Plato and PythagoreanismWas Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics thought so, but scholars since the nineteenth century have been more skeptical. With this probing study, Phillip Sidney Horky argues that a specific type of Pythagorean philosophy, called "mathematical" Pythagoreanism, exercised a decisive influence on fundamental aspects of Plato's philosophy. The progenitor of mathematical Pythagoreanism was the infamous Pythagorean heretic and political revolutionary Hippasus of Metapontum, a student of Pythagoras who is credited with experiments in harmonics that led to innovations in mathematics. The innovations of Hippasus and other mathematical Pythagoreans, including Empedocles of Agrigentum, Epicharmus of Syracuse, Philolaus of Croton, and Archytas of Tarentum, presented philosophers like Plato with novel ways to reconcile empirical knowledge with abstract mathematical theories. Plato and Pythagoreanism demonstrates how mathematical Pythagoreanism established many of the fundamental philosophical questions Plato dealt with in his central dialogues, including Cratylus, Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus, and Philebus. In the process, it also illuminates the historical significance of the mathematical Pythagoreans, a group whose influence on the development of philosophical and scientific methods has been obscured since late antiquity. The picture that results is one in which Plato inherits mathematical Pythagorean method only to transform it into a powerful philosophical argument about the essential relationships between the cosmos and the human being. |
Contents
1 Aristotle on Mathematical Pythagoreanism in the Fourth Century BCE | 3 |
2 Hippasus of Metapontum and Mathematical Pythagoreanism | 37 |
3 Exoterism and the History of Pythagorean Politics | 85 |
4 Mathematical Pythagoreanism and Platos Cratylus | 125 |
5 What Is Wisest? Mathematical Pythagoreanism and Platos Phaedo | 167 |
Mathematical Pythagoreanism and Discovery | 201 |
Afterword | 261 |
| 265 | |
| 281 | |
| 295 | |
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Common terms and phrases
acousmatic acousmatic Pythagoreans activity acusmata Apollonius appears Archytas of Tarentum Archytas’s argued Arist Aristotle Aristotle’s Aristoxenus associated Athenian attributes Burkert chapter city-states claims concerning context Cratylus demonstration derived described dialogue Dicaearchus Dillon Diogenes discussion divine doctrines doxographical Echecrates Empedocles Epicharmus Epicharmus’s Eurytus evidence exoteric FGrHist fifth century bce fire first-discoverer fourth century bce fragments gods Growing Argument Heraclitus heurematographical Hippasus of Metapontum Hippasus’s honorable Horky Huffman human Iambl Iamblichus Iamblichus’s mathematical Pythagoreans Metaph Metaphysics myth nature Nicomachus objects Palamedes Parmenides passage Peripatetic Phaedo Philebus Philolaus of Croton Philolaus’s philosophical Plato Platonists political pragmateia predication principles Protagoras Pythago Pythagoras Pythagoras’s reference Republic sciences section entitled Sedley so-called Socrates Socrates’s Sophists sort soul Speusippus suggests term Theophrastus theory Theuth things Timaeus of Tauromenium Timaeus’s tion tradition translation universe unlimited Wehrli writings Xenocrates Zhmud ἐν καὶ οἱ τὰ τὸ τοῦ τῶν