1An Instructive Failure: The Status of Anaxagoras in Plato’s Phaedo and Parmenides, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics

For both Plato and Aristotle, Anaxagoras is a disappointment and his philosophy a failure. But Anaxagoras ’ is an extraordinary failure, one that holds a privileged place in Socrates ’ account of his development in the Phaedo (96a-102a), in Aristotle’s history of philosophy in Book A of Metaphysics, and in Parmenides. Anaxagoras is of vital importance to Plato and Aristotle because it is in his failure that the problem of the relation of the causes emerges as an urgent problem for philosophy. Anaxagoras posits Nous1 as both a self-related principle and as effecting the order of the all-mixed world; yet, he is unable to show how Nous, in its isolation, can enter into ordering relationship with the world. While Plato and Aristotle agree on this criticism, Aristotle goes one step further. Aristotle argues that this problem pertains equally to the self-related forms of Platonism. The purpose of this paper is to outline Anaxagoras ’ central role in Plato’s Parmenides and in Book A of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. I propose that the problem of Anaxagoras is a vehicle through which Plato works out the relationship among the causes and through which Aristotle develops his arguments against the tenability of the causes in Platonism. After praising Anaxagoras for introducing Nous into philosophy as the “cause an