Plato and Pythagoreanism

by Horky, Phillip Sidney

• ISBN13: 9780199898220
• ISBN10: 0199898227
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-08-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Was Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics thought so, but scholars since the 19th century have been more skeptical. InPlato and Pythagoreanism, 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 new approaches to science that sought to reconcile empirical knowledge with abstract mathematical theories.Plato and Pythagoreanismshows how mathematical Pythagoreanism established many of the fundamental philosophical questions Plato dealt with in his central dialogues, includingCratylus,Phaedo,Republic,Timaeus, andPhilebus. In the process, it also illuminates the historical significance of the mathematical Pythagoreans, a group whose influence over the development of philosophical and scientific methods have 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 concerning the essential relationships between the cosmos and the human being.

Author Biography

Phillip Sidney Horky is Lecturer in Classics at Durham University.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Preface
Chapter 1: Aristotle on Mathematical Pythagoreanism in the 4th Century BCE
Chapter 2: Hippasus of Metapontum and Mathematical Pythagoreanism
Chapter 3: Exoterism and the History of Pythagorean Politics
Chapter 4: Mathematical Pythagoreanism and Plato's Cratylus
Chapter 5: What is Wisest? Mathematical Pythagoreanism and Plato's Phaedo
Chapter 6: The Method of the Gods: Mathematical Pythagoreanism and Discovery
Afterword
Index Locorum
Bibliography
General Index