Anaxagoras on Mind, Part 2: How the Mind Rules Itself, the Ten Attributes of Mind, and a Greater Mind That Is Angelic Rather Than Divine

Orientation #

He is mid-way through Anaxagoras’ great fragment on Mind, working down a numbered list of things said about it. At the end: “Now we’ll look at Leucippus and Democritus next time, and then we’ll go back to… the second book of wisdom.” Readings are from his own handouts on the natural fragments of the first philosophers and on the matter and order of wisdom.

The class, in order #

1. The apparent contradiction in the fragment (“something is hidden from us”) #

The point: a contradiction found in a text is the start of discovery.

• Anaxagoras says (2) mind is self-ruling, and gives as reason for (3) that the ruler must be separated from the ruled. But the mind is not separated from itself.
• Both are highly probable: logic’s very existence is a sign that mind can rule itself; and rule does seem to require separation.
• He notes Aristotle treats this role of contradiction explicitly at the beginning of Book Three [ed.: of the Metaphysics], and invokes Heraclitus: “the hidden harmony is better than the apparent harmony.” Before seeing the contradiction the students were in a state of apparent harmony; now they are in perplexity.
• Aside: in years of teaching this fragment “maybe one student” ever found the contradiction on his own.
• A student suggests a difference between self-direction and ruling objects, and asks whether there is a distinction in mind between ruler and ruled.

2. Socrates and self-rule by parts (“do you really want to convince us”) #

The point: three steps of an analogy, each a little harder to see, prepare the answer.

• Republic II opens with “Do you want to have seemed to have convinced us, Socrates, or do you really want to convince us?” — Socrates wants really to convince, so he makes the famous comparison of the three parts of the soul to three parts of the city.
• Colony vs. self-ruling country: self-rule does not mean the whole country rules the whole country, but that one part, the government, rules the others. Ruler and ruled are still distinct — easy to see, since they are different individuals.
• Self-control in a man: one part, reason or will, controls another part, the emotions. Harder to see: parts of the same man.
• Aside illustrating unmoderated emotion: the McDonald’s counter at a busy hour, staff harried by demanding customers — that is reason enslaved to the emotions.
• But reason itself has no two parts, one ruling the other; and it cannot have parts, since Anaxagoras says it is the thinnest of all things.

3. The solution: the known separated from the unknown (“logic is the art of using what you do know”) #

1. Socrates found that men did not know that they did not know — they had mixed up what they know with what they don’t.
2. His work was thus to get them to separate the known from the unknown; this is the proemium or preparation for logic.
3. Logic is the art of using what you do know to investigate and, if you can, prove what you don’t; Aristotle adds the separation of what is more known to you from what is less known, and of the most known from the rest.
4. Therefore the mind is ruled in what it does not know by what it does know, in the less known by the more known, ultimately by the most known — and so the ruler is separated from the ruled. The contradiction dissolves.

• Examples: knowing length and width, I am ruled about the area by that knowledge; in the syllogism one is ruled about the conclusion by the premises already known.
• Corollary he presses: most men’s minds are not yet ready to rule themselves. Aside on graduation speeches thanking professors for teaching students “to think for yourselves” — fine if you can do it, but you can only do it if you have separated what you know from what you don’t, and know how to use the one on the other.
• Student: what did Socrates use to separate them? — Questions, yes, but ultimately contradiction: he shows that some things they think contradict others. “Nothing’s more known to us than something cannot both be and not be.”
• Simplest example: the slave boy who thinks doubling the side doubles the square — 2×2 is 4, 4×4 is 16, and 16 is not double 4; his sayings don’t harmonize. “There’s noise in his mind, and Socrates is going to restore him to music.”

4. Digression: Anaxagoras vs. Einstein on the greater mind (“in that sense Anaxagoras is much wiser”) #

The point: both reach a greater mind by reason, not by belief; they differ on whether it is separate.

• Likeness: Anaxagoras comes to a greater mind from the order/intelligibility of the universe, though he was no believer in Greek religion (he got in trouble for saying the sun is a stone on fire, when the sun was the god Apollo). Einstein likewise says a greater mind reveals itself in nature and that higher scientific work rests on a feeling like religion, though he was not a believing Jew.
• Difference: Einstein’s greater mind is mixed with things — pantheistic, as Einstein admits; Anaxagoras says it is separated and gives a reason, that the ruler must be separated from the ruled. Einstein gives no reason for mixing it in.
• Why the pantheism? Tocqueville, Democracy in America, chapter on religion: democratic customs give men pantheistic notions. Equality dominates modern thinking, partly through democracy, partly through equations; if everything is equality, God cannot be more than the whole.
• Asides: 19th-century condemnations in the Enchiridion Symbolorum of German theologians’ pantheism; an Italian cardinal [Siri] quoting pantheistic passages from Rahner; “May the force be with you” as popular pantheism; Chesterton — the devil can quote scripture, and the most quoted line now is “the kingdom of God is within you.”
• A student adds: it also seems a democratic custom that the ruler needn’t rule himself in order to rule.

5. Fourth thing: mind is the thinnest of all things (“it’s the thinnest that divides things”) #

1. It is the thinnest that penetrates and that divides — you sharpen a knife by making it thinner.
2. Mind most of all separates and distinguishes, even separating what cannot be separated in reality: the universal from the singular, the sphere from the rubber ball and the glass ball.
3. Therefore mind is the thinnest of things.

• A student proposes “because it takes on the shape of” things; he does not see that in thinness as such, and stays with dividing, penetrating, insight.
• Confirmations: Empedocles makes thought blood (a thin thing, not something gross); moderns make it electric or magnetic waves.
• Consequences: “unlimited” therefore cannot mean an infinite body; and mind has no parts, else there would be something thinner than it.
• Contrast: we think first matter is the thinnest — atom thinner than molecule, particle than atom, quarks thinner still — but mind is thinner than that.

6. Fifth thing: purest (“it’s not a mixture of things itself”) #

The point: a distinction he first thought unnecessary and then defends.

• (3) said mind is mixed with nothing else — else it could not rule them. (5) says mind is not itself a mixture of things. A student supplies: not in composition, not composed.
• It follows from (4): the ingredients of a mixture would be thinner than the mixture, so the thinnest cannot be a mixture.
• Parallel in Thomas: in treating the substance of God, divided into five parts (order differing in the two Summas), he shows God is not composed — no composition of quantitative parts, of matter and form, of what you are and something else, of substance and accident — and also that God is not a part of anything. Two different points: has no parts; is not a part.
• Student’s boundary case: of a point you could say (5), that it is not put together, but not (3), since a point is mixed with / terminates the line. He agrees, and adds that some want God to be the limit of things, as a part of them.
• Aside on end/limit (one Greek word): the point as end of the line is the first sense; end as that for the sake of which is the third sense, in which God is alpha and omega. A student names Teilhard de Chardin’s omega point.

7. Sixth and seventh: all knowledge, greatest power (“knowledge is power”) #

• All knowledge follows from being thinnest: what penetrates all things knows all things; found fully in the greater mind.
• Greatest power: as a modern you should say at once “knowledge is power” — Bacon’s aphorism, with which the modern world begins. All knowledge, therefore all power. Man overpowers the other animals not by muscle but by knowledge; our mind too is powered by knowledge — it powered the atomic bomb.

8. Eighth: mind rules all things that have life (“why should he single out that?”) #

The point: why living things are singled out though mind’s rule is not limited to them.

1. In animals and plants you see a diversity of parts well arranged; in a rock you do not. (A student supplies complexity; he redirects to order.)
2. You see end or purpose much more in living things — most recognise the purpose of eye, ear, heart; water’s purpose you can hardly see except by comparison with living things.
3. Hence the connection of mind with end: in the Phaedo Socrates, on first reading Anaxagoras, expected him to explain the purposes of things, and was let down when he did not.

• Then mind ruling the whole revolution: the separation of things by the revolution, beginning small and evolving over greater distance. Our own mind too uses circular motion to separate things — the centrifuge. He hesitates over the numbering here (whether this is eight or nine), and keeps the general formulation: mind separates things by circular motion. Earlier fragment recalled: earth settled at the bottom, the light things above.

9. Ninth: mind set in order (“looking before and after”) #

The point: order presupposes distinction, and this is why reason is defined by order.

• Shakespeare defines reason as “the ability for large discourse, looking before and after” — which is the definition of order.
• Axiom of before and after: nothing is before or after itself; so reason must see distinction before it sees a before and after. Today is before tomorrow and after yesterday, but not before or after today.
• But not conversely: you can see a distinction without seeing which is before — you can distinguish two men without knowing who is older or better.
• Wine example: among those who know what they are drinking there is more agreement about which is better; a judge is tested blindfolded on unlabelled wines to name Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel. Those who cannot make the distinction cannot say which is better; men given unlabelled beers cannot say Budweiser is better than Miller.
• Aristotle treats opposition (the basis of distinction) and before/after together in both the Categories and Metaphysics V: opposites, before and after, and together — distinction and order.
• Why Shakespeare defines by order rather than distinction: seeing order includes having seen distinction, not conversely. John Dryden saw Beaumont and Fletcher performed more often than Shakespeare, and only gradually saw Shakespeare’s superiority, finally calling Fletcher a limb — an arm or leg — of Shakespeare; that is “before” in the sense of better, the fourth sense of before in the Categories.
• Chesterton: if you don’t know the reason why something is there, you can’t claim a better reason to do away with it — you have no comparison of reasons.
• Thomas in Summa Contra Gentiles II treats the distinction and order of the universe as both caused by God through His mind: it goes all the way back to Anaxagoras. Aristotle’s praise recalled: introducing the greater mind, he seemed a sober man among drunk men — so think of the moderns as quite drunk.
• He then reads on through the revolution of stars, sun, moon, air, ether, and the separating of thick from thin, warm from cold, noting this is elaboration, nothing new, and the repeated “nothing is separated off entirely except the mind.”

10. Tenth: every mind is similar, greater and lesser (“that underlies our whole thinking here”) #

• This grounds both our inference to a greater mind and our partial understanding of it through our own.
• Hence in studying the Trinity we proceed through our own mind and will: Thomas on the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son, since in us the love of a thing proceeds from the knowledge of it — to be a lover of wisdom presupposes knowing somewhat what wisdom is.
• He counts this a tenth thing “in this great treatise on the mind.”

11. The last sentence: naming things by what they have most of (“the Anaxagorean way of naming things”) #

• Objection answered: if everything is in everything, why call this a man and that a dog? Because we name a thing by what it has most of.
• There is truth in it: something in me is able to be a dog, but what is in me is actually a man, so it is more man than dog — the dog is there only in ability. The wood in this chair is actually chair and only toothpicks or table in ability, so it is more chair. Anaxagoras, though, would take “most” quantitatively.
• Further examples of the same way of naming: “market economy” though government intervenes everywhere, and Soviet “planned”/“command” economy (Gosplan’s thousand economists and thousand engineers) though there had to be some market or things would break down; Psalms called a book of prayer and praise (Thomas: orationis and laudativus — prayerful and praising) though it prophesies, Isaiah a book of prophecy though it prays; the Comedy of Errors a comedy though a man is sentenced to death, Macbeth a tragedy despite comic relief.
• Refinement: we name either by what it has most of absolutely, or by comparison to others — a Cabernet called sweet compared with other Cabernets. Aside on Yellowtail and “Wolf Boss” [ed.: Wolf Blass?].

12. Which mind has he arrived at? (“more the angelic mind than the divine”) #

1. Not the human mind, which is the lesser.
2. This mind acts on matter by locomotion only, not by creation — it is not responsible for the existence of matter.
3. Angels can act on matter by locomotion but cannot create it. So Anaxagoras has arrived at the angelic mind rather than the divine.

• Aside: De Koninck once said in passing in class that it is easier to know the existence of the angels than of God; he never unfolded it, but it has stuck, and you can see it here.
• Marx and Engels divide all thinkers into materialists (matter the beginning of all things, even of mind — Lenin: mind is the highest product of matter; the evolutionists say the same) and idealists (mind the beginning of all things — Hegel, and St John the Evangelist: in the beginning was the Word). Is the division exhaustive? Where does Anaxagoras go? He is a dualist: the greater mind is superior to matter but not its origin — a middle position.
• Leaving out the middle position makes it very hard to reach the truth: our mind naturally begins with Mother Earth; unless you first see mind as distinct from matter and able to be without it, you never reach a mind that creates matter. Without the middle you are “on one shore with no bridge.” Plato’s Demiurge in the Timaeus, reducing chaotic matter to order, is the same dualist position.
• Aristotle is getting to the creator and Thomas thinks he arrived; yet Metaphysics III raises the question whether anything is a cause without motion — a problem for the Greeks. Likewise Thomas’ order of the proofs (not original with him, but better understood): in both Summas he begins from God as unmoved mover, then as first efficient cause, moving toward what is altogether proper to God; even the highest treatment begins with mover, not creator. “Perfectly ordered.”

13. Mind as a better guess than love and hate (“which is a better separator, hate or mind?”) #

The point: compare rival candidates for mover, as Anaximander’s air against Thales’ water.

1. Hate separates, but blindly — haters destroy even their own friends, not distinguishing friend from enemy. It was not hate that split the atom, nor hate that distinguished the senses of the word “in” [ed.: as Aristotle does], nor hate that divides triangles into equilateral, isosceles, scalene, or numbers into prime and composite. Mind separates better.
2. Love brings things together in ratios; but mind is the cause of ratio — in Latin ratio is also reason, in Greek logos is both ratio and word. So mind is the better cause of combination in order.
3. Even if mind were merely as good, one cause is better than two: “kill two birds with one stone.”

• But a caution: maybe that’s not the whole truth. There is the same knowledge of opposites — I can teach you or deceive you, the doctor can heal or kill. So knowledge without appetite produces nothing; something besides knowledge is needed to do one rather than the other, namely will. This is one reason philosophers hold that God has a will: his knowledge enables opposites, yet he does one.
• Closing note back to the first thing said, mind is unlimited: anticipated by Heraclitus — “you’ll not find the ends of the soul, no matter how far you travel.”

His words #

• “the hidden harmony is better than the apparent harmony” — Heraclitus, invoked for a contradiction that forces deeper looking.
• “apparent harmony” / “state of perplexity” — before and after seeing the contradiction.
• “proemium” — Socrates’ separating of the known from the unknown as the preparation for logic.
• “logic is the art of using what you do know to investigate and to prove, if you can, what you don’t know.”
• “noise in his mind… restore him to music” — the slave boy’s unharmonised sayings.
• “the ability for large discourse, looking before and after” — Shakespeare’s definition of reason, taken as the definition of order.
• “axiom of before and after” — nothing is before or after itself.
• “ability” [ed.: potency] — the dog in me, the toothpicks in the chair.
• “the Anaxagorean way of naming things” — naming a thing by what it has most of.
• “greater mind” / “lesser mind” — Anaxagoras’ terms for divine-or-angelic and human mind.
• orationis, laudativus [ed.: Thomas on the Psalms] — prayerful and praising.
• “a sober man among drunk men” — Aristotle on Anaxagoras introducing mind.

Texts #

Read in class

• Anaxagoras, fragment DK 12 — the ten things said of Mind, through the revolution and the closing sentence on naming.
• Handout, On the Natural Fragments (Natural Fragments of the First Philosophers), p. 48.
• Handout, The Matter and Order of Wisdom, p. 52.

Mentioned

• Plato, Republic I–II (parts of soul and city); Meno (slave boy, inferred); Phaedo (Socrates on Anaxagoras); Timaeus (Demiurge); Apology (Socrates’ defence of his life).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I (Anaxagoras sober), III (beginning: contradiction; whether anything is a cause without motion), V (opposition, before and after); Categories (opposition; four senses of before).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I on the substance and simplicity of God, and the proofs; Summa Contra Gentiles II on distinction and order of the universe; on the Holy Spirit proceeding through the Son.
• Heraclitus, fragment on the ends of the soul; Empedocles (thought as blood; love and hate); Pythagoras; Anaximander and Thales.
• Tocqueville, Democracy in America, chapter on religion; Bacon; Marx, Engels, Lenin, Hegel; St John’s Gospel; Chesterton (on America; on reasons); Dryden on Beaumont and Fletcher; Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, Macbeth; Enchiridion Symbolorum; Cardinal Siri on Rahner; Teilhard de Chardin; Einstein; De Koninck.

His questions #

• What two things in this fragment seem to contradict each other? Mind is self-ruling (2), yet the reason for (3) says the ruler must be separated from the ruled.
• When a country enjoys self-rule, does the whole country rule the whole country? No — one part, the government, rules the others; ruler and ruled stay distinct.
• What is the separation in the mind that makes self-rule possible? The separation of what it knows from what it doesn’t, and of the more known from the less.
• What did Socrates use to separate the known from the unknown? Questions, and ultimately contradiction — nothing is more known than that something cannot both be and not be.
• Is there some reason to think the mind is the thinnest of things? Yes: the thinnest penetrates and divides, and mind most of all divides and distinguishes.
• Is the fifth thing (purest) anything new after the third? Yes — (3) says not mixed with anything else, (5) that it is not itself a mixture; and (5) follows from thinness.
• Why does he single out mind’s rule over things that have life? Because order and purpose are far more visible in animals and plants than in a rock.
• Has Anaxagoras arrived at the divine mind or the angelic? The angelic: this mind moves matter but does not create it.
• Is Marx’s division of all thinkers into materialists and idealists exhaustive? No — Anaxagoras and Plato’s Demiurge hold a middle, dualist position, and dropping it removes the bridge to the creator.
• Which is a better cause, love and hate or mind? Mind — it separates and proportions better, and is one cause rather than two; but will must be added, since knowledge is of opposites.