Ancient Teachings

9 December 2024

Ancient Teachings

In the dialogue Phaedo Socrates refers to his teachings on the immortality of the soul and on rebirth as ‘ancient teachings.’  If I recall correctly, Socrates links his teachings to Orphics and some Mystery traditions.  Pythagoreanism is implied in Phaedo because Cebes, one of the main participants in the discussion with Socrates, was a student of Philolaus who was a Pythagorean.  In addition, Echecrates, who asks Phaedo to tell him what happened to Socrates during his last hours and thus creates the occasion for the dialogue, was also a Pythagorean.

I have been reading Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History by Charles H. Kahn, a scholar of Greek philosophy, particularly its very early manifestations.  Kahn discusses how difficult it is to determine the teachings of Pythagoras as nearly all the original material has vanished.  This makes it difficult to know what the actual teachings of Pythagoras were; and there is a lot of strong disagreement on this issue among contemporary scholars. But generally speaking, Pythagoras is famous as a mathematician and also as the founder and leader of a religious community.  Both of these teachings were absorbed by, and reshaped by, Plato.  

Addressing the question of where Pythagoras learned these teachings, and specifically addressing rebirth, Kahn writes:

“What is not controversial, however, is his (Pythagoras’s) importance as the founder of a religious community and the evangelist of immortality based upon transmigration.  This was a new doctrine in Greece in the sixth century B.C.  It represents a radical break with the Homeric view of the psyche as the phantom of the dead man in Hades, doomed to a gloomy afterlife among the shades below.  Where did this new view of human destiny come from?  There is no reason to suppose that it was invented by Pythagoras, although he probably gave it a new form and certainly made it widely known.  Herodotus (IV.123) implies that Pythagoras borrowed it from the Egyptians but pretended that it was his own.  Now the ancient Egyptians did believe in a meaningful afterlife for the dead; but they did not in fact have a doctrine of reincarnation.  Some scholars suggest that Pythagoras learned of this doctrine from Pherecydes of Syros, with whom he is traditionally associated.  But the evidence that Pherecydes held such a view is late and inconclusive, and that would in any case only displace the question of origins by one generation.  One important modern school [of Western scholars] connects the new Greek view of the soul with the influence of shamanistic practice and belief from the Black Sea area.  Now it may in fact be useful to think of spirit-travelers like Aristeas of Proconessus and Abaris the Hyperborean in terms of the shamanistic traditions of central Asia.  But there is no link, either logical or historical, between the shamanistic practice of religious trance and the systematic belief in a cycle of human and animal rebirth.  The only religious tradition in which the doctrine of transmigration is at home from a very early period is that of India in pre-Buddhist times.  The concept of karma (according to which one’s destiny in the next reincarnation is a consequence of one’s performance in this life) appears as a secret teaching in the earliest Upanishads.  After the conquests of Cyrus (who died c. 530 B.C.), the Persian empire stretched from Ionia to the Indus.  From that time on, if not before, it was clearly possible for oriental doctrines to travel to the West.  How exactly they reached Pythagoras we cannot even guess.  But we can at least see that the later legend of Pythagoras’ journey to India in search of the wisdom of the East may very well contain a grain of allegorical truth.”

(Charles H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 2001, pages 18 and 19, ISBN: 9780872205758)

Here are a few thoughts that have appeared to me while reading Kahn’s book:

1.  I think the way many moderns interpret Pythagoras reflects the way the modern mind is split into two mutually antagonistic parts.  Modern readers of Pythagoras tend to think that either Pythagoras was a mathematician and therefore proto-modern, or Pythagoras was a religious, or spiritual, teacher who founded a community of religious disciples governed by fairly strict regulations.  I think that it is understandable that moderns find the idea that Pythagoras was both of these difficult; normally we do not ask ourselves what the religious convictions of a mathematician are because we consider those convictions to be irrelevant to a mathematician’s contribution to mathematics.  

2.  But Platonism views numbers as numinous entities, or noetic realities that can be accessed through meditative practices and trances.  This view of numbers links numbers, and mathematics as a whole, to spirituality; this view allows for Pythagoras’s mathematical contributions, whatever they were, to be spiritual contributions.  In other words there is no split between Pythagoras as a mathematician and Pythagoras as a spiritual teacher and founder of a religious community.

3.  In a general way reading about the difficulty in accessing what Pythagoras actually did and what his teachings actually were, is a testament to the dissolving nature of time.  Things recede into the past and the past recedes into the inaccessible.  This is the universal fate of all material things.

4.  The connection to India as the source for the teachings on rebirth makes sense to me, though it would be difficult to prove this; I’m not aware of any documentary evidence or any artefact that points to that conclusion.  But, again, it makes sense.

And it seems to have been a regularly recurring theme in Greek philosophy.  The tradition that Pythagoras went to India connects to Plotinus, centuries later, attempting to reach India to study Indian traditions; an attempt which was thwarted.  Looked at geographically, it is entirely possible that Pythagoras either went to India and learned these teachings, or connected with Indian teachers in the Mediterranean region of that time.

5.  The teaching on the immortality of the soul resembles the Pythagorean teachings on number in that both the soul and numbers are, to use a Platonic term, noetic realities.  This again reinforces the lack of any separation between the mathematical and spiritual activities of Pythagoras.

Pythagoras discovered the noetic source of numbers and in the same way discovered the noetic source of the soul.

6.  I have encountered a few youtube Platonists (that’s not a put-down; some of the most creative work on Plato and Platonism is found on youtube) hold the view that Plato was a Pythagorean.  The main reason I think there is something to that point of view is that the Pythagorean tradition thought of numbers as having a special place in the creation and/or construction of the cosmos, both at macro and micro levels.  There is a similar high regard for numbers in the Platonic tradition.  And historically Platonists have made significant contributions to mathematics down to the present day.  There is an intimate connection between Platonism and how mathematics unfolded in the West.

But I think Platonism goes a step further than the Pythagoreans by placing numbers in the noetic sphere; in other words comprehending numbers within an overall metaphysical framework.  This clarifies why numbers are not sensory realities, why numbers and their relationships are discovered as opposed to created, and why Plotinus would say that the mathematician is inherently in a good position to make the journey to the transcendental, the Good and the One (along with some other types of human beings.)  

7.  But Platonism also absorbs other traditions, notably Orphism.  Kahn writes, “. . . in Plato’s conception of philosophy the Orphic and Pythagorean streams merge, and both traditions find their hyponoia, their deep meaning, in Plato’s own theory of the soul and its transmundane destiny.”  (Kahn, as above, page 53)

8.  How helpful is it to spend time exploring the predecessors of Platonism such as Orphism and Pythagoreanism?  Personally, I have found it helpful in several ways.  First, understanding the connection between these predecessors and Platonism helps me to see why certain issues were of concern to Plato (such as the nature of numbers.)  Second, exploring the thoughts of Plato’s predecessors helped me to see through modernist interpretations of Platonism.  This happens by providing a larger context for Plato’s interests and interpretations, a context free from the arbitrary assumptions of contemporary materialism.  

If I may make an analogy, learning about Plato’s predecessors resembles learning about the composers who wrote symphonies before Beethoven.  Beethoven’s symphonies stand on their own and you don’t have to listen to Beethoven’s predecessors to enjoy his symphonies.  But if you do take the time to listen to the symphonies of Haydn, and Mozart, then the symphonies of Beethoven are understood in a larger context and regions of meaning open up in that context.

9.  Plato seems to have admired Pythagoras; and that is another reason to investigate Pythagorean teachings.  This admiration contrasts with other philosophers whom he found more problematic; I’m thinking of Heraclitus as an example, another would be Anaxagoras.  

Pythagorean teachings seem to have nourished Plato both philosophically and personally (Plato seems to have had friends who were Pythagoreans, such as Archytas.)  This suggests that our own understanding of Plato could be nourished by cultivating an understanding of what the Pythagoreans had to say.