1. Anaxagoras
Chapter 2 Philosophical and Theological Background 1. Anaxagoras Although Socrates ultimately found his account lacking, and Aristotle treated him rather dismissively, it was Anaxagoras (sixth century ), as Socrates reports, who was the first to argue 'that it is intellect [νοῦς] that arranges and causes all things', and, according to Simplicius, he also taught that creation was 'two-fold'.¹
There are many obscurities and contentious points of interpretation regarding Anaxagoras' teaching, but there are also several points of importance for understanding the background of Gregory's work. Although the fragments of Anaxagoras' writings are primarily preserved in the writings of Simplicius in the sixth century , extracting these fragments from that context and attempting to make sense of them in terms of Aristotle's presentation of Anaxagoras leads to numerous problems and inconsistencies; indeed, Simplicius occasionally points out that Aristotle had misunderstood or misrepresented Anaxagoras. Simplicius, of course, was writing in a very different context than either Anaxagoras or Aristotle, with the whole history of Neoplatonism behind him. But this doesn't necessarily mean that he has turned a Presocratic into a Neoplatonist; his commentary on Aristotle is a fair account of the Stagirite, and we have no reason to doubt that Simplicius is equally faithful in his representation of Anaxagoras whose writings he knew. It is just as likely, as Tzamalikos argues, that 'some
Neoplatonists saw in Anaxagoras the real source of a consistent solution to the ancient problem of how exactly did the material universe come to be from immaterial principles'.² ¹ Plato, Phaedo 96c; text and ET Harold North Fowler, Loeb Classical Library, Plato 1 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1914). For a brief but lucid account of Anaxagoras, see David Sedley,
Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 8–30, and for a recent massive (almost 1800-page) account arguing that Anaxagoras was the genius behind later developments in philosophy, culminating in Origen and through him the Neoplatonists, see Panayiotis
Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism: The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late
Antiquity, Arbeiten zur Kirchenggeschichte 128, 2 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), especially, for the topic treated here, Chapter 4, 'A Two-Fold Creation'. The best treatment of Anaxagoras is Anna
Marmodoro, Everything in Everything: Anaxagoras' Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2017).
² Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, 58.
Anaxagoras opened his book On Nature with the words: 'All things were together' (ἧν ὁμοῦπάντα χρήματα).³ The fullest passage preserved from Anaxagoras' own writings (though in fact compiled from different parts of Simplicius' work) describes the cosmogenic activity of intellect [νοῦς] in terms echoed by Gregory in the opening chapter of his On the Human Image, and deserves to be quoted in full.
The other things possess a portion of every thing, but intellect is unlimited and master of itself, it has not been mixed with any thing, but is the only one to be itself by itself. For if it were not by itself, but had been mixed with some other thing, it would participate in all things, if it had been mixed with any; for in every thing is present a part of every thing, as I said earlier. And the things that would be mixed with it would prevent it from having control over any thing in the same way as it does being alone by itself. For it is at the same time both the thinnest of all things, and the purest, and in particular it retains the full decision [γνώμην or 'understanding'] concerning every thing and possesses the greatest power; and of the things that have life [ψυχὴν], whether they are larger or smaller, of these intellect is master; and intellect has been master of the whole rotation, so that there would be rotation at the beginning [καὶτῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νοῦς ἐκράτησεν, ὤστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχὴν]. And the rotation began at first from the small, then it rotates more broadly, and it will continue to become even broader. And the things that mix as well as those that are detached and separate out—all these intellect decided [ἔγνω or 'knew']. And as things were going to be, and as all things were that now are not, and as all things are now, and as they will be, intellect separated and ordered them all, as well as this rotation, which is being performed now by the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon, the air, and the aether, which are separating out. And the rotation itself caused the detachment
[ἡδὲπεριχώρησις αὕτη ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι]. And from the rarefied the dense separates out, from the cold the warm, from the dark the bright, and from the moist the dry. Numerous are the parts of numerous things; yet nothing is completely detached or separates out from one another, except intellect. But all intellect is similar, the larger and the smaller, and nothing else is similar to anything else, but that of which each thing contains the most, this is what each thing is and was most manifestly.⁴ ³ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 460.26); ET J. O. Urmson, On Aristotle Physics 3, ACA (London:
Bloomsbury, 2013), 79, occasionally modified.
⁴ Herman Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. Walther Kranz, 6th edn., 3 vols (Berlin:
Weidmann, 1951–2), B12 (= Simplicius, In Phys., ed. Diels, 164.24–5; 156.13–157.4); text and ET,
André Laks and Glenn W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy, vol. 6, LCL 529 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2016), modified. I should note that while translators of Anaxagoras almost uniformly translate νοῦς as 'mind', I have chosen 'intellect', not to project back to him later developments, but for consistency across this volume. References to the fragments of the Presocratics will be given by the Diels-Kranz numeration.
Intellect is thus a distinct cosmogenic force, separate from everything else, and so able to work upon all things. Unlimited, autonomous, and unmixed with anything else, it is the active agent in the process of separating, segregating, ordering, and thus bringing into being, that is, creating.⁵ But what are the things (χρήματα) that were originally all together? Aristotle, perhaps led by comments that Anaxagoras makes about nourishment which we will consider momentarily, called these
'things' 'homoeomeries', referring to 'elements, such as bone, flesh, and marrow, and anything else of which the part bears the same name as the whole'.⁶ However, in the above passage Anaxagoras is clearly speaking about various sets of incorporeal powers (cold and hot, moist and dry, etc.).⁷ By rotating or spinning the unified whole, intellect separates out these powers, so that, as Simplicius reports
Anaxagoras concluding, 'the dense, <the> wet, the cold, and the dark came together here, where earth now is, while the rare, the hot, <the bright>, and the dry retreated to the farther parts of the aether'.⁸ Anaxagoras, as Simplicius rightly understood, 'posited as elements the simple qualities, which have the nature of principles [τὰς ἁπλᾶς καὶἀρχοειδεῖς ποιότητας], but not the compounds . . . these most simple things which have the character of principles are separated off and other things of a more compound nature are in some cases compacted as compounds [συμπήγνυσθαι ὡς σύνθετα], in others separated off, as earth'.⁹
Earth, and the other elements, are thus the resultant products of this segregating-by-spinning activity of intellect; they are compounds compacted from particular incorporeal powers. However, even when separated in this manner, the various powers are not completely sundered or severed from each other: never being able to be absolute heat or wetness (for heat could always, in principle, be hotter), their opposite always remains present, so that as Anaxagoras put it above, 'other things [apart from intellect] possess a portion of every thing'.¹⁰
The revolving effected by intellect is one that, according to the above passage (B12), operates even now and will continue to do so; it began small and increases
⁵ As Tzamalikos (Anaxagoras, 287–8) notes, Simplicius (In Phys., 300.27–30) quotes from Alexander of Aphrodisias' lost commentary on Aristotle's Physics, to the effect that Aristotle did not mention Anaxagoras, because even though he posited intellect, he 'does not make use of this in genesis'
(ἐν τῇγενέσει), although, Simplicius argues, it is plain that Anaxagoras does, for he says that 'genesis is nothing other than separation itself ' (τὴν γένεσιν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢἔκκρισιν εἶναι φησί).
⁶ Aristotle, Gen. corr. 314a18–21. For Aristotle's misreading of Anaxagoras, see Sedley, Creationism,
26–30, and Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, 264–5, 272–3.
⁷ That these pairs of opposites (cold/warm, dark/bright, moist/dry) should be designated as 'powers' rather than 'properties' (the latter being 'properties' that inhere in something else) is strongly argued by Marmodoro, Everything in Everything, 17–24, and passim.
⁸ B15 (Simplicius, In Phys. 1.4; Diels, 179.3–6; ET 79; where it follows the relevant passage from B12). D–K marked 'earth' as an editorial addition; but David Sider, The Fragments of Anaxagoras, 2nd edn. (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2005), 149, demonstrates that it is unanimously present in the manuscript tradition, of which only one ms includes a definite article: it is 'earth', not 'the earth'.
⁹ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 178.33–4, 179.6–7; ET 86).
¹⁰ Cf. B8 (Simplicius, In Phys. 1.4; Diels, 176.29 and 175.12–14): 'The things that are in one world order have not been separated from one another and they have not been chopped apart by an ax, neither the hot from the cold, nor the cold from the hot.'
in breadth. The separation of the unified whole into incorporeal powers is not a primordial creation of a different world or realm, nor in fact is it Anaxagoras' own starting point. On Simplicius' telling, Anaxagoras began from the observation that bread, when taken as nourishment, becomes separated out into flesh, bones, sinews, veins, hair, and so on.¹¹ From this, he concluded that 'everything was mixed in everything and genesis happens by separation [τὴν γένεσιν κατὰἔκκρισιν γίνεσθαι]'.¹² This genesis, moreover, has an order and a proper time: Anaxagoras
'saw that everything comes from everything, if not immediately, but in order [κατὰτάξιν]'.¹³ And from such observation, according to Simplicius, Anaxagoras reasoned by analogy to the universe: 'So just as in each thing there is at some time a principle to distinguish it, so also in the universe. And just as from each, something appears to come to be at some time, so, since everything comes to be, the genesis of all things was separated out from the universal mixture, even if not all together.'¹⁴ It was this that led Anaxagoras, finally, to postulate a 'principle and cause' superior to bodies, which are moved externally, and he called this intellect.¹⁵ Finally, intellect, 'that which was distinguishing the complex and bringing out in order the distinction from the complexity, had first to contain itself the existent as a complex and reveal the distinction in itself '.¹⁶ Thus, intellect establishes the incorporeal principles that both cause and are embodied in the material universe we inhabit.
Tracing the order of his thought in this way—from empirical observation to postulating intellect as the primary cause—as Simplicius suggests, Anaxagoras' hypothesis about principles becomes clear. Whereas Aristotle had presented the superficial aspect of his thought (τὸπροφαινόμενον ἱστορεῖν τῆς Ἀναξαγόρου δόξης), Anaxagoras was, according to Simplicius, in fact pointing to something more:
Anaxagoras, being wise, hinted at a twofold orderly arrangement: the one united and intelligible, pre-existing, not in time (for that one is not temporal), but in superiority of being and potentiality; the other distinct from this; and in accordance with this it comes to be through the demiurgic intellect.¹⁷
¹¹ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 460.22–5; ET 79).
¹² Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 460.19–20; ET 79).
¹³ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 460.12–13; ET 79).
¹⁴ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 460.32–5; ET 80): ὥσπερ οὖν ἐν ἑκάστῳἀρχὴγίνεταί ποτε τῆς διακρίσεως, οὕτως καὶἐν τῷπαντί. καὶὥσπερ ἀπὸἑκάστου φαίνεταί τις γένεσίς ποτε γινομένη, οὕτως ἐπειδὴκαὶπάντων ἐστὶγένεσις, ἀπὸτοῦπάντων μίγματος ἡπάντων γένεσις ἐξεκρίθη, εἰκαὶμὴἅμα.
¹⁵ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 460.35–461.1; ET 80).
¹⁶ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 461.1–3; ET 80): ἔδει γὰρ τὸτὰσυνῃρμένα διακρῖνον καὶπροάγον ἐν τάξει τὴν διάκρισιν ἀπὸτῆς συναιρέσεως αὐτὸσυνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν πρώτως ἀναφαίνειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάρκσιν.
¹⁷ Simplicius, In Phys. 3.4 (Diels, 461.11–14; ET 80): ὁδὲἈναξαγόρας σοφὸς ὢν διττὴν ᾐνίττετο τὴν διακόσμησιν, τὴν μὲν ἡνωμένην καὶνοητὴν προϋπάρχουσαν οὐχρόνῳ(οὐγὰρ ἔγχρονος ἐκείνη), ἀλλ᾽ ὑπεροχῇοὐσίας καὶδυνάμεως, τὴν δὲδιακεκριμένην ἀπὸταύτη· καὶκατὰταύτην ὑφίστασθαι ὑπὸτοῦ δημιουργικοῦνοῦ. . .
Simplicius continues by referring back to his first book, where he had given the evidence from words of Anaxagoras himself, and in which, after quoting the passage with which we began (B12), he makes a similar observation:
He posits a twofold world-order, one intellectual, the other perceptible, derived from the former [διττήν τινα διακόσμησιν τὴν μὲν νοεράν, τὴν δὲαἰσθητὴν ἀπ᾽ ἐκείνης]: that is clear both from what he has previously said and from the following: 'Intellect is now too where all the other things are as well [ὁδὲνοῦς καὶνῦν ἐστιν ἵνα καὶτὰἀλλὰπάντα], in the surrounding mass, in the things that have separated more, and in those that are separating' [=B14].¹⁸ Further, after [saying] 'in all the things that are combined there are many things of all kinds and seeds of all things with all kinds of shapes and colours and flavours, and human beings have been compacted [ἀνθρώπους γε συμπαγῆναι] and the other animals which have life [ψυχὴν]' [=B4, 2–5], he goes on 'and human beings have built cities and devised works [ἔργα κατεσκευασμένα], as we do, and they have a sun and a moon and the rest, as we do, and the earth brings forth for them many things of all kinds, the most useful of which they collect in their dwellings and use' [=B4, 5–10]. That he is hinting at a different world order from ours [ἑτέραν τινὰδιακόσμησιν παρὰτὴν παρ᾽ἡμῖν αἰνίττεται] is made clear from the phrase 'as we do', which he uses more than once. That he thinks that it is not a perceptible world, preceding this world in time, is made clear by [the words] 'the most useful of which they collect in their dwellings and use'. For he does not say 'used' but 'use'. But he is not talking about a civilisation similar to ours located elsewhere.¹⁹
The word 'twofold' (διττὴν) does not occur in any preserved text of Anaxagoras; it does, however, describe accurately the distinction between the spinning out of the incorporeal powers and the compacted resulting products (such as earth). And, if Simplicius is right in describing the order of Anaxagoras' train of reflection (from how, for instance, bread separates out into flesh and bones, to the originary separation of incorporeal powers, such as hot and cold), this movement is not two separate stages but two aspects of the same revolving effect of intellect. The distinction of world orders between the intellectual and the perceptible is not a matter of chronological priority (he emphasizes the present tense), nor are they located in different realms. The perceptible is derived from the intellectual, and the latter is embodied in the former; it is this world order, other than our empirical one but embodied in it, at which Anaxagoras is 'hinting'. More will be said presently about Anaxagoras' words in the above passage from Simplicius
¹⁸ Following the emendation of B14 proposed by Sider and adopted by Laks and Most.
¹⁹ Simplicius, In Phys. 1.4 (Diels, 157.5–20), adopting D–K's emendation; Simplicius' has ὁδὲνοῦς ὅσα ἐστί . . . Trans. Pamela Huby and C. C. W. Taylor, On Aristotle Physics 1.3–4, ACA (London:
Bloomsbury, 2011), 65–6, modified.
(constituting fragment B4). Regarding the first quotation given there (B14), Tzamalikos argues that the ἵνα clause should be taken purposively rather than locatively, so that it would read: 'intellect exists so that others exist too'.²⁰ It is through the activity of intellect that everything is ordered—that is, brought into being; everything brought into being is ontologically different from intellect, yet totally dependent upon intellect, and while intellect is 'alone all by itself ' (B12, above), intellect co-exists with that which it has brought into being, and, indeed, is embodied in it.
Although, as we have seen, Anaxagoras emphasizes the distinction of intellect from everything else, he also affirms that intellect masters (κρατεῖ) 'things that have life, whether they are larger or smaller' (B12, above), so that 'in every thing there is a portion of every thing except of intellect; but there are things in which intellect too is present [ἐστιν οἷσι δὲκαὶνοῦς ἔνι]'.²¹ As Sedley comments, with Anaxagoras 'the reference of the word nous ranges, without clear demarcation, over both intelligence as a power resident in each of us, whose properties we therefore know at first hand, and the great cosmic intelligence which created the world. The ambiguity is permissible because Anaxagoras almost certainly holds that the great cosmic intelligence, having created the world, apportioned at least some of itself into individual living beings, ourselves included.'²² As Gregory would put it later, 'intellect' is not simply 'given' (ἔδωκεν) by God to human beings, but rather 'he gives a share' (μετέδωκε, De hom. 9.1).
Anaxagoras seemed to Socrates and Plato to have failed in giving an account of why the result of the activity of intellect is the best structure for the cosmos—that is, a fully adequate teleology. Sedley, however, argues that there is in fact a teleological orientation in the subtext of Anaxagoras' thought: 'when intelligence creates worlds, it designedly constructs them so as to be hospitable to agricultural civilizations like Anaxagoras's own'.²³ The 'seeds of all things', which Anaxagoras sees implanted in all things should, according to Sedley, be taken simply as ordinary biological seeds, in accord with his agricultural model. Moreover, translating B4 (quoted above) as 'and that human beings, for their part, have cities that they have populated and farms that they have constructed [ἔργα κατεσκευασμένα], just as where we are', Sedley infers that this 'mirrors accurately enough the purposive construction of the great cosmic farm by nous'.²⁴ Moreover, as Aristotle reports that 'Anaxagoras asserts that it is his possession of hands that makes the human being the most intelligent of animals', whereas Aristotle would
²⁰ Cf. Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, 284–5; his full translation of the passage is: 'Mind, which always is, certainly is also now, so that all the other things also should exist, namely, in the encompassing multitude [of the principles] and in the things that have been joined together, and in the things that have been separated off.'
²¹ B11; Simplicius, In Phys. 1.4 (Diels, 164.23–4; ET 72).
²² Sedley, Creationism, 11.
²³ Sedley, Creationism, 22.
²⁴ Sedley, Creationism, 23; the translation is given on p. 14. Laks and Most translate ἔργα κατεσκευασμένα similarly: 'cultivated fields'.
have it that it is 'because the human is the most intelligent animal that he has hands', it would seem that Anaxagoras shared in the commonplace assumption that the human being is the culmination or high point of the works of intellect within nature.²⁵ And so, Sedley concludes, 'it therefore seems implicit in Anaxagoras' text that nous constructs and, as it were, farms worlds primarily in order to generate human beings. The teleology proves to have an anthropocentric bias.'²⁶
There are many themes in what we have seen that recur in Gregory's treatise On the Human Image (and elsewhere in his corpus): that incorporeal properties are combined to make matter; that a process of revolving results in the genesis of things in an ordered and temporal sequence; that creation is twofold; that intellect is not simply given to humans, but that they have a share of it; and that humans, the culmination of this process, have hands as befits an intellectual being.
It is possible that there is a further allusion, through the word used in the opening sentence of Anaxagoras' book, a leitmotif of his thought (though obscured by Aristotle's 'homoeomeries'): 'All things [χρήματα] were together.'
This word also occurs in the LXX text of Prov. 17:6 'The faithful one has the whole world of money [ὅλος ὁκόσμος τῶν χρημάτων], but the faithless not even a farthing', which Origen paraphrases: 'the faithful, he says, will see the principles of this world, which he figuratively called the things of the intellect [ὄψεται τοὺς λόγους τοῦκόσμου τούτου, οὕστινας χρήματα τροπικῶς τοῦνοῦπροσηγόρευσεν]'.²⁷
This characteristically Anaxagorean word (along with other points) indicates, for Tzamalikos, Origen's 'discipleship' to Anaxagoras.²⁸ This verse from Proverbs, through this 'Anaxagorean' interpretation, is thus taken as a metaphor, speaking of the vision that the faithful one will have: the λόγοι of the world are the χρήματα of the intellect (that is, for Origen, God), and they are held together in his Logos.
Similarly, for Origen the λόγοι are the words of Scripture, woven together as the 'garment' of the Word and as his body (for, according to Origen, 'the Word always becomes incarnate in Scripture'); they are a garment, moreover, which appears one way to those at the foot of the mountain, but brighter than the sun to those who climb Tabor to see the transfigured Christ in every passage.²⁹ Intriguingly,
Gregory opens his letter to Peter, introducing the work On the Human Image, using the same word, χρήματα: 'If it is necessary to honour with rewards of χρήματα those who excel in virtue, "the whole world of χρήματα"' would not match his brother's virtue; but as the feast of Pascha requires a gift, Gregory offers him a treatise (λόγος), 'woven not without toil from our poor mind'. Moreover, the very subject of this treatise points to the same indebtedness, for according to ²⁵ Aristotle, Parts of animals, 4.10, 687a8–10; text and ET A. L. Peck and E. S. Forster, Loeb Classical
Library, Aristotle 12 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937). Gregory too employs this topos in De hom. 8.8.
²⁶ Sedley, Creationism, 24.
²⁷ Origen, Exp. Prov. PG 17, 197c9–11.
²⁸ Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, 827.
²⁹ Origen, Philoc. 15.19; cf. Com. Matt. 12.38.