Anaximens of Miletus was a philosopher pre-Socratic who lived in the Ionia region (currently Turkish territory) between 585 BC. Ç. and 528 a. Ç. Due to the great historical distance, not much is known about the life of Anaximenes. The little that is recognized was rescued, in Modernity, from the fragmented works left by Aristotle and Diogenes Laertius (former historian of philosophy). It is speculated that the thinker wrote a work in which he spoke of the organization and origin of the Universe.
Because it is historically situated before Socrates in ancient Greek philosophy, Anaximenes is considered a pre-Socratic. Like the other philosophers of the period, he sought to understand the origin of the entire Universe through observation of nature.
Anaximenes Thought
Anaximenes was a disciple of the second philosopher of the Western tradition, Anaximander of Miletus. Between the pre-Socratic, the way of trying to rationally understand the
origin and organization of the Universe by the observation exercise. In search of the element that would give rise to everything (arche), ancient philosophers began to observe the natural constitution (physis) to understand it rationally and without fables, as the narratives did mythological.Anaximander, continuing the philosophical exercise and cosmological left by your master tales, concluded that there was no definite and perceptible origin for the Universe. For the thinker, the origin would be in what he called the apeiron, which would be something infinite and indefinable. His disciple, Anaximenes, agreed with the master when he said that the original element was infinite, but he disagreed when he stated that there was a definition for such an element. Second Anaximenes, the original element was the air, which was present in everything, permeated everything, blew the movement of all beings and was infinite.
Everything that exists, inanimate or animate, was composed of air for Anaximenes, just as Thales understood that water was at the origin of everything. “Anaximenes of Miletus […] declared that air is the beginning of things that exist; for it is from him that all things come, and it is in him that they dissolve again. Just as our soul, [...] which is air, holds us together and governs us, so also the wind (or blow) and the air surround the whole world”|1|.
The air, therefore, was the breath that animated living beings, which was indispensable for life and who made sure that everything was kept in its proper place.
Anaximenes and Anaximander
Anaximander learned philosophy from his master Tales. The latter, after traveling and studying astronomy and mathematics, concluded that it was necessary understand the Universe rationally, different from the way the mythological narratives treated him. Anaximander was a disciple of Thales and, in turn, introduced Anaximenes into philosophical thought.
The ideas of Anaximander and Anaximenes are similar to a certain extent, in conceiving the original element as something infinite. This philosophical tradition that was dispersed among thinkers, seeking among them elements that could be linked to the origin, was passed on. As in the entire history of philosophy, in pre-Socratic Greece there was also disagreement among thinkers, and, in part, Anaximenes diverged his theory from the proposal by his master. Despite conceiving the original element as something infinite, he thought of something that was very well defined: air.
See too: Leucippus and Democritus – founders of the atomist theory
Ionic school
Like Thales, Anaximander and heraclitus, Anaximenes is framed in the Ionian school — the grouping of the first philosophers of the western tradition. The work of the Ionians was centered on the search for a single natural element that was the cause of everything, different from the pluralists, who conceived the origin of the Universe as a mixture of several elements.
The division of schools of thought took place several centuries after the rise of philosophy so that the study of the period was facilitated. There is a similarity between the Ionians in their way of conceiving philosophy with regard to choice of original elements, but Heraclitus disagrees with the thought of this school by adding to the natural cosmological order the the idea that movement and constant change would be the basis of all the chaos that would give rise to Universe.
Read too: Zeno, ancient philosopher who did not believe in a creator of the Universe
Grades
|1| KIRK, G. S.; RAVEN, J. AND.; SCHOEFIELD, M. The pre-Socratic philosophers. 4. Ed. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbekian Foundation, 1994, p. 161.
by Francisco Porfirio
Philosophy teacher