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How Aristotle Changes Anaxagoras’s Mind

  • Jason W. Carter EMAIL logo
From the journal Apeiron

Abstract

I argue that a common interpretation of DA 3.4, which sees Aristotle as there rejecting Anaxagoras’s account of mind, is mistaken. Instead, I claim that, in providing his solution to the main puzzles of this chapter, Aristotle takes special care to preserve the essential features that he thinks Anaxagoras ascribes to mind, namely, its ability to know all things, its being unmixed, and its inability to be affected by mixed objects.

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Note

I am grateful to Ronald Polansky, Daniel Vasquez, and my anonymous reviewers, for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, as well as to David Charles, for taking the time to offer criticisms of some of the ideas expressed within it.


Published Online: 2018-04-17
Published in Print: 2019-01-26

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin

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