Note 68 — Chapter XXV · PHÆDON.

What Sokrates understands by the theory of Anaxagoras, is evident from his language — Phædon, pp. 98-99. He understands an indwelling cosmical Reason or Intelligence, deliberating and choosing, in each particular conjuncture, what was best for the Kosmos; just as his own (Sokrates) Reason deliberated and chose what was best for him (τῇ τοῦ βελτίστου αἱρέσει), in consequence of the previous determination of the Athenians to condemn and punish him.

This point deserves attention, because it is altogether different from Aristotle’s conception of Nous or Reason in the Kosmos: in which he recognises no consciousness, no deliberation, no choice, no reference to any special situation: but a constant, instinctive, undeliberating, movement towards Good as a determining End — i.e. towards the reproduction and perpetuation of regular Forms.

Hegel, in his Geschichte der Philosophie (Part i. pp. 355, 368-369, 2nd edit.), has given very instructive remarks, in the spirit of the Aristotelian Realism, both upon the principle announced by Anaxagoras, and upon the manner in which Anaxagoras is criticised by Sokrates in the Platonic Phædon. Hegel observes:—

“Along with this principle (that of Anaxagoras) there comes in the recognition of an Intelligence, or of a self-determining agency which was wanting before. Herein we are not to imagine thought, subjectively considered: when thought is spoken of, we are apt to revert to thought as it passes in our consciousness: but here, on the contrary, what is meant is, the Idea, considered altogether objectively, or Intelligence as an effective agent: (N.B. Intellectum, or Cogitatum — not Intellectio, or Cogitatio, which would mean the conscious process — see this distinction illustrated by Trendelenburg ad Aristot. De Animâ, i. 2, 5, p. 219: also Marbach, Gesch. der Phil. s. 54, 99 not. 2): as we say, that there is reason in the world, or as we speak of Genera in nature, which are the Universal. The Genus Animal is the Essential of the Dog — it is the Dog himself: the laws of nature are her immanent Essence. Nature is not formed from without, as men construct a table: the table is indeed constructed intelligently, but by an Intelligence extraneous to this wooden material. It is this extraneous form which we are apt to think of as representing Intelligence, when we hear it talked of: but what is really meant is, the Universal — the immanent nature of the object itself. The Νοῦς is not a thinking Being without, which has arranged the world: by such an interpretation the Idea of Anaxagoras would be quite perverted and deprived of all philosophical value. For to suppose an individual, particular, Something without, is to descend into the region of phantasms and its dualism: what is called, a thinking Being, is not an Idea, but a Subject. Nevertheless, what is really and truly Universal is not for that reason Abstract: its characteristic property, quâ Universal, is to determine in itself, by itself, and for itself, the particular accompaniments. While it carries on this process of change, it maintains itself at the same time as the Universal, always the same; this is a portion of its self-determining efficiency.” — What Hegel here adverts to seems identical with that which Dr. Henry More calls an Emanative Cause (Immortality of the Soul, ch. vi. p. 18), “the notion of a thing possible. An Emanative Effect is co-existent with the very substance of that which is said to be the Cause thereof. That which emanes, if I may so speak, is the same in reality with its Emanative Cause.”

Respecting the criticism of Sokrates upon Anaxagoras, Hegel has further acute remarks which are too long to cite (p. 368 seq.)