The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy

by A. A. Long

  Perhaps we may conclude as follows. Just as the activities of the Milesians cannot be labeled “philosophical” in any specifically modern sense of the word, so they are not to be called “scientific” in a specifically Baconian or Popperian sense either. Yet, to do justice to what they initiated and to their position in Greek intellectual history, we might regard them at least as protoscientists, standing at the gateway of the history of that part of ancient philosophy that was called physics.

  NOTES

  1 For a detailed treatment of how Homer and Hesiod shaped the culture inhabited by the earliest Greek philosophers, see Most in this volume, p. 342.

  2 On early calendars and chronology, see Bickerman [83] 27–34.

  3 See Burkert [85] 174–76.

  4 Some of the main texts have been conveniently collected and translated by Pritchard [125].

  5 For the remnants of other early cosmogonies ascribed to Orpheus and Musaeus, see DK 1 and 2; a survey in KRS, 21–33.

  6 More examples of such interpretations are in West [135] 35–36.

  7 The idea is certainly Anaximandrean, although we do not know whether he actually used the term gonimon. For the term apeiron (boundless) and its range of meanings in early Greek thought, see McKirahan in this volume, p. 139.

  8 On the use of analogy, see Lloyd [108].

  9 Cf. Theog. 11; 33; 37; 51; and Works and Days 654–59, which may refer back to the Theogony.

  10 It is probably against this background that one should interpret Herodotus’ claim (II.53) that Homer and Hesiod basically “gave to the gods their titles and clarified their provinces and , and made clear their various kinds” .

  11 Hesiod may well have recited his own Theogony at the funeral games of Amphidamas in Chalcis. See West [135] 43–46; J. P. Barron and P. E. Easterling “Hesiod,” in Easterling and Knox [95] 52–54.

  12 For examples, see Pritchard [125] 1 (on an Egyptian creation myth); 60–61 and 332 (on the Babylonian Enuma Elish and its recitation). For a judicious treatment of various views on the connection between myth and ritual, see Kirk [106] 8–31.

  13 A controversial issue: Dicks [170] is extremely sceptical on the astronomical achievements of the Milesians; for a clear and balanced review of the evidence on Thales and the eclipse, see Panchenko [180].

  14 On Hippias as Aristotle’s source, see Snell [183] and Mansfeld [29].

  15 Cf. Metaph. I. 4 985a11-15 on Anaxagoras and Empedocles.

  16 Cf. Mansfeld [32] 143.

  17 Cf. Babut [164] 22. On this new conception of divinity, see Broadie in this volume pp. 205–7. It is possible (i.e., it might be inferred from Aristotle, Phys. III.4 203b7) that Anaximander claimed that the apeiron in fact “steers” (kubernan) all things. But, pace Solmsen [184] and Babut [164], there is no reason to take this otherwise than as claiming that the apeiron is somehow at the basis of the cosmogonical process.

  18 R. Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, published in 1678, esp. Book I, ch. III. In this work, Cudworth takes issue with various forms of atheism, arguing that they can be reduced to two main kinds: “atomick atheism” and “hylozoical atheism.”

  19 Burnet [6] 12, n.3 used this as an argument against the application of the term hylozoïsm. I would object that for us to be allowed to use the term it suffices that the Milesians’ theories were “materialist” in the broad sense that Aristotle recognized, that is, that in explaining the physical world they did not invoke any other causes (whether incorporeal forms or any other kind of separate moving cause) apart from corporeal entities.

  20 Cf. KRS, 98. The kind of materialism posited appears not to have been very strict; the material world, or its archê, are sometimes said to be themselves alive or divine, sometimes to contain soul or god (Thales). A similar ambiguity characterized the mythical world view, where the gods could be either identified with or said to reside in the elements of the cosmos.

  21 Note that when he tries to elucidate the role of matter in his own system, he usually resorts to the analogy of the production of artifacts from some inanimate stuff. In such cases it is quite obvious that matter cannot initiate the required process of change. It is telling that, by contrast, the Milesians appear to have preferred the use of biological analogies.

  22 Interestingly Cudworth, who does leave room for hylozoïsm as a position sui generis, follows Aristotle’s account of the Milesians in this particular respect, and claims (op. cit., 113) that they recognized only “senseless and stupid matter, devoid of all understanding and life.” According to Cudworth (ibid.) the first hylozoïst was Strato of Lampsacus, Theophrastus’ pupil and successor as head of the Peripatos.

  23 Cf. Kahn [162] 77.

  24 This has been suggested by Mansfeld [12] vol.1, 59.

  25 This interpretation has been defended by Bodnár [165], following a suggestion of Von Fritz referred to in Kahn [162] 90, n.5. For other suggestions, see Guthrie [15] 95 with n.1.

  26 In fact it is not certain whether Anaximander specified the size (and hence the distance) of any ring other than that of the sun; the text of the relevant source Hippolytus (DK 12 A11) is corrupt at the crucial point. Cf. Kahn [162] 94–97; KRS, 134–37.

  27 See for example Mansfeld [12] vol.1, 62.

  28 In view of the fact that it is not just air, water, and earth that we are dealing with, it is unlikely that this is simply a philosophical reformulation of the primacy of Ouranos, Gaia, and Okeanos in mythical cosmogonies, as Guthrie [15] 123 suggests.

  29 Anaximenes’ “elements” are not just the quartet “fire, air, water, earth” familiar from Empedocles and Aristotle, nor are they immutable, as in Empedocles.

  30 On the Milesian cosmologists’ fondness for such similes, see Most in this volume, p. 351.

  31 This, admittedly, is a controversial point. For a judicious defence of the view I here follow see Barnes [14] 94–99; for a more sceptical view, see Broadie in the present volume, p. 210, and KRS, 171–72.

  32 See Hegel [22] 178: “The proposition of Thales, that water is the Absolute … is the beginning of Philosophy, because with it the consciousness is arrived at that essence, truth, that which is alone in and for itself, are one.” On the other hand, Hegel [22] 187–88, finds the details of Anaximander’s cosmology “a mere succession in time” containing “no real necessity, no thought, no Notion,” and hence philosophically insignificant.

  33 This position has been defended by Mansfeld [116].

  34 The fact that the Milesians did not call themselves “philosophers” – Pythagoras is said to have been the first to use the term – is immaterial in this connection. They did not call themselves “scientists” either, and once the term “philosophy” had been coined, others used it to describe the activities of the Milesians.

  35 This position appears to have been rather overstated by Cornford [88] [90] and Jaeger [481]. On this, see Vlastos [187].

  36 Popper [122] 150.

  37 This point was already made by Vlastos [187] before Popper published his views on the Presocratics. In a way the point was also made by the author of the fifth-century Hippocratic treatise On ancient medicine, who claimed that concerning the subjects studied by cosmology “it would not be clear to the speaker himself or to his audience whether what was said was true or not, since there is no criterion to which one should refer to obtain clear knowledge.” See Lloyd [124] 113.

  38 Thus the Anaximandrean idea that the cosmos grows out of a spermlike substance as if it were a living organism only presupposes a very rough observation of how living beings are generated. The fact that the analogy is not very detailed entails that the cosmic process is only described and explained in its bare outlines.

  CARL A. HUFFMAN

  4 The Pythagorean tradition

  In the modern world Pythagoras is the most famous of the early Greek philosophers. The same was true in the fourth century B.C., when Plato wrote his Republic, some 150 years after Pythagoras left Samos in about 530, to emigrate to Croton in southern Italy,
where Pythagoreanism would flourish. Plato has Socrates say that Pythagoras was “especially loved as a leader of education in the private sphere,” and that his followers

  … loved him for his teaching and handed on to posterity a certain way of life … and these latter-day followers even now seem in some way to stand out among others for their manner of life, which they call Pythagorean after him (Rep. X 600a9-b5).

  However, beginning with Plato’s successors in the Academy, the reputation of Pythagoras became seriously exaggerated, and by the fourth century A.D. in the Neoplatonic tradition, he had become the greatest of all philosophers, from whom both Plato and Aristotle borrowed their central ideas.

  Unfortunately, Pythagoras’ distorted post-Platonic reputation has hindered an accurate appreciation of his genuine accomplishments and also those of other early Pythagoreans, particularly Philolaus of Croton. Moreover, despite Pythagoras’ fame, Pythagoreanism has been poorly integrated into recent studies of early Greek philosophy. It seems to mean either too much or too little: Pythagoras has either anticipated all of Platonic metaphysics, or it is impossible to say anything about him at all. In addition, classical studies have been torn between scholars who still uphold the Greeks as models of rational inquiry and those who emphasize the irrational in Greek culture. Pythagoras duly becomes either the first to recognize the role of mathematics in describing the order of nature, or a wonderworking shaman.1

  The Pythagorean question, the problem of determining the beliefs and activities of the historical Pythagoras, arises primarily because Pythagoras wrote nothing.2 It is an even more difficult problem than the parallel Socratic question, because no younger contemporary wrote about Pythagoras as Plato and Xenophon wrote about Socrates. The first detailed accounts of Pythagoras, treatises by Aristotle and his pupils that survive only in fragments, date to the late fourth century B.C. Our earliest complete accounts of his life and beliefs are from the third and fourth centuries A.D.: the works by Diogenes Laertius, and the Neoplatonists Porphyry and Iamblichus. These latter works arose in a spiritual climate in which there was a need to identify a divine man to whom all truth had been revealed by the gods.3 Pythagoras, whose fame was great, but who had left no writings to contradict what the later tradition assigned to him, was admirably suited to play this role. Iamblichus calls him “the divine Pythagoras” (On the Pythagorean life 1), and Porphyry reports that “about no one else have greater and more extraordinary things been believed” (Life of Pythagoras 12.28). This view of Pythagoras was handed down through Proclus to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when Neoplatonism was widely influential.4

  The hagiography of Pythagoras can first be traced back to a movement known as Neopythagoreanism, which started in the first century B.C. in Rome and Alexandria and flourished in the work of Moderatus of Gades in the first century A.D. and of Nicomachus of Gerasa in the next century.5 Nicomachus presents the Pythagoras who is common in popular imagination: the great mathematician; founder of the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (Introduction to arithmetic 1–3). Nicomachus’ Pythagoras also originated Plato’s distinction between the intelligible and sensible worlds, and Nicomachus quotes from Plato’s Timaeus to illustrate Pythagoras’ philosophy. This Pythagoras, in fact, originated much earlier, in the later part of the fourth century B.C. among Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy.6 Paradoxically at this time, when, according to Aristotle’s pupil Aristoxenus, the last of the followers of Pythagoras lived (D.L. VIII.46), Pythagoras himself was reborn in even greater form.

  Detailed analysis of the later tradition is outside the scope of this chapter, but a grasp of its assumptions is crucial to understanding Pythagoras’ true achievement. Too often Neopythagoreanism lives on in the study of early Pythagoreanism. Pythagoras is often not distinguished from his early followers, with the result that Pythagoreanism from the flourishing of Pythagoras himself (530–490 B.C.) down to Aristotle almost 200 years later is treated as a seamless whole. Pythagoras thus becomes the divine founder to whom Pythagoreanism was handed down fully formed.7 Again, while the influence of Pythagoreanism clearly lies behind Platonic dialogues such as Phaedo and Timaeus, passages from Plato are frequently quoted uncritically as evidence for Pythagoras’ thought.8 Finally, granted that the later tradition must preserve some early material, the identification of what is early often proceeds without criteria other than what is commensurate with a particular scholar’s conception of the greatness of Pythagoras.9

  This modified Neopythagorean approach to Pythagoras has now been undercut by Walter Burkert’s precise analysis of the later tradition.10 He distinguishes two primary traditions about Pythagoreanism in the fourth century B.C. One is represented by Aristotle; the other began among Plato’s successors in the Academy, Speusippus and Xenocrates. Aristotle (1) talks about Pythagoreans of the fifth century and never about Pythagoras himself when discussing metaphysics and cosmology (Metaph. I. 4 985b23); (2) refers to these Pythagoreans as the “so-called Pythagoreans,” indicating that this is the name in common use, but questioning the connection between their thought and Pythagoras; (3) discusses Pythagoras himself in the fragments of his specialized works, but portrays him only as a wonder-working religious leader (e.g., Aristotle, fr. 191 Rose); (4) sharply distinguishes Pythagoreanism from the Platonic separation of the intelligible and sensible realms and from the introduction of the one and the indefinite dyad as ultimate principles. Aristotle’s Pythagoreans recognize only the realm of sensibles and seem to identify numbers with sensible objects (Metaph. I. 6 987b29 ff.).11

  On the other hand, the Academic tradition (1) makes Pythagoras himself the central figure rather than the Pythagoreans; (2) refers much of Plato’s philosophy back to Pythagoras, including both the use of the one and the indefinite dyad as ultimate principles and also the cosmology of the Timaeus. It is this tradition that dominates later treatments of Pythagoreanism. Aristotle’s account of Pythagoreanism makes sense of it as a system contemporary with the atomists, but simply was not as exciting as the tradition that makes Pythagoras the originator of Platonic metaphysics and at the same time gives the authority of ancient wisdom to Plato’s system. One of the fruits of the Academic tradition is the large number of treatises forged under the names of early Pythagoreans, the Pythagorean pseudepigrapha, which seem to originate largely in the first and second centuries B.C.12 These documents are the Pythagorean “originals” from which Plato and Aristotle are supposed to have derived their central philosophical concepts.

  Thus, Aristotle’s presentation of Pythagoreanism, although it also needs correction, is much more likely to allow us to appreciate the actual contributions of Pythagoras and fifth-century Pythagoreans than the Academic tradition. As one of the central controls for developing an accurate account of early Pythagoreanism, Aristotle’s presentation undermines the assumption that what the later tradition frequently assigns to Pythagoras must contain a kernel of truth. The Pythagoreanism of late antiquity was not motivated by documentary evidence but by Pythagoras’ status as the ultimate sage. Although the later tradition may preserve some reliable information about Pythagoras, its testimony cannot be accepted unless it agrees with sources earlier than his canonization by the Academy.

  One final result of Burkert’s revolutionary work is the stunning news that we do, after all, have some primary texts for early Pythagoreanism. A core of the fragments assigned to Philolaus of Croton do not fit the mould of the Pythagorean pseudepigrapha and, in fact, agree with Aristotle’s account of fifth-century Pythagoreanism. Rather than making the more than 150 years of early Pythagoreanism a unified system, our best evidence distinguishes between Pythagoras and fifth-century Pythagoreanism and shows that there is more precise evidence for Philolaus than for Pythagoras himself.

  PYTHAGORAS

  Although Burkert’s approach to Pythagoras may seem to diminish his importance, the early evidence still reveals that there was no more important figure in early Greek thought. Pythagoras’ greatness
lies in his introduction of (1) a powerful new vision of the fate of human beings after death, the doctrine of metempsychosis; and (2) a way of life tightly governed by a moral and religious code that took southern Italy by storm and still produced followers more than 100 years after his death.13 However, while there is enough reliable evidence to trace the outlines of his achievement, the details of his teachings are often impossible to recover. An unusually cautious passage in Porphyry (Life of Pythagoras 19 – derived from Aristotle’s pupil Dicaearchus) reflects the early evidence reasonably well. Upon Pythagoras’ arrival at Croton:

  a great reputation grew up around him, and he gained many from the city itself as followers; not only men but also women… Now the content of his teaching to his associates no one can describe reliably… But the doctrines that became best known to the public were first, that the soul is immortal, then that it migrates into other species of animals… (tr. after Burkert).

  Our earliest evidence associates Pythagoras with this transmigration of souls, metempsychosis. His contemporary Xenophanes mockingly tells the story that Pythagoras once urged a man to stop beating a puppy saying, “It is the soul of a friend; I recognized it when I heard it speak” (DK 21 B7). Traditional Greek religion, as reflected in the Homeric poems, emphasized the shortness of human life in contrast with the immortal gods. Upon death, the shade goes down to Hades where it has only the most tenuous existence, one so bleak that the hero Achilles asserts that he would rather “be a slave on earth even to a poor man with no land, than be king of all the dead below” (Od. XI.489). Pythagoras offers what Achilles asked for and more, rebirth on earth, and, through a cycle of rebirths, an approach to the immortality previously reserved only for the gods. Pythagoras may have originated the doctrine himself or drawn it from Egypt (Herodotus II.123) or India (more likely), but his introduction of it into the Greek world had a widespread impact, particularly in southern Italy and Sicily where he was active.13 Pindar, in an ode for Theron of Acragas in Sicily written in 476 B.C., says that those who have kept free from injustice in three lives will pass to a marvelous existence in the Isles of the Blessed (Olympian 2.68ff.).