Anaxagorás – Kratochvíl Zdeněk (2015)

The monograph on Anaxagoras represents the intellectual transformation of older Ionian natural science and archaic philosophy in the spirit of the 'Enlightenment' of early classical Greece. It is no coincidence that Anaxagoras was nicknamed 'Mind' in Athens. Not only did he 'bring philosophy to Athens,' but he also transformed it by seeking a constant foundation for the changes of all things. From older Ionian didactic prose, he creates a genre that already strongly resembles later philosophical and scientific texts. The content, however, is a reflection of a free-thinking intellectual. The interpretation of all preserved fragments of Anaxagoras's work (in a new original translation) as well as testimonies about him and his teachings focuses on the discovery of infinitesimal quantities, a new emphasis on the mind, including a kind of religious reform or scientific novelties, such as the understanding of the Sun or meteorites. Anaxagoras presents these novelties within the framework of the traditional Ionian unity of the world, which is not yet divided into celestial and earthly, material and bodily. He still manages without the notion of a purposeful arrangement of the world. Purposeful action is rather a way in which people (and presumably other animals) temporarily compensate for their finiteness and limitations, while the world has no such need. The governance of the mind is not yet subordinated to purpose; it remains...