The Bounds of Experience: Encountering Anaximander’s In(de)finite

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the term ἄπειρος originally referred to things people experienced as inexhaustible, countless, or untraversable. This everyday usage provided the context for Anaximander’s notion of the ἄπειρον. This observation receives support from Anaximander’s world map, especially from its representation of an agent-indexed boundedness of lands and seas. That representation in turn draws upon and develops out of Homer and Hesiod, particularly the myth of Oceanus.