Beginning and End
Anaximander and the Unbounded
Although he is not named as the earliest, Anaximander (circa 610 – c. 546 BCE) is the first philosopher in the so-called western tradition, of who’s work we have a direct quotation, albeit, only a line or two at most1. For more of a gist of his philosophy, here is a quote from a much later (5th century CE) philosopher, Simplicius-
“Of those who hold the element is one, moving, and limitless, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, who was successor and pupil of Thales, said that the limitless (apeiron) is principle (arche) and element of things that exist”
Beings are always emerging into and disappearing from presence. For any being that we encounter (including ourselves) to exist, means it is impermanent in this way of transitioning. Permanence as understood by Anaximander is peiron; bounded, circumscribed in the sense of something crystallised or fixed, static and enduring through time. The true nature, the being of beings, the arche, by contrast, is apeiron; unbounded. It is unbounded in the sense that no particular, fixed being endures, but everything is in a process of coming to be and passing away amid others. If, as was traditionally the case in western philosophy, what is real being is taken as that which is permanent, which does not change, then paradoxically, it is this very same impermanence that is the ruling principle of being (or just real Being itself) that is real.
What appears as the solidity and duration of beings in space and time is in fact their non-being, the illusion of their being. Their reality is the very emerging (into presence) and disappearing. This implies that our ordinary architecture of beliefs, of personal identity and relationships, of life stories and tragedies, hopes and loves- all this is only a mirage, or at most, a waking dream. What is real, steady, and changeless is what is not ‘appearance’.
If we compare this to the concept of Being which comes from Parmenides, in other words, that Being is essentially changeless and that all apparent change is illusion, then we find what on first sight seems an extreme incongruity. However, if as Anaximander would have it, that Being is impermanence and that permanence (as we see it or understand it according to our way of thinking) is illusion, then it does not look so different at all, once we reorient our thinking and perhaps change our metaphors. Parmenides for instance conjures the image of a solid ball to stand for the unchanging nature of Being that underlies all apparent change. By contrast we might imagine for Anaximander’s Being a whirling vortex or undifferentiated abyss underlying the illusion of enduring and particular beings.
Either way, essentially the same thing is said by both of these incipient thinkers, as indeed is said by Plato, Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, the Vedantists and Buddhists; that what appears to be real is illusion (or at most a shadow, reflection, derivative, dream) and what is real is not the appearances. This is not a dismissing of suffering – quite the contrary; enmeshed in illusion, suffering permeates the foreground and horizon of our world of appearances, that is, of life. What is said rather is that the world of (or as) appearances is only the lesser, ephemeral aspect of reality. It is the manifestation but not the essence, the phenomenon and not the Being-in-itself. We could say that phenomena, as Anaximander’s beings, begin from, and end into the same of which they are merely the phenomena, or appearances. As this same insight is worded and taught in the Taittiriya Upanishad-
“That from which these beings are born; on which, once born, they live; and into which they pass upon death – seek to perceive that. That is brahman”
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Mugh Ruith’s Oracle
“appearing from, and in the dark;
this universe- ever refreshed!
hills and houses, arising with dawn,
bearing the plains, beasts on the hoof,
turquoise bunting, sky mirror sea,
a realm returned,
beneath the sun”
“ And the things from which existing things come into being are also the things into which they are destroyed, in accordance with what must be. For they give justice and reparation to one another for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time”