PREHISTORY OF THE DIALECTIC OF OPPOSITIONS:

A FARRELLIAN LOOK AT ANCIENT HELLENIC

THOUGHT
PART ONE: ANAXIMANDER

James L. Kelley 2015

According to Aristotle, philosophy began amongst the Ionian Greeks as a search for an
arch or first cause (prt aitia): That from which all things come to be is their first
principle [1]. For Thales (c. 624 c. 546 BC), the principle of all things is the element
water; this ingenerate element-origin is a step away from the traditional Hellenic
pantheon comprised of gods who do not die once they are born, but who exist as part of
a divine lineage whose alpha was Chaos and whose omega was Zeus. Thaless water is
deathless, but is not born or generated. Other elements or beings find their origin as
modifications of the original water, which is never declared explicitly by Thales to
exist apart from the tangible world-order. His student Anaximanders (c. 610 c. 546
BC) unique concept of primal entity as apeironthe Unboundedhas been viewed by
scholars as a qualitative leap in abstraction over Thaless aqueous arch [2]. The
apeiron of Anaximander is the invisible, undetermined, indefinable source of the
oppositesthe hot, the cold, the moist, the dry, and the restwithout being itself of
the same nature as the world [3]. Incidentally, Anaximander and many other early
Greek philosophers consider this source of all beings to be divine, though scholars
disagree about the details of their theism [4]. The pairs of opposites separated from
the apeiron (and the beings that are, in turn, constituted by these opposites) exist in
space and time [5]. The primary pair of opposites for Anaximander is hot and cold, but,
because almost none the Milesians writings have survived, we have no clear idea of

how these first opposites relate to the other pairs, the moist, the dry, and the rest; we
only know that these dichotomous forces originated from a part of the apeiron that, by
some unspecified cause, became separated. This primordial scissioning was
simultaneous with the creation of the world-order [7].
Of Anaximanders voluminous oeuvre only a single fragment has survived. This brief
yet important passage is preserved in the following statement from Simplicius (the
italicized text is believed to be the actual words of Anaximander): Into those things
from which existing things have their coming into being, their passing away, too, takes
place, according to what must be; for they make reparation to one another for their
injustice according to the ordinance of time [8]. It is important to understand that
the things from which existing things have their coming into being are the opposites,
and not individual beings. However, John Mansley Robinson has shownthrough
parallels to ancient Greek medical writersthat opposites were commonly thought to
be operative as much inside of beings material bodies as in the world at large. But the
opposites are not at work only in every spatial nook and cranny: the contraries are also
operative temporally, in the change of seasons that determine both natural and societal
rhythms: The year has a share of all thingsthe hot, the cold, the dry, and the wet
for no one of the things which exist in the world-order would lastwere it not for all
the rest [9]. Thus, Anaximanders notion of binary as a category of Few between the
One as apeiron and the Many as beings (ta onta) allows opposition to straddle (and
thus saturate) the whole scale of being, explaining each levels material (and thus
organizational and even moral) basis.
The fact that we have little of Anaximanders work, and thus must make due with the
comments of later writers to flesh it out, leads historians of philosophy into great
anxiety over whether or not they are reading too much into Anaximander. However, our
tracing of the dialectic of oppositions path from its beginning in Greek philosophy,
being more concerned with trajectory than point of origin, can afford to forgo a full
treatment of certain questions of influence and priority. Now, to return to
Anaximanders apeiron and to its core of dialectical contrariety
For the Hellenic philosophers it was axiomatic that beings do not arise out of
nothingness; rather, things that exist must have been made from preexisting material.
Anaximander follows this no creation from nothing rule but with his own stamp. The
apeiron is an immense, perhaps even infinite being that contains all possible potencies
and these forces or powers are opposites such as hot versus cold, et ceterain a

kind of balanced state. In fact, viewed from its in and for itself aspect, there are no
qualities in the apeiron, since its natural state of perfect balance or equilibrium of
opposites means that no quality is actually manifested, there being a kind of nullity or
absolute repose that rules over it [10].
Though his thought-world is doubtless far removed from the presocratics, Nicholas of
Cusas (1401-1464) version of deity is nonetheless similar to the apeiron in that
Cusanuss Godhead is a kind of prime matter that contains all actualities, all possible
beings, in each part of its radically-simple, infinite expanse. For Cusanus, as for his
Milesian counterpart, there was only one way to maintain the deitys total lack of
composition while also explaining how this highest being could generate a multifarious
cosmos of limited yet interrelated beings: The apeiron/Godhead must contain all
potentialities as a coincidence of all opposites in every part of its being.
Of course, Anaximanders whole idea is that there are no regions or parts in the
apeiron; the cosmos of beings comes about, as we touched on above, only once a
region of apeiron is differentiated; this primeval carving alters the existential mode of
the opposites therein. The vectorial opposites no longer exist within each other in a
state of balance; now the opposites are arranged in a kind of spatio-temporal imitation
of the apeiron's in and for itself Unity. This is the law of temporal necessity spoken
of in the Anaximander fragment. And since nothing comes from nothing, the apeiron
as coincidence of opposites allows that beings are created out of the substance of the
deity as a separation of these coincident opposites. Notice that, what Anaximander has
invented (and Plato, Cusanus and many others have carried on) is a conception of the
One as the only being free from ontological, elemental, dispositional, psychological,
and cosmic opposition. Anaxagoras deems the divine principle pure (katharos)
because unmixed with the elemental dialectic of opposition [11].
But, paradoxically, the apeirons freedom from opposition, indeed from composition, is
secured at a price. Only by remaining inactive and static, by hibernating from activity
and even from existence or being itself, can Anaximanders first principle avoid
manifesting the deadly seeds of opposition that lay within it [12]. But can the apeiron
avoid manifesting the opposites? Indeed, to anticipate our discussion of Middle
Platonism below, can the One not create and still be the One? Not according to
Simplicius, for whom Anaximander did not derive generation from the alteration of
some element, but from the separation of contraries due to everlasting [rotational]
motion [13]. Indeed Plutarch testified that Anaximander seemed not to believe that the

separation began at a particular moment, though it undoubtedly followed the inexorable

law of time, whereby the opposite forces took turns as dominant. An example is
Anaximanders notion that the moisture on the earths surface is slowly evaporating;
this era will end once water reaches a certain dearth without completely dying.
Presumably, an aqueous age will follow, which will spell the overpowering of heat and
aridity through a slow cooling and dampening [14]. Doubtless we see here the wellspring of a perennial problem in Greek thought, that of explaining how a perfect (and
thus perfectly simple and perfectly independent) divine principle can have any relation
to a cosmos full of limited beings that are, in Xavier Zubiris words, peras, [that is]
perfectly delimited with respect to the indefinite, which is their arch, their beginning
[15]. This same Hellenic dilemma of divine creation is at work in Plotinuss notion of
the Ones emanation, and in the concept, epochal to Farrells work, of the Origenist
Problematic [16].
We would be remiss to pass over what might well be the aspect of Anaximanders
thought most relevant to Joseph Farrells dialectic of opposition; namely, the Milesians
theme of the earth at rest [17]. St. Hippolytus of Rome offers the following
concerning Anaximanders geocentric and geostatic theory: The earth is aloft, not
dominated by anything; it remains in place because of the similar distance from all
points [of the celestial circumference] [18]. The earth, then, does not fall because it
has no opposite that can overpower it; this follows from the simple fact that the earth
sits at the same distance from every point on the cosmic spheres outermost boundary.
There seems to be a kind of analogy at work here between physical pairs of opposites
and rational opposites, and within this analogy lies the possible origin of the dialectic
of oppositions appeal. The rational aspect of the geostasis stems from queries such as:
Why does the earth stay put? Because it has no good reason to move. Why no good
reason? Because, for a centrally-placed entity such as the earth, any direction one could
choose to move is just as reasonable as any other; thus, the earth remains stationary.
From the physical or cosmological angle, it occurred to Anaximander that the earth is
held in place from every direction by an equal amount of force, there being an equal
amount of air and fire in each elemental layer encasing the earth. The earth, then,
because it absorbs the force or kratos of all beings, stands as a summing up or heading
up of the whole cosmos (and the apeiron that stands above it). In a sense, the earth is
the being that holds all beings in place; it is the perfect point where the geometric,
cosmic, mathematical, and physical buck stops.
But the earth also remains in the center because it has power or dominance over every

pair of opposites; we can imagine each and every line of geometric space as a spoke
that begins at the surface of the cosmic limit and ends at the same terrestrial median
[18a]. Each spoke has its diametric opposite, and the whole arrangement is meant to
express a harmony achieved by the divine principles law of opposites, a law to which
the deity itself is not subject, but which all beings are subject [19]. Though we do not
have the space to pursue the thread here, we note that Anaximanders apeiron has more
than a passing likeness to the Pythagoreans harmony of oppositesof high and low
tones, of long and short distances, and so onbased in number. For them, number
mediated the divine and the created: number was in all cosmic beings, both
individually and relationally, but was not contained by them. A further analogy to
Anaximanders moral-yet-impersonal arch is detected in the Pythagoreans tetraktys,
which was for them both the holiest symbol of cosmic harmony, and at the same time a
physics text, a chart representing numbers relation to the material cosmos of space and
time [20].

NOTES
[1] Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983b25, trans. avail. at http://www.iep.utm.edu/thales/#H3
(accessed 27 February, 2015).
[2] On Thaless notion of water as the origin of all being, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives
of the Eminent Philosophers 1.27: He theorized that water was the source of all
things (Translation from Daniel W. Graham, editor and translator, The Texts of
Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the
Major Presocratics. Two Volumes [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010],
1.21). For an interpretive overview of Anaximanders apeiron, see Jonathan Barnes,
The Presocratic Philosophers. Volume One, Thales to Zeno (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1979), 28-37. On Anaximanders apeiron as philosophys first invisible
First Principle, Karl Jaspers remarks, What is the apeiron? The meaning of the word is
infinite, boundless, undetermined. Thus the apeiron is not an object of intuition. The
ancients understood Anaximanders apeiron as the matter from which the worlds arise
and to which they returnanalogous to the water from which all things originated,
according to the earlier Thales. But water was visibly present in the world.
Anaximander took the leap to positing a source that was not only invisible but could
not even be defined (The Great Philosophers, The Original Thinkers [Volume Two]:
Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plotinus, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Ralph

Manheim [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966], 11).

[3] Simplicius, Physics, 150.24; trans. from John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction
to Early Greek Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), 34.
[4] Aristotle reports that the apeiron is the divine, for it is deathless and
imperishable (Physics 203b, trans. from Graham, Texts, 1.55). See the Diogenes
Laertius, Lives, 1.27 for Thales notion that the whole cosmos was full of deities
(idem, 1.21).
[5] Anaximander sees the creation of the cosmos as a separat[ion] of the
contrarieties from the one in which they are present, that is, the apeiron (Aristotle,
Physics 187a, trans. from Graham, Texts, 1.53). The Milesians contrarieties are hot,
cold, dry, moist, and the rest, says Simplicius (Physics 150.24-25, trans. from Graham,
Texts, 1.53).
[7] On hot and cold as the primary separation from Anaximanders apeiron, note the
words of Plutarch: Anaximander says that that part of the everlasting which is
generative of hot and cold separated off at the coming-to-be of the world-order and
from this a sort of sphere of flame grew around the air about the earth like bark around
a tree. This subsequently broke off and was closed into individual circles to form the
sun, the moon and the stars (Miscellanies 2, trans. from Graham, Texts, 1.57).
[8] Simplicius, Physics, 24.18, trans. from Robinson, Introduction, 34.
[9] Robinson, Introduction, 35, citing Hippocrates Nat. hom. 7.
[10] In referring to the apeirons in and for itself aspect, I am alluding to Findlays
analysis of the Eides dual aspect in Platos Parmenides, wherein the Platonic Eide is
seen to have a side in and for itself (undifferentiated Unity) and another side, Its
wider and fuller nature, which allows us to predicate other notions of it or relate them
to it (J.N. Findlay, Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines [New York:
Humanities Press, 1974], 237). A later sections analysis of Parmenides will argue that
the apeiron presages both Platos Eide and Plotinuss One.
The opposites and the four elements of Empedocles: John Ferguson, in his paper The
Opposites (Apeiron 1.3 [January 1969], 1-17), holds that Anaximander did not
conceive of hot and cold as two of Empedocles four elements, or, to avoid
anachronism, Empedocless four roots or elements were not derived from the
traditional oppositeshot and cold, wet and dry, because, though the antithesis

between hot and cold had played a fairly large part in previous systems, the antithesis
between wet and dry had played next to none. There is in fact no sense of antithesis at
all between his roots, as there would be if they were really derived from the
opposites (7). Nevertheless, as Gerard Naddaf insists, the hot and cold produced by
the separated apeiron, along with whatever other opposites Anaximander may have
had in mind, must be considered not as qualities or properties that characterize bodies,
but as entities or things. This is the case since in Anaximanders timethere was no
technical vocabulary that enabled the distinction between a substance (e.g., earth) and
its attributes (e.g., cold and dry) (The Greek Concept of Nature [Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 2005], 71).
[11] Jean Pierre Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks (New York: Zone
Books, 2006), 222.
[12] For Anaximanders notion that the apeiron secretes a gonimon or seed that
produces hot and cold, which opposites then generate the cosmos as an organism made
up of many beings, see Plutarch, Miscellanies 2, trans. from Graham, Texts, 1.56-57.
Cf. the trans. and discussion of the same passage in Naddaf, Greek Concept of Nature,
72-74.
[13] Simplicius, Physics, 24 in Graham, Texts, 1.51, emphasis added.
[14] And [Anaximander] declared perishing to take place and much earlier coming to
be, all these recurring from an infinite time [apeirou aeonos] past (Plutarch,
Miscellanies 2, trans. from Graham, Texts, 1.56-57). John Burnet describes the
overcoming of the cold substance by the hot substance as a re-equalizing of the
opposites, which causes the world to become part of the apeiron again (Early Greek
Philosophy, 2nd Ed. [London: Adam and Charles Black, 1908], 72).
[15] Xavier Zubiri, The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics, trans. Joaquin
Redondo (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2010), 28.
[16] See Farrell, God, History and Dialectic, 97ff.
[17] See Barnes, Presocratic, 23-28.
[18] Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 1.6, Diels-Kranz, Fragmente, vol. 1, p.
84.7-8; English trans. from Charles Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek
Cosmology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 76.
[18a] Furley pointed out that Anaximander conceived of a columnar earth and not a

spherical earth; yet only the latter would seem to support Aristotles attribution to
Anaximander of an earth equidistant from all points on the outermost cosmic limit.
Hahn speculates that Anaximanders earth as the Principle of Sufficient Reason, so
cherished by historians of philosophy, is salvaged if we consider the Milesian as
approaching the question of the earths fixity from a dual perspective, one lateral (and
linked to Anaximanders first ever world map, which presented world on a flat surface)
and the other vertical. Hahn argues that Anaximander drew upon the architectural
innovations of his time, which allowed the creation of more stable temples via new
understandings of proportion and foundation reinforcing. See Robert Hahn,
Anaximander and the Architects: The Contributions of Egyptian and Greek
Architectural Technologies (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), 197-200. Hahn cites
David Furley, The Greek Cosmologists, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), 23-28 and idem, Cosmic Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 14-22. Furley and others have contended that Aristotle must be in error
and that Anaximanders view is really in accord with that of the other Milesians
Thales and Anaximeneswho accounted for the fixity of the earth in terms of din. For
analysis and references, see the section on Anaximenes below.
[19] Kahn (Anaximander, 77) notes the close relationship of the earth at rest theme in
Anaximander to the school of Thaless geometrical emphasis on the diameter as a
wheel-spoke that points toward the central point of a wheel or sphere. It seems Thales
was one of the first thinkers to single out the concept of diameter as being physically,
cosmologically, and metaphysically significant.
[20] Arnold Ehrhardt gives Anaximanders apeiron credit as the term that became the
unlimiteds of Pythagorean theology (The Beginning: A Study in the Greek
Philosophical Approach to the Concept of Creation from Anaximander to St John
[Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968], 24).