VIVAT PYTHAGORAS!

[Opening this subsection on Pythagoras, I must remind the reader that there are already three entries about him in the Philosophy section (And God Was Number; Pythagoras, Kaballah, And The Wisdom Of China; and The Mystery Of The Irrational Number).]

The more educated among us are naturally familiar with the famous Latin phrase “ipse dixit,” which we use generically, to indicate any argument to authority. Fewer of us are educated well enough to recognize the origin of this phrase in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, and here it is in its full context: “Ipse dixit. Ipse autem erat Pythagoras.” It takes a giant of a man to be posthumously used in a phrase like that!

His name is not included in the list of the greatest pre-Socratics, in the opening of Nietzsche’s Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks: “Any nation is put to shame when one points out such a wonderfully idealized company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Socrates”. Nor is he allotted a separate section in it, no matter how small, like Xenophanes and Zeno. Yet, I have a distinct impression that Nietzsche stands in awe of the great Pythagoras, judging from the scattered references to him, always treating him as one of the greatest of them all. To illustrate what I have in mind, here are a few excerpts from Nietzsche’s works:

It was they (the Greeks of the last phase of Hellenism) who handed on to the later generations a picture of Greek antiquity, painted entirely in the pale rose hues of serenity; as if there had never been a sixth century with its birth of tragedy, its Mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heraclitus, indeed as if the art works of the great period did not exist at all. (Birth of Tragedy XI. It is clear that Nietzsche’s sympathies are with the glories of the sixth century BC, which he explicitly identifies with two names: Pythagoras and Heraclitus!)

Plato is the first magnificent hybrid character, and as such he finds expression as well in his philosophy as in his personality. In his ideology are united Socratic, Pythagorean, and Heraclitean elements. (Philosophy Preface 2. Three great men as the sources of Plato’s “hybrid character,” and Pythagoras is again a part of the few select!)

In other instances he is mentioned alongside with Plato and Empedocles, called a cataclysmic personality, a talent fitted to be a founder of religion, a monster of pride and sovereignty, in other words, a superman!

Bertrand Russell is even more extravagant in crowning Pythagoras with laurels. His chapters on him and on Heraclitus in The History of Western Philosophy are the longest in the pre-Socratic division, and talking of Pythagoras, this is what he says:

Pythagoras was intellectually one of the most important men who ever lived, both when he was wise, and when he was unwise. Mathematics, in the sense of demonstrative deductive argument, begins with him and in him is intimately connected with a peculiar form of mysticism… (After his death) he became a mythical figure, credited with miracles and magical powers but was also the founder of a school of mathematicians. Thus two opposing traditions disputed his memory, and the truth is hard to disentangle. Pythagoras is one of the most interesting and puzzling men in history. Not only are the traditions concerning him an almost inextricable mixture of truth and falsehood, but even in their barest and least disputable form they present us with a very curious psychology. He may be described as a combination of Einstein and Mrs. Eddy. He founded a religion, of which the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans. His religion was embodied in a religious order which here and there acquired control of the State and established a rule of the saints. It is said that Pythagoras, like St. Francis, preached to animals. In the society that he founded men and women were admitted on equal terms; property was held in common, and there was a common way of life. Even the scientific and mathematical discoveries were deemed collective, and in a mystical sense due to Pythagoras even after his death…

It is because of the downside of this last peculiarity that the name of Pythagoras has melted down and was made indistinguishable from the term Pythagoreans, among the critical historians of philosophy. Professor W. T. Jones, whom I mentioned and quoted earlier in this section, thus begins his section on Pythagoras: About the life of Pythagoras we know almost nothing, and about his views, as distinguishable from those of his followers, we know even less. For this reason, Pythagoras seems to have fallen victim nowadays to what I might call the Homeric Complex. Even though unlike with Homer, we are pretty sure that there lived such a person in reality and his name was indeed Pythagoras of Samos, everything else has become as vague and iffy as in Homer’s case. But, by the same token as with Homer, my own attitude toward this controversy is equally unambiguous and categorical, and here it is.

I know that, none of the original Pythagoras’s writings being extant, his name is indistinguishable from the work of his followers, the so-called Pythagoreans, who were many, and often in conflict with each other. Thus, most of what is attributed to his name is likely to be the work of his school, in the large meaning of this word, and even the famous Pythagoras Theorem’s authorship is in doubt. Having said all that, I have just one thing to add: I don’t care! Clearly enough, Pythagoras was a great man, by far greater than any of his followers even put together. What we call Socrates comes to us from others too. What we call Euclid is, strictly speaking, a compilation of other mathematicians’ findings, famously including some fundamental stuff attributed, yes, to Pythagoras. History of the ancients cannot be critical, in the Nietzschean sense, but only monumental. Fact and legend are one. Had we not accepted that kind of history as irrefutable fiction, we would have had to reject all of it as anecdotal and utterly untrustworthy fact.

For that reason, I stand with Pythagoras, the mighty tree of Dèscartes’ metaphor, as opposed to his school, the parasitic vine, first creeping upwards around the trunk, then slinking back down. I prefer the legend’s perfect health to the degenerate reality of “what really-really happened” which, in itself, must be the worst kind of fiction: that is neither credible nor educational in any sense of the word.

And so vivat Pythagoras! (…Oops, did I forget to mention that the very word "philosophy" reportedly originates with him?!)