The earliest Greek Philosophers -- were all looking for, reaching for, and theorizing on, in some fashion -- 'The Big, One Initial Cause' of Creation, The World, and Man...
Does it surprise anyone that we are still searching, still reaching, still theorizing...some 2600 years later...
Thales (the 'water' theorist), Anaxamander (the 'Apeiron' theorist), Anaxamenes (the 'air' theorist), Heraclitus (the 'fire' theorist)...all put in their respective theories with Anaxamander's theory being significantly different than the other three because he was the only theorist to argue that we had to go 'beyond the one cause, one substance idea' to look for 'God's Playpen' (my words, not his), i.e., the 'Ultimate Breeding Ground' for 'all opposite causes and substances' which Anaxamander called 'The Apeiron'....
The Apeiron can be viewed as being similar to our present usage of the term 'Universe' but it also has certain elements of the concept that are similar to our present usage of the term 'Chaos' and Jung's usage of the term 'Shadow' and Freud's usage of the term 'Id' and Perls' usage of the term 'Background'...
The Apeiron can be viewed as the 'Backdrop' and 'Primal Chaos' of life from which all substances and elements in life become slowly differentiated from each other -- and then 'spit out into the world to compete with each other and try to dominate each other'...in extended Nietzschean language, each opposite substance in life is blessed (and/or cursed) with its own particular 'Will to Power' or 'Will to Self-Empowerment and Self-Actualization' which it takes with it into the world to 'try to survive and indeed dominate', particularly over its 'opposite nemesis' (you can see Hegel's dialectic theory in its archaic infancy here)...
So 'opposite substances' land in the world together, compete and fight with each other, with one opposing substance coming out on top as the 'dominant or superior opposite substance' and the other opposing substance' coming out on bottom as the 'submissive or inferior opposite substance'...When this 'power struggle' is played out and fully articulated, 'the inferior substance' is then spit back into the Apeiron (Unarticulated Chaos, The Shadow, The Id, The Background...) in order to re-group, re-energize, 're-gain more of God's Power' if you will, and then it is 'spit' back into the world again to re-confront its 'Lifelong Opposing Nemesis' and to fight another battle...and win or lose again...
...........................................................................................
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
-- Anaxamander's Fragment
.....................................................................
So while Thales -- the oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- was preaching about 'water' as 'Life's Original Cause'...
And Anaxamenes -- about the third oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- was preaching about 'air' as 'Life's Original Cause'...
And Heraclitus -- about the fourth oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- was preaching about 'fire' as 'Life's Original Cause'...(although Heraclitus had some of Anaxamander's teachings within his 'dialectic' thought process and theory as well)...
Anaxamander -- the second oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- was aiming for a way to 'bring all these different opposites and so-called original causes into one over-riding (multi-dialectic) theory that integrated all these 'opposites' together in the same 'Original Birthplace' -- 'The Apeiron' ('Cosmic Chaos', The 'Cosmic Shadow', The 'Cosmic Id', The 'Cosmic Background'...) -- where they were each 'differentially articulated' and 'born' to the world as we know it, something like a 'Noah's Ark' type of situation...although 'The Noah's Ark' biblical story focused on the idea of 'one pair of opposite sexes' of each species of plant and animal being brought on board Noah's Ark in order that the world would have the capability of 'Generating New Birth and Creation' once 'The Ultimate Flood' subsided...
The Noah's Ark biblical story can also be associated with Heraclitus' most important philosophical work as Heraclitus emphasized the dialectic idea for the first Western time -- like the Chinese were doing about this same time over in The East with their opposing concepts of 'yin' (feminine energy) and 'yang' (masculine energy) -- that opposites were not only put on earth to 'struggle with each other' and 'try to overpower each other' but they were also brought into this world to 'be attracted to each other', 'want each other', 'long for each other', 'need each other', 'biologically and/or psychologically and/or philosophically and/or politically and/or artisitically create with each other' in order to continue 'God's Creation' of the world (my religious words, not Heraclitus') and to 'bring dialectic peace, harmony, unity, wholism, and balance' into the world as opposed to power-seeking, strife, conflict, and war...
This was the main difference between Anaxamander's 'Will to Power' Cosmic Theory as opposed to both Heraclitus' 'Dialectic Homeostatic Balance' Theory locally in Greece (after Anaxamander was dead) and Lao Tse's Eastern 'Yin' and 'Yang' Cosmic Theory that was providing the philosophical foundation for Daoism (Taoism) in China and eventually beyond China...to those who now practise it in all parts of the world...For a couple of very similar theories (Heraclitus and Lao Tse respective 'Cosmic Philosophical Theories') that are some 2500 years old (or perhaps much older in China), these two 'dialectic theories' that set the stage for Hegel's 'Ultimate Dialectic Theory' in 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1804)...they have both done very well, indeed... (Well, I am trying to make both theories even more 'Ultimate' today...and in the 21st Century...)
Between Anaxamander's precursor to Nietzsche's 'Will to Power' Cosmic Theory and Heraclitus' 'Will to Dialectically Integrate' Cosmic Theory, you essentially have the backdrop to more than 2500 years of Western and Eastern Philosophy coming to a head in Hegel's Dialectic Philosophy in Prussia/Germany (the essential border-point between Western and Eastern Philosophy and their respective similarities and differences but mainly differences as would become structurally pronounced in 'The Berlin Wall') with Karl Marx turning Hegel's Philosophy upside down but 'ringing bells' and fascinating the Eastern World for perhaps much of the worst part of both China's and Russia's respective political and civil history...through Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin...
Their intentions may or may not have been good (they were probably mainly bad) but/and the results were mainly disasterous...(because peace, integration, harmony, and democracy all disappeared -- or stayed -- in 'The Apeiron' of The Eastern World...which is not to say that the Western world was necessarily faring much better but 'The Enlightenment', 'Romanticism', and the birth of 'Humanistic-Existentialism' were positive evolutionary developments in Western philosophy before 'The French Reign of Terror' and Napoleon's 'Megalomania' took over and blew things out of control...likewise with certain facets of today's Western (and now Eastern) Narcissistic Capitalism...and Globalization and Free Trade with their respective good and bad features...good for third world countries...bad for America and Canada in that all the manufacturing jobs are getting 'outsourced' to Third World countries...and/or we are 'cheapening' the labour market in North America in order to try to compete with the rising Third World countries...and/or 'importing' Third World Labour Forces here...such as just north of the Mexican boundary...)
Back with Anaxamander, his philosophical mindset was such that he emphasized the 'competition, the will to power, and the destruction between opposites' as the essential 'Way of The World'...whereas Heraclitus (and Lao Tse) emphasized the more positive side of 'opposites desiring and needing each other for homeostatic dialectic balance' (my 21st century words, not his)....
Anaxamander might have been watching the respective Greek 'city-states' of Sparta and Athens continually trying to overpower and destroy each other...and the 'loser' eventually coming back to seek 'retribution' and 'justice' for its previous 'suppresion' 'oppression' and 'repression'...Sparta being the more 'authoritarian' city-state, and Athens being the birth place of Western 'democracy'...
Thousands of years later we can see these two respective cosmic theories of Anaxamander and Heracltius coming back into play, first in the philosophy of Hegel, and then Nietzsche in 'The Birth of Tragedy' and then in the work of Freud, Jung, and Perls, and their respective descriptions and understandings of the way man's mind works...also, later in the philosophical work of Foucault and Derrida...
And we thought that Plato and Aristotle were the 'primary' philosophers of Ancient Greece... Anaxamander and Heraclitus stand up in the ongoing evolution and integration of Western and Eastern philosophy just as importantly...if not more so, as we continue into the 21st Century....
What Freud, Jung and Perls all essentially did in their own respective way was to bring Anaxamander's essential idea of the Apeirion 'out of the heavens' and into the 'chaotic, Darker Shadow or Id or Background' -- of man's Psyche and Soul', complete with all of his most primitive, archaic, driving impulses, desires, characteristics, and shocking behavior patterns...that place in the human psyche where all evolving opposite tendencies exist side by side both in attraction and in conflict and turmoil...with a need for some form of Central Integrating Force (The Central Ego in my own DGB model) in The Personality to both detoxify and to harmoniously balance these attracting and repulsing opposite forces...'
In the partial language of Freud from 1920 on...(Beyond The Pleasure Principle)...and paraphrased and/or extrapolated on by me at this moment....The 'life and death (love and hate, creativity and destruction) impulses or instincts' in both the body and the personality are dialectically, paradoxically, and inseparably linked to each other throughout our lives through the ancient destructive and creative principles of Anaxamander, Heraclitus, and Lao Tse...all these similar and different competing, attracting, converging, diverging evolutionary energies...looking for their own separate place in the world, either in power and destruction and/or in harmonious integration...
With elements of Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Darwin, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche all adding to the Pre-Socratic foundational base, what we have here is essentially a 'collision' of both 'Individuated' and 'Integrative' Energies -- both trying very much to survive at the same time -- through a more or less 'Cosmic Will To Power and Differentiation' as well as a 'Cosmic Will to Embrace, Contact, Engage, and Unite'...as easily witnessed through the metaphorical 'ebb and flow of the tides', the divergence and convergence of individuals, races, countries...and the contact and withdrawal of every day living...
In DGB post-Jungian conceptuology and terminology, the 'Internal Archetype of God' is 'The Soul' and 'The Genetic, Partly Created, Partly Templated, Partly Undifferentiated, Unactualized Self-Apeiron of Man'.
Sitting right beside or behind the 'Light of The Soul' is 'The Dark of The Soul' -- like 'The Light and Dark Side of The Moon' as represented by 'The Estranged, Ex-Communicated Angel of God -- Satan' with all its/his potential for upsurging 'human pathology and evil'...
'Pathology and evil is born from the self-perception of being The Most Disavowed, Ex-Communicated, Rejected, Abandoned, Betrayed, Slighted, Discriminated... amongst Us...and feeling the perceived need for some form of 'Negative' (Destructive and/or Self-Destructive) Compensation, Power, and/or Retribution... And often this tendency is born from the 'Most Righteous' amongst us -- politically and/or religiously intolerant and inflexible, and incapable or unwilling to entertain 'the potential integrative good' of holding two or more opposite ideas in one's mind at the same time...
I view 'The Central Mediating Ego' in the personality as being the 'Archetype of Jesus Christ' -- capable of both healing the personality through the integration of conflicting opposites both inside and outside the personality; as well as potentially also being 'overpowered' by the competing factions inside and outside of the personality which can in effect 'overpower', 'destroy' and 'crucify' The Central Ego if it is/we are not strong enough to deal with -- and integrate -- the onslaught of these competing powers...
As far as Thales, Anaxamenes, and Heraclitus, they also have a different important place in the history and evolution of Western Philosophy...as exemplified by the following integrative Ancient Greek based 'Double Bi-Polarity' Model of The Personality...
1. 'Air' is an essential structural part of the makeup of our mind and body; psychologically/mythologically/symbolically speaking we look to the 'sky' for our most important 'self-ideals and virtues'; also, when we speak we may speak with 'hot' or 'cold', 'warm' or 'cool' words...if our words are coming from too high in the sky, then they are likely to lack the 'passion', 'heat', and 'directness' of fire, the 'depth' and 'wisdom' of water, and 'the common sense and groundedness' of 'the earth'...which is why an integration of all four of these competing qualities is essential to our body, our philosophy and psychology, and the words that we choose to use, and how we choose to use them...
2. Similarily, 'the earth' is also an essential part both of our structural makeup in the food, vitamins, and minerals we eat, and psychologically/mythologically/symbolically speaking, we all need the 'rootedness' of the 'earth beneath our feet'...for a sense of self-stability and groundedness...
3. 'Fire' is in our blood, structurally speaking, and psychologically/mythologically/symbolically 'fire' makes up our desire and passion for life...an essential 'yang' energy in our ongoing existence...
4. 'Water' is also an essential part of our bodily, structural makeup, and psychologically/mythologically/symbolically speaking, we need water as a 'cooling' ('yin') force in our ongoing existence...Water is also symbolic of 'depth of character'...'Still waters run deep'...
Thus, in a combined model of our most ancient Western philosophers -- 'internalized' and 'psychologized' -- we have come up with a 'double bi-polarity model' of the personality with The Central Ego needed to harmoniously integrate these opposing, bi-polar energies and forces towards a 'compromise-formation of homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance'....
We have accomplished enough for today...
Or have we?
-- dgb, Nov. 6th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Evolutionary Progress...
