ABSTRACT
Little has been written on Hegel's reading of Anaxagoras in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy no doubt because little of consequence seems to take place in it. Hegel offers a long digression that relates nous to purpose or end in order to demonstrate how objective thinking works, even though nothing in Anaxagoras's writing specifically indicates purposiveness. Despite praising Anaxagoras for considering nous as cause, Hegel agrees with Plato's Socrates and Aristotle that the details of Anaxagoras's writings are a disappointment. The early Greek thinkers from Thales to Anaxagoras unearth increasingly fundamental thoughts. Hegel outlines six steps. (1) Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, followed by (2) the Pythagoreans, (3) the Eleatics, (4) Heraclitus, (5) Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus, and (6) Anaxagoras. The general theme of Hegel's lecture on Anaxagoras is that it is important to emphasize objective thinking as Anaxagoras does and was the first to do.
