Commentators on Anaximander have regarded him as a key thinker who played a major role in the development of philosophy in ancient Greece. As the second of the Milesian Pre-Socratic philosophers (after Thales, who has traditionally been regarded as his tutor) he has been presented to us by classicists as a very innovative abstract philosophical thinker. But we have so little direct information about Anaximander himself that it is fruitful to regard his later historical commentators as being co-authors with him in the accounts that are given of his work.
They present us with an interesting set of “Anaximanders” whose relationship to the original Anaximander is difficult to establish. Perhaps we can regard their interpretations as variations on a theme? In recent decades cross-disciplinary studies on Anaximander have challenged some traditional interpretations of his philosophy and have sought to place him more firmly into the ethos and material culture of his own day.
We will look at various new interpretations of what inspired Anaximander and also at why his hometown, Miletus, may well have “originated” at least one branch of philosophy, if not all of Greek philosophy, as has often traditionally been claimed. Conclusions to be drawn from these studies will be discussed in the next talk.