Apeiron (cosmology) - Influence On Greek and Western Thought

Influence On Greek and Western Thought

We may assume that the contradiction in the different interpretations is because Anaximander combined two different ways of thought. The first one dealing with apeiron is metaphysical (and can lead to monism), while the second one dealing with mutual changes and the balance of the opposites as central to reality is physical. The same paradox existed in the Greek way of thought. The Greeks believed that each individual had unlimitable potentialities both in brain and in heart, an outlook which called a man to live at the top of his powers. But that there was a limit to his most violent ambitions, that arrogance-injustice (hybris or adikia) could disturb the harmony and balance. In that case justice (dike) would destroy him to reestablish the order. These ideas are obvious in later Greek philosophers. Philolaus (5th century BC) mentions that nature constituted and is organized with the world from unlimitable (Greek: ἄπειρα apeira, plural of apeiron) and limitable. Everything which exists in the world contains the unlimited (apeiron) and the limited. Something similar is mentioned by Plato: Nothing can exist if it doesn't contain continually and simultaneously the limited and the unlimited, the definite and the indefinite.

Some doctrines existing in Western thought, still transmit some of the original ideas: "God ordained that all men shall die", "Death is a common debt". The Greek word adikia (injustice) transmits the notion that someone has operated outside of his own sphere, without respecting the one of his neighbour. Therefore he commits hybris. The relative English word arrogance (claim as one's own without justification - Latin verb: arrogare), is very close to the original meaning, "Nothing in excess."