10 - Mind Over Mixture: Anaxagoras

I found it very interesting when you got into talking about teleology around minute five of that podcast, when you were criticizing Socrate's supposed approach to Anaxagoras' work. Would you say that Anaxagoras actually concerned himself with teleology?

Anaxagoras theory of the mind steering everything seems to call forth the idea of a power - in this case the mind - that is the reason for creation, and courses through us all. Though Socrates may have been a bit turned off by Anaxagoras' interest in physical process, we can find that Anaxagoras took his philosophy of the mind as the creator and finding proof for it the physical world around him. It is hard to doubt that Socrates, from coming into contact with Anaxagoras, comes to create his philosophy of forms, his love of the "good", and in many ways his creation of what comes to be the Christian god - the mind, the creator, the one that is, as Anaxagoras says, "above everything else."

I would like to mention that this podcast has brought to light a period of philosophy that I was ignorant of in many ways and now find that it is indeed the foundation upon which our principal western philosophers seem to rest upon. I also find it interesting that once we have our first philosopher, Thales, we are already beginning to abandon "the gods", and move to a more simplified and central figure. "God", the mind, whatever it may be called, these philosophers seem driven to move towards a principal, SINGLE reason/foundation for creation to be founded upon. Taking this into light, do you think polytheism to be an aspect of culture from an earlier intellectual period, when nature, the wilderness and barbarism were still the leading forces of the times? What truly attributes to the fall of "the gods"?

Once again Professor Adamson, this has been a wonderful podcast. I find it one of the treasures of the internet, allowing me to have conversation and discourse with these great philosophers, their ideas, and to have at your behest a wonderful analysis of these great thinkers. With great joy to look I forward to the rest of your podcasts - wonderful!

Mixing water and wine?

This involves mixing the unmixed to created the unmixed, for nothing can exists in a mixed state since all is the same (everything) and yet it is a higher state of mixture that truly does mix.

Are your titles always s cringeworthy? I love this podcast, by the way. 3

Socrates dismissed Anaxagoras on the grounds explained in the "Phaedo", mentioning that Anaagoras's explanation amounted to the same thing as explaining that he--Socrates--chose to be where he was (imprisoned) because his physical constitution is made up of bones and sinews etc., that move, and these explain the reason why he is where he is.  This completely fails to account for the real reason for Socrates being imprisoned and that's to be found in Socrates's mind.  He chose to accept the penalty imposed on him.  The issue is not what makes the world the best possible place, but the issue is 'causation.'  What is the cause for the world's being?  Leibniz puts the question:  "Why is there something rather than nothing?"  It is this same question that lies at the heart of Scorates's dismissal of Anaxagoras.  This point seems lost in the discussion on Anaxagoras.

There are traces of Anaxagoras' everything in the world is for the best idea with (much later) Leibniz's "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” as paradied by Voltaire's philosopher Pangloss in his novel Candide. I'm so enjoying this series and how my patchy understanding of thought is being increasingly glued by the resin of your research and voice, Peter. Thank you! This is a chance to see or at least sense intellectual succession, which is otherwise murled or laboured over by the entanglements of history and everyday life. This series is like a giant philosophical compost, building layer upon layer the slow formation of patriarchal (and reified) culture, and the long descent into abstraction, institutionalism and ecological destruction. I'm in! Patrick

having listened to the India episodes and coming back to this. the fact that for Anaxagoras, mind is not responsible for the physical world but instead more related to consciousness sounds a lot like Samkhya where Prakriti is like that infinitely rotating physical world, but Parusha is like mind.