History of Philosophy. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Volume I. Milesian school: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. The problem of "beginning" and "element" of being Philosopher Anaximenes biography

The teachings of Anaximenes are developing in line with the orientation traditional for Milesian natural philosophy. Most revealing in this respect is his humanization, his "domestication" to the limit of the world of cosmological (simultaneously meteorological) phenomena. The universe is limited by a crystalline outer shell. The earth is in the center. The sun revolves around it, just as “a hat revolves around our head” (A7). The sun is flat, "like a leaf of a tree," so it seems to be able to float in the air. It is the only source of light: the moon and stars reflect it. At the same time, the Moon is likened to a “hanging disk”, while the stars, “like nails”, are driven into the firmament. So important for human life, the Earth and the Sun also occupy a central place in the cosmology of Anaximenes. Let us add that the Earth "lies" in the air, since, being locked by it, the air acquires elasticity. The world of Anaximenes is purely human, devoid of
ny any mystery or hostility to man. And the natural explanation of such formidable phenomena as an earthquake and lightning expels from the world everything alien to man, terrible and inexplicable.
Air, which occupies an important place in the cosmology of Anaximenes, is at the center of his cosmogonic and philosophical concepts, which are closer to him to a much greater extent than Anaximander. The air of Anaximenes is the air that man breathes. The Greek aer takes on this usual meaning for us for the first time in Anaximenes (previously it basically meant "haze, fog, darkness"). The Iliad contains an episode when Zeus covers the battlefield with darkness and Ajax turns to him with a prayer: "... save the sons of the Achaeans from darkness." In early Greek thinking, darkness is seen as a definite something, not as the absence of light. In Anaximander, light and darkness are opposites, possessing equally substantiality. Anaximenes transforms aer into a natural environment surrounding a person, and at the same time into a substance from which all opposites arise, including light and darkness.
The doctrine of air as the fundamental principle (primary substance) of the universe, of the emergence from it of everything that exists through the processes of condensation and rarefaction, is the essence of the philosophy of Anaximenes, including cosmogony. How does his philosophy interpret man, what is the place of man in the world? The fact is that aer is an eternal and living being. Air is immortal and therefore divine. Man is mortal, and the question of his relation to the deity is one of the most important questions of ancient anthropology. Its concretization is the question of the divinity of air. The divine air of Anaximenes is alive primarily because it is breath.
Let us turn to the fragment of Anaximenes B2 that caused a number of discussions: “Just as our soul, being air, holds each of us together, so breath and air embrace (periechein) the entire universe.” The air here is identified with the vital breath. The identification of breath with life is generally a widespread idea, already present in the Iliad. However, restoring the whole context of the ancient ideas about air and the soul, W. Guthrie comes to the conclusion that Anaximenes' ideas about air provide a basis for identifying it not only with life, but also with the mind. The air of Anaximenes is reasonable: it embraces everything (periechein). Anaximander used this word in this sense in relation to apeiron.

Let's move on to the interpretation of the fragment. J. Burnet was the first to notice the analogy between the microcosm and the macrocosm. This analogy is discussed in detail as the original Anaximenian one by V. Krantz. There are also objections, justified by the fact that physiological analogies between the human body and the outside world were common only in medical treatises of the 5th century BC. BC. and could not belong to Anaximenes.
W. Guthrie, dispelling this kind of objection, rightly notes that philosophical ideas might not have influenced medical treatises, so that Anaximenes' analogy clearly belongs to him. Being the foundation of the human soul, rational and divine air informs man not only of life, but also of reason. Anaximenes reduces the divine to the rational structure of the universe, and man acts as a rational part of it (as a microcosm). The barrier between man and god is broken; gods, like people, are derived from a single base - air.
K. Alt, having subjected to a rigorous analysis of the compendium, which contains the message of Simplicius, comes to the conclusion that fragment B2 is a product of later peripatetic and Stoic interpretations of those provisions that most likely go back to Diogenes of Apollonia. Disputing the authenticity of fragment B2, Alt generally denies the possibility of Anaximenes including the human being and the soul in cosmic processes, referring this kind of problematics only to Heraclitus, who compares the cosmic “fire” and the “dryness” of the soul. According to the author, Anaximenes does not even have a hint of such a relationship, although fire is assigned the most important cosmological role: “For Anaximenes, fire is something guiding, the final stage of changing darkness: light, vast and giving opportunities aer.” In this sense, Anaximenes cannot be a forerunner of the doctrine of the fiery nature of the soul. This article is an example of hypercriticism. However, Heraclitus also has a position containing an echo of the ideas of Anaximenes, about "psyches evaporating from moisture." And this provision suggests that in the doctrine of the soul there can be a path from Anaximenes to Heraclitus.

Summarizing the above, we can conclude that the world around man, nature appear in natural philosophy Milesian school surprisingly proportional, "home", correlated with the possibilities of human experience. The world in its cosmological description remains an accessible and familiar world of human everyday life. Man in this world is not something unique, he is a necessary part of nature. Man is naturalized: this also follows from the cosmogonic description of the world, including anthropogenesis in cosmogenesis, from the hylozoistic consideration of the first substances. Naturally, in this case, not only a person is naturalized, but the world is biologized, it appears alive and animated. Naive materialism and hylozoism substantiate naturalistic anthropology as a whole.
However, it cannot be said that the Milesian natural philosophers stopped there (this applies especially to their own philosophical ideas- the doctrine of substance). The doctrine of the soul, of the relationship between the divine (eternal), the immortal and the human, may well be regarded as the first form of posing anthropological problems. The Milesian philosophers not only pose these problems, but also solve them. The universe is generated from a living principle, and the very world order of things becomes "alive" and "fair". Man, with his whole being, as a rational and social being, belongs to the universe. The naturalization of man does not contradict this, since the universe is subject to the norms of the social order. The model of the universe of the Milesian thinkers testifies to the decisive ideological break they carried out: instead of correlating man with a deity, they correlate him with divine nature, and the problem of hybris (deviation from justice) of man in front of God is replaced by the problem of dike and adikia as order and deviations that characterize nature. Carrying out such a worldview reorientation, introducing a consideration of man into cosmological and cosmogonic descriptions and substantiating their views with the doctrine of a living substance that obeys social standards, the Milesian thinkers saw a person as a “polis being”.

The last philosopher of the Milesian school is Anaximenes (about 585 - about 525 BC), fellow citizen, junior contemporary and student of Anaximander. Apparently, he wanted to stand between Thales and Anaximander in solving the fundamental question for all of them about the fundamental principle of the world.

The influence of his predecessor is clearly visible on him, and at the same time it is clear what difficulties the concept of "infinite" presented already for Anaximander's closest successors.

Anaximenes, like his teacher, considers the eternally living and eternally moving principle to be the beginning of everything, but, unlike Anaximander, he defines it as air. Air is the "middle" between earth and heavenly ether, between water and fire; it is steam or fog, now thinning out, becoming transparent, light, now thickening into clouds, into rain and dew. In order to defend the unity of substances, the unity of the elements, and to avoid a clear contradiction between such unity and qualitative differences that “stand out” from the infinite, Anaximenes reduces qualitative changes to quantitative change, by means of thickening, compaction and rarefaction, thinning of the original element. When rarefied, the air becomes fire, and when it thickens, “clumping”, it forms wind, clouds, water (liquid air), earth, stones. Once we recognize the unity of the elements, all kinds of matter are only its modifications. Otherwise, instead of a single matter, it will be necessary, together with later physicists, to admit a primary mixture of many different elements. It is the air that moves the sky, the moon, the sun with its current. He is the first engine of the Universe, the beginning of movement. At the same time, it was presented not only as a bodily, but also as a spiritual substance, in accordance with those representatives of the soul or spirit that existed in early times. Soul - steam, soul - spirit, breath, air body; the air we breathe is the basis of life and movement. And "just as the soul, being air, holds us, so breath and air embrace the whole world." The world breathes and lives like us.

Anaximenes was the first to point out the difference between fixed stars and planets, put forward a hypothesis explaining the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon, as well as the phases of the Moon. Anaximenes corrected Anaximander's mistake and placed the stars beyond the Moon and the Sun. He associated the state of the weather with the activity of the Sun. Condensed, "knocked down" air forms the earth - a wide flat disk, rushing in the air. In the same way, other celestial bodies that breathe it are supported by it. Moist vapor rising from the earth is rarefied, ignited and, surrounded by air, form celestial bodies, flat like the earth and like leaves rushing in the air with a lateral movement. Such are the planets: the fixed stars are fastened like nails to the crystal vault of the heavens. There are also non-fiery, dark celestial bodies, similar to the earth - apparently - Anaximenes explained eclipses by their presence. Celestial bodies do not go underground: together with the sky they rotate like a millstone on a horizontal plane, and if the sun hides from us, it is only because it is moving away from us: in the south it is closest to us, in the west it is all farther and farther, in its turn from west to east, it hides behind the heights located in the north of the earth. Thus, if Anaximander considered the orbits of celestial bodies inclined to the earth, then to Anaximenes the earth itself was an inclined surface with respect to the celestial axis.

Outlining his teaching, Anaximenes often resorted to figurative comparisons. The condensation of air, "giving birth" to the flat earth, he likens to "felting wool"; The sun, the moon - fiery leaves floating in the middle of the air, as Pseudo-Plutarch A.V. Lebedev writes about. Fragments of early Greek philosophers / M., 1989 ..

Anaximenes pays great attention to meteorological phenomena - rain, hail, snow, etc., trying to explain these phenomena by various causes based on the presence of air. Even the emergence of the gods Anaximenes explained from the air.

A letter from Anaximenes to Pythagoras has been preserved:

“You turned out to be much more intelligent than us, because you moved from Samos to Croton and live peacefully there. And here the Aeacids do innumerable evil deeds; the Milesians are not released from the power of their tyrants; and the Median king threatens us with disaster if we are not willing to pay tribute to him. The Ionians are going to rise up against the Medes in a war for their common freedom; and when that happens, we will have no hope of salvation. How, then, should Anaximenes think about the affairs of heaven when he has to fear death or slavery? You are welcomed with joy by the Crotonians and the rest of the Italians, and the disciples flock to you even from Sicily.

Ἀναξιμένης Date of Birth: Date of death: A place of death: School/tradition: Direction:

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Anaximenes of Miletus(other Greek. Ἀναξιμένης , / - /502 BC e. , Miletus) - an ancient Greek philosopher, a representative of the Milesian school of natural philosophy, a student of Anaximander.

The genesis of the world in Anaximenes

Anaximenes is the last representative of the Milesian school. Anaximenes strengthened and completed the trend of spontaneous materialism - the search for natural causes of phenomena and things. Like Thales and Anaximander earlier, he considers a certain type of matter to be the fundamental principle of the world. He considers such matter to be unlimited, infinite, having an indefinite form. air, from which everything else arises. “Anaximenes… proclaims air to be the beginning of existence, for everything arises from it and everything returns to it.”

As a meteorologist, Anaximenes believed that hail is formed when water falling from clouds freezes; if air is mixed with this freezing water, snow is formed. Wind is compressed air. Anaximenes associated the state of the weather with the activity of the Sun.

Like Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes studied astronomical phenomena, which, like other natural phenomena, sought to explain in a natural way. Anaximenes believed that the Sun was a [flat celestial] body, similar to the Earth and the Moon, which became hot from rapid movement. Earth and heavenly bodies hover in the air; The earth is motionless, other luminaries and planets (which Anaximenes distinguished from stars and which, as he believed, arise from earthly vapors) are moved by cosmic winds.

Compositions

The writings of Anaximenes have been preserved in fragments. Unlike his teacher Anaximander, who wrote, as the ancients themselves noted, “artificial prose,” Anaximenes writes simply and artlessly. Outlining his teaching, Anaximenes often resorts to figurative comparisons. The condensation of air, "giving birth" to the flat earth, he likens to "felting wool"; The sun, the moon - fiery leaves floating in the middle of the air, etc.

Literature

• Fragments of early Greek philosophers, vol. 1. - M .: Nauka, 1989. - S. 129-135.
• Thomson J. Studies in the history of ancient Greek society, v. 2. The first philosophers. Per. from English. - M.: 1959. - S. 153-154.
• Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics. Early classic. - M.: Ladomir, 1994. - S. 312-317.
• Trubetskoy S. N. History course ancient philosophy. - M.: Russian yard, 1997.
• Asmus V.F. ancient philosophy. - M.: Higher School, 1998. - S. 11-12.

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Anaximenes/Anaksimen

Anaximenes is a student and follower of Anaximander, the last representative of the Milesian school.

He strengthened and completed the trend of spontaneous materialism - the search for natural causes of phenomena and things. He considered air (apeiron) as a material principle, from which fire arises due to rarefaction, and wind, clouds, water, earth and stones due to condensation. He, unlike his teacher, who wrote, as the ancients themselves noted, "artificial prose", wrote simply and artlessly. This speaks of the formation of a scientific and philosophical language, of its liberation from the remnants of mythology and socioanthropomorphism. Like the Milesian philosophers, Anaximenes was a scholar. But the range of his scientific interests is narrower than that of Anaximander. Questions of biology and mathematics did not seem to interest him. Anaximenes is an astronomer and meteorologist. He is the author of the essay "On Nature".

This philosopher taught that the world arises from "infinite" air, and the whole variety of things is air in its various states. Cooling, the air condenses and, solidifying, forms clouds, earth, stones; rarefied air gives rise to heavenly bodies with a fiery nature. The latter arise from earthly vapors. Outlining his teaching, Anaximenes often resorted to figurative comparisons. The condensation of air, "giving birth" to the flat earth, he likens to "felting wool"; The sun, the moon - fiery leaves floating in the middle of the air. Anaximenes' boundless air encompasses the whole world, is the source of life and breath of living beings. Anaximenes thought that the Sun was the Earth, which became red-hot from its rapid movement. The earth and heavenly bodies float in the air. At the same time, the earth is motionless, while other luminaries move in air whirlwinds.

Anaximenes saw in the boundless air the beginning of both the body and the soul. The soul is airy. As for the gods, Anaximenes also brought them out of the air. Augustine reports that "Anaximenes did not deny the gods and did not pass them over in silence." But he, says Augustine, was convinced that "the air was not created by the gods, but that they themselves were from the air."

Some guesses of Anaximenes are quite successful. Hail is formed when water falling from clouds freezes, and if air is mixed with this freezing water, snow forms. Wind is condensed air, which is not true. Anaximenes corrected Anaximander's mistake and placed the stars beyond the Moon and the Sun. He associated the state of the weather with the activity of the Sun.

Philosophy of Anaximenes

Anaximenes ((c. 588 - c. 525 BC) - an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. Like Thales and Anaximander earlier, he considers a certain type of matter to be the fundamental principle of the world. He considers such matter to be unlimited, endless, indefinitely shaped air, from from which everything else arises: “Anaksimene… proclaims air to be the beginning of all things, for from it everything arises and everything returns to it.”

Anaximenes materializes apeiron, purely abstract definition your teacher. To describe the properties of the world element, he draws on a set of air properties. Anaximenes still uses Anaximander's substantive term, but attributively. The air of Anaximenes is also boundless, i.e. apeiros (ἄπειρος); but Anaximenes understands the beginning already in addition to other properties that air has. Accordingly, the statics and dynamics of the beginning is determined by such properties.

The air of Anaximenes simultaneously corresponds to the ideas of both Thales (an abstract principle, conceivable as a concrete natural element) and Anaximander (an abstract principle, conceived as such, without quality). Anaximenes' air is the most qualityless of all the material elements; a transparent and invisible substance that is difficult/impossible to see, which has no color and normal bodily qualities. At the same time, air is a qualitative principle, although in many ways it is an image of universal spontaneity, filled with a generalized abstract, universal content.

According to Anaximenes, the world arises from "infinite" air, and the whole variety of things is air in its various states. Due to rarefaction (i.e. heating) fire arises from air, due to condensation (i.e. cooling) - wind, clouds, water, earth and stones. The rarefied air gives rise to heavenly bodies with a fiery nature. An important aspect of the provisions of Anaximenes: condensation and rarefaction are understood here as the main, mutually opposite but equally functional processes involved in the formation of various states of matter.

The choice of air by Anaximenes as a cosmogonic first principle and the actual life basis of the cosmos is based on the principle of parallelism of the microcosm and the macrocosm: “just as air in the form of our soul holds us together, so breath and air cover the entire Earth.” Anaximenes' boundless air encompasses the whole world, is the source of life and breath of living beings.

Completing the construction of a single picture of the world, Anaximenes finds in the boundless air the beginning of both the body and the soul; the gods also come from the air; the soul is airy, life is breath. Augustine reports that “Anaximenes did not deny the gods and did not pass them over in silence ... Anaximenes ... said that the beginning is unlimited air, and that everything that is, that was, that will be arises from it; (all) godly and divine things; and that everything that follows will arise from the offspring of air. But Anaximenes, says Augustine, was convinced that "air was not created by the gods, but that they themselves were made of air." The gods of Anaximenes are a modification of a material substance (and, accordingly, in the view of orthodox theology, they are not divine, that is, they are not actually gods).

Anaximenes first introduces the concept of mutual respect pra-matter and motion. Air as a pra-matter, according to his views, "constantly fluctuates, because if it did not move, it would not change as much as it changes." (At the same time, Anaximenes postulates the “condensation” and “rarefaction” of a single pra-matter, leading to the formation of various states (the matter of the world), as opposite but equally functional processes, i.e. both lead to qualitative changes.) Anaximenes suggests a step towards the development of the first teachings about qualitative changes, i.e. comes close to the dialectic of transformation quantitative changes in quality.

As a meteorologist, Anaximenes believed that hail is formed when water falling from clouds freezes; if air is mixed with this freezing water, snow is formed. Wind is compressed air. Anaximenes associated the state of the weather with the activity of the Sun.

Like Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes studied astronomical phenomena, which, like other natural phenomena, he sought to explain in a natural way. Anaximenes believed that the Sun was a (flat celestial) body, similar to the Earth and the Moon, which became hot from rapid movement. Earth and heavenly bodies hover in the air; The earth is motionless, other luminaries and planets (which Anaximenes distinguished from stars and which, as he believed, arise from earthly vapors) are moved by cosmic winds.

The writings of Anaximenes have been preserved in fragments.

He considered air to be the beginning of everything, from the condensation and rarefaction of which all things arise.

Anaximenes (Ἀναξιμένης) from Miletus (c. 588-525 BC) is an ancient Greek materialist philosopher of the Milesian school, a student of Anaximander. Anaximenes considered air to be the source from which everything arises and to which everything returns again. According to the teachings of Anaximenes, all things arise through various degrees of air condensation (the formation of water, earth, stones, etc.) or its rarefaction (the formation of fire). Thus, Anaximenes for the first time in Greek philosophy the idea of ​​transition of quantity into quality is expressed.

Philosophical Dictionary / ed.-comp. S. Ya. Podoprigora, A. S. Podoprigora. - Ed. 2nd, sr. - Rostov n / a: Phoenix, 2013, p. 16.

Anaximenes of Miletus. Anaximenes (middle of the 6th century BC) believed that everything in the world was created from air. Proving this point of view, he said that air can be rarefied to the state of fire or condensed to the state of water or earth, and all these elements together make up the world and all things in it. Anaximenes regarded air as the breath of the cosmos, its divine and indestructible source. He represented the earth in the form of a flat and thin disk supported by air.

Adkins L., Adkins R. Ancient Greece. Encyclopedic reference book. M., 2008, p. 435.

Anaximenes (c. 585-525 BC) - He considered the air to be the beginning of all things; when rarefied, it produces fire; when condensed, it produces water and stones. This air (not to be confused with our usual one!) is “the beginning of the soul, gods and deities”. “Air is homogeneous, inaccessible to the senses, boundless” (hence, it is similar to Anaximander’s “apeiron”). They say, having heard from his student the question of why he was overcome by doubts, Anaximenes outlined two circles on the ground: a small one and a large one. “Your knowledge is a small circle, mine is a big one. But all that remains outside these circles is the unknown. The small circle has little contact with the unknown. The wider the circle of your knowledge, the greater its border with the unknown. And henceforth, the more you learn new things, the more questions you will have.

Balandin R.K. One Hundred Great Geniuses / R.K. Balandin. - M.: Veche, 2012.

Philosophers, lovers of wisdom (biographical guide).

Greece, Hellas, the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, one of the most important historical countries of antiquity.

Fragments:

DK 1.90-96; Lebedev A. V. Fragments, p. 129-135;

Wdhri G. Anaximenes von Milet. Die Fragmente zu seiner Lehre. Stuttg 1993.

Literature:

Rozhansky ID The development of natural science in the era of antiquity. M., 1979;

Guthrie W.K.C. A History of Greek Philosophy. Cambr., 1971;

Kirk G.S., Raven J. E. The presocratic philosopher Cambr., 1957, p. 143-162.