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Did anaximander ever say (or

write) any words? The nature of
cartographical reason
Franco Farinelli

Istituto di Discipline della Comunicazione , Universit di

Bologna , via Toffano 212, Bologna, 40125, Italy E-mail:
Published online: 10 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Franco Farinelli (1998) Did anaximander ever say (or write) any
words? The nature of cartographical reason, Philosophy & Geography, 1:2, 135-144, DOI:
10.1080/13668799808573640
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13668799808573640

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Ethics, Place and Environment, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1998

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Did Anaximander ever Say (or

Write) any Words? The Nature of
Cartographical Reason
FRANCO FARINELLI
Original manuscript received, 19 May 1998
Revised manuscript received, 10 June 1998

This paper focuses on Anaximander's pinax, the first map according to

Western tradition. Its aim is to demonstrate that it is only after the realization of the
pinax that it was possible to distinguish between Being and beings in a Heideggerian
sense, that is to pose the question of the ontological difference. Consequently, all the
history of Western thought is nothing but the history of the raising of cartographical
representation, and of reason here embodied, from the dark rigidity of death to the
rarefied splendours of Pure Reason.
ABSTRACT

At the beginning of our era Strabo stated that geography was a philosophical matter, thus
implying that philosophy was a geographical affair. Soon after this incipit, he added that
the first geographers were Homer and Anaximander (Strabo, I, 1, 1). Strabo was a stoic,
and according to Stoics Homer was the father of all knowledge, who therefore had to be
mentioned right at the beginning. Anaximander, on the other hand, was one of the
presocratic philosophers, or more properly, one of the Greek savants, because philosophy
started only later, with Plato (Colli, 1978, pp. 153-205). According to the Western
tradition, Anaximander is well known for his primacy in two separate fields. First of all,
he 'dared draw the ecumene on a table (pinax)' (Agathemerus, I, 1, in Mller, II, p. 471).
He was also 'the first known Greek who dared to publish the first written account
concerning nature' (Themistius, in Diels-Kranz, 12 A 7). In this paper I will attempt to
maintain that these two fragments refer to same thing, that Anaximander's supremacies
are only one, and that they are not separated but rather they coincide. If this is true, it
would mean that logos and table are the same thing, and therefore that Western thought
(reason) is nothing else than the protocol of geographical representation, that is of the
cartographical image. Further, this would imply that our rationality is determined from
a cartographical point of view, that it is already contained and produced by the
cartographical image. Western reason is nothing but cartographical reason, its relentless
unwinding and development. In other words, the idea of language as a set of compatible
Franco Farinelli, Istituto di Discipline della Comunicazione, Universit di Bologna, via Toffano 212, 40125
Bologna, Italy. E-mail: farinell@dsc.unibo.it.
1366-879X/98/020135-10 1998 Carfax Publishing Ltd

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Franco Farinelli

symbols is directly derived from the map. Therefore, the house of the Being is not the
language, as Heidegger (Heidegger, 1947, p. 56) maintains, but the map.
Let us begin with the nature of the astronomical system used by Anaximander in the
sixth century BC to transform cosmogony into cosmology, which is usually understood
according to a geometrical model. In considering this, I will refrain from any interpretations about the relevance of its connections (Vernant, 1985, pp. 216-237) or indeed the
lack of its connections (Serres, 1993, pp. 121-131) with the shape of the political order.
What interests me here is first of all the internal nature of the geometric order as it
expresses itself, that is the nature of the rational implications that are at the basis and
therefore implicit to the afore-mentioned order. These implications, which for Anaximander were originaries, now are taken for granted and are no more questioned. The aim
of Anaximander's system was to explain the stability of the earth, the reason why it did
not shift in the universe. The earth was imagined as a precise and fixed center inside a
moving cosmos. It was surrounded by concentric wheel-rims, which were empty and
filled with fire. One of these was for the stars, another for the moon, and another for the
sun. Stars, moon and sun were nothing but holes in these rims from which one could
glimpse the internal fire (Aetius, in Diels-Kranz, 12 B 21-22). As Aristotle (Cael. 295
b 12-16) reports, according to Anaximander it is similarity (pmoiotes) that explains the
position of the earth, as 'what sits in the middle and is similary related to the extremes
has no more reason to go upwards than downwards or sideways'.
Some years ago Jonathan Barnes attempted an interpretation of Anaximander's model.
The author himself considers his interpretation speculative and yet in line with all the
sources. This has the advantage that it sheds light on the inferences and on some of the
implications which are at the basis of Anaximander's model (Barnes, 1982, pp. 23-28).
Here it is worth examining Barnes' interpretation more closely. According to him,
everything Anaximander needs is:
(1) For any cosmic spoke S;, there is a distinct spoke Sj such that Sj is similar to Si.
Here it is important to realize that for 'cosmic spoke' Barnes (1982) means 'a straight
line drawn from the center of the earth to the boundary of the finite cosmos' (italics
mine). I will shortly explain what all this means. At this point the text draws our
attention to the fact that when Aristotle talks about the lack of any reasons why the earth
should move, this implicitly refers to Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason, according
to which a fact does not exist or a statement is not true without a motive which explains
why it is really so and not otherwise. On the basis of this principle Barnes (1982)
reconstructs Anaximander's reasoning in the following way. Let us suppose that:
(2) The earth moves along the cosmic spoke indicated with Sj
In order for Anaximander to explain this movement, he has to refer to a principle of this
kind:
(3) If a is F, then for some (f>,
a is F because a is (f>.
From (2) and (3) we infer that:
(4) For some </> the earth moves along Si because Si is $.
At this point we suppose that the explanatory feature of Si is G.
This results in:
(5) The earth is moving along Si because Si is G.

Cartographical Reason

137

Therefore:
(6) S, is G.
So for 1 and 6 we have:
(7) Some Sj distinct from Si is G.
We finally assume that:
(8) S2 is G.

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At this point, in order to proceed, Barnes (1982) has to introduce a further principle.
According to this all explanations are 'universalizable'. These are expressed with the
following formula:
(9) If a is F because a is G, then if anything is G it is F.
It is just in this transition from (3) to (9) that, according to Barnes (1982), occurs what
Leibniz calls the Principle of Sufficient Reason. First, (3) says that what happens implies
some kind of explanation. Second, in (9) it is specified that this explanation is a sufficient
condition for what it explains. So, from (5), (8) and (9) it follows that:
(10) The earth is moving along S2But because nothing can move in two different directions at the same time, (2) and (10)
are incompatible and therefore Barnes (1982) concludes that (2) is false and thus the
earth is motionless.
What is striking in Barnes' (1982) analysis is its partial and incomplete nature. To say
that each spoke has its own similar, as in (1), means to affirm the first of the two
principles that according to Leibniz are at the basis of all our reasoning. This is the
principle of contradiction according to which we judge false what implies contradiction,
and true what is the opposite in relation to false (Leibniz, 1989, p. 24). Indeed, the
principle of contradiction, in the same way as the principle of knowledge, presupposes
similarity. Similarity allows us to go beyond the tautology A = A, according to which
there is nothing new, and to go on saying that A = B is not a contradiction but
corresponds to the maximum knowledge possible (Olsson, 1998). In short, similarity is
the departure point, the form on which the principle of contradiction is founded, and on
which truth and falseness finally depend. It is only amongst things that are similar that
problems of sameness and equality arise.
So, what is at stake in Anaximander's system are both of the main fundaments of
Western reason. Barnes (1982) states that it would not be correct to accuse Anaximander
of abolishing without any explanations all transcendental differences amongst the
spokes, as every authentic scientific enterprise is based on the preliminary abolition of
all divine, and therefore capricious, interferences in natural processes. In a similar way,
Barnes (1982) goes on by saying that all scientists think (3) and (9) are true even if they
cannot demonstrate a priori their validity, because otherwise there would be no
possibility of finding universal astronomical laws. This occurs because Anaximander's
model is a geometrical model in the same way that the assumption of (1), according to
Barnes, is also geometrical: according to his definition, the spokes are, in fact, 'drawn'.
But where does Western reason'actually come from? What is its material origin? Husserl
(1954) pauses in front of this question. He admits that each measure implies the
realization of an empirical cause-effect model, but at the same time he ascribes the sense
of geometry and the possibility of its objectivity to linguistic comprehension, through

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Franco Farinelli

which subjects communicate their own psychic internal dimension in space and time. In
this context the figure drawn is nothing but a substitute of the actual reproduction of the
originary ideal. Husserl (1954) acknowledges that this has become inaccessible and
irrecuperable. He also acknowledges that one must thematize the 'apodeictic element'
which in geometry serves first as material and then as 'invariable structure', 'absolute a
priori' which endows geometrical truths with absolute validity for all cultures and all
times. However, Husserl (1954) also acknowledges that the principle which functions as
a presupposition for this condition has never been grounded, because it has never
become a problem. At the same time he cannot help noticing that, from a phenomenological point of view, for practical reasons human beings are forced to reduce things to
surfaces, that is smooth and fiat tables, and to reduce all lines to straight lines (Husserl,
1954, pp. 60-62, 367-368, 370-372, 376, 383-386). All this could be translated in the
following manner: all human praxis has been governed by the reduction of things
according to tabular models or pinakes. Derrida (1962) stresses that for Husserl it is only
writing, the graphic expression, that constitutes the final condition of 'ideal objectivity'.
He further stresses that in each sign that functions as a depository of sense, there is also
deposited a truth which has not been thought. Derrida (1962) acknowledges that,
although Husserl often talks about a perceptible 'base' or 'substratum', these expressions
are not to be understood as fundamentals: the geometrical truth only depends on 'pure
thinking', which is responsible for idealization (Derrida, 1962, pp.86, 90-91, 145).
Also for Heidegger (1950, p. 314), as well as for Husserl, the originary 'dictare'
comes from thought, but Heidegger, at the end of the 1960s, had still to deal thoroughly
with the 'principle of ground' (Heidegger, 1987, p. 309). What Heidegger (1957,
pp. 31-32) calls 'the principle of ground' is literally Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient
Reason. This takes us back to Anaximander, and more precisely to Heidegger's
interpretation of this figure and his words, probably the most ancient, perhaps most
problematic and, as a consequence, most debated ones in Western thought. This debate
leads us to the core of my argument in this paper.
Following Burnet's lesson, and leaving aside the longer one of Diels-Kranz, Heidegger (Heidegger, 1950) refers to the fragments in the following way: katd to chreon;
didonai gar auta diken kai tisin allelois tes adikias. Richardson (1967, p. 520) translates
the second clause, which is about the beings (td onto) in the following way: 'beings-inthe-ensemble {auta) come to presence insofar as, in com-patibility with each other (tisin
allelois), they overcome (didonai ... diken) the tendency within themselves to deny the
negativity (adikias)' that is a very condition of their presencing. One has to be reminded
that, according to Heidegger, for the early Greeks, the Being corresponds to the phusis
(which today under a Latin influence is translated with the word Nature) and was an
emergent-abiding-presence (Heidegger, 1983, pp. 10-12). From this point of view phusis
was equivalent to aletheia, that is truth without concealment; however, in the abovementioned essay Heidegger (1950, pp. 375-376) explains that non-concealment cannot
escape negativity, and nor can the beings that become present through it. Richardson
(1967) translates and sums up in the following way: beings are insofar as they
come-to-presence, but they remain in some way or other non-present, that is concealed;
therefore that which comes to presence is a mixture of the present and the non-present;
insofar as that which comes-to-presence is negatived, that is non-present, it is that which
does-not-come-to presence. This is a process endowed with a certain dynamism,
according to which 'the whiling' (i.e. the staying for a while) of beings obeys a particular
arrangement (dike). A-dikla (dis-arrangement) is exactly the privation of that arrangement, and can be explained by the fact that intrinsic to this process is a kind of 'drag',
a sort of a law of hidden gravity which obstructs movement and fluidity, a tendency of

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beings to freeze into rigidity, to perdure in a static form. Richardson (1967) stresses that
beings in no way have to be understood anthropomorphically. However, in a footnote,
he cannot help explaining Heidegger's interpretation of the saying of Anaximander
through an analogy. He discards the image of actors who step before a curtain, then
disappear behind it, and wonders whether perhaps it would be possible to say that beings
are as if fashioned out of turbulent quicksand, which is in the process of disappearing
at the very moment in which it becomes visible. He quickly adds that this is not the
terminology used by Heidegger and that it also presents various problems (Richardson,
1967, p. 518).
On the contrary, I think this is a revelatory image, in relation more to Anaximander
than to Heidegger. Let us start from the first clause of Anaximander's saying. No
interpreter doubts the facts that this clause does not refer to beings, but to Being, and
that it therefore has an ontological value. For Heidegger (1950, pp. 337-40) Chreon is
'the oldest name by which thought brings the Being of beings into language' and he
translates this expression as 'according to the handling', meaning that Being 'hands
something to its own essence and keeps it in hand, preserving it in its truth as
coming-to-presence in this way'. Heidegger (1950, pp. 337-401) stresses that the word
Chreon comes from a root that means 'hand', and exactly this hand-ling, this keeping
beings in hand, is the originary gathering-together, hence it is the logos (Heidegger,
1950, pp. 337-401). Richardson (1967, pp. 520-521) adds that, curiously, Heidegger
speaks in such a way as to imply not only that Being hands essence to beings, but that
it hands beings over to (their) essence as if beings were 'manu-ducted' by Being into the
process of coming-to-presence that holds the primacy over them. But at the same time
Heidegger specifies something which is of paramount importance. He explains that the
relation between this process of coming-to-presence and that which comes-to-presence
is not thought of because the first (of which we forget the essence) imperceptibly
changes into the second. The formula is well known and it refers to the event of
metaphysics: 'The forgottenness of Being is the forgottenness of the difference between
Being and beings' (Heidegger, 1950, p. 336).
This forgottenness can be precisely placed from a chronological point of viewa fact
that validates my thesis and that also confirms the validity of Richardson's (1967)
analogy which he himself doubted. Also in this case we are reminded of a well-known
statement (you remember, Hegel said, that those things we are acquainted with are not
those we know): 'I laugh when I see that many have drawn the map of the earth and
nobody has interpreted it wisely. They draw the Ocean that flows around the earth which
is round as if it had just come out of a potter's wheel (os apd tornou) and they draw Asia
as if it was Europe' (Herodotus, IV, 36, 2). It is not customary to translate Herodotus
in this way. In fact, usually translators do not refer to the image of the potter's wheel
and instead use the expression 'drawn with a compass'. It is however a legitimate choice,
and Euripides, for example uses the word tornos in both meanings (fr. 382; Bacch.,
1067). My translation has the advantage that it considers the pinax in its true nature as
a philosophical sculpture. At this point it is useful to remember that Allen Workmann
(1953) has noticed a close relationship, almost coincidence, between the lexicon of
Presocratic thinkers and the lexicon which refers to the technique of the fusion of bronze
statues which was being perfected in Anaximander's lifetime. Workmann explained that
the fusion of bronze statues was the most technical and scientific process ever performed
by the Greeks as it implied the change from one substance to another through the four
physical states: solid, liquid, gaseous and combustible. He also noticed that the stages of
this process function as the demonstration of the relationship amongst the four elements
of the Milesian philosophy: earth, water, air and fire. He further stressed the way in

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which thought took the process of sculpture as its model to the point that, for the Greeks,
the concept of the Archetypos directly comes from the empty mould obtained spreading
a layer of wax on the original clay figure. In other words thought comes from a form
that is impalpable and yet not ideal. It is for this reason that, according to Workmann
(1953), Anaximander and his colleagues have always refused to consider the phenomenon as the product of ideal forms and have never dared say a word about anything that
was not endowed with a body.
What then does Herodotus say? He stresses a very important point in relation to
geographical representation that allows us to identify the beings with the nature of
cartographical representation. There is no doubt that he laughs at the Ionic pinakes which
descend from the circular model of Anaximander (Kahn, 1960, pp. 82-83). This is
usually understood as a revolt against the excessive geometric nature of the geographical
figures of his time (Jacob, 1992, p. 492). However, this demonstrates that just during the
period of Pericles the difference between Being and beings is definitely forgotten,
because the memory of the process that leads to the production of beings, that is of the
cartographical forms with their crystallization and rigidity, is also definitely lost.
Richardson (1967, pp. 518-519) stresses that Heidegger does not say at all why beings
tend to negate the whiling process, why, in the process of falling in the adikia, they tend
to freeze into rigidity. However, if we use Workmann's (1953) analysis we have an
immediate answer depending upon the material nature of sculpture which functions as
model. It does not matter whether it is made out of clay or bronze, the pinax is destined
to congeal and solidify in a way that does not bear any trace of the originary fluidity of
its substance or of the process of its transformation. If we start from the potter's wheel,
as Herodotus forces us to do, the image that Richardson (1967) proposed, not without
some perplexity, of the quicksand whose shape vanishes as soon as it starts to appear,
is a correct one and the only one possible. About Being and its relationship with beings,
what Heidegger ascribes to Anaximander fits in perfectly with the relationship that, in
the process of production, exists between the throwing wheel and the clay that is worked.
In this way also the formidable question of the limitless nature (apeirori) of Being
intended as origin and domination (arche) of the 'movedness' (Richardson, 1967, p. 310)
would find a possible and immediate solution. Onians (1951, pp. 310-326) has demonstrated that the originary meaning of peras is not limit, but rope, knot, bond. Workmann
(1953, p. 46) explains that it was only during the process of fusion, and not while
modelling the clay, that ropes or chains were utilized to keep the moulds in shape when
the melted metal expanded.
The limit of this interpretation is not that it is too simple, but rather that it does not
take into account the reasons for the loss of memory, for the oblivion of the fundamental
ontological difference. Questions of this kind still remain unanswered as do those which
refer to the nature of the cartographical image and its transformations. It is Heidegger
(1983, p. 117) himself who points towards an answer when he remarks that the Dasein,
the There-being, that is the condition which allows beings to manifest themselves to men
and that render all encounters with them possible, is the polls, the city, the place of
history (the 'There') in which and from which history happens. And the unwinding of
history in Greece from Anaximander to Herodotus can be summed up with a movement
from the circular shapes of the city and the picture of the earth to the quadrangular shape,
the same one whose supremacy Heidegger (1983, pp. 71-101) will celebrate when,
considering modernity as 'the time of World-as-Picture', he gives meaning to the word
Gestell. For Heidegger (1983) this term contains 'the essence of modern technology' and
indicates the structure which, because it coincides with the 'exactness of representation',
is necessary to 'uncover, transform, store, divide, alter' the energy hidden in nature. The

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aim of the Gestell is to grasp this energy in the form of 'an organized whole of
computable forces' which have to be 'sorted out in order to be utilized' (Heidegger,
1954, pp. 19, 23, 25, italics mine). Later on, Michel Foucault, without paying homage
to Heidegger, will translate all this with the expression 'timeless rectangle'. Here beings
only bear their names and are represented through their visible surfaces. They are placed
one beside the other, and ordered according to their physical features, which alone serve
to analyse them (Foucault, 1966, p. 143). Foucault's representation still remains a
modern unsurpassable definition of the cartographical image.
All Greek history, from Anaximander's times onwards, is nothing but the concrete
realization on the earth, in the city, of the order of the map, or pinax. Leveque and
Vidal-Naquet (1964, p. 123) emphasize the coincidence between Anaximander's geometrical vision of the universe and the 'political vision of a rational and homogeneous
city, like that of Cleisthenes'. They also remark how this solidarity disappeared during
the fifth century. At the end of the sixth century, Athens, the Cleisthenic polis, was the
first one to be based on the equivalence (isonomy) between citizens. Herodotus (VI, 131,
2) sees in the birth of the polis the beginning of the democratic system. There is no doubt
that Cleisthenes' reform marks the beginning of the idea of political identity as we know
it today; an idea which depends on the belonging to a given territory and, at the same
time, on the recognition of the individual position within a plan which prior to this
reform did not exist at all. As Christian Meier (1980) notes, a rupture occurred between
social order and political order. Society, with all its inequalities, remained more or less
the same; however a new separated sphere, in which all were equal, sprang up alongside
it. Meier (1980, p. 263) goes on to clarify that it was not the state and the society that
were separated and concentrated in different circles of people, but that there were merely
two co-existing levels, which no longer corresponded to one another in any way. It is
only at a political level, within the political order, that a citizen in a situation of
unchangeable social inequality becomes for the first time equal to the others. But where
does this ontological modification spring from, what is the nature of this equality, of this
generalized, and yet not total identity? Where does this new level or new order come
from?
It is well known that the city of Athens in Cleisthenes' times started to assume a shape
that was clearly regulated by a set of geometrical relations and it was precisely these
relations which provided the structure for the birth of a new civic sphere. In this
perspective the Cleisthenic reform consisted in re-designing the Athenian administration
according to the principle of a spatial and geometrical order (Leveque and Vidal-Naquet,
1964, pp. 63-75). It is exactly the nature of this order that transforms the administrative
act into a political project, that is that re-models not simply the form of the city but also
the nature of the relationship amongst citizens who begin to assume the essence of
perfectly equivalent geometric points (Farinelli, 1994, p. 16). Cleisthenes' reform marks
only the beginning of this equivalence. Qualitatively, in fact, the space of the city is not
yet an even, undifferentiated space. Hannah Arendt (1958, pp. 21-25) explains that each
time the citizens of Athens left their homes to go into the main square, that is into the
place in which they performed their role of citizens, they had to cross an abyss. The
abyss was between the place and the space, that is between the domestic realm and the
material form of the political sphere. The latter corresponds to the realm of freedom
which has nothing to do with the realm of necessities and it is made up of the sum of
social relations and at the same time significantly overlaps it. But where does the
geometrical space which with Cleisthenes becomes the principle of urban organization
come from?
At the beginning of this paper we said that Michel Serres (1993) tends to depreciate

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the homology, also noted by Vernant, between the above-mentioned model of urban
organization and Anaximander's cosmological model. This model was similarly
grounded on the recurrence of the round shape of the circle, the very same shape that,
according to what is described for instance in the Iliad governs most ancient political
systems. Such systems functioned through the assembly of the warriors. All warriors
were equal, so they sat in a circle and in turns moved to the centre to perform their
speech. Leveque and Vidal-Naquet (1964, p. 68) disregard any direct influence of the
political order on the cosmological order; yet at the same time they firmly state that the
first provides a system of references, the image of an order that is already created and
at the same time about to be created. The problem that arises here is one of the priority
of what is considered political over what is cosmological. But where does the form
which allows the similarly between these two spheres come from?
Karl Reinhardt (1960, p. 256) points to a possible answer when he describes Athenian
citizenship as equivalent to 'a substance in which each amount, extract at random from
time to time, has the same structure and the same composition'. In other words, he
describes politics as something endowed with all the properties of Euclidean space, that
is continuity, homogeneity and isotropy. But differently from the hollow space of the
moulds of the sculptor this space is neither ideal, nor impalpable. On the contrary, all
Euclidean geometry is a system grounded on tactile and muscular assumptions, only
preoccupied with metrics and totally oblivious of visuality. Precisely because such a
system depends only on tactile sensations, its spatial intuitions are very elementary and
limited, even though the abstract nature of its symbols was able to organize such
intuitions according to a very complex and coherent grammar (Ivins, 1985, p. 32). The
table has been the only instrument and model of this organization, the object by which
it was possible to produce and synthesize all tactile assumptions. One could at this point
overturn what Leveque and Vidal-Naquet (1964) state. In defining the nature of 'civic
space', they write that with the Cleisthenes' reform 'the new realities can be inscribed
on to a map' (Leveque and Vidal-Naquet, 1964, p. 13). Contrary to what they affirm, it
is because the table, that is the map, becomes a model for reality that the latter takes on
different and unexpected forms. But why does this occur?
Is it really true that Heidegger (1983) is the only one to offer an adequate answer to
this question when he explains that the function of the work of art is to realize in a being
the Being. To realize, Heidegger (1983) adds, here means to produce a work of art in
which the emergent-abiding-Power, which corresponds to the phusis intended as logos
and as dike, appears. At this point there is no doubt that a pinax, whether it is made out
of bronze or clay, is a work of art, and as such it enters, according to Heidegger (1983,
p. 122), the place where everything which appears different, or is there by accident, is
confirmed, made accessible, significant and intelligible, as something which either exists
or does not exist. There is nothing complicated, mystical or obscure in all this. Here
Heidegger (1983) is simply saying that, from our point of view, it is only through the
pinax (the originary work of art?) that we can distinguish between Being and being,
according to a movement in which Being, opposing to the beings at the point in which
they become signs, becomes that which shuns from the map, that which does not appear
on it, even though it is imprinted in the geometrical order implied in the very materiality
of what functions as basis and concrete support of its representation. And this is the
reason why at the same time in which Being is unveiled this is also hidden, and why one
cannot conceive of Being without the preliminary production of those particular beings
which are the signs and the body of the signs. Being can only be conceived of in
opposition to the body of beings (the map) and as their negative. It is for this reason that
for Heidegger (1983), phusis, logos and dike coincide in the work of art. Adikia is

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nothing but the oblivion of the temporary character of this coincidence, of the fact that
only for a fleeting moment, before it solidifies, being can stay for Being. Something
similar, but in a different context and pointing to a different direction, is also stated by
Eco (1997, p. 17) for whom, if the Dasein is being which is aware of the semiotic nature
of its relation with other beings, it is not necessary to duplicate being and Being.
As a matter of fact, the late Heidegger, in the summer of 1967, seems to say what has
just been affirmed. Science, Heidegger says, presupposes nature as a specific, measurable
sphere of beings. Nature is grounded on measurability and its measurability is in turn
made possible by the homogeneity of space and time. Heidegger also adds that we have
no problem in immediately sensing Newtonian space as this is immediately present to
us. On the contrary, in nuclear physics something completely new occurs, as results are
influenced by the process of undertaking the experiment. Here the model becomes
necessary because it is not possible to sense the objects and yet there is still the need
of computability. In the same fashion, Heidegger continues, today the representation of
language is not determined by language itself, by the way in which one person speaks
to another, but by the way in which computers speak and compute. Language is
assimilated to the computer in the same way that physics becomes nuclear physics, that
is by excluding peoplewho inhabit a world organized by computers and nuclear
physicsfrom access to the world itself (Heidegger, 1987, pp. 309-311). What Heidegger does not take into account in this case is that we can immediately understand
Newtonian space only because this is the protocol of cartographical representation, and
that the nature of the computer is that of being a map that continuously produces other
maps, 'the square of a map' with the purpose, which is proper to all maps, of making
the world more and more predictable through the application of a binary logic, a sort of
logic that directly springs out of the map (Farinelli, 1987, pp. 29-30). 'The Time of
World-as-Picture' is literally the time of World-as-Map (Farinelli, 1992), and Kant
manages to ground objectivity (the validity of knowledge) only by applying the schemes
of cartographical projection to subjectivity, making them transcendental and able to
produce the absolute legality (modality) of knowledge (Farinelli, 1996, pp. 279-282).
This is the upturning of the position which was at the base of Western philosophy. In
the very last lines of Plato's Republic (X, 621 ,b), at the end of the recounting of the myth
of Er, is described the world of Death, and more precisely the dry plain of the river Lethe
(that is of Forgetfulness), the last halting place of souls before they are sent on earth to
be incarnate again. In this place no vessel can draw the water from the river. A country
where no vessel can draw water from a river could be taken as the best ancient definition
of the cartographical image.
I am well aware that my interpretation of the Platonic Hell is not in line with current
thought (Vernant, 1985, pp. 144-145). Despite this, the fact is still valid that the entire
history of Western Philosophy, almost up to our days, remains the history of a adikia
which begins with Anaximander: it is the history of the raising of cartographical
representation and of reason here embodied from the dark rigidity of death to the rarefied
splendours of Pure Reason.
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