Everything in everything : Anaxagoras’s metaphysics

225 Pages·2017·1.5 MB·English

by  Anna Marmodoro

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EVERYTHING IN EVERYTHING
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EVERYTHING
IN EVERYTHING
Anaxagoras’s Metaphysics
Anna Marmodoro
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. The Fundamental Items in the Ontology  11
1.1. Opposites, Stuffs, and Seeds  12
1.2. Does Matter “Matter” to Anaxagoras?  17
1.3. The Concreteness of Power  20
1.4. Parmenidean Constraints on Change  24
1.5. The Causal Efficacy of the Opposites  31
1.6. An Early Power Ontology?  38
1.7. Closing Remarks  42
1.A. Appendix: Anaxagorean versus
Aristotelian Powers  43
2. The Principles Governing the Ontology  46
2.1. The Principle of Universal Extraction  48
2.2. The Everything- in- Everything Principle  51
2.3. The No- Least and No- Largest Principles  54
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Contents
2.4. The Preponderance Principle: The Mechanism
of Preponderance  60
2.5. The Outcome of Preponderance  66
2.6. Closing Remarks  73
3. A Theory of Extreme Mixture  74
3.1. The Inseparability of All Opposites  76
3.2. Power Gunk  84
3.3. Divided Gunk  88
3.4. Gunk’s Location in Space  90
3.5. The Grind Model  92
3.6. Can There Be Preponderance in a Gunky World?  96
3.7. Closing Remarks  100
3.A. Appendix: An Overview of Anaxagoras’s
Main Metaphysical Principles  103
4. Compresence versus Containment of the Opposites  105
4.1. The Proportionate Interpretation  107
4.2. The Particulate Interpretation  109
4.3. The Liquids Model  113
4.4. The No- Divisibility Interpretation  121
4.5. Closing Remarks  125
4.A. Appendix: Zeno’s Argument from Multitude  127
5. Intelligent Powers  129
5.1. The Unmixed Status of Nous  131
5.2. The Structure and Operation of Nous  136
5.3. Nous’s Cosmic Powers  140
5.4. Nous’s Cognitive Powers  145
5.5. The Seeds and the Origins of Life  147
5.6. Closing Remarks  153
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Contents
6. Stoic Gunk  156
6.1. Unlimited Division  158
6.2. Colocation  162
6.3. The Constitution of Material Bodies:
What Is Active and What Is Passive  167
6.4. Sharing Subjects  174
6.5. Causation  177
6.6. Types of Ontological Unity  183
6.7. Closing Remarks  185
Conclusions  186
Bibliography  191
General Index  199
Index Locorum  213
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book project began in the summer of 2012, as part of my research
program Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies, funded by the
European Research Council (award number 63484). Throughout the
years the project was ongoing, the two Oxford institutions to which
I am affiliated, the Faculty of Philosophy and Corpus Christi College,
provided me with an ideal research environment. I benefited from
the opportunity to discuss my work in progress on multiple occasions
here, and at a number of other universities in the United Kingdom,
Europe, and the United States. I would like to thank collectively all
the colleagues and students who engaged with my project and thus
contributed to making this a better book. I am also very grateful to
Patricia Curd and Stephen Makin, who served as readers for Oxford
University Press and gave me insightful and helpful feedback on the
typescript; and to Peter Ohlin, the Editor, for his support through-
out. This book is dedicated to my friends, near and far, with thanks
for their cheer and care.
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