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Pythagoreans and Orphics (tweets)
Mar. 25th, 2014 01:28 pmOnly by studying the early Hellenic philosophers can we glean something of the relationship between the Orphic and Pythagorean revelations.
We know that the Orphic and Pythagorean movements were very closely associated, but this overlap is not much visible in their doctrines.
It shows itself to us only in their general way of life. The philosophers are really the ones who can offer the link, I believe.
Salvation through mathematics, salvation through purification and mania. Pythagoreans and Orphics seem very far apart to us, but in fact they weren't, and this is a problem for us to think through. One could say that the structural similarities in these movements, or in their lifestyle, explains it, but I'm not satisfied.
I think that we have a better sense of what Orphism was, despite some distortions, than we do of Pythagoreanism. I don't think Neopythagorean texts like the Theology of Arithmetic (possibly notes from a lecture course of Iamblichus') quite convey it. We see in a text like this certain very abstract results, symbolic associations with numbers. Nor, on the other hand, is it enough to point to the process, the labor of mathematics, as a sort of transformative ascesis.
The commonality must lie, rather, in the content, and in essential aspects, not mere associations.
Basic ontological notions were being hammered out by Orphics and Pythagoreans before Plato got to work on them.
Hence in the Phaedo, Socrates can speak to Pythagoreans as people already committed to their own "theory of ideas", while in the Sophist, Plato can turn a critical eye on the "friends of forms", and this is not a turning in his thought, in my opinion.
Ontologically speaking, I think the turn to mathematics is about saving the reality of *relations* under Parmenidean phenomeno-logic. The givenness of the unit in relation and of relations in the unit, domesticating the absence-in-presence that is Parmenides' prime concern.
From another perspective, the "idea" can be understood as a moment of motion, as the in-principle-cyclicality of motion. What is "ideal" in a motion is that which can be in principle repeated; the fullest understanding being that which brings it full circle. The idea as telos of a process can thus be treated as a special case of circular motion. This seems to be the importance of astronomy for Plato, not, e.g., the establishment of an astral faith. Rather, he explains in the Laws that the significance of astronomy is that it shows us natural motions like the "motions" of reason.
The kinetics of reason, therefore, is like the relationality of the unit.
The circular motions (the one centered on itself, the one centered on the other) are not merely metaphorical, but metaphysical. That is, they are as it were motions of motions.
Situating the Orphics and Pythagoreans relative to this project, broadly speaking: perhaps the former, cycles, the latter, relations.
We know that the Orphic and Pythagorean movements were very closely associated, but this overlap is not much visible in their doctrines.
It shows itself to us only in their general way of life. The philosophers are really the ones who can offer the link, I believe.
Salvation through mathematics, salvation through purification and mania. Pythagoreans and Orphics seem very far apart to us, but in fact they weren't, and this is a problem for us to think through. One could say that the structural similarities in these movements, or in their lifestyle, explains it, but I'm not satisfied.
I think that we have a better sense of what Orphism was, despite some distortions, than we do of Pythagoreanism. I don't think Neopythagorean texts like the Theology of Arithmetic (possibly notes from a lecture course of Iamblichus') quite convey it. We see in a text like this certain very abstract results, symbolic associations with numbers. Nor, on the other hand, is it enough to point to the process, the labor of mathematics, as a sort of transformative ascesis.
The commonality must lie, rather, in the content, and in essential aspects, not mere associations.
Basic ontological notions were being hammered out by Orphics and Pythagoreans before Plato got to work on them.
Hence in the Phaedo, Socrates can speak to Pythagoreans as people already committed to their own "theory of ideas", while in the Sophist, Plato can turn a critical eye on the "friends of forms", and this is not a turning in his thought, in my opinion.
Ontologically speaking, I think the turn to mathematics is about saving the reality of *relations* under Parmenidean phenomeno-logic. The givenness of the unit in relation and of relations in the unit, domesticating the absence-in-presence that is Parmenides' prime concern.
From another perspective, the "idea" can be understood as a moment of motion, as the in-principle-cyclicality of motion. What is "ideal" in a motion is that which can be in principle repeated; the fullest understanding being that which brings it full circle. The idea as telos of a process can thus be treated as a special case of circular motion. This seems to be the importance of astronomy for Plato, not, e.g., the establishment of an astral faith. Rather, he explains in the Laws that the significance of astronomy is that it shows us natural motions like the "motions" of reason.
The kinetics of reason, therefore, is like the relationality of the unit.
The circular motions (the one centered on itself, the one centered on the other) are not merely metaphorical, but metaphysical. That is, they are as it were motions of motions.
Situating the Orphics and Pythagoreans relative to this project, broadly speaking: perhaps the former, cycles, the latter, relations.
