Nous (νοῦς) — a Greek term rendered as “intellect,” “reason,” or “mind,” denoting the faculty that grasps the intelligible directly, as distinct from sense perception and discursive reasoning. The word derives from the verb noein (“to perceive,” “to think”), and its meaning shifts across Greek philosophy from the cosmological plane to the psychological and metaphysical. In Anaxagoras, the Nous is the ordering principle of the cosmos — pure, unlimited, and separated from matter — which sets in motion and organizes the primordial mixture of elements. In the Phaedo, Plato recounts how Socrates was first excited by this doctrine and then disappointed, finding that Anaxagoras fell back on mechanical causes instead of explaining everything according to the best; for Plato, nous is the highest faculty of the soul, the one that contemplates the intelligible Forms. Aristotle, in the De Anima (book III), distinguishes the passive intellect from the nous poietikos (active intellect), which renders objects actually intelligible and is described as impassive, unmixed, and separable from the body. Plotinus, in the Enneads, elevates Nous to the second hypostasis of reality, an emanation of the One and the dwelling place of the Forms, intermediate between the supreme principle and the Soul. The concept is closely bound up with the notion of logos (reason as discourse and order) and with the psyché (soul), of which nous represents the highest and most divine part.
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