From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 201
though (g) may also perhaps refer to an individual mind directing each ensouled
thing, doubtless under the overall direction of the cosmic mind. (Aristotle says
(On the Soul 2–4, DK 59 A 100) that Anaxagoras sometimes identified soul
with mind and attributed the latter to all animals, but appears unsure of what
precisely he meant, while the pseudo-Aristotelian work On Plants reports that he
regarded plants as a kind of animals and attributed consciousness and thought to
them (815a15ff., DK 59 A 117).) Assuming that the fragments refer both to the
cosmic mind and to individual minds, they are inexplicit as to the relation
between the former and the latter. The minds of humans and of other animals are
clearly subordinate to the cosmic mind, but it is unclear what the model of
subordination is, i.e. whether particular human and other minds are parts of the
cosmic mind, or agents operating under its direction.
The only assertion which Anaxagoras supports by any argument is (c): mind
cannot be a constituent of any stuff, for if it were it would (by the ‘everything in
everything’ principle) be a constituent of every stuff. Why should it not be?
Empedocles had maintained that ‘everything has intelligence and a share in
thought’ (fr. 110); why should Anaxagoras have demurred? The reason which he
gives in fragment 12 is that if mind were a constituent of anything, the other
constituents would prevent it from exercising its directive function. Mind has to
be external to what it controls, as the rider has to be external to the horse. It is
hard to see any force in this argument. We think of organisms as self-directing,
and assume that some part of the organism functions as a control mechanism.
Why should the mind of a human or animal not be a built-in control mechanism
for the animal, or the cosmic mind such a mechanism for the cosmos as a whole?
It is problematic precisely because what is implied by the description of mind
as unlimited. All stuffs exist eternally (fragment 17), and are therefore
temporally boundless, and are unlimited in amount (fragments 1 and 3). Perhaps
(a) is simply to be read as making the same claims for mind, but the opening of
the fragment appears to contrast mind with the other things, and it is at least
tempting to look for a sense of ‘unlimited’ (apeiron) in which mind alone is
unlimited. Such a sense may be suggested by fragment 14, which states that mind
is where all the other things are. Mind is not, as we have seen, a constituent of
anything else, but it knows and controls everything, and is here said to be where
everything else is. The picture seems to be of mind as everywhere, pervading
everything without being part of anything. This would differentiate mind from
the other stuffs, for though every stuff is contained in every stuff, there are some
places where it is not, namely those places which are occupied by other stuffs.
Mind, on the other hand, if this suggestion is right, is not excluded from any
place by the presence of any stuff in that place. This, together with the
description of mind as the finest and purest of all things, may suggest that
Anaxagoras was groping towards the conception of mind as immaterial, but it
would be anachronistic to suggest that that conception is clearly articulated in the
fragments.