A testimony of Anaximenes in Plato

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 53, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 327-337

  Graham, Daniel W ^a  

^a BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 62949088284     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/53.2.327     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. G. Wöhrle, Anaximenes aus Milet: Die Fragmente zu seiner Lehre (Stuttgart, 1993), 31
2. 2), 43: 'Die entscheidende Tatsache ist, dass zur Zeit Platons von keinem der drei Milesier mehr Schriften bekannt waren. Das darf man daraus schliessen, das Platon von ihnen überhaupt nur Thales kennt . . .'
3. 2)
4. M. M. McCabe, Plato and his Predecessors (Cambridge, 2000). This book does not claim to be a complete survey, for it deals only with the Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus. But where the author does discuss Plato's views of his Ionian predecessors at Sophist 242c-243a, she has nothing to say about the Milesians (see esp. 64-5)
5. In his account of the 'way up' he omits cloud (49c2), and in his account of the 'way down' he omits wind (c4-5); but clearly wind is thicker than air, and presumably thinner than cloud. Although this point should be fairly straightforward, it is complicated by the fact that Hippol. Haer. 1.7.7 reads which Diels corrects by dropping the and changing the final two words to Much has been made of this by J. Klowski, '1st der Aer des Anaximenes als eine Substanz konzipiert?' Hermes 100 (1972), 131-42, esp. 137-8
6. but their interpretation starts, I believe, with a misreading of Pseudo-Plutarch Stromateis 3 = A6 DK, as I have argued elsewhere (D. W. Graham, 'A new look at Anaximenes', History of Philosophy Quarterly 20 [2003], 1-20). One would need strong reasons to abandon Theophrastus in favour of Hippolytus and Pseudo-Plutarch when the latter two depend on the first; a key move in the brief for Hippolytus and Pseudo-Plutarch is an argument from silence: no one before Theophrastus knows of Anaximenes' theory of change (as reported by Theophrastus). But at least Anaxagoras and Melissus, as well as Plato, know of it
7. This particular term is first found in Anaxagoras as a quasi-scientific term (B12, B13, B17 DK); the last passage makes clear the image of mixing and separating in which nothing comes to be or perishes. Here Plato seems to be conflating terminology from pre-Parmenidean and post-Parmenidean theories, that is, theories of generation vs. theories of mixture (cf. C. H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology [New York, 1960], 155)
8. But since he conjoins the term with 'dissolved', a term appropriate to early Ionian thought and found in the Anaximander doxography (Aetius 3.7.1 = A24 DK, with Kahn, 101), he seems unconcerned with the potential distinction. F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology (London, 1937), 180 sees Anaximenes as moving towards Anaxagoras: 'Anaximenes . . . took a step towards the doctrine clearly formulated after Parmenides, that qualitative change is reducible to the bringing together or separation in space of a number of unalterable elements.' This, I take it, is precisely what he did not do; instead he made what Aristotle would later call coming to be and perishing the fundamental kinds of change, as Plato recognizes
9. See P. J. Bicknell, 'Anaximenes' simile', Apeiron 1 (1966), 17-18 for a suggested reinterpretation of the cap as a circular strip. Whatever the specific apparel referred to, the peculiar reference to felt headgear seems to guarantee that felt played a significant role in Anaximenes (cf. Kirk et al. [n. 3], 156). If the term 'felted' did subsequently become a synonym for 'compacted' in Greek cosmology, we may reasonably trace its origin to Anaximenes
10. For example A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928), 314-15
11. G. Vlastos, Plato's Universe (Seattle, 1975), 80, n. 22
12. Critics of MM as an interpretation of the pre-Socratics include W. A. Heidel, 'Qualitative change in Presocratic philosophy', Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 19 (1906), 333-79
13. H. Cherniss, Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy (Baltimore, 1935), 362 ff
14. J. B. McDiarmid, 'Theophrastus on the Presocratic causes', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 61 (1953), 85-156
15. M. C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington, 1971), ch. 2
16. J. Klowski, 'Das Entstehen der Begriffe Substanz und Materie', Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 48 (1966), 2-42
17. 4), 73-4
18. C. Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (Oxford, 1928), 16-18
19. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy I (Cambridge, 1962), 115-16
20. G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (New York, 1970), 19-20, 21-2
21. id., Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge, 1979), 140-1
22. J. Barnes, The Early Greek Philosophers, rev. edn (London, 1979/1982), 38-44
23. Against Barnes in particular see D. W. Graham, 'Heraclitus' criticism of Ionian philosophy', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 15 (1997), 1-50 at 12-17
24. The novelty of Aristotle's ontology of things is argued forcefully in W.-R. Mann, The Discovery of Tnings: Aristotle's Categories and their Context (Princeton, 2000)
25. Cf. Hölscher (n. 14), 268. Parmenides might be replying to Hesiod and common-sense views, but if non-philosophers are his only targets, he ignores the whole previous philosophical tradition
26. G. Vlastos, 'On Heraclitus', American Journal of Philology 76 (1955), 337-68 at 354, 362-7
27. Cf. Gigon (n. 2), 104
28. See D. W. Graham, Aristotle's Two Systems (Oxford, 1987), ch. 6