Presocratics-Arg Philosophers

Jonathan Barnes

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415203517
• eBook ISBN: 9781136291197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance.

PARADISE REGAINED

XV

The Ionian Revival

(a) A few depressing facts

If the Eleatics are right, scientists may as well give up their activities: a priori ratiocination reveals that the phenomena which science attempts to understand and explain are figments of our deceptive senses; the scientist has little or nothing to investigate—let him turn to poetry or to gardening.

Fortunately few Greeks reasoned in that way; and some of the brightest gems of Greek philosophical science were polished in the generation after Parmenides. Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Philolaus, Leucippus, Democritus, Diogenes of Apollonia, all pursued the old Ionian ideal of historia despite the pressure of the Eleatic logos. And these neo-Ionian systems contain much of interest and much of permanent influence. How far they were genuine answers to the Eleatic metaphysics, and how far they were obstinate attempts to follow an out-moded profession, are questions which I shall later discuss. First, I shall offer a brief and preliminary survey of the main neo-Ionian systems which will, I hope, indicate the connexions between these men and their early models, show the respects in which their new systems must lead to conflict with Elea, and uncover the novelties of thought and argument by which they hoped to win that conflict.

This section, however, will concern itself primarily with a few issues of chronology. I begin with Anaxagoras: his dates are remarkably well attested, and we know he lived from 500 to 428 BC (Diogenes Laertius, II.7 = 59 A 1); between his birth in Clazomenae and his death in Lampsacus he enjoyed a thirty-year sojourn in Athens, during which time he is said to have ‘taught’ Pericles and Euripides (e.g., Diogenes Laertius, II.10; 12 = A 1) and to have been condemned on a charge of impiety brought against him by Pericles’ political opponents (e.g., Diogenes Laertius, II. 12 = A 1). The dates of that sojourn are uncertain: the period from 463–433 seems not improbable.¹ A charming though doubtless apocryphal story has it that as he lay dying the rulers of Lampsacus asked him how he would like to be commemorated, ‘and he said that every year the children should be allowed a holiday in the month of his death’ (Diogenes Laertius, II. 14 = A 1).

The dates of our other philosophers are less certain. Empedocles was ‘not much younger’ than Anaxagoras, according to Theophrastus (Simplicius, 31 A 7) and he died at the age of sixty, according to Aristotle (fr. 71 R³ = A 1). A perplexingly ambiguous phrase in the Metaphysics (984all) says that Anaxagoras was tois ergots husteros than Empedocles: I agree with those scholars who give husteros its literal sense of ‘later’, and I suppose that Empedocles wrote before Anaxagoras.² If the question is controversial, it is also unimportant; for I see no evidence of any interaction between the two philosophers.

Of Philolaus’ life and dates we know little. A passage in Plato’s Phaedo (61 E) and a scholiast’s note upon it (44 A 1 a) suggest that as a young man Philolaus, a Pythagorean, escaped the persecutions of his sect and left South Italy in about 450 BC to reside in Thebes. He appears to have lived on into the fourth century. A working career spanning the years 450 to 400 will not be wildly inaccurate.³

The Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, are shadowy figures: ‘I came to Athens,’ Democritus allegedly said, ‘and no one knew me’ (68 B 116); and Epicurus, who is said to have studied under Leucippus, is also reported to have denied that Leucippus ever existed (Diogenes Laertius, X.13 = 67 A 2). A strong tradition says that Leucippus was a ‘pupil’ of Zeno (Diogenes Laertius, IX. 30 = A 1; Clement, A 4; etc.); and a late report makes him, interestingly, a student of Melissus (Tzetzes, A 5). Simplicius observed that

Leucippus the Eleatic or Milesian—for both titles are given him⁴—having shared in the philosophy of Parmenides, did not follow the path of Parmenides and Xenophanes about what exists but, it seems, quite the opposite path (193: A 8; cf. Epiphanius, A 33).

Democritus came from Abdera; and he was a ‘companion’ or ‘pupil’ of Leucippus (Diogenes Laertius, IX. 34 = 68 A 1; Suda, A 2; etc.). He is also said to have ‘heard’ Anaxagoras (ibid.). By his own account he was a young man in Anaxagoras’ old age, perhaps forty years his junior (Diogenes Laertius, IX. 34, 41 = A 1); and that puts his birth in 460 BC His major work, the Mikros Diakosmos or Little World-Order, was published, so he said, 730 years after the capture of Troy (Diogenes Laertius, IX.41 = A 1). Alas, we do not know to what year Democritus dated the fall of Troy; but if we think of the period of 440–400 as his working life we shall not be far wrong.⁵

Those sparse, dry facts are of little intrinsic interest; I mention them in the hope of throwing light on the relations between the Eleatics and their neo-Ionian opponents. But hope is illusory. Parmenides’ work, we may be sure, antedated all these neo-Ionian inquiries; but the relationships between Melissus and the neo-Ionians, and between Zeno and the neo-Ionians, which are of much greater interest, must remain dark. Melissus’ dates are unknown; and we can say little better for Zeno. Did any of the neo-Ionians know and study Melissus’ prose system of Eleatic metaphysics? Did any of them puzzle over Zeno’s paradoxes? The chronological data I have listed are far too scanty to encourage an answer to those questions: the dates we have are compatible with several competing answers. Nor will internal evidence help us: it is, of course, frequently appealed to, but in contradictory senses. Thus some scholars find evidence in the fragments that Empedocles knew and attempted to answer Melissus’ views on motion; others are equally certain that Melissus attacks Empedocles’ doctrine of the four roots. Again, many scholars find in Anaxagoras a clear knowledge of Zeno’s views of infinite divisibility; but others see, if anything, an opposite influence.

The moral is negative: we cannot hope to chart in any detail the course of fifth-century philosophical thought. We may speak generally of ‘answers to the Eleatic challenge’; and one or two particular connexions between neo-Ionian fragments and the verses of Parmenides can be discerned. Beyond that, all is speculation. When we study the history of seventeenth-century thought, our philosophical and our historical appetites are whetted and satisfied together; we consider, say, Locke’s attack on innate ideas, and Leibniz’ defence. As philosophers, we are keen to decide whether the Leibnizian defence breaks Locke’s attack; and as historians we can enter the fray with dates and personalities, for we know that Leibniz’ Nouveaux Essais were written as a commentary upon Locke’s Essay, The intellectual excitement of the fifth century BC must have been no less intense than that of the seventeenth AD, and the cut and thrust of debate was doubtless as violent and as personal in Greece as it was later in enlightened Europe: when Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war. But we cannot recover and relive those Olympian games; and if the handbooks on ancient philosophy make us think we can, they are deceptive. We must reconcile ourselves to ignorance of the historical wars and be content to investigate the abstract battles of ideas. The prospect is sad, but not appalling: men are less permanent than thought.

(b) Empedocles’ cosmic cycle

This section is purely expository. I shall state what I take to have been the Empedoclean world-view; and I shall briefly sketch the basic positions of Anaxagoras, of Philolaus, and of the Atomists. I shall have little more to say about Empedocles’ cosmology, which is philosophically unrewarding; but some of my remarks on Empedoclean psychology in a later chapter will refer back to his ‘cosmic cycle’. Anaxagoras, Philolaus and the Atomists will receive detailed treatment later on; and Diogenes of Apollonia will get a chapter to himself.

Everything connected with Empedocles’ cosmology is now controversial: there is what may be called the traditional view of his theory, which I shall expound and which I believe to be in all essentials true; and there are various heterodoxies, recently advocated with great scholarly power and ingenuity. I shall not enter into any of these issues; and the reader should be warned that my exposition here is more than usually one-sided.

The main text is 31 B 17.1–13⁶ (most of its contents are repeated, sometimes verbatim, in B 26 and B 35):

I shall tell a double tale; for at one time they⁷ increased to be one
thing alone

from being many; and then again they grew apart to be many from
being one.

And two-fold is the generation of mortal things, two-fold their
disappearance;

for the one⁸ the collocation of everything both brings to birth and
destroys,

and the other is nourished and flies apart⁹ as they again grow 5
apart.

And they never cease from continuous interchange,

now by Love all coming together into one,

now again each carried apart by the enmity of Strife.

[Thus in so far as they have learned to become one from being
many]¹⁰

and as the one grows apart they become many, 10

thus far do they come into being and there is no stable life for
them;

but in so far as they never cease from continuous interchange,

thus far do they exist forever, changeless in the cycle (194).

The fragment has as its subject the four elemental stuffs or, as Empedocles call them, ‘roots (rhizômata)’: earth, air, fire, water (cf. B 6; B 21.3–8). According to Aristotle, fire had a place of special importance in Empedocles’ system (GC 330b20; Met 985b1 = A 36–7; cf. Hippolytus, A 31); but that is not apparent from the fragments. Nor need we pay any heed to the doxographical assertion that the roots had an atomic or corpuscular substructure (e.g., Aëtius, A 43).¹¹ The roots are eternal (cf. B 7); they are obliquely characterized in B 21 and given divine appellations in B 6.¹²

The roots are involved in a never-ending cycle of change (194. 6; 12–3; cf., e.g., Aristotle, Phys 187a24 = A 46). One part of the cycle is dominated by the agency of Love (194. 7), during which the elements gradually commingle into one mass; another part is dominated by Strife (194.8), during which the elem...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Note on Citations
• Prologue
• Eden
• The Serpent
• Paradise Regained
• Epilogue
• Appendix A: Sources
• Appendix B: Chronology
• Notes
• Bibliography (revised 1981)
• Indexes
• Concordance