Anaxagoras: The Philosophy of Mind

         Good day everyone first let me start this by asking question. Who is Anaxagoras? Anaxagoras is the Pre-Socratic Greek Philosopher. Anaxagoras was the first to bring philosophy to Athens. According to Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, in later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus; the charges may have been political, owing to his association with Pericles, If they were not fabricated by later ancient biographers.

           Anaxagoras was born around 500B.C at Clazomenae and was the son of Hegesibulus. He was an early Pre-Socratic natural philosopher and scientist who live and taught in Athens for approximately thirty years. He left from Athens when he was prosecuted for impiety for his statement that the sun is a hot stone and the moon made of earth. Anaxagoras was part of the pluralists, who held that the cosmos is composed of several material ingredients, and not just a single one. Anaxagoras main philosophical interest was the “Mind”. According to him, there is a particle of everything in everything except in the mind because it is not an individual thing to be found in everything. 

        According to Anaxagoras all things have existed in some way from the beginning, but originally they existed in infinitesimally small fragments of themselves, endless in number and inextricably combined throughout the universe. All things existed in this mass, but in a confused and indistinguishable form. There was an infinite number of homogeneous parts as well as heterogeneous ones. The work of arrangement, the segregation of like from unlike and the summation of the whole into totals of the same name, was the work of Mind or Reason.. Mind is no less unlimited than the chaotic mass, but it stood pure and independent, a thing of finer texture, alike in all its manifestations and everywhere the same. 

     Anaxagoras state that all things existed from beginning but originally they existed infinitesimally small fragments of themselves based on my own understanding his philosophy means all things were started from a very tiny particles which is an countless numbers of mass. He believes that even the universe is composed of indistinguishable form of particles. He also believes that the mind is the one who is responsible for the rotation of the heavenly bodies that brought the combining and separating of the particles. 

          Therefore, the theory of Anaxagoras was helpful because it can give us an idea of what is beyond of that thing. His theory was still present until today because everything we use in our daily lives there is composed of another mixture of elements on it. That’s all thank you.