Nous
conceptThe Greek concept of pure intellect or mind, the highest faculty of the soul and the organizing principle of the cosmos.
The Myth
Anaxagoras changed philosophy when he proposed that Nous — Mind — was the force that set the cosmos in order. Before him, the pre-Socratics had looked for material principles. Anaxagoras said the arche was not a substance but an intelligence. Nous was unmixed with anything else, the finest and purest of all things, and it initiated the cosmic rotation that separated the elements and formed the world. Socrates was initially excited by this idea, then disappointed — Anaxagoras, he complained, used Nous to start the machine but then explained everything mechanically. Plato made Nous the highest part of the tripartite soul, the charioteer who must control the two horses of spirit and appetite. In the Republic, Nous is the faculty that grasps the Forms directly, including the Form of the Good. Aristotle went further: in De Anima he described the Active Nous as something divine that enters the soul from outside and survives the body's death — the only part of the soul that is immortal. Plotinus built an entire metaphysics around Nous as the second hypostasis, the divine intellect that emanates from the One.
Parents
Pre-Socratic and Platonic tradition
Symbols
Fun Fact
British slang still uses "nous" to mean common sense — a distant echo of Anaxagoras's cosmic intelligence, domesticated into street-level shrewdness.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth:
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