When discussing Anaxagoras' doctrine of mind (vo~c,), we should be clear as to what Anaxagoras did not talk about, and we should ask ourselves in what way he talked about whatever he did talk about. These two points are dealt with in the first (mainly negative) and the third (more positive) sections of this paper. Section two recalls and criticizes two typical interpretations of Anaxagoras' mind; this criticism serves as a foil to my own reading, which is sketched out in the last section.
A Question about the Composition of Anaxagoras' TreatiseAlthough this has recently been questioned-we shall see why in a moment-it seems fair to assume that Anaxagoras' mind has something to do with cognition. Indeed, this cognitive value of the term VOOS seems to be the least common denominator of the numerous meanings, nuances, and usages that K. von Fritz set forth in a famous series of articles devoted to the history of the word in the pre-Platonic tradition.' Since cognition is a standard topic in Presocratic philosophy, the natural assumption would be that Anaxagoras had spoken of voOq not only in the cosmological section of his treatise, where we find the description of how voOq initiated the cosmogonical process by stirring the original mixture,2 but also in the section devoted to the explanation of the cognitive powers of living beings. This does not appear to have been the case, however.
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