Anaximander here is very poetic; personifying time, giving it character. He tells us that time has firmly established laws to deal with the processes of everything. Time, says Anaximander, governs all things; time collects retribution and payment when the natural laws are broken. Time runs the cycle from which things arise and to which things fall. This fragment has suddenly become an excellent commentary on the nature and passage of time, and its master role in the universe. While there may be other catalysts for change: for birth, for death, and for rebirth in the universe, none would be possible without the passage of time! We thus far understand that Anaximander believes in a continuity and recapitulation among everything in the universe: human disciplines are nothing without natural laws, nor could natural laws exist without the human disciplines and sciences. Birth and death go hand in hand. Everything is interrelated; all of course run by the most powerful time. It is to then be understood that Anaximander's view of the substance from which all things come is not, in fact, can not be any one thing in particular. He did not believe, like his teacher Thales, that all things are water; for how could water exist without its opposite element, fire? And how, inversely, could fire possibly come from water, itself? This is where we find the essence of Anaximander's Apeiron. His was a belief that all elements, if elements, in fact, did exist, came from one infinite, limitless source; and for each element was an opposite element. These elements, forever paired with their opposites, are in a constant state of flux. They pull at one another constantly so that no one element may 'gain an upper hand' on the others. This is in direct disagreement with many of the other Presocratics, who focused on one element as the source of the universe. His ideas, as a result of the Apeiron, also disagree with the limited universe theory of other philosophers, for if any one thing in the universe is unlimited, then how can a limited universe contain it? If the Apeiron is infinite, the universe that contains it must be infinite as well! As one can gather from his ideas, if Anaximander was not correct, he was at the very least a trailblazer in his field!
One notices that, in the fragment, Anaximander does not try to explain himself, nor does he attempt to explain the laws of time or the recompense that all things must pay. While he may originally have spoken tomes on the subject, all we have left are these few lines, simple but for the fact that they are seemingly all encompassing. Is Anaximander correct only as a result of his vagueness? I do not believe so. Are these thoughts correct at all? That remains to be seen. The most important thing about Anaximander's remaining fragment, I believe, is that it creates a space for open discussion. It quite easily creates more thought. Other humans will read the fragment, reflect on it, and come to their own conclusions. As a result of this idea, we must now ask ourselves an extremely important question: Is it important that any of the pre-Socratic philosophers were correct at all? The answer can only be 'no'. These philosophers, at the dawn of time, began what is possibly the most important of human processes: rational thought. These few small fragments have set other humans on the course of thought, who in turn have set still others. I believe that once 'the discussion' was started, it soon became, or will become, only a matter of time before the correct answers are found. Will the answers be correct forever, or will they be correct only within the context in which they are given? This will be seen only when the answers are found, but this writer regards it as unimportant. Whether or not the answers we come to differ from those of the early Greeks is also unimportant. As a final question: Can we still glean something from the works of Anaximander and his contemporaries? I am inclined to answer in the affirmative, for rational thought and discussion guide our world; they are one of the ways in which Humankind has been able to survive this long. Even if we do not agree with the pre-Socratic ideas, we must at least believe in their methods. Do the words of Anaximander still say something to us? That question is for the individual to decide. BibliographyCohen, S. Home Page. U of Washington. 5 November 1998. *http://weber.u.washington.edu/~smcohen/anaximan.htm*. anonymous. Heidegger's Greek. September 1996. 5 November 1998. *http://webcom.com/~paf/grk/anax1.htm*. Heidegger, Martin. Early Greek Thinking. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Nietzsche, Frederich. Werke. Munich: C. Hanser Verlag, 1954. Words: 1485
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