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
Further: in order to explain that Chaos, a force must already have
been at work; a movement is necessary to bring about this complicated
entanglement.
Therefore periodical preponderance of the one and the other force is
certain. They are opposites.
The force of attraction is still at work; for otherwise there would be
no Things at all, everything would be segregated.
This is the actual fact: two kinds of motion. The Nous does not explain
them. On the contrary, Love and Hatred; indeed we certainly see that
these move as well as that the Nous moves.
Now the conception of the primal state undergoes a change: it is
the most _blessed._ With Anaxagoras it was the chaos before the
architectural work, the heap of stones as it were upon the building
site.
3
Empedocles had conceived the thought of a tangential force originated
by revolution and working against gravity ("de coelo," i., p. 284),
Schopenhauer, "W. A. W.," ii. 390.
He considered the continuation of the circular movement according
to Anaxagoras _impossible._ It would result in a _whirl, i.e.,_ the
contrary of ordered motion.
If the particles were infinitely mixed, pell-mell, then one would be
able to break asunder the bodies without any exertion of power, they
would not cohere or hold together, they would be as dust.
The forces, which press the atoms against one another, and which give
stability to the mass, Empedocles calls "Love." It is a molecular
force, a constitutive force of the bodies.
4
Against Anaxagoras.
1. The Chaos already presupposes motion.
2. Nothing prevented the complete segregation.
3. Our bodies would be dust-forms. How can motion exist, if there are
not counter-motions in all bodies?
4. An ordered permanent circular motion impossible; only a whirl. He
assumes the whirl itself to be an effect of the νεῑκος.--ἀπορροιαί. How
do distant things operate on one another, sun upon earth? If everything
were still in a whirl, that would be impossible. Therefore at least two
moving powers: which must be inherent in Things.
5. Why infinite ὄντα? Transgression of experience. Anaxagoras meant
the chemical atoms. Empedocles tried the assumption of four kinds of
chemical atoms. He took the aggregate states to be essential, and heat
to be co-ordinated. Therefore the aggregate states through repulsion
and attraction; matter in four forms.
6. The periodical principle is necessary.
7. With the living beings Empedocles will also deal still on the same
principle. Here also he denies purposiveness. His greatest deed. With
Anaxagoras a dualism.
5
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