PHIL 2 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Dianoia, Nous, Supreme Intelligence
9 Aug 2019
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For the greeks who initiated the western philosophical tradition the word dianoia was synonymous with thought or intellect. However, it is not about any thought but a particular way of reasoning, discursive reasoning. Greek philosophers, especially plato, based their proposals on rationality. Despite this, they understood that there is no single way to understand the reason. Thus, when we think in an argumentative way we are faced with dianoetic reason, which opposes the noetic reason. Thus, dianoia and noesis are two approaches to reason. In the first case, it is a discursive intellectual process and in the second one of intellectual intuitions. For example, in a moral dissertation, we would be at the level of dianoia, while universal or intelligible ideas are based on noesis. According to plato, dianoia has a lower range than noesis. He also states that dianoia is an intermediate level between opinion or doxa and intelligence.
