Chapter 178 of 208
Passages from Plato referring to Anaxagoras.
Apol. 26 D. He asserts that I say the sun is a stone and the moon is earth. Do you think of accusing Anaxagoras, Meletos, and have you so low an opinion of these men and think them so unskilled in letters as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras of Klazomenae are full of these doctrines? And forsooth the young men are learning these matters from me, which sometimes they can buy from the orchestra for a drachma at the most, and laugh at Sokrates if he pretends that they are his—particularly seeing they are so strange.
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Phaedo 72 C. And if all things were composite and were not separated, speedily the statement of Anaxagoras would become true, ‘All things were together.’
97 C. I heard a man reading from a book of one Anaxagoras (he said), to the effect that it is mind which arranges all things and is the cause of all things.
98 B. Reading the book, I see that the man does not make any use of mind, nor does he assign any causes for the arrangement of things, but he treats air and aether and water as causes, and many other strange things.
Lysis 214 B. The writings of the wisest men say... that it is necessary for the like always to be loved by the unlike.
Hipp. Mai. 283 A. They say you had an experience opposite to that of Anaxagoras; for though he inherited much property he lost it all by his carelessness; so he practised a senseless wisdom.
Kratyl. 400 A. And do you not believe Anaxagoras that the nature of all other things is mind, and that it is soul which arranges and controls them? (cf. Phaedo 72 C).
409 A. It looks as though the opinion Anaxagoras recently expressed was a more ancient matter, that the moon has its light from the sun.
413 C. Anaxagoras is right in saying that this is mind, for he says that mind exercising absolute power and mingled with nothing disposes all things, running through all.
Rival. 132 A. But the youths seemed to be quarrelling about Anaxagoras or Oenopedos, for they were evidently drawing circles and imitating certain inclinations by the slope of their hands with great earnestness.
Phil. 28 C. All the wise men agree that mind is king of heaven and earth for us.
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30 D. Some long ago declared that always mind rules the all.
Legg. 967 B. And some had the daring to conjecture this very thing, saying that it is mind which disposes all things in the heavens. And the same men again, being in error as to the nature of soul, in that it is older than bodies, while they regarded it as younger, to put it in a word, turned all things upside down, and themselves most of all. For indeed all things before their eyes—the things moving in the heavens—appeared to them to be full of stones and earth and many other soulless bodies, which dispose the causes of all the universe.
Phaedr. 270 A. All the arts that are great require subtlety and the higher kind of philosophy of nature; so such loftiness and complete effectiveness seem to come from this source. This Perikles acquired in addition to being a man of genius; for as the result, I think, of his acquaintance with such a man as Anaxagoras he became imbued with high philosophy, and arrived at the nature of intelligence [νοῦς] and its opposite, concerning which Anaxagoras often discoursed, so that he brought to the art of speaking what was advantageous to him.
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