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“This Ph.D. dissertation shows how the notion of purity of thought entered Greek philosophy through Pythagorean dualism and then grew in importance until, with Aristotle, it functioned simultaneously as the capstone of a psychology (humans are most of all pure thought, nous), a characterization of God (who is thinking thinking of thinking), and a moral ideal (we must strive to become divine, by thinking purely of God, who is himself pure thought). Besides the arrival of Pythagoreanism, major moments in this history include: the assumed correspondence between psychology and cosmology that begins with the Milesians, the supremacy of thought accorded to God by Xenophanes, the logic of self-intellection pioneered by Parmenides, and the doctrine of pure thought advanced by Anaxagoras. Plato is shown synthesizing these Presocratic contributions, incorporating them into the Pythagorean program of purification and divinization. Despite his refinements of Platonism, Aristotle never changes it so much as to compromise this program. Divinity, he maintains, can be achieved through pure thought.”
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