Ancient philosophy. Anaxemander - about the boundaries of the world in space and time. /last part/

The main contrast between hot and cold, which is expressed in a mutual struggle between these two moments, leads to the manifestation of injustice, for in this struggle it overcomes the one and the other, with which it is done unrighteousness, for which vengeance is given. Flying is doing the wrong, the hot, overcoming the cold, the winter the opposite; unrighteousness is from the cold. The hot unjust is imposed on the moist, drying it and destroying it. All this comes from the existence of the individual, which has to be restored to the infinite, in order to eliminate the injustice.

image source

All the limited things, Anaxemander wants to say, as limited as they have shortcomings and mistakes, and therefore deserve to disappear as they have manifested, and this disappearance is made according to their shortcomings. We have to say that this detailed and otherwise clear understanding does not distinguish two not only different but also completely opposite questions: what is due to the fault-generating or disappearance of world diversity? If the fault is due to the emergence, the emergence of diversity, then that fault can not be guilty of any of the limited things, since they have not yet originated when it existed and should therefore be construed as fault of the infinite self. Such a view, however, contradicts the original text of the Anaximander fragment. It is precisely the mutual injustice of the limited, allied / alilus / for their struggle for the exclusive existence of theirs, we can say forgetting that they belong to each other and that none is absolute, but dependent on the limit. Of course, all these expressions of forgetfulness, defamation, retribution, remorse, and others are only personified, conditional expression for the otherwise real situation that unity, harmony, and completeness in the eternal kingdom is all but contradictory, limited and dependent on something else. In any case, Anaximander directs his attention to real metaphysical problems. So no wonder that on the issue of the appearance of living creatures on earth, it gives us deep Evolutionary Doctrine, a Distant Harbinger of Darwinism: "It is the living creatures that have emerged from the damp substance because of the hot sun's effect on the mud and the drying of the latter."

The first animals, as they appeared in the wet, were fishermen, wrapped in a barbed coat. Gradually, with the drying of the mud and the emergence of the solid, some of these animals came out on land, where their prickly skin burst and they adapted to the new conditions of life on land. And man was originally a fish-like creature born of fish-like animals. Anaxemander has expressed this opinion based on the reasoning that one spends a relatively long time of suckling, and in his present work he could not last long in water without parental help. That is why it would have been at first like fish." As we can see in Anaxemander, there are the beginnings of various further philosophical teachings. Despite its geocentrism regarding the solar system, it already grasps the transience of the earth in terms of the uninterrupted without boundaries. He was the first of the ancients to conceive of it as a meteor, as a cosmic body in the world of space, which is already a whole revolution in comparison to the teaching of Thales. His thought of the birth and disappearance of the worlds, as a universal retribution, is great and profound. Finally, his teachings of evolutionary evolution in the realm of the animal kingdom of a new country comprehend the world as a unified world process in which everything comes from the immutable immanent laws of being. This is why some authors tend to be Anaxemander to be the true founder of philosophy.