The Pre-Socratic Non-conceptual Apeiron (Infinity)​

"Worship all you can see and more will appear.” –Dr. Dysart in the movie ‘Equus’ (video at 20:45 minute mark).

"6. 372  So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained."--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus.


Heidegger invents many neologisms in an attempt to build an alternative epistemological paradigm where Being is the center of human understanding. Heidegger’s new terminology sidestep twenty five centuries of Western philosophical development by avoiding classic irresoluble logical antinomies and forgotten theoretical presuppositions in the realms of being and thinking; being and becoming; being and appearance; being and ought. Heidegger is radically refocusing his ideological telescope turned toward pre-Socratic history to bring back into appearance the forgotten distant planet of Being. In each of these relationships to being he provides new paradigms to apprehend being and being-human. Heidegger uncovers overlooked dynamic processes of being which “...for two thousand years, these ties between logos, aletheia [unconcealment], physis [nature], noein [apprehension], and idea have remained hidden in unintelligibility” (An Introduction to Metaphysics, by M. Heidegger, Doubleday/Anchor 1961,p.143).

Definitions of key terms and concepts used by Heidegger can be found at Heideggerian Terminology. Also, one should note the dialectical manner in which Heidegger’s analysis treat the dynamic relationships between polar opposites such as Being/Non-Being, Authentic Dasein/ Inauthentic das Man, and Concealment/Un-concealment. Each polar opposite influence the other creating a balance--or in some cases imbalance--of a third state of synthesis. Take for example a falling body: “...it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it”(Capital Vol. I: Karl Marx, p. 70). There is clearly a Hegelian influence on Heidegger’s phenomenology which is not unexpected from two philosophers strongly influenced by Heraclitus. One classic example of Hegel giving a dialectical analysis between antithetical forces can be found in his work, “The Phenomenology of Spirit” in the Master-Slave Dialectic.

While reinterpreting Heraclitus, Heidegger does not mention any etymological analysis of the pre-Socratic concept of “Apeiron.” However, Heidegger does name “guilt” or “debt” as an essential existential of Dasein’s structure. “Guilt” is treated by Heidegger in its original pre-Socratic meaning as “indebtedness.” Heidegger uses the term “nullity," to describe Dasein’s existential finitude in the fulfillment of its authentic freedom. When Dasein decides and projects a future project, its choice automatically “nullifies” a multitude of other possibilities:

”Apeiron is an abstract, void, something that cannot be described according to the Greek pessimistic belief for death. Death indeed meant "nothingless". The dead live like shadows and there is no return to the real world. Everything generated from apeiron must return there according to the principle genesis-decay. There is a polar attraction between the opposites genesis-decay, arrogance-justice. The existence itself carries a guilt” (Wikipedia: O. Gigon (1968 ) Der Umsprung der Griechische Philosophie, Von Hesiod bis Parmenides, Bale Stutgart, Schwabe & Co. pp. 81–82).

The early Ionian Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander of Miletus, (610 BC to 546 B.C) who pre-dates Heraclitus of Ephesus, (535-c. 475 BCE) likely provided Heraclitus the inspiration for his concept of the primary substance of all things as fire. Anaximander is the first Greek scientist known in detail and is also the founder of Greek astronomy and natural philosophy (physics). He created the first Greek world map, celestial map, and invented the gnomon, which is the vertical pointer on a sundial.

Anaximander was concerned with explaining the interaction of opposites and the conflict of opposites (birth/death, hot/cold, solid/liquid, light/dark). The primary element (ἀρχή) of all things is according to Anaximander, 'Apeiron (ἄπειρον) a Greek word meaning unlimited, infinite or indefinite from ἀ- a-, "without" and πεῖραρ peirar, "end, limit," the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, "end, limit, boundary.” Apeiron is the substance without limits, Indeterminate Infinite, Eternal, Ageless, Un-traversable, and all Encompassing. Anaximander wrote, “It is neither water [Thales’ primary element] nor any other of the so-called elements, but a nature different from them and infinite, from which arise all the heavens and worlds (κόσμοi) within them.” He means a succession of κόσμοi rather that simultaneous plurality of κόσμοi. ἄπειρον is θεῖος,(The Divine) that steers and governs the κόσμοi (worlds).

In the first century B.C., philosopher Aetius wrote, “ Everything is generated from apeiron and there its destruction happens. Infinite worlds are generated and they are destructed there again. And he says (Anaximander) why this is apeiron. Because only then genesis and decay will never stop”( Aetius I 3,3<Ps.Plutarch; DK 12 A14, at Wikipedia).

Careful reading of Heidegger’s Being and Time and Introduction to Metaphysics will show the deep underlying analysis of Dasein’s existentials (essential characteristics of being-human) as historical, dialectical, dynamic, and process oriented. Hegel applied the same dialectical paradigm to Western theology and the history of Western philosophy. Marx employed this paradigm to capitalist economics, while Freud investigated the human psyche as conflicted by imbalanced opposing internal forces.

Also, with the concept of Apeiron we confront the non-conceptual (that which cannot be fully conceptualized) and like Kant’s “thing-in-itself” or “noumena” we can only know representationally, or symbolically and incompletely. The conceptual origin of the infinite non-conceptual can be traced back to the Upanishads, then through Greek Ionian philosophy, Christianity, German Idealism, and Early American Christian Transcendentalism.

The Frankfurt School philosopher, Theodor W. Adorno, believed it is possible to “unseal the non-conceptual” for this is the true mission of philosophy. Adorno rejected the “Kantian Block” that separated appearance (phenomena) from being (noumena) rendering the real unknowable and inaccessible to thought:

“…to counter Wittgenstein by uttering the unutterable….The work of philosophical self-reflection consists in unraveling that paradox. Everything else is signification, secondhand construction, pre-philosophical activity, today as in Hegel’s time. Though doubtful as ever, a confidence that philosophy can make it after all—that the concept can transcend the concept, the preparatory and concluding element, and can thus reach the nonconceptual--is one of philosophy’s inalienable features and part of the naiveté that ails it. Otherwise it must capitulate, and the human mind with it. We could not conceive the simplest operation: there would be no truth; emphatically, everything would be just nothing. But whatever truth the concepts cover beyond their abstract range can have no other stage than what the concepts suppress, disparage, and discard. The cognitive utopia would be to use concepts to unseal the non-conceptual with concepts, without making it their equal”(Negative Dialectics by Theodor Adorno, trans. E.B. Ashton, 1966, Seabury Press, N.Y., 1979 edition, p.10).

The “non-conceptual” is extremely important for understanding Adorno’s philosophical works that are surprisingly very relevant to Christian theology and formulating a theory of spiritual experience.

Heidegger again blames Plato and Aristotle for distorting the relation between being and appearance by demoting the role of appearance in knowledge as inferior copies of the Platonic Forms unlike the pre-Socratics who understood instead “...Appearing is the very essence of being...The essence of being is physis [“physics,” or ‘nature’]. Appearing is the power that emerges from concealment. Since the essent as such is, it places itself in and stands in unconcealment, aletheia [Truth]”(IM, p.86).

Heidegger further writes, “ Because being is logos [gathering together, order], harmonia [harmony], aletheia [unconcealment, or truth], physis [nature], phainesthai [to appear, show], it does not show itself as one pleases”(IM, 112).

The demotion of appearance in the Western theory of knowledge had a profound effect on Western Philosophy and Christian theology resulting in a bifurcated worldview of the perfect idea, or concept and its opposite—existence. The concept (essence) is now viewed as more concrete—more real-- than the object (essent) it is supposed to represent in thought:

“It was in the Sophists and in Plato that appearance was declared to be mere appearance and thus degraded. At same time being, as idea, was exalted to a supersensory realm. A chasm, chorismos, was created between the merely apparent essent here below and real being somewhere on high. In that chasm Christianity settled down, at the same time reinterpreting the lower as the created and the higher as the creator. These refashioned weapons it turned against antiquity (as paganism) and so disfigured it. Nietzsche was right in saying that Christianity is Platonism for the people”(IM, p. 89).

Heidegger takes issue with another Western misinterpretation regarding Heraclitus’ doctrine of change that distort the dialectical character of being:

”The popular interpretation of Heraclitus tends to sum up his philosophy in the dictum panta rhei, “everything flows.” If these words stem from Heraclitus to begin with, they do not mean that everything is mere continuous and evanescent change, pure impermanence; no, they mean that the essent as a whole, is its being, is hurled back and forth from one opposition to another; being is the gathering of this conflict and unrest”(IM, p. 113).

Western thought views being-human and being as only historical and is unable to comprehend the difference between being and being-human. Only being-human asks the question of Being:

”The separation between being and being-human comes to light in their togetherness. We can no longer discern the separation through the pale and empty dichotomy of ‘being and thinking’ which lost its roots hundreds of years ago unless we go back to its beginnings”(IM, p. 119).

There are no “human beings,” per se for these are only objects; “being-human” better describes the process and activity of human development in existence. Unlike other beings (ontic), being-human (ontological) cannot be understood only as a static historical entity, but as dynamic, indeterminate, independent, self-reflecting Dasein that is able by a process of apprehension and decision question its purpose in existence: “The determination of the essence of man is never an answer but essentially a question”(IM, p. 118).