Anaxarque

Anaxarque d' Abdère lived towards 340 av. J-C. It was a Greek Philosophe . It would have been formed by Diogène of Smyrna and attended the school of Démocrite, which was probably related to the school pythagorician, by Philolaos of Crotona which was at least a friend, if not one of its Masters.

Biography

Anaxarque was born with Abdère in Thrace.

He was Master of Pyrrhon, itself founder of the school Sceptique.

“One day that Anaxarque had fallen into a marsh, it (Pyrrhon) carried on its way, without him to lend hand-strong; but whereas some made him reproach of it, Anaxarque itself spoke in praise of its indifference and its absence of attachment. ”

He was the companion and friend of Alexandre Large the at the time of his campaigns of Asia.

According to Diogène Laërce ( Lives , 9.10.2), in answer to the claim of Alexandre to be the son of Zeus, Anaxarque pointed its ensanglantée wound and foot-note: “See the blood of a mortal, and not the Ichor, as it runs in the veins of the immortal gods”.

Diogène Laërce ( Lives , 9.10.3) tells that Nicocréon, the tyrant of Cyprus, condemned it to be crushed with dead in a mortar, and that it endured this torture with force. This anecdote is also reported by Cicéron. The anecdote: One day, with a banquet, Alexandre required of him what he thought of the dinner. He answered: “O king, all is splendid, but it would have been necessary to add the head of a satrap to it”; this saying, it looked at Nicocréon. This one remembered the insult, and after the death of the king, when during a voyage Anaxarque failed in spite of him Cyprus, it made it stop, throw in a mortar and crush by an iron rammer. But one tells that Anaxarque, indifferent to the punishment, told him the famous saying: “Thus Crushes, thus crushes the bag which wraps Anaxarque, you will not crush Anaxarque!” On top, Nicocréon ordered to cut the language to him, but the tradition says that it cut it itself of its teeth and spit it to him with the face.

Doctrines of happiness

If the philosophical doctrines of Anaxarque are known little, the little which us came from there would tend to associate it with a philosophical opportunism . Some concluded from the epithet eudaimonikos (" bienheureux") who is usually allotted to him, whom it supported that the end of the lifetime was the eudaimonia , i.e. the happiness .

The initiator of the scientific doubt

Anaxarque is that has which practices it philosophical doubt is generally allotted, while having transmitted it to Pyrrhon, holding knowledge like dubious. So some associate it by error to the sophists.

These two points move away it from the mystic of the school pythagorician and the orphism - for which:

happiness necessarily passed by a purifying step
the world was scientifically ordered, the harmony of the numbers testifying to accessible rationality.

This doubt about the scientific reason marked the Western thought during centuries, until mistrust. It could be rested only with Rene Descartes and devoted by the publication of its famous work: Discourse on Method for leading its reason well and seeking the truth in sciences .

Anaxarque would be also the author of this maxim Connaître the measurement of the occasion, it is that prudence , which would tend to classify it among the intellectual guides of the Opportunisme…

The philosophy of the good moment

“… the hedonism of Anaxarque (...) made reside the sovereign well in the impassibility, the capacity not to let itself affect by the world, its smallnesses and its meannesses. Most probably, the philosophical joy consists in living above the usual contingencies, beside the concerns of the greatest number, in another place that on the commonplace scene of the daily newspaper of the man in the street. Pleasure of being and of existing like an individuality solar, free, independent, autonomous, inaccessible to violences come besides: a tyrant, the body, the desire, the social one, nature or the family. The pleasure consequently defines the pleasure of oneself like a sovereignty carried out, conquered and radiant. ”

The praise of prudence

Prudence within the meaning of the phronêsis Aristotélicienne, i.e. the intellectual virtue of the heart which makes it possible to state truth and to evaluate what is well or badly, so in particular choosing the actions according to their consequences, which must be beneficial at the company. The occasion, the kairos in Greek, is heard here within the meaning of the convenient period, and which comes us from the Greek Mythologie (Kairos was a young god equipped with a thick tuft of hair which had to be seized to always stop it when it passed, at any speed.) It thus symbolized the occasion, one fugacious moment.

The language of the philosopher

Zénon of Elée also spit its language with the face of a tyrant
Esope: the language is the best and worst things

References

Random links: