Early Greek Philosophy & Other Essays: Collected Works, Volume TwoNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Early Greek Philosophy & Other Essays: Collected Works, Volume Two
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Philosophy, Ancient
According to these hypotheses Anaxagoras conceives of the world's
primal existence: perhaps as similar to a dust-like mass of infinitely
small, concrete particles of which every one is specifically simple
and possesses one quality only, yet so arranged that every specific
quality is represented in an infinite number of individual particles.
Such particles Aristotle has called _Homoiomere_ in consideration of
the fact that they are the Parts, all equal one to another, of a Whole
which is homogeneous with its Parts. One would however commit a serious
mistake to equate this primal pell-mell of all such particles, such
"seed-grains of things" to the one primal matter of Anaximander; for
the latter's primal matter called the "Indefinite" is a thoroughly
coherent and peculiar mass, the former's primal pell-mell is an
aggregate of substances. It is true one can assert about this Aggregate
of Substances exactly the same as about the Indefinite of Anaximander,
as Aristotle does: it could be neither white nor grey, nor black, nor
of any other colour; it was tasteless, scentless, and altogether as a
Whole defined neither quantitatively nor qualitatively: so far goes the
similarity of the Anaximandrian Indefinite and the Anaxagorean Primal
Mixture. But disregarding this negative equality they distinguish
themselves one from another positively by the latter being a compound,
the former a unity. Anaxagoras had by the assumption of his Chaos at
least so much to his advantage, that he was not compelled to deduce the
Many from the One, the Becoming out of the "Existent."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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