Plato, Gorgias

THE CLASSICAL REVIEW stuffs, for it was Empedocles who imposed the obstacle of those 'microscopic building blocks', and his work would then be earlier than that of Anaxagoras (cf. Aristotle Met. 984a 11-13, a passage Schofield evades with a reference to Kahn and O'Brien). Elsewhere (p. 82) it is implied that Zeno too was earlier than Anaxagoras. Chapter 1 clarifies the possible shifts in the meaning of nous, and shows how the inherent ambiguities might be resolved. In particular, the use of such propositions as ' for any judgment about anything, there is some mind which has it', and' for anything animate, there is some mind which controls it' allows a merger into a cosmic process controlled by mind, without a commitment to an omniscient Supreme Mind. Schofield suggests that 6fiov xpvt "ovra ty is an axiom, an irreducible belief of Anaxagoras, and the three instances of yap which follow the initial statement in Fragment 1 are subtly shown not to bear on it. A lengthy re-interpretation of Aristotle's comments at Phys. 187a 26-31 is then required, and the difficulties are modified by an application of the principle of sufficient reason to the homogeneity of the primordial mixture. Another knot of ambiguity has to be untied before the present sense of iravra 6fioi> can be ascertained. On one side the 'paniculate' interpretation, the one most generally favoured, is elegantly explained before its weaknesses are exposed, but the other 'proportionate' approach, which Schofield prefers, brings with it the problems of unlimited smallness. These are unflinchingly faced in a lucid analysis of Fragments 3 and 6. Once it was realised that Anaxagoras had grasped the crucial irrelevancy of size to structural complexity, the proposition that there is no least could support the theory that in everything there is a portion of everything. But no arguments are found for unlimited smallness; it is another metaphysical dogma. Schofield's denial of philosophical status to the fragments is a disappointment, salutary perhaps and original, but not incontrovertible. Some argument is however admitted for the denouement the interpretation of'in everything there is a portion of everything'. Using the distinction between substances and ingredients to check any regress, Schofield posits opposites as the things that there are, and as their ingredients. '"In the F there is a portion of the /"and of every other opposite" where " F " stands for any given opposite' (p. 116). A hierarchy can then be constructed, with inanimate stuffs and the seeds of animals and plants and of their tissues derived from the opposites. Debts to previous scholars here are acknowledged (except for a surprising silence on Tannery), but some of Mathewson's points which are still relevant have not been countered (cf. CQ 8 [1958], 67-81). Nevertheless, the coherent and plausible whole that emerges opens up a new view on Anaxagoras; the result, as Schofield is the first to admit, is perhaps too neat, but it well repays study. Present technology surely allows authors of Schofield's calibre a more professional presentation of their work than that current in the Cambridge Classical Studies series.