Chapter 65 XIV ANAXAGORAS Ⅱ MOVEMENT MYSTERIES

Philosophy in the Age of Greek Tragedy XIV ANAXAGORAS Ⅱ MOVEMENT MYSTERIES 14.1 Reality of Motion In order to properly assess the extraordinary nature of Parmenides' hypothesis For the advantages, we have to look at the opponents of the Elia faction.What embarrassment would Anaxagoras, and all those who believed in the unity of many substrates, face, if the question "how many substrates there are" (Parmenides would not suffer from this embarrassment) ).Anaxagoras closed his eyes and jumped, saying: "Infinitely many".In this way, he escaped at least one unimaginably difficult task of proving the exact number of substrates.Since this infinity must not increase, remain unchanged, and have existed from eternity, there is already a contradiction contained in this assumption, namely, that there is a closed and completed infinity.

In short, many, motion, infinity, condemned by Parmenides' astonishing principle of being, return from exile and try to mortally wound Parmenides' opponents by firing cannonballs.These adversaries, however, apparently did not accurately estimate the terrible power of the Eleatic idea: "Time, motion, and space cannot exist, because we can only conceive of all these things as infinite, regardless of their infinite size. can still be subdivided infinitely, and all infinite things do not have a being, do not exist." Whoever strictly understands the meaning of the word "being" and confirms that self-contradictory things such as "completed infinity" are not If it exists, there will be no doubt about it.If reality showed us everything only in the completed infinite form, it would appear that reality is self-contradictory and therefore has no real reality.

If these opponents wished to retort: ​​"But, after all, in your thinking there is succession and alternation, and therefore your thinking cannot be real, and therefore cannot prove anything," then Parmenides would perhaps have done something similar to Kant's. Occasion replied to the same charge: "Although I may say that my thoughts are successive and alternate with each other, this only means that I am aware of them in a temporal order, that is, following the inner sense form. This is does not mean that time is something in itself, or a determinateness objectively attached to things." Therefore, a distinction must be made between pure thinking - which is atemporal like Parmenides' being - and the This awareness of thinking; the latter has been translated by thinking into the form of illusion, that is, of alternation, multiplicity, movement.

Parmenides probably took advantage of this outlet, and the reason A. Spir used to refute Kant (Thinking and Reality, Volume 1) must have been used to refute him: It is now clear, however, that, first, if a successive alternation does not appear simultaneously in my consciousness, I can only be ignorant of the alternation itself.Therefore, the idea of ​​alternation itself is not alternation at all, and is therefore completely different from the alternation of our ideas.Second, the absurdity contained in Kant's assumption is so obvious that one wonders how one can ignore it.According to this assumption, Julius Caesar and Socrates didn't really die, they lived as well as they did two thousand years ago, only because of the arrangement of my "inner sense organs", they seemed to have died.The people of the future are now alive, and if they are not now alive before us, then this is also to blame for the arrangements of the "inner senses".The main question is: How can the beginning and the end of conscious life itself, with all its inner and outer senses, exist only in the perception of the inner senses?The fact is that there is simply no denying the reality of change.Sent it away from the window, it slipped in again through the keyhole.Although it can be said that "states and concepts only seem to change", this illusion itself is still something objectively existing, and the alternation in it has an undoubted objective reality. In fact, there is something successive . —Furthermore, it should be seen that all critiques of reason are justified and grounded only on the premise that our thoughts themselves appear to us as they are.For if an idea does not appear to us as it actually is, then it is impossible to make valid claims about it, and thus impossible to establish epistemology and "a priori" examination of objective validity.Now there is no doubt that our thoughts themselves appear to us as successions and alternations.

Anaxagoras' meditations on this unmistakable alternation and movement compelled him to formulate a very remarkable hypothesis.Thoughts are obviously self-moving, they are not moved and have no cause outside themselves.Thus, he says, there is something that contains within itself the cause and beginning of motion.But he also observed that these thoughts not only move themselves, but also move something quite different, namely the body.Thus he discovered by the most direct experience the action of thought upon extended matter, which is recognized as the movement of the latter.He takes this as a fact, and only secondarily feels the need to explain it.

14.2 Initial Movement It was enough for Anaxagoras to have a canonical schema of motion in the world; nous), or as motions caused by what has been moved. According to his basic assumption, the latter case, that is, the mechanical transmission of motion and collision, also contains a problem in itself, which he may have overlooked.The frequent occurrence of collisional effects may have blunted his vision for discovering the mystery of collisions.On the contrary, he may rightly feel that the action of ideas on a substratum that exists in itself is problematic, even absurd.So he tried to attribute this effect to mechanical movements and collisions which he thought were obviously possible.

In any case, "Nus" is such a substrate that exists in itself, and he describes it as an extremely fine substance with a special "thinking" attribute.According to the nature thus assumed, the action of this substance on another substance, and the action of another substance on a third substance, that is, mechanical, moving by pressure and impact, must also be completely equal. Belong to the same category.Now at last he has a substratum that moves itself and sets others in motion, the motion of which is neither external nor dependent on others.Now it seems almost indifferent how this self-motion should be conceived; perhaps it is like the rolling to and fro of a very fine mercury bead.

Of all the problems concerning motion, none is more intractable than the beginning of motion.Although we can conceive of all other motions as causal, we still have to account for the first, beginning motion.In the case of mechanical motion, however, the first link in the chain can never be a mechanical motion, since that would mean resorting to the absurd notion of "causa sui."On the other hand, it is equally useless to add ego-motion as a lifetime dowry to the Eternal Absolute from the outset.Since motion cannot be conceived without a direction in which to go, it must be conceived as relations and conditions.And if a thing is by its nature necessarily concerned with something existing outside it, it ceases to be in-itself and absolute.

Faced with this dilemma, Anaxagoras thought he had found a special savior in the self-moving, always independent "Nus". The nature of "nous" is so ambiguous that it is just enough to conceal that the assumption of it contains in essence the forbidden "self-cause".Empirical observations show that the mind is undoubtedly not a self-cause, but a product of the brain; So grotesque.But this is exactly what Anaxagoras did; he forgot about the brain with its astonishing intricacies, the deviousness of its structure, and proclaimed what he called a "spirit at ease."This "free spirit" can make its own decisions-what a wonderful discovery!It can set things outside itself into motion at any time, but it can take an extremely long time when it comes to itself.

In conclusion, Anaxagoras can postulate a first moment of motion as the starting point of all so-called becomings, that is, of all changes (i.e., all displacements and transpositions) of the eternal substrate and its constituents.Though the spirit itself is eternal, it is not forced to torment itself by moving matter and objects back and forth through eternity.Whether it is long or short, there must have been a time and a state when Nous had not acted on matter, and matter had not yet moved.This is what Anaxagoras called the time of confusion.