Anaxagŏras
(
Ἀναξαγόρας). A Greek philosopher, of Clazomenae in Asia
Minor, born about B.C. 500. Sprung from a noble family, but wishing to devote himself entirely
to science, he gave up his property to his kinsmen, and removed to Athens, where he lived in
intimacy with the most distinguished men—above all with Pericles. Shortly before the
outbreak of the Peloponnesian War he was charged by the political opponents of Pericles with
impiety, i.e. with denying the gods recognized by the State; and, though acquitted through his
friend's influence, he felt compelled to emigrate to Lampsacus, where he died soon after, aged
seventy-two. He not only had the honour of giving philosophy a home at Athens, where it went
on flourishing for quite a thousand years, but he was the first philosopher who, by the side
of the material principle, introduced a spiritual, which gives the other life and form. He
laid down his doctrine in a work “On Nature” in the Ionic dialect, of
which only fragments are preserved. Like Parmenides, he denied the existence of birth or
death; the two processes were rather to be described as a mingling and unmingling. The
ultimate elements of combination are indivisible, imperishable
primordia
of infinite number, and differing in shape, colour, and taste, called by himself
“seeds of things,” and by later writers (from an expression of Aristotle)
ὁμοιομέρεια, i. e. particles of like kind with each other
and with the whole that is made up of them. At first these lay mingled without order; but the
divine spirit—
νοῦς, pure, passionless
reason—set the unarranged matter into motion, and thereby created out of chaos an
orderly world. This movement, proceeding from the centre, works on forever, penetrating
farther and farther the infinite mass. But the application of the spiritual principle was
rather indicated than fully carried out by Anaxagoras: he himself commonly explains phenomena
by physical causes, and only when he cannot find these, falls back on the action of divine
reason. The fragments of his most important work were edited by Schaubach
(1827),
and by Schorn
(1829). See also Beckel,
Anaxagorae Doctrina de Rebus
Animatis (Münster, 1868), and Ueberweg,
Hist. of
Philosophy, vol. i. pp. 63-67
(Eng. trans., N. Y. 1872). For criticism of
Anaxagoras by Lucretius, see the
De Rerum Natura,
i.
830-920.