The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy

by A. A. Long

  In his psychology, Empedocles introduces what appear to be supernatural factors. Human beings have an everlasting soul that is exiled from its blessed abode for its sins. Wandering from place to place, it inhabits different bodies in turn until it does what is right so as to be able to escape the cycle of rebirths. This religious doctrine, perhaps influenced by Pythagorean teachings,6 distinguishes Empedocles’ philosophy from those of other neo-Ionians. There is continuing debate over whether his psychological-religious views can be reconciled with his natural philosophy. In his style, as in his philosophy, he borrows from the realm of religion. For Empedocles presents his theory of nature as well as his theory of the soul in hexameter verses – borrowing from the epic tradition as did Parmenides, echoing his language but pursuing a more florid style full of personifications, metaphors, and mythological motifs.7

  By contrast, Anaxagoras writes sober Ionian prose in developing a more traditional kind of cosmogony. According to Anaxagoras’ famous introduction, “Together were all things, boundless both in multitude and in smallness” (DK 59 B1). Out of the primeval mixture arose the cosmos when the cosmic Mind (nous) began a rotatory motion that separated different stuffs from each other. As heavy and moist materials gathered in the centre and light and dry materials were carried to the circumference, the delineations of the world began to emerge. Some heavy objects were carried around with the whirl and ignited by friction to form the heavenly bodies. The vortex motion continues expanding within the boundless universe, but there is no cyclical formation and destruction of the cosmos as in Empedocles, only an ongoing expansion.

  As best we can tell from the meagre details of the fragments, Anaxagoras admitted an indefinite number of different substances as the building blocks of his cosmos. He mentions air, aither (the fiery upper air) and earth as examples (B1, B4), and ancient sources add biological tissues and substances such as blood, flesh, and bone. Anaxagoras speaks also of contrary qualities such as hot and cold, wet and dry, light and dark in the same context as the substances (B4). Some modern interpreters have sought to account for such substances as flesh and blood as combinations of the contraries, in a way analogous to Empedocles’ combinations of elements to form compounds – that is, they envisage flesh as a certain combination of hot and cold, wet and dry, light and dark, and so on, in determinate proportions.8 But there is no textual evidence for such a reduction, and it is at least consistent with what Anaxagoras says that the contraries should be thought of as substances like earth and air. Thus he seems to posit as many elements as there are material stuffs, and perhaps as there are qualitatively determinate kinds of stuff. He reiterates the principle that everything is mixed with everything – presumably meaning that every stuff is intermixed with every other stuff, with only one exception: Mind (nous) is distinct from all other stuffs and is found only in some things, presumably in animate objects, without ever being mixed with them (B12). It understands and rules all things.

  Five postulates have been identified as characterizing Anaxagoras’ physical theory:9

  (1) According to the postulate of No Becoming, no substance comes into being or perishes.

  (2) Universal Mixture maintains that everything is in everything.

  (3) By Infinite Divisibility, matter can be divided ad infinitum.

  (4) Predominance asserts that the substance that supplies the greatest quantity of a mixture has its qualities predominate in the resulting substance.

  (5) According to Homoiomereity, each substance is composed of portions of exactly the same character, that is, it is homogeneous through and through.

  There is evidence in the fragments for all of these postulates except the last. Anaxagoras’ elements are often taken to be completely homogeneous because Aristotle calls them homoiomerê (having parts like the whole). Aristotle’s homoiomerê are stuffs (he is especially interested in tissues of living things) that can be divided into portions of the same kind of stuff, as a portion of blood that can be divided into smaller portions of blood. But it is unclear whether Aristotle is explaining Anaxagoras’ elements as homogeneous or simply identifying them as those things which in Aristotle’s system, but not necessarily in Anaxagoras’, are in fact homogeneous, for example, flesh and blood. The only thing that Anaxagoras explicitly identifies as homogeneous is Mind, which he goes on to contrast with the variability of the elements (B12, end).10 Thus the last postulate must remain controversial.11 But clearly, Anaxagoras holds to the others, and it can be shown that the first four are not inconsistent with each other.12 Anaxagoras develops a theory in which there is a strong mixture of all things, which seems to continue to the microscopic level without end. Components of the mixture are everlasting elements that manifest themselves when they predominate quantitatively in a local mixture. Quantities of elements can vary from place to place, but some trace of every element is found in every place.

  Although many details remain obscure in the systems of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, we can perceive important similarities in their physical theories. Both posit element-like substances as the basic constituents of the universe. Early Ionian systems, in contrast, seem to posit basic substances that are transformed into one another, for instance Anaximenes’ air turns into fire when rarefied, and wind, cloud, water, earth, and stones, successively when condensed.13 And they often treat the forces that drive change as internal to their basic substance, as Anaximenes’ air and Heraclitus’ fire are thought to have a motive power of their own.14 But Empedocles and Anaxagoras identify external forces that act on the elements: Love and Strife for the former, Mind, for the latter. Thus they recognize a distinction between the relatively inert elements and the active forces that drive them. To be sure, the forces are not yet fully abstracted from the matter: they occupy space like physical bodies on the one hand and are identified with spiritual attributes on the other.15 They constitute a unique type of physical-spiritual being, but not yet a categorically distinct type of entity.

  Empedocles and Anaxagoras also appeal to a model of mixture to account for the way elements interact with one another. In some way, the interaction of elements is like, say, what happens when liquids such as water and wine mix together. Various ingredients go into the mixture and a distinctive material emerges. Whereas the early Ionians envisage a single dynamic substance that changes into other substances in a cycle of transformations, Empedocles and Anaxagoras posit a plurality of substances of fixed natures that interact in different proportions to produce mixed substances. In their conception one can at least theoretically distinguish between the basic constituents and the resultant mixtures, between element and compound, between pure and phenomenal substance.

  II. PARMENIDES’ INFLUENCE

  We must now turn back to Parmenides and his influence on Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Parmenides had stated that there are two ways of inquiry that can be thought, that (it) is or that (it) is not. But the latter is an impossible way because it is unsayable and unknowable, so that only the former way is acceptable. Coming to be is impossible because it presupposes a change from what-is-not to what-is, and hence it presupposes not-being. Differentiation is ruled out because it involves a contrast between what-is and what-is-not. Motion is impossible because it presupposes coming to be. What-is cannot be incomplete because then it would presuppose what-is-not. Parmenides goes on to develop a deceptive cosmology which he criticizes at the outset as involving a fallacy (B8.50-52). If this cosmology, which is the best that can be devised, fails, (a fortiori) all other cosmologies fail.

  Parmenides’ argument against change is relentless, but its implications are far from clear. How are we to take his points? And, more important, how did Empedocles and Anaxagoras take them? We do have a record of ancient views on Parmenides. Plato and Aristotle take it that Parmenides (and the members of his “school,” the Eleatics)16 were monists: that is, they maintain that there was just one reality, namely Being. In an ancient debate about motion they argue against Heraclitus and his followers, who held that every
thing is in motion, that rather everything is at rest.17 To save the appearances, the pluralists Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the atomists posit a plurality of beings that can interact.18

  Now there are some problems with this view. In the first place, Parmenides does not expressly argue for monism.19 It is true that on a certain reading, monism would follow from his theory: if all there is is what-is, and if what-is is something determinate, then there is only one thing; but Parmenides himself argues rather against dualism (in the second half of his poem) than for monism.20 Furthermore, it is difficult to find a theory to which Parmenides is reacting.21 In any case, the ancient sources did not fully appreciate the role of Parmenides in restructuring the terms of the ancient debate, and hence they are not wholly reliable as informants about what was going on. They seem to have pictured the ancient conflict as a fixed debate between several dogmatic schools rather than as a dynamic interaction.

  It is an accomplishment of twentieth-century history of philosophy to see that Parmenides did change the way the issues were conceived. According to the dominant view, Parmenides argued effectively against all motion and change, attacking the very foundations of Ionian natural philosophy. In a desperate attempt to rescue cosmology, Empedocles and Anaxagoras conceded that coming to be and perishing are impossible, but they allowed arrangement and rearrangement of elements which have the Eleatic properties of being everlasting and unchanging in their natures. Unfortunately, they merely begged the question because they never established the theoretical possibility of the limited kinds of change they allow. The atomists are often praised for their willingness to confront the problem directly by admitting that what-is-not exists, in the form of a void or empty space in which motion can take place. Hence they succeeded in providing a theoretical possibility of change where Empedocles and Anaxagoras failed.

  This view, though still widely held,22 runs into serious problems. Consider how Empedocles and Anaxagoras respond to Parmenides:

  …there is no birth [physis] of any of all

  mortal things, neither any end of destructive death,

  but only mixture and separation of mixed things

  exist, and birth is a term applied to them by men. (Empedocles, DK 31 B8)

  when things being mixed in the form of man arrive into the bright light

  or in the form of the race of wild beasts or of bushes

  or of birds, then men call it being born

  and when they are separated, ill-fated destruction;

  what is proper they do not call it, but by custom I speak so myself. (B9)

  Fools! For not far-reaching are their thoughts,

  who expect what was not before to come to be

  or that something dies and perishes completely. (B11)

  For from not being at all it is impossible for something to come to be [or: be born],

  and for what is to be destroyed is impossible and unheard of.

  For always it will be there, wherever anyone sets it. (B12)

  Coming to be and perishing the Greeks do not rightly understand; for no thing comes to be or perishes, but from existing things it is mixed and separated. And thus one would rightly call coming to be mixture and perishing separation. (Anaxagoras, DK 59 B17)

  Both Empedocles and Anaxagoras wholeheartedly endorse Parmenides’ rejection of coming to be and perishing, without qualification or implied criticism. And neither one ever argues explicitly against him in the fragments on any other issue.23 Nor do we find evidence in ancient sources (who were interested in debates between rival schools) that they criticized Parmenides.24 Why not? Where is the evidence that they were desperately trying to save cosmology against his onslaught? Modern interpreters have assumed that (1) Parmenides argued against all change, (2) Empedocles and Anaxagoras read him as arguing against all change, and hence (3) they must have opposed Parmenides. There is, however, no explicit evidence for (2), and if (2) is false, (3) will not follow. One possibility is that both (1) and (2) are true, but that, like good scientists, Empedocles and Anaxagoras simply dismiss Parmenides’ arguments as too abstractly philosophical and continue on with the project of explaining the cosmos.25 But the dichotomy between science and philosophy seems anachronistic, and, moreover, the fact that they accept Parmenides’ rejection of coming to be and perishing belies the claim that his arguments are too abstractly philosophical. If they explicitly accept part of Parmenides’ theory, they owe us a reasoned rejection of the part they reject.

  Empedocles and Anaxagoras agree with Parmenides without explicitly disagreeing. On the standard view we should expect disagreement; on the view that they are merely pursuing a scientific program we should not expect the agreement. Can we account for their attitude as expressed in the fragments? I believe we can. We must simply reject (2). But how could we do that? We must note that Parmenides’ poem is difficult to interpret, and it was no less so in his own time than in ours. Although we have so far assumed that there is a straightforward reading of the text, in fact, modern interpreters have taken it in different ways. One possible reading is that in rejecting what-is-not, Parmenides is developing a radical cosmology, in which there is just one substance, what-is, and no change. This interpretation seems embodied in the ancient view of Parmenides as a monist. It is also possible that Parmenides is criticizing beliefs in change and differentiation without substituting a new kind of ultimate substance in the world. What-is, whatever it is, must conform to the canons of Eleatic being: it must be everlasting, all alike, unchangeable, complete. On this reading, Parmenides is the first metaphysician instead of the latest cosmologist. He is telling what something would have to be like in order to qualify as an explanatory principle. This interpretation may sound too Kantian in its aim to find the presuppositions of scientific explanation. But it makes sense as an account of what could be meant by the otherwise bizarre claims that there is no change and no difference.

  Moreover, this interpretation allows us to take into account the second half of Parmenides’ poem, in which he develops a cosmology of his own. Granted, Parmenides does make a disclaimer when he introduces the cosmology (DK 28 B8.50-52). He goes on to offer a diagnosis (lines 53-54), but it is not clear precisely what his diagnosis is, and further, whether he is opposing cosmology in principle or just the inadequate ontology on which mortals base their cosmologies.26 On one reading he says: “[Mortals] have made up their minds to name two forms, of which it is not right to name one – in which they have gone astray.” Could it be that the reason one contrary form should not be named is that it is conceived as derivative from the other? If fire is basic for Heraclitus, that is, the hot, dry, light principle, then what is cold, wet, heavy will not exist in its own right. Indeed, one might ask how the latter could exist at all if what-is consists of the hot and dry and nothing else. Perhaps then the mistake mortals commit is to produce a cosmology depending on two contrary principles, while taking their two principles as interdependent contraries. If instead we take them as independent and “equal” realities, as Parmenides does in B9, we can produce a satisfactory account of nature. When Parmenides recommends his cosmology as better than any other (B8.60-61), one could understand this as a blanket endorsement of his natural philosophy, or at least of his method of inquiry.

  Here, as elsewhere, Parmenides’ hexameters produce an argument that is suggestive rather than demonstrative, full of ambiguities and alternative readings rather than perspicuous. As acute a student of the early Greek philosophers as Aristotle could take Parmenides’ cosmology to be a serious account of reality.27 One might read the second half of the poem, then, not as providing a deceptive cosmology, but as sketching a program for the right kind of cosmology. I am not arguing that such a reading is the correct one, only that it is a possible one, and one, moreover, that it is historically plausible to attribute to Empedocles and Anaxagoras.28

  III. THE PARMENIDEAN MODEL OF EXPLANATION

  From the first half of Parmenides’ poem one learns that what-is must be (1) everlasting, (2) a
ll alike, (3) unchanging in its nature, and (4) complete. From the second half, one sees that what-is (5) constitutes a dualism, and (6) embodies a contrariety (7) of independent entities that are (8) equal to one another. Parmenides’ criticism of mortal cosmologies could be read as an attack on (5) in which Parmenides criticizes mortals for taking not-being as one of the two contraries.29 If then we reject a dualism between being and not-being, we leave open the option of a pluralism of equal and independent entities. Pluralism becomes a successor theory to a problematic dualism.

  The one serious challenge for a pluralistic interpretation is how to take the property of being all alike (2) in such a way that the allegedly distinct entities do not collapse into a unity. In Parmenides’ most explicit discussion, B8.22-25, he says that (it) is all alike because there is no more or less of it in one place than in another, but all is full of what-is. Now if we take “what-is” as expressing some definite reality, it will turn out that the indefinite subject of our discussion is both quantitatively and qualitatively uniform, and hence, by Leibniz’s Law, any part of it is indistinguishable from any other part, and all the alleged parts of being will collapse into a single being. But if we take “what-is” as not referring to any particular kind of thing, including Being (whatever that is), but only as a place-holder for whatever we determine to be real, then it will not follow that the world consists of a uniform substance. It will be sufficient if what-is, whatever it is, is internally uniform, that is, if it is quantitatively distributed in a uniform way, wherever it is. But nothing precludes the possibility of there being several types of reality, each one of which is internally uniform. While the latter reading is not the most obvious one, it is not obviously false either, and there is some sense in which it might be viewed as the most sophisticated and charitable one to take.30