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Chaos and Order, Environment and Anarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2010

Extract

The distinction between chaos and order has been central to western philosophy, both in metaphysics and politics. At the beginning, it was intrinsic to presocratic natural philosophy, and shortly after that to the cosmology and social philosophy of Plato. Even in the pre-presocratic period there were important intimations of it. Thus Hesiod tells us that ‘first of all did Chaos come into being’ (Theogony, line 116, in Kirk et al., 1983, p. 35)—although exactly what is meant by ‘chaos’ in this context is not clear. (It could be some sort of undifferentiated, primordial mass, or just the separation (the gap) between earth and sky (Kirk et al., 1983, pp. 38–41). Nor does Hesiod concern himself with what Chaos came from (Barnes, 1987, p. 57).) The myth of origin in the Theogony, though, can be seen in contrast to the underlying theme of Works and Days, namely, Zeus's eternal rule over the world in accordance with Justice or Order (Kirk et al., 1983, pp. 34, 72). This point will become centrally important in what follows.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1994

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References

1 On this and other extra-terrestrial issues see Hargrove, 1986; Marshall, 1993; and Keekok Lee's contribution to this volume.

2 I owe this point to Professor Jan J. Boersema of the University of Groningen. I am grateful to Professor Boersema for showing me some of his work in progress, which also draws attention to the evaluative content of cosmology.