Arche: The eclipse of the Milesians in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger

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Summary:

The Milesians — Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes — were the first of the natural philosophers in ancient Greece to search for an arche, or first principle as the primary substance of the visible world. They distinguish themselves by surpassing the tradition of myth, looking behind the diversity of nature, and even approaching the threshold of being met by their successors. Although very few fragments of their thinking remain, the Milesians are the subject of several contemporary accounts as the beginning and the end of a metaphysical tradition that dominates Western thought. Nietzsche gives us one of the first translations of the Anaximander fragment, and Heidegger dismantles it to expose his own principle of ontological difference. Both thinkers give us an interpretation that resembles poetry more than science, establishing dialectic as the arche of Transcendentalese, the language of philosophy.

What the verse is to the poet, dialectic thinking is to the philosopher; he snatches at it in order to hold fast his enchantment, in order to petrify it. And just as words and verse to the dramatist are only stammerings in a foreign language, to tell in it what he lived, what he saw, and what he can directly promulgate by gesture and music only, thus the expression of every deep philosophical intuition by means of dialectics and scientific reflection is, it is true, on the one hand the only means to communicate what has been seen, but on the other hand it is a paltry means, and at the bottom a metaphorical, absolutely in-exact translation into a different sphere and language. Thus, Thales saw the Unity of the "Existent," and when he wanted to communicate this idea he talked of water.

This history of science and the history of philosophy, before there could be any such distinction, are said to share the same beginning. Both traditions point to Thales of Miletus, one of the seven sages of ancient Greece, who according to multiple accounts successfully predicted a solar eclipse in the year 585 BC. In the absence of further detail, we might reasonably assume that this achievement is a reflection of his engagement with some of the earliest formulations in geometry and astronomy. As for philosophy — if we follow history more so than tradition, we find in the eclipse of Thales a vestige of science and perhaps nothing more. But before there could be any such distinction, we rightly call him the first of the “natural philosophers,” a diverse group of thinkers collectively referred to as the “Presocratics.” 

That we have generally accepted the latter designation is unfortunate; it suggests that the significance of the beginning of Western thought is primarily in relation to, or in anticipation of the more “systematic” philosophical schools that follow. The justification is more than apparent. Most of what remains from the writings of the Presocratics are fragments, preserved by later thinkers as testimonia, and often for their own pedagogical purposes. For this reason they are particularly susceptible to awkward translations and misinterpretations; we might wonder whether anything authentic or as intended has survived. Perhaps this is why we also find in modern times, specifically in the philosophies of Nietzsche and Heidegger, a renewed interest in what they call “Pre-platonic” thought (to include Socrates), seeking to recover the forgotten wisdom of these early thinkers as something important in itself. 

Something quite new begins with Plato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with that Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers since Plato lack something essential.

Already in Thales we have a prelude to the divergent epistemological approaches of Plato and Aristotle — one transcendent, the other imminent. Plato recounts a somewhat humorous “fable” in the Theaetetus stating, “once while Thales was gazing upwards while doing astronomy, he fell into a well…he was eager to know the things in the heavens but failed to notice what was in front of him...” If we are so inclined to locate the beginning of Western thought in a historical event — although this one seems to me more appropriate — then there is another eclipse obstructing an attitude of thinking that more aptly establishes Thales and the Milesians as the first. A common inquiry into the arche, or ultimate principle that underlies and governs the natural world, defines their own epistemological approach. They ask whether there is any source of unity beneath the obvious or at least apparent diversity of things around us. And with this question they expose the very first dialectical “problem” of philosophy — the recurring metaphysical theme of “the One and the Many.” 

Aristotle discusses the Milesians towards the beginning of the Metaphysics to frame his own answer to this question, and more specifically to formulate his theory of the four causes. He groups the Milesians (or more broadly, the Ionians) as “material monists” — each selecting an arche from what would become the four ancient elements. Thus for Thales, everything is water; for Anaximenes, air; for Heraclitus, fire. Aristotle points out that in selecting a single element they limit their appropriation of “the One” to material cause alone; yet he also admits on their behalf some kind of justification. For example, regarding Thales theory that everything is (or comes from) water, Aristotle suggests that “maybe he got this idea because the nourishment of things is moist.” If we are tempted to dismiss this hypothesis as naive or pseudo-scientific at best, we lose sight of an entirely new way of thinking that marks a shift from myth to nature by way of rational explanation. By proceeding from observation to description, and prediction to verification, Thales takes a certain distance from the natural world and initiates what we have called the “propositional attitude.” Thus we have the beginning of science, but not yet the beginning of philosophy.

In his presentation of this concept of unity through the hypothesis of water, Thales has not surmounted the low level of the physical discernments of his time, but at the best overleapt them. The deficient and unorganized observations of an empiric nature which Thales had made as to the occurrence and transformations of water, or to be more exact, of the Moist, would not in the least have made possible or even suggested such an immense generalization. That which drove him to this generalization was a metaphysical dogma, which had its origin in a mystic intuition and which together with the ever renewed endeavors to express it better, we find in all philosophies, the proposition: Everything is one!

Nietzsche disagrees. In his early, unfinished essay Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, he argues that Thales “went beyond the scientific” when he concluded that "Everything is One” — not simply proceeding from observation or generalization, but a kind of “mystic intuition.” Here at the very dawn of Western thought, Nietzsche identifies a curious distinction between philosophy and science: “For a strange illogical power wings the foot of philosophical thinking; and this power is fancy.” By way of fancy, then, he makes a leap for Thales that Thales himself does not make. It is the radical leap into Transcendentalese, which Nietzsche here speaks on his behalf: “Thus, Thales saw the Unity of the "Existent," and when he wanted to communicate this idea he talked of water.” Perhaps such a decidedly poetic interpretation is warranted in the transition from myth to nature; still, the proposition that “Everything is One” remains silent with respect to the other half of the question. To understand the plurality of “the Many,” the Milesians that follow introduce another problem and an even more sophisticated solution — the simultaneous unity and opposition of contrary properties, or simply “opposites.”

This we find more prominent in the thought of Anaximenes, the last of the Milesians, whose arche — air — transforms into one or the other elements as it becomes more or less dense, a process of refraction (hot) and condensation (cold). Aristotle later develops this theory in On Generation and Corruption to account for the four irreducible (terrestrial) elements, distinguishing them according to the possession of pairs of primary properties, and their opposites: water (cold and wet); earth (cold and dry); air (hot and wet); and fire (hot and dry). These properties inhere as “accidental” qualities in the underlying substance or material substrate (as they cannot exist on their own), which becomes one or another element as it loses or gains the opposites via a process of privation. Although Aristotle dismisses material monism, he owes to the Milesians not only the beginning of such a theory, but also a mechanism to account for plurality and change in the natural world. 

With such a lapidarian emphasis Anaximander once said: "Whence things originated, thither, according to necessity, they must return and perish; for they must pay penalty and be judged for their injustices according to the order of time." 

If the transition from myth to nature marks the beginning of science, it is the transition from nature to being that marks the beginning of philosophy. With some interpretation, we might reasonably attribute this to Anaximander, who is neither the first nor the last of the Milesians, whom Nietzsche rightly introduces to us as “the first philosophical author.” It is widely accepted that Anaximander not only gives us the first fragment of Western thought — in his own words — but also the first word of Transcendentalese, the apeiron. As the arche of Anaximander, the apeiron is not another element but something “boundless,” often translated as “the Indefinite.” Whether Aristotle counts him among the material monists, with the apeiron bearing some resemblance to his own principle of prime (formless) matter, is a subject of much historical speculation (Nietzsche himself suggests it might be “a peer to the Kantian Thing-In-Itself”). But the apeiron is not to be found in what we refer to as the “Anaximander fragment” per se; it precedes the fragment within the same testimonia of Simplicius in which it is found. That fateful text, the direct quotation, is more so concerned with understanding “the Many” as it comes forth and returns to the “One,” presumably the apeiron, in a manner that resembles cosmic justice — to which Simplicius adds that Anaximander “says in rather poetical language.” How, then, can we reasonably concede that this is the first philosophical fragment? Does it adequately establish the language of philosophy?

Thales shows the need of simplifying the empire of plurality, and of reducing it to a mere expansion or disguise of the one single existing quality, water. Anaximander goes beyond him with two steps. Firstly, he puts the question to himself: How, if there exists an eternal Unity at all, is that Plurality possible? and he takes the answer out of the contradictory, self-devouring and denying character of this Plurality. The existence of this Plurality becomes a moral phenomenon to him; it is not justified; it expiates itself continually through destruction. But then the questions occur to him: Yet why has not everything that has become perished long ago, since, indeed, quite an eternity of time has already gone by? Whence the ceaseless current of the River of Becoming? He can save himself from these questions only by mystic possibilities: the eternal Becoming can have its origin only in the eternal "Being," the conditions for that apostasy from that eternal "Being" to a Becoming in injustice are ever the same, the constellation of things cannot help itself being thus fashioned, that no end is to be seen of that stepping forth of the individual being out of the lap of the "Indefinite."

Perhaps further context is required. Anaximander is not silent with respect to the problem of opposites. We attribute to him in another testimonia an account of the origin of the world — namely, the separation of the hot, from which arises the sun and other heavenly bodies, and the cold, air and things of the earth — but even this seems closer to myth than nature or reason. Taken together, however, these two primordial fragments suggest that the essence of the apeiron might be less mysterious than something “Indefinite,” and quite possibly the source and unity of contrary properties. That is, the elements in their dialectical opposition to one another, with a natural inclination to permanence and expansion, are destined to perish for that same injustice. This injustice is not simply a conflict of one against another, but more so a result of their very coming into existence. This Nietzsche puts this into his own words, perhaps this time for his own purposes:

It may not be very logical, it is however at any rate very human and moreover quite in harmony with the philosophical leaping described above, now with Anaximander to consider all Becoming as a punishable emancipation from eternal "Being," as a wrong that is to be atoned for by destruction. Everything that has once come into existence also perishes, whether we think of human life or of water or of heat and cold; everywhere where definite qualities are to be noticed, we are allowed to prophesy the extinction of these qualities—according to the all-embracing proof of experience. Thus, a being that possesses definite qualities and consists of them, can never be the origin and principle of things; the veritable ens, the "Existent," Anaximander concluded, cannot possess any definite qualities, otherwise, like all other things, it would necessarily have originated and perished.

Such a pessimistic, poetic interpretation of philosophy’s first, albeit poetic fragment is not, however, its only legacy. Heidegger, who echoes Nietzsche's interest in the Pre-platonic philosophers, is nonetheless critical of his approach — even calling it “superficial” — and takes it in quite a different direction. The Anaximander fragment is for him a point of departure for his own philosophical project — to recover the primordial concept of Being that has been forgotten, or rather concealed over the course of Western thought. He famously sees in Nietzsche culmination of that tradition, with Nietzsche himself attempting to reject any kind of metaphysical foundation (absolute Being or Existent) but only replacing it with his own “metaphysical” principle of the Will to Power. The primacy of the Eternal Return, endless cycle of Becoming, and the drive to expand and expend energy which permeates all things living and non-living, still requires a foundation in Being, and this is the primordial metaphysical anchor Nietzsche locates in the apeiron of Anaximander.

At the summit of the completion of Western philosophy these words are pronounced: "To stamp Becoming with the character of Being — that is the highest will to power." Thus writes Nietzsche in a note entitled, "Recapitulation." …The "Being" Nietzsche thinks here is "the eternal recurrence of the same." It is the way of continuance through which will to power wills itself and guarantees its own presencing as the Being of Becoming. At the outermost point of the completion of metaphysics the Being of beings is addressed in these words. The ancient fragment of early Western thinking and the late fragment of recent Western thinking bring the Same to language, but what they say is not identical. However, where we can speak of the Same in terms of things which are not identical, the fundamental condition of a thoughtful dialogue between recent and early times is automatically fulfilled.

In the ontology of Heidegger, by contrast, there is explicitly no arche — Being is not “the One.” Nor is it simply the “Being of beings” (the Many) as he interprets the entire Western metaphysical tradition. For Heidegger, Being is understood as the mysterious “condition of possibility,” a dynamic “presencing of what is present.” In his essay on the Anaximander fragment in Early Greek Thinking, he begins with the translation given to us by the “young” Nietzsche, then proceeds to deconstruct it with his own more nuanced, meticulous approach to classical language. His translation strips the pessimistic, moral sentiment of his predecessor and replaces the sense of “justice / injustice” with the more neutral “order / disorder.”  Accordingly, as the “elements” emerge from concealment to unconcealment, there is not so much opposition among them as there is a delicate “lingering,” and a desire for “continuance,” through which they inevitably become “out of joint.” Order is subsequently restored, or rather disorder surmounted as beings, in their mutual regard for one another, yield and recede back into concealment. Hence the apeiron of Anaximander might be called “indefinite” in Heidegger’s sense as a “clearing” that makes room for the “jointure” of beings, while Being recedes into the background and simply “keeps to itself.”

Heidegger limits his philological analysis to the section of the Anaximander fragment he considers free from Platonic and Aristotelian influence, as the beginning and end of the quotation itself are otherwise unclear:

. . . according to necessity; for they pay one another recompense for their injustice.

Because it poetizes as it thinks, the translation which wishes to let the oldest fragment of thinking itself speak necessarily appears violent.

. . . along the lines of usage; for they let order and thereby reck belong to one another (in the surmounting) of disorder.

The outcome does not resemble the conventional translation in the slightest. If the first clause is read in light of the second, he leads us to believe that “necessity” [in the German, der braucht] might be more accurately, and certainly more “violently” rendered as “usage.” Such a peculiar word choice, elaborated upon as an “allotment” or “handing over” of Being, might be better understood as a kind of “leasing,” insofar as Being “distributes boundaries” in the presencing of beings. Although Heidegger is clear that we should avoid any conventional sense of the word “use” or “to use,” we must also consider how the Greek necessarily retains a sense of “need,” making way for his pessimistic formulation of the principle of ontological difference: “The oblivion of Being is oblivion of the distinction between Being and beings.” In this further context, which he himself here provides, the term “usage” introduces his own appropriation of the Will to Power as it takes itself as its own object, becoming the “Will to Will” and ushering in the tragic fate of human being (Dasein) as it reduces itself in exchange for mastery over beings, or “the environment” (hence his well-known criticism of technology). To that end, Heidegger concludes his essay with this haunting suggestion:

But what if Being in its essence needs to use [braucht] the essence of man? If the essence of man consists in thinking the truth of Being? Then thinking must poetize on the riddle of Being. It brings the dawn of thought into the neighborhood of what is for thinking.

Must Nietzsche or perhaps more so Heidegger pay penalty for the same injustice, the historical tendency to make of the Pre-platonic philosophers something more than what their very few words have to say? The unstable ground of the apeiron, as it were, is not fully overturned until shaken by the anti-foundationalist, post-modern “arche-ologies” of Derrida and Foucault, their “successors,” who seem to have the last but not necessarily the final word. If the oblivion or “eclipse” of Being is here foreshadowed in the testimonia of the Milesians, and the modern victory of science (and technology) over philosophy even predicted, it is further validated in the dialectical “opposition” of Heraclitus and Parmenides, the next of the natural philosophers, and brought to completion with the “great” synthesis or “new beginning” in Plato.

References

Curd, Patricia, ed. A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia. Translated by Richard D. McKirahan. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996, 1-16.

Heidegger, Martin. Early Greek Thinking. Translated by David F. Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984, 13-58 (quotes 19, 22-23, 26, 50, 57, 58).

Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks" in Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Oscar Levy, Logos Books, 2023, 59-80 (quotes 66, 70, 74, 76, 77, 79).