Anaxagorean Cosmic Nous

With Anaxagoras the word nous crosses the threshold from psychic organ to cosmological principle. In fragments B 11–14 Anaxagoras describes a nous that is “without limit, self-ruled and mixed with no thing, but alone and by itself… . the finest and purest of all things, and has all judgement (gnome) concerning everything and is most powerful” (B 12, quoted Sullivan 1995, p. 34). Unlike the seeds of which the universe is composed, which exist in mixture, nous is purely and only itself.

This nous surrounds and permeates the seeds, knows them, “originally … made them revolve in a motion that led to the arrangement they now display. It set them in order in the past, does so now, and will continue to do so henceforth” (Sullivan 1995, p. 34). Its function is intellectual — it judges all things — and its power is unlimited. A “portion of nous, apart by itself” is found in some things (B 11): human beings share in the ruling principle. Sullivan names this the microcosm-macrocosm pattern in its pre-Socratic form — the macrocosm is the motive force, nous, functioning as the human nous does but on a cosmic scale.

Plotinus explicitly claims Anaxagoras as predecessor: “Anaxagoras, again, in his assertion of a Mind pure and unmixed, affirms a simplex First” (Enneads V). The Anaxagorean cosmic nous is therefore the hinge between the Homeric organ-of-images and the Plotinian second hypostasis — the moment at which the Greek word nous first carries the ontological weight it will bear through plotinus, the corpus-hermeticum, and the whole Western mystical tradition descended from them.

Relationships

• nous
• the-one
• enneads
• microcosm-macrocosm
• mythos-to-logos
• plotinus

Primary sources

• sullivan-psychological-ethical-ideas (Sullivan 1995) — the reconstruction of Anaxagoras B 11–14
• enneads (Plotinus c. 270) — Enneads V, citing Anaxagoras as precedent