DIVINE MYSTICISM INFLUENCES ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY CONTINUED BY ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY & MYSTICISM

By: Ahmad Y. Samantho, S.IP

Master’s Degree Programe ofIslamic College for Advance Studies (ICAS) – Jakarta, 2003

DIVINE MYSTICISM INFLUENCES ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY CONTINUED BY ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY & MYSTICISM

By: Ahmad Y. Samantho, S.IP

Student of Master’s Degree Programe ofIslamic College for Advance Studies (ICAS) – Jakarta, 2003

Introduction

Hermetism

A primarily religious amalgam of Greek philosophy with Egyptian and other Near Eastern elements, Hermetism takes its name from Hermes Trismegistus, ‘thrice greatest Hermes’, alias the Egyptian god Thoth. Numerous texts on philosophical theology and various occult sciences, ascribed to or associated with this primeval figure, were produced in Greek by Egyptians between roughly AD 100 and 300, and are a major document of late pagan piety. Reintroduced into Western Europe during the Renaissance, they provided considerable inspiration to philosophers, scientists and magicians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Hermetic literature can be divided into philosophical treatises, on God, the world and man, and technical writings on astrology, alchemy and other branches of occult science. The philosophical Hermetica comprise principally: (1) the Asclepius or Perfect Discourse, a longish work surviving in a Latin translation; (2) the Corpus Hermeticum proper, a Byzantine collection of fourteen treatises, translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino in 1462-3 and published in 1471 under the title Pimander (after Poemandres, its first and most important treatise), to which three further pieces were later added; and (3) some twenty-nine extracts in the anthology compiled in the fifth century AD by John Stobaeus. The Stobaeus Hermetica vary in length from single sentences (12, 27, 28) toan important extract (23, from the Kor0 Kosmou or Pupil of the Cosmos) as long as anything in the Corpus Hermeticum.

The philosophical treatises take the form of dialogues, or rather, since disputation and argument are notably absent from them, of expositions, usually although not always by Hermes himself, to one or more trusting disciples. Their scenery and dramatis personae - Hermes, his son Tat, Asclepius (alias Imouthes or Imhotep), King Ammon and so forth - are Egyptian and ancient, investing these treatises, like so many other writings of the period, with the authority of primeval revelation. Their philosophy - that is, their cosmology and metaphysics - is a contemporary ‘Middle Platonism’ (see Platonism, Early and Middle), the only philosophical idiom available in late antiquity to anyone attempting a non-mythological treatment of these subjects. (There are also gnostic and Jewish elements, notably in Poemandres and Corpus Hermeticum III.) Their purpose, however, is not strictly philosophical. A treatise may start with some standard question of

school philosophy - for example, motion (II), death (VIII), or intellection and sensation (IX). But the answer, often garbled, is seldom more than a starting point for meditation and homily. The aim is not to offer some new, coherent and discussible account of God, the world and man so much as to satisfy a religious need, common enough in this period, for a saving ‘gnostic’ illumination. The purpose of the Hermetist teacher - and the treatises tend to be stylized as lessons in a course of ever more esoteric instruction - is to generate a gn>sis, an intuitive knowledge of god and self, vouchsafed to very few, an answer in cosmic terms to the perennial question ‘What am I here for? What am I?’. The instruction finds its fulfilment in intellectual illumination, as the pupil becomes aware of being a particle of divine life and light (Poemandres 21) and the teacher can say ‘You have come to know yourself and our common Father’ (Corpus Hermeticum XIII 22).

In this context, doctrinal consistency and lucid theory are minor considerations. There arenumerous contradictions between the treatises - one text admits as much (Corpus Hermeticum XVI 1). Some of these go back to Plato’s own works, to the contrast there between the Timaeus, with its picture of mankind placed in a good world by a good god - an optimism strongly endorsed by the Asclepius and by Corpus Hermeticum II, V-VI, VIII-XII, XIV, XVI - and the gloomier account of our human condition in the Phaedo and the Phaedrus, reflected in the severe pessimism of Poemandres, Corpus Hermeticum IV, VII, XIII and Kor0 Kosmou, when they dismiss the material world as a ‘totality of evil’ (Corpus Hermeticum IV 6), into which the soul has fallen as a punishment for original sin (Kor0 Kosmou 24), or in consequence of some primeval blunder (Poemandres 14). But the inconsistencies hardly matter. The Hermetic treatises aredocuments of spirituality, not philosophy. Scholarship has come increasingly to see them as translations, as products of a native Egyptian religious tradition (the very fact that they are attributed to Hermes-Thoth is confirmation of their author’s religious loyalties) rewritten in the language of Middle Platonism.

Thoth was, among other things, the god of wisdom, knowledge and science. In Roman Egypt numerous works were ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus on technical subjects such as astrology, alchemy and the hidden properties of plants. His name is constantly invoked in magical papyri. These disciplines all rested on a principle, widely held in late antiquity and briefly sketched in the Asclepius (2-7, 19), of cosmic ‘sympathy’. Linking things on earth to each other and to things in heaven is a nexus of largely hidden sympathies and antipathies which can be used to explain, predict and manipulate the course of events. The philosophical Hermetica, where mentioning these occult sciences, give them a high religious colouring. Magic and philosophy alike, says the Kor0 Kosmou (68), nourish the soul. Both are ways to salvation.

Hermes was remembered as a magician, and also as a primeval sage, a younger contemporary of Moses, who foretold the coming of Christianity. During the Middle Ages, numerous works in Arabic and Latin were produced under his name. The arrival of Corpus Hermeticum in the West created something of a sensation: Ficino interrupted his life’s work on Plato and Plotinus to translate it. A vastly older figure than Plato and a vastly purer exponent of the ‘original theology’ (prisca theologia), Hermes lent authority and respectability to the active interest which Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and others took in magic. The broad Hermetic vision of the world as a network of hidden forces waiting to by discovered and exploited by the magus was to be an inspiration to such luminaries of sixteenth-century science as Paracelsus, whose experiments in alchemy led to the discovery of laudanum, and Giordano Bruno, whose Hermetic interests endedwith him burnt at the stake. The antiquity, and hence the authority, of Hermes Trismegistus received a fatal blow in 1614 when Isaac Casaubon demonstrated, on linguistic and other grounds, that the Hermetic writings could only be a late forgery. Hermes still had admirers and readers in the seventeenth century, including the Cambridge Platonists and even Isaac Newton. But Casaubon remained unrefuted; and the Hermetic writings lost their appeal to all save lovers of the occult and, in the twentieth century, historians of religion.

See also: Gnosticism; Mystical philosophy in Islam §2; Renaissance philosophyJOHN PROCOPÉ

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References and further reading

Copenhaver, B.P. (ed.) (1992) Hermetica: The Greek ‘Corpus Hermeticum’ and the Latin‘Asclepius’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.(English translation, with notes and auseful introduction.)

Festugière, A.-J. (1944-54) La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, Paris: Gabalda, 4 vols.(Indispensable in-depth study.)

Fowden, G. (1986) The Egyptian Hermes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Importantor the historical and social background of the Hermetica.)

GGrafton, A. (1983) ‘Protestant Versus Prophet: Isaac Casaubon on Hermes Trismegistus’,Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46: 78-93.(On Casaubon’s seminalredating of the Corpus Hermeticum.)

Kingsley, P. (1993) ‘Poimandres: The Etymology of the Name and the Origins of the Hermetica’,

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56: 1-24.(Seeks to vindicate asauthentically Egyptian the main content of the treatises.)

Nock, A.D. and Festugière, A.-J. (eds) (1945-54) Hermès Trismégiste, Budé series, Paris:Belles Lettres, 4 vols. (Text, French translation and notes.)

Yates, F.A. (1964) Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge & KeganPaul.(Important study of the Renaissance tradition.)

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Gnosticism

Gnosticism comprises a loosely associated group of teachers, teachings and sects which professed to offer ‘gnosis’, saving knowledge or enlightenment, conveyed in various myths which sought to explain the origin of the world and of the human soul and the destiny of the latter. Everything originated from a transcendent spiritual power; but corruption set in and inferior powers emerged, resulting in the creation of the material world in which the human spirit is now imprisoned. Salvation is sought by cultivating the inner life while neglecting the body and social duties unconnected with the cult. The Gnostic movement emerged in the first and second centuries AD and was seen as a rival to orthodox Christianity, though in fact some Gnostic sects were more closely linked with Judaism or with Iranian religion. By the fourth century its influence was waning, but it persisted with sporadic revivals into the Middle Ages.

1 Basic doctrines

Gnosticism can best be understood in terms of family likeness. One can identify characteristic features, most of which are found in most Gnostic sects; but the attempts often made to defineGnosticism in terms of universally present common features can only approximate to the truth.

Characteristic tenets include:

1 A radical dualism, contrasting a transcendent realm of pure spirit with the world of gross matter. The human makeup likewise presents a sharp contrast of spirit and sensuality, with a corresponding distinction between the ‘elect’ or spiritual people and the rest of society, though some systems introduce an intermediate grade.

2 A creator presented as imperfect or evil, though commonly identified with the God of Judaism, and sharply contrasted with the supreme divinity, who is his ultimate source. His existence is explained by various myths depicting events prior to the creation and claiming to show how evil dispositions arose by accumulated lapses among the heavenly powers.

3 The human spirit originated in the higher realm, but is now imprisoned in the form of a soul within the material body. Many Gnostic sects taught that the same spirit can live many lives. But it is often seen as predestined to salvation or the reverse.

4 The Gnostics’ aim was to liberate their spirits from all attachment to material things, and thereby return with the elect minority to ultimate happiness. Most Gnostic sects therefore adopted a puritan ethic, though some held that all physical actions are contemptible and approved licentious conduct as a sign of liberation.

2 Definitions, origins and dating

‘Gnosticism’ is a term coined by modern scholars. Ancient writers allude to ‘gnosis’, that is,knowledge, especially spiritual knowledge or enlightenment. St Paul speaks disparagingly ofChristians who laid claim to it (1 Corinthians 8: 1), but it was nevertheless commended byClement of Alexandria and others. Clement also uses ‘Gnostic’ to mean a devout andinstructed Christian. The Gnostic sects themselves had no common self-designation parallel to‘Jew’ or ‘Christian’, and were commonly named after their founders. Irenaeus (c.130-c.200),however, implies that the term was appropriated by several sects, and its use was soonextended to include all similar schools.

There has been much debate about the origins of Gnosticism, whether Greek, Jewish or Iranian.It now appears that the movement was too diversified for any single-source theory to beacceptable, and many forms of it clearly presuppose an amalgamation of different cultures. Itsablest exponents, including Valentinus and Marcion (fl. c.140-60), inherit the traditions ofHellenistic Judaism, incorporating Christian elements; the rest are unlikely to interest students ofphilosophy.

The problem of dating has been complicated by ill-defined terminology. It has been claimed thatGnosticism originated in Iran before the Christian movement emerged. But it now appears thatthe emergence of systematic Gnostic teaching is roughly contemporaneous with a parallelChristian development, though many of the ideas found in Gnosticism were current earlier.Scholars, especially in Germany, now tend to reserve the term ‘Gnosticism’ for the elaboratesystems described by Irenaeus around 180 AD, for example, using ‘Gnosis’ as an inclusive termfor its constituent ideas.

Mandaeism, a small Gnostic sect unnoticed by Christian writers, has attracted some attentionfrom scholars, as the sect still survives and has preserved sacred writings of great antiquity. Itsclaim to derive from John the Baptist is probably unfounded.

3 Sources

For many centuries Gnosticism was known only through the writings of its Christian opponents,notably Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement, who did however embody quotations from the worksthey criticized. Some later Gnostic texts of dubious value emerged in the eighteenth century,supplemented by the important Berlin Codex 8502 (discovered 1901, fully edited 1955). But thesituation was transformed by the discovery of forty-four books in codex form at Nag-Hammadiin Upper Egypt in 1944 (though once again publication was delayed). Most are Coptictranslations of Greek originals, some of which probably date from the first century AD. Many ofthem introduce biblical characters, though strongly influenced by Gnostic assumptions. Threemay be mentioned in particular: the Apocryphon of John, which abounds in fanciful mythology,but was apparently authoritative and survives in several copies; the Gospel of Thomas, acollection of sayings ascribed to Jesus, isolated from their settings and accompanying actions,but sometimes presenting variant forms of canonical Gospel texts; and the so-called Gospel ofTruth (Evangelium veritatis), the one item in the collection which could without absurdity beannexed to the Christian scriptures; it has no marked heretical features and offers an originalmeditation on the passion of Christ.

The list of sources should be extended by a brief note on Manicheism, a Gnostic sect foundedby Mani (Manes, Manichaeus) around 216-76 AD in Iran, and influential especially in the fourthcentury, when it briefly captured St Augustine (see Manicheism). Earlier patristic and Muslimsources can now be compared with Manichean documents found at Turfan from 1898 and in

Egypt from 1930 onwards, including a biography of the founder.

4 Philosophical content and value

Early Christian writers, especially Hippolytus (c.170-c.236), argued that the Gnostics wereinfluenced by Greek philosophy. In most cases this is unlikely, and where such influence existedit has been overlaid by mythology. Some philosophical schools, for example, Sceptics andEpicureans, can be discounted; Stoic influence was slight and indirect. One must also excludethe dominant Platonism, which taught the eternity of the world, taking the Timaeus to symbolizeits eternal dependence on creative goodness. But some Gnostic sects echo the Jewish andChristian Platonism that assimilated the early chapters of Genesis with the Timaeus interpretedhistorically, as it was by Plutarch and Atticus. The Nag-Hammadi texts include an extract fromPlato’s Republic (588a-589b) inaccurately reproduced in Coptic. Pythagorean influenceappears in the significance assigned to numbers, already present in the Jewish practice ofGematria, where numbers, commonly expressed by letters, are regrouped to yield significantwords; thus 666, ‘the number of the beast’ (Revelation 13: 18), can be split up, it is alleged, toyield the letters NERO CAESAR.

Platonic traits appear clearly in the Valentinian system, which was widely influential and iscommonly taken as typical. Valentinus was a gifted man who hoped to be made Bishop ofRome, and so presumably restrained his speculative powers, as his scanty surviving fragmentssuggest. Yet the Valentinian system, as known only one generation later, presents abewilderingly complex mythology, clearly unacceptable to mainstream Christians.

Note however the following features:

1 Dualism is modified to include an intermediate grade: three levels of being - spirit, soul and matter; and three classes of people - the Gnostic elect, the conventional church member, the unregenerate outsider - which recalls the three classes of citizens in Plato’s Republic.

2 Evil is traced to defective cognition.3 The ultimate divinity expands to form a series of powers or ‘Aeons’. The first derivative is

God’s self-knowledge (his ‘Ennoia’). But the process goes wrong: in the developed Valentinian myth, the primal fault is ascribed to the last in a series of thirty Aeons, who nevertheless bears the prestigious name of Sophia. This may point to an earlier conception in which it is the first derivative, Ennoia-Sophia, who fails. Conversely, Irenaeus describes a further development in which the erring Sophia herself is duplicated.

The myth serves to express a fundamental problem of theology. The ancients commonly thoughtof knowledge as a process of copying; thus we may be said to know someone when we canrecall that person’s features. Thus any knowledge of God must be a kind of replica. But itcannot be perfect, or it would amount to a second divinity. So any attempt to elucidate God mustbe presumptuous. The most thoughtful treatment of the problem appears in the TripartiteTractate from Nag-Hammadi. Here God’s nature is expressed in a series of powers which atfirst appear as impersonal attributes; but to replicate God’s being each one must become asovereign will; they thus incur a common failure, as each one fails to consider its ownincompleteness and its need of the others. This account of the primary fault is clearly morepersuasive than the official Valentinian theory, which fixes the blame exclusively on Sophia. Butthe majority of Gnostic teachers were catering for untrained minds, and sought to impress themwith increasingly complex and pretentious mythology, a feature which today baffles and repelsmany philosophers.

CHRISTOPHER STEAD Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London: Routledge

References and further reading

Foerster, W. (ed. and trans.) (1972, 1974) Gnosis, Oxford: Clarendon Press.(An Englishtranslation of Gnostic texts in two volumes: 1, Patristic Evidence: 2, Coptic and

Mandaean

Sources.)Grant, R.M. (ed. and trans.) (1961) Gnosticism, An Anthology, London: Collins. (Good

introductory collection.)Jonas, H. (1958) The Gnostic Religion, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.(Authoritative brief

survey.)Koester, H. (1990) Ancient Christian Gospels, their History and Development, London:

SCM Press.(Compares the canonical Gospels with Gnostic parallels.)Layton, B. (ed. and trans.) (1987) The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation, London:

SCM.(Complete English version of the Nag-Hammadi texts.)Pagels, E.H. (1975) The Gnostic Paul, Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press.(Introduces Gnostic

biblical scholarship.)Pagels, E.H. (1979) The Gnostic Gospels, New York: Random House; repr. Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1982.(Introduces Gnostic biblical scholarship.)Robinson, J.M. (ed. and trans.) (1988) The Nag-Hammadi Library, Leiden: Brill. (Complete

translation of the collection.)Rudolph, K. (1983) Gnosis, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.(Authoritative, comprehensive study.)Stead, G.C. (1969) ‘The Valentinian Myth of Sophia’, Journal of Theological Studies 20:

75-104.(Examines the growth of a Gnostic myth).Wilson, R.M. (1968) Gnosis and the New Testament, Oxford: Blackwell.(Fairly simple in

Treatment, but totally reliable.)Yamauchi, E. (1973) Pre-Christian Gnosticism, London: Tyndale Press.(Discusses the

question whether Gnosticism antedates Christianity.)

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Mystical philosophy in Islam

Mystical philosophy has an intimate connection with the mainstream of Islamic philosophy. It consists of several main strands, ranging from Isma‘ili thought to the metaphysics of al-Ghazali and Ibn al-‘Arabi, and with a continuing powerful presence in the contemporary Islamic world. Although mystical thinkers were aware that they were advocating an approach to thinking and knowledge which differed from much of the Peripatetic tradition, they constructed a systematic approach whichwas often continuous with that tradition. On the whole they emphasized the role of intellectual intuition in our approach to understanding reality, and sought to show how such an understanding might be put on a solid conceptual basis. The ideas that they created were designed to throw light on the nature of the inner sense of Islam.

1 Mystical philosophy as Islamic philosophy

It is important at the outset to ask what is meant by mystical philosophy in the context of the Islamic philosophical tradition. The term in Arabic closest to the phrase ‘mystical philosophy’ would perhaps be al-hikmat al-dhawqiyya, literally ‘tasted philosophy or wisdom’, which etymologically corresponds exactly to sapience from the Latin root sapere, meaning to taste. As understood in English, however, the term ‘mystical philosophy’ would include other types of thought in the Islamic context, although al-hikmat al-dhawqiyya was at its heart. Al-hikmat al-dhawqiyya is usually contrasted with discursive philosophy, or al-hikmat al-bahthiyya. Mystical philosophy in Islam would have to include all intellectual perspectives, which consider not only reason but also the heart-intellect, in fact primarily the latter as the main instrument for the gaining of knowledge. If this definition is accepted, then most schools of Islamic philosophy had a mystical element, for there was rarely a rationalistic philosophy developed in Islam which remained impervious to the distinction between reason and the intellect (as nous or intellectus) and the primacy of the latter while rejecting altogether the role of the heart-intellect in gaining knowledge.

This entry concentrates on those schools which not only include but emphasize noesis and the role of the heart-intellect or illumination in the attainment of knowledge. We shall therefore eave aside the Peripatetic school, despite the mystical elements in certain works of al-Farabi, the ‘oriental philosophy’ of Ibn Sina (Nasr 1996b) and the doctrine of the intellect adopted by the

Muslim Peripatetics (mashsha’un) in general. Instead, the discussion will concentrate primarily upon the Isma’ili philosophy so closely connected with Hermetic, Pythagorean and Neoplatonic teachings, the school of Illumination (ishraq) of al-Suhrawardi and his followers, certain strands of Islamic philosophy in Spain and later Islamic philosophy in Persia and India. However, it would also have to include the doctrinal formulations of Sufism and its metaphysics from al-Ghazali and Ibn al-‘Arabi to the present.

2 Isma‘ili and Hermetic philosophy

Isma‘ili philosophy was among the earliest to be formulated in Islam going back to the Umm al-kitab (The Mother of Books) composed in the second century AH (eighth century AD). It expanded in the fourth century AH (tenth century AD) with Abu Hatim al-Razi and Hamid al-Din Kirmani and culminated with Nasir-i Khusraw (Corbin 1993, 1994). By nature this whole philosophical tradition was esoteric in character and identified philosophy itself with the inner, esoteric and therefore mystical dimension of religion. It was concerned with the hermeneutic interpretation (ta’wil) of sacred scripture and saw authentic philosophy as a wisdom which issues from the instructions of the Imam (who is identified on a certain level with the heart-intellect), the figure who is able to actualize the potentialities of the human intellect and enable it to gain divine knowledge. The cosmology, psychology and eschatology of Isma‘ilism are inextricably connected with its Imamology and the role of the Imam in initiation into the divine mysteries. All the different schools of Isma‘ili philosophy, therefore, must be considered as mystical philosophy despite notable distinctions between them, especially, following the downfall of the Fatimids, between the interpretations of those who followed the Yemeni school of Isma‘ilism and those who accepted Hasan al-Sabbah and ‘The Resurrection of Alamut’ in the seventh century AH (thirteenth century AD).

Two of the notable philosophical elements associated with Shi‘ism in general andIsma‘ilism in particular during the early centuries of Islamic history are Hermetism andPythagoreanism, the presence of which is already evident in that vast corpus of writingsassociated with Jabir ibn Hayyan, who was at once alchemist and philosopher. Thephilosophical dimension of the Jabirian corpus is certainly of a mystical nature, havingincorporated much of Hermeticism into itself, as are later works of Islamic alchemy whichin fact acted as channels for the transmission of Hermetic philosophy to the medieval West.When one thinks of the central role of Hermeticism in Western mystical philosophy, onemust not forget the immediate Islamic origin of such fundamental texts as the EmeraldTablet and the Turba Philosophorum, and therefore the significance of such works astexts of Islamic mystical philosophy. Obviously, therefore, one could not speak of Islamicmystical philosophy without mentioning at least the Hermetical texts integrated into Islamicthought by alchemists as well as philosophers and Sufis, and also Hermetic texts written byMuslim authors themselves. It should be recalled in this context in fact that the philosopherIbn Sina had knowledge of certain Hermetic texts such as Poimandres and the Sufi Ibnal-‘Arabi displays vast knowledge of Hermeticism in his al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (TheMeccan Illuminations) and many other works (Sezgin 1971).

As for Pythagoreanism, although elements of it are seen in the Jabirian corpus, it wasprimarily in the Rasa’il (Epistles) of the Ikhwan al-Safa’ in the fourth century AH (tenthcentury AD), who came from a Shi‘ite background and whose work was wholly adopted bylater Isma‘ilism, that one sees the full development of an Islamic Pythagoreanism basedupon the symbolic and mystical understanding of numbers and geometric forms (Netton1982) (see Ikhwan al-Safa’). What is called Pythagorean number mysticism in the Westhad a full development in the Islamic world, and was in fact more easily integrated into thegeneral Islamic intellectual framework than into that of Western Christianity (seePythagoreanism).

3 Illuminationist philosophy

Perhaps the most enduring and influential school of mystical philosophy in Islam came into

being in the sixth century AH (twelfth century AD) with Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, whofounded the school of ishraq or Illumination. Al-Suhrawardi’s basic premise was thatknowledge is available to man not through ratiocination alone but also, and above all,through illumination resulting from the purification of one’s inner being. He founded aschool of philosophy which some have called theosophy in its original sense, that is, mysticalphilosophy through and through but without being against logic or the use of reason. In fact,al-Suhrawardi criticized Aristotle and the Muslim Peripatetics on logical grounds beforesetting about expounding the doctrine of ishraq. This doctrine is based not on the refutationof logic, but of transcending its categories through an illuminationist knowledge based onimmediacy and presence, or what al-Suhrawardi himself called ‘knowledge by presence’(al-‘ilm al-huduri), in contrast to conceptual knowledge (al-‘ilm al-husuli) which is ourordinary method of knowing based on concepts (Ha’iri Yazdi 1992).

In his masterpiece Hikmat al-ishraq (The Philosophy of Illumination), translated by theforemost Western student of al-Suhrawardi, Henry Corbin, as Le Livre de la SagesseOrientale (The Book of Oriental Wisdom), the Master of Illumination presents anexposition of a form of mystical philosophy which has had a following up to the present day.Based upon the primacy of illumination by the angelic lights as the primary means ofattaining authentic knowledge, the school of ishraq in fact was instrumental in bestowing amystical character upon nearly all later Islamic philosophy, which drew even closer toIslamic esotericism or Sufism than in the earlier centuries of Islamic history without everceasing to be philosophy. Although the wedding between philosophy and mysticism in Islamis due most of all to the gnostic and sapiential nature of Islamic spirituality itself, on theformal level it is most of all the school of Illumination or ishraq which was instrumental inactualizing this wedding, as eight centuries of later Islamic philosophy bears witness (seeIlluminationist philosophy).

4 Philosophy in the Maghrib and Spain

TThe rise of intellectual activity in the Maghrib and, especially, Andalusia was associatedfrom the beginning with an intellectual form of Sufism in which Ibn Masarra was to play acentral role. Most of the later Islamic philosophers of this region possessed a mysticaldimension, including even the Peripatetics Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufayl. The former’s Tadbiral-mutawahhid (Regimen of the Solitary), far from being a political treatise, deals inreality with man’s inner being. Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Living Son of the Awake),interpreted by many in the West in naturalistic and rationalistic terms, is a symbolic accountof the wedding between the partial and universal intellect within the human being, awedding which results consequently in the confirmation of revelation that is also receivedthrough the archangel of revelation, who is none other than the objective embodiment of theuniversal intellect. Moreover, this mystical tendency is to be seen in its fullness in lesswell-known figures such as Ibn al-Sid of Badajoz who, like the Ikhwan al-Safa’, wasdevoted to mathematical mysticism, and especially the Sufi Ibn Sab‘in, the last of theAndalusian philosophers of the seventh century AH (thirteenth century AD), who developedone of the most extreme forms of mystical philosophy in Islam based upon the doctrine ofthe transcendent unity of being (wahdat al-wujud) (Taftazani and Leaman 1996).Andalusia was also the home of the greatest expositor of Sufi metaphysics, Ibn al-‘Arabi((see §6).

5 Illuminationist thought in the East

In eastern lands of the Islamic world and especially Persia, which was the main theatre forthe flourishing of Islamic philosophy from the seventh century AH (thirteenth century AD)onward, primarily mystical philosophy was dominant during later centuries despite therevival of the discursive philosophy of the mashsha’is, such as Ibn Sina, by Khwajah Nasiral-Din al-Tusi and others. It was in the East in the seventh and eighth centuries AH(thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD) that the doctrines of ishraq with its emphasis oninner vision and illumination were revived by al-Suhrawardi’s major commentators, Shams

al-Din al-Shahrazuri and Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, who was also a master of Ibn Sinanphilosophy. The next three centuries saw mystical ideas and doctrines become ever morecombined with the philosophical theses of the earlier schools, and figures such as IbnTurkah Isfahani sought consciously to combine the teachings of Ibn Sina, al-Suhrawardi andIbn al-‘Arabi.

This tendency culminated in the tenth century AH (sixteenth century AD) with theestablishment of the School of Isfahan by Mir Damad and the foremost metaphysician oflater Islamic thought, Mulla Sadra, in whom the blending of ratiocination, inner illuminationand revelation became complete (Corbin 1972). In this school the most rigorous logicaldiscourse is combined with illumination and direct experience of ultimate reality, as seen soamply in Mulla Sadra’s masterpiece al-Asfar al-arba‘ah (The Four Journeys). This laterIslamic philosophy is certainly mystical philosophy, relying as it does on ‘experiential’knowledge and direct vision of ultimate reality and the angelic worlds, a vision that isassociated with the eye of the heart (‘ayn al-qalb orchism-i dil). However, it is also aphilosophy in which the categories of logic are themselves seen as ladders for ascent to theworld of numinous reality in accordance with the Islamic perspective, in which what wouldbe called Islamic mysticism from a Christian perspective is of a gnostic (‘irfani) andsapiental nature, Islamic mysticism being essentially a path of knowledge of which love isthe consort, rather than a way of love exclusive of knowledge.

In any case it was this type of philosophy, associated especially with the name of MullaSadra, that has dominated the philosophical scene in Persia during the past few centuriesand produced major figures such as Hajji Mulla Hadi al-Sabzawari and Mulla ‘Ali Zunuzi inthe thirteenth century AH (nineteenth century AD), both of whom were philosophers as wellas mystics. It is also this type of philosophy that continues to this day and has in fact beenrevived during the past few decades. Nearly all philosophers in Persia associated with theschool of Mulla Sadra, which is also known as al-hikmat al-muta‘aliya (literally the‘transcendent theosophy’), have been and remain at once philosophers and mystics.

In India likewise, Islamic philosophy began to spread only after al-Suhrawardi and duringthe past seven centuries most Islamic philosophers in that land have been also what in theWest would be called mystics. It is not accidental that the school of Mulla Sadra spreadrapidly after him in India and has had expositors there to this day. Perhaps the most famousof Muslim intellectual figures in India, Shah Waliullah of Delhi, exemplifies this reality (seeShah Wali Allah). He was a philosopher and Sufi as well as a theologian, and his manywritings attest to the blending of philosophy and mysticism. It can in fact be said thatIslamic philosophy in India is essentially mystical philosophy, despite the attention paid bythe Islamic philosophers there to logic and in some cases to natural philosophy andmedicine.

6 Sufism and the Akbarian tradition

No treatment of mystical philosophy in Islam would be complete without a discussion ofdoctrinal Sufism and Sufi metaphysics, although technically speaking in Islamic civilization aclear distinction has always been made between philosophy (al-falsafa or al-hikma) andSufi metaphysics and gnosis (al-ma‘rifah, ‘irfan). However, as the term ‘mysticalphilosophy’ is understood in English, it would certainly include Sufi metaphysical andcosmological doctrines which were not explicitly formulated until the sixth and seventhcenturies AH (twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD) although their roots are to be found in theQur’an and hadith and the sayings and writings of the early Sufis. The first Sufi authorswho turned to an explicit formulation of Sufi metaphysical doctrines were Abu HamidMuhammad al-Ghazali in his later esoteric treatise such as Mishkat al-anwar (The Nicheof Lights) and al-Risalat al-laduniyya (Treatise on Divine Knowledge), and ‘Aynal-Qudat Hamadani who followed a generation after him.

The writings of these great masters were, however, a prelude for the vast expositions of

the master of Islamic gnosis Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-‘Arabi, perhaps the most influentialIslamic intellectual figure of the past seven hundred years. Not only did he profoundlyinfluence many currents of Sufism and establish an ‘Akbarian tradition’ identified withsuch later masters as Sadr al-Din Qunawi, ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami and, in the last century,Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir and Shaykh Ahmad al-‘Alawi. He and his school also influencedformal philosophy to such an extent that a figure such as Mulla Sadra would not beconceivable without him. The Ibn al-‘Arabian doctrines of the transcendent unity of being,the universal man, the imaginal world and eschatological realities are not only esoteric andmystical doctrines of the greatest significance in themselves for the understanding of theinner teachings of Islam, but are also sources of philosophical meditation for generations ofIslamic philosophers to the present day, who have cultivated diverse and rich schools ofmystical philosophy during the past eight centuries and brought into being currents ofphilosophical thought that are still alive in the Islamic world. One need only think of suchfourteenth century AH (twentieth century AD) figures as ‘Alalamah Tabataba’i in Persiaand ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud in Egypt to realize the significance of the wedding betweenphilosophy and mysticism in the Islamic intellectual tradition, not only over the ages, but aspart of the contemporary Islamic intellectual scene (see Islamic philosophy, modern).

See also: Gnosticism; Ibn al-‘Arabi; Illuminationist philosophy; Mysticism, history of;Mysticism, nature and assessment of; al-Suhrawardi

SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London: RoutledgeReferences and further reading

Chittick, W. (1989) The Sufi Path of Knowledge, Albany, NY: State University of NewYork Press.(The standard account of the nature of mystical knowledge.)

Chittick, W. (1994) Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of ReligiousDiversity, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.(An analysis of theconcept of the mundus imaginalis.)

Chodkiewicz, M. (1993) Seal of the Saints - Prophethood and Sainthood in theDoctrine of Ibn ‘Arabi, trans. L. Sherrard, Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society.(Closeaccount of the key concepts of prophecy and sainthood.)

Corbin, H. (1972) En Islam iranien (On Persian Islam) Paris: Gallimard.(The mostimportant collection of sources of Persian philosophy.)

Corbin, H. (1980) Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, trans. W. Trask, Houston, TX:Spring Publications.(Ibn Sina’s account of mystical perception.)

Corbin, H. (1993) The History of Islamic Philosophy, in collaboration with S.H. Nasr andO. Yahya, trans. P. Sherrard, London: Kegan Paul International.(The first history to layproper emphasis on Persian philosophy.)

Corbin, H. (1994) Trilogie ismaélienne (Isma‘ili Trilogy), Paris: Verdier.(Discussion ofsome of the most important Isma‘ili texts.)

Cruz Hernández, M. (1981) Historia del pensamiento en el mundo islámico (Historyof Thought in the Islamic World), Madrid: Alianza Editorial.(Excellent general accountof Islamic philosophy.)

Ha’iri Yazdi, M. (1992) The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy -Knowledge by Presence, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.(The bestaccount of ‘ilm al-huduri, knowledge by presence.)

Knysh, A. (1993) ‘The Diffusion of Ibn ‘Arabi’s Doctrine’, in S. Hirtenstein and M.Tiernan (eds) Muhyiddin ibn ‘Arabi - A Commemorative Volume, Shaftesbury:Element, 307-27.(Discussion of the influence of Ibn al-‘Arabi.)

Nanji, A. (1996) ‘Isma‘ili Philosophy’, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History ofIslamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 9, 144-54.(Examination of Isma‘iliphilosophy including the influence of Neoplatonism.)

Nasr, S.H. (1975) Three Muslim Sages, New York: Delmar.(Excellent introductions to IbnSina, al-Suhrawardi and Ibn al-‘Arabi.)

Nasr, S.H. (1978) Islamic Life and Thought, Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress. (General introduction to the role of mysticism in Islamic culture.)

Nasr, S.H. (1996a) ‘Ibn Sina’s Oriental Philosophy’, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds)History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, 247-51.(Argument for theexistence and importance of the ‘oriental philosophy’.)

Nasr, S.H. (1996b) The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, Richmond: CurzonPress.(Deals with the Persian contribution to philosophy and mysticism.)

Netton, I. (1982) Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of theBrethren of Purity, London: Allen & Unwin.(The standard account of the Ikhwanal-Safa’.)

Sezgin, F. (1971) Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (History of ArabicLiterature), vol. 4, Leiden: Brill.(Sources on Hermetism in Islamic literature.)al-Suhrawardi (1154-91) Hikmat al-ishraq (The Philosophy of Illumination), trans H.Corbin, Le livre de la sagesse orientale, Paris: Verdier, 1986.(Very importantilluminationist text.)

Taftazani, A. and Leaman, O. (1996) ‘Ibn Sab‘in’, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds)History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, 346-9.(Discussion of thesignificance of the thought of Ibn Sab‘in.)

Ziai, H. (1990) Knowledge and Illumination, Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.(Very clearaccount of the links between illuminationist philosophy and epistemology.)

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Pythagoreanism

Pythagoreanism refers to a Greek religious-philosophical movement that originated with Pythagoras in the sixth century BC. Although Pythagoreanism in its historical development embraced a wide range of interests in politics, mysticism, music, mathematics and astronomy, the common denominator remained a general adherence among Pythagoreans to the name of thefounder and his religious beliefs. Pythagoras taught the immortality and transmigration of the soul (reincarnation) and recommended a way of life that through ascetic practices, dietary rules and ethical conduct promised to purify the soul and bring it into harmony with the surrounding universe. Thereby the soul would become godlike since Pythagoras believed that the cosmos, in view of its orderly and harmonious workings and structure, was divine.

Pythagoreanism thus has from its beginnings a cosmological context that saw further evolution along mathematical lines in the succeeding centuries. Pythagorean philosophers, drawing on musical theories that may go back to Pythagoras, expressed the harmony of the universe in terms of numerical relations and possibly even claimed that things are numbers. Notwithstanding a certain confusion in Pythagorean number philosophy between abstract and concrete, Pythagoreanism represents a valid attempt, outstanding in early Greek philosophy, to explain the world by formal, structural principles.

Overall, the combination of religious, philosophical and mathematical speculations that characterizes Pythagoreanism exercised a significant influence on Greek thinkers, notably on Plato and his immediate successors as well as those Platonic philosophers known as Neo-Pythagoreans and Neoplatonists.

1 History

In the second half of the sixth century BC, Pythagoras founded a community in thesouthern Italian city of Croton whose members were united by the belief in thetransmigration of the soul, an ascetic way of life that centred on the purification ofthe soul, and a political outlook that aimed at social reform along aristocratic lines.Pythagorean associations (hetaireiai), which also formed in other cities of MagnaGraecia, acquired considerable political authority, but their dominance eventuallymet with opposition, both during the lifetime of Pythagoras and later again about 450BC. In the wake of these anti-Pythagorean movements the followers of Pythagoraswere scattered throughout the Greek world, so that by the time of Plato there islittle evidence of formal Pythagorean societies. Individual Pythagoreans, however,continued to be recognized, some by their distinctive lifestyle in matters of food,

dress and purificatory practices, others by the additional pursuit of variousphilosophical, mathematical and musical theories with which they creditedPythagoras. Later tradition refers to these two types of Pythagoreans as‘hearers’ (akousmatikoi) and ‘learners’ (math0matikoi). The distinctionsupposedly goes back to the original society in which some members were only fitto accept the oral teachings of Pythagoras without arguments and proofs, whilethose with more leisure and perhaps philosophical ability were further instructed inthe rational foundations of the master’s teachings. Whatever differences there mayhave been between groups of Pythagoreans, and even among individualmath0matikoi, all professed allegiance to Pythagoras.

From the time of Pythagoras to Plato there were several famous Pythagoreans -Hippasus, Philolaus and Archytas. Aristotle, in his extant works, speaks onlygenerally of the Pythagoreans (‘some Pythagoreans say… ’); his special treatise onPythagorean beliefs unfortunately no longer survives. In the third and secondcenturies BC we do not hear of philosophers who were known as or calledthemselves Pythagoreans, but interest in ‘Pythagoreanism’ continued, as isevidenced by the wealth of apocryphal writings in prose and verse on Pythagoreanthemes that mostly date from this period. The actual practice of Pythagoreanismexperienced a revival in the Roman world from the first century BC to the firstcentury AD; Latin writers such as Cicero, Ovid and Seneca testify to its popularity.In the first two centuries AD the theoretical side of Pythagoreanism marked certainphilosophers to the extent that they may be called Neo-Pythagoreans (seeNeo-Pythagoreanism) and these in turn influenced later Platonic philosophers (seeNeoplatonism).

2 Music, mathematics, and cosmology

Plato says of the true philosopher, whose mind is on the higher realities (that is, thePlatonic Forms):

he looks unto the fixed and eternally immutable realm where… all is orderly andaccording to reason, and he imitates this realm and, as much as possible,assimilates himself to it… and by association with the divine order becomeshimself orderly and divine as far as a human being can…(Republic VII 500c)

Plato’s philosophic ideal, as well as one of the methods he prescribed to achieve it -namely mathematics - owes much to Pythagoreanism. Pythagoras had taught thatlife should be in harmony with the divine cosmos (see Pythagoras §2). InPythagoreanism harmony (harmonia) became a central tenet and was explainedthrough numerical relations, possibly in connection with musical theory. Forexample, the Pythagoreans thought that the motions of the orbiting planets produceda sound which, given the belief that the intervals between the heavenly bodiescorresponded to musical ratios, was harmonious. So Aristotle explains the ‘music ofthe spheres’ - one of several explanations offered for this famous Pythagoreanimage. Of seminal importance for illustrating the coherence of music and numberwas the discovery of musical ratios - that music should result when the first fourintegers of the numerical system, used as components in the harmonic ratios of theoctave ( ), the fifth ( ) and the fourth ( ), were imposed upon thecontinuum of sound. Whether or not Pythagoras, as tradition holds, was the‘discoverer’ of the musical concords, the Pythagoreans fixed upon the first fournumbers as the building blocks of nature. These four sufficed to give extension andshape to bodies in the sequence of point-line-surface-solid:

Moreover, the first four integers add up to ten, which the Pythagoreans considereda perfect number and represented in a figure called the tetraktys.

From whatever angle one approached the tetraktys in counting, the addition alwaysresulted in ten, the basis of the decimal system. The tetraktys also produced anequilateral triangle, the simplest plane figure, and a pyramid, the simplestthree-dimensional shape.

The Pythagoreans viewed the tetraktys as a sacred symbol and used it in thefollowing oath: ‘By him [Pythagoras] who handed down to us the tetraktys, sourceand root of everlasting nature’. In short, the Pythagoreans supposed the nature ofthings could be understood numerically; indeed, some of them apparently went sofar as to say that things are numbers: ‘…they assumed the elements of numbers tobe the elements of all things that exist, and the whole universe to be harmonia andnumber’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics 986a2).

Since numbers functioned as the constituent elements of the cosmos, it isiimportant to see how the Pythagoreans understood the nature and generation ofnumber itself. Aristotle again offers the best starting-point:

The elements of number are the even and the odd, the latter limited, the formerunlimited. The One is composed of both of these (for it is both even and odd)and number comes from the one; and numbers… are the whole universe.(Metaphysics 986a17)

How the One can be both odd and even is best explained in the sense that the One,as the first number, is the principle of both odd and even numbers (zero wasunknown in Greek mathematics). Thus ‘number comes from the One’, and thegeneration of number was simultaneously a cosmogonical process since‘numbers… are the whole universe’. Although in its origin the Pythagoreansviewed the One as both odd and even, limited and unlimited, in its practicalapplication, that is, in its interaction with other numbers, they treated it as odd andlimiting. This can be seen in the schema by which the Pythagoreans illustrated thecorrespondence of odd/even to limited/unlimited. Gnomons (carpenter squares)were placed around an arrangement of points (or pebbles) as follows:

When a gnomon is placed around one point, and the process is continued insequence, the resulting figure is always of ‘limited’ shape, that is, always a square,whereas when it is placed around two points, the result is a series of oblongs whosesides stand in an ‘unlimited’, that is, an infinite variation to each other. In thisscheme the One, as a single unit or point, is equated with the odd. The One is alsoranked with limited and odd in the Pythagorean table of ten opposites:

The position of limited/unlimited at the beginning is not accidental, for theiropposition, embodied in the original composition of the One, was considered primaland basic to the development of number and the universe, while the oppositionbetween odd and even can be generally subsumed under this fundamentaldistinction. The connection of the One with the limited reappears in anotherPythagorean text (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1091a17), where it is said that the limited(tantamount to the One) ‘breathes in’ and is thus penetrated by the unlimited. In thiscosmological fragment the unlimited is equated with the void, to be thought of asinfinite space and serving as a dividing principle. The One now becomes a Two(reminiscent of the mythological separation of heaven and earth), which in effectmarks the beginning of number, plurality and the existence of discrete physicalbodies. The cosmogonic process is sometimes put the other way round: theunlimited is limited (or penetrated) by the limit. This way of stating it brings to thefore the characteristic Greek feeling that what is unlimited, without bounds, iswithout order and somehow evil (hence ‘bad’ is listed under the unlimited in theabove table) and therefore needs to be curtailed and bounded by limit and measure

(as the limits of harmonic ratios must be imposed upon the limitless range of soundto produce music). The result, in cosmological terms, is then precisely a kosmos, anorderly and structured universe. In so far as the perfected and integral cosmosrepresents a harmonia, a unity stemming from a reconciliation of opposites,Pythagoreanism has a monistic aspect, yet in its source theory it remains essentiallydualistic: number comes from the One, and the One is composed of limited andunlimited. From these first two principles everything derives, even though the One,when identified with limit, odd, male, and so on, was felt to be the ‘good’ element inthis cosmic dualism. (There can be no question of positing the One as the soleultimate principle without imposing Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean notions uponearly Pythagoreanism.)

Limited und unlimited are the principles of number. Numbers do not merely expressthe substance, shape and quantitative differences of things but actually appear toconstitute bodies of physical dimension. The identification of things with numbersconfuses physical bodies with abstractions, or, in Aristotelian terms, the materialcauses of things with their formal causes. Here Pythagoreanism connects withmuch of Presocratic thought according to which the source and informing elementof the universe was thought of as some kind of matter, be it water, air, fire, earth, ora combination of these (see Arch0). At the same time the numerical theories of thePythagoreans represent a true advance in the history of Greek philosophy: theattempt to explain the nature of things by numbers is a valid philosophical striving tounderstand the world by its formal or structural principles, even if the Pythagoreansthen equated these with the things themselves. And while the Pythagoreans’interest in numbers was often infused with a mystical element (their solemnveneration of the tetraktys) and a primitive number symbolism that blurreddistinctions between abstract and concrete (a moral concept such as justice wasconsidered the embodiment of four, a square number of ‘just’, that is, equalreciprocity), no less an authority than Aristotle acknowledged that the Pythagoreanswere pioneers and made advances in the mathematical fields (arithmetic,astronomy, harmonics and some geometry). For the ‘Pythagorean theorem’,although long known to Babylonian mathematicians, the Pythagoreans are generallyconsidered to have found the proofs and, although in the wake of this theorem theydiscovered that the ratios of geometrical figures to each other cannot simply beexpressed by a series of rational integers - the discovery of irrational numbers andthe principle of incommensurability upset the Pythagorean notion that the world isharmony and number - their very setbacks contributed to subsequent work in Greekmathematics. Plato valued mathematics as a useful discipline to train thephilosopher in the perception of eternal and transcendent truth, since in his mind itdealt essentially with invisible and eternally valid realities. By divorcing number fromphysical substance Plato transforms Pythagorean mathematics, yet few doubt thathis interest in number, arithmetic and measure largely rests upon Pythagoreanfoundations (consider the mathematical model of the universe in his Timaeus (seePlato §16). Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy were steeped inPythagorean number theory (see Speusippus §2; Xenocrates §2).

3 Soul and ethics

Perhaps in no other ancient Greek philosophy is the human being as intimatelylinked to the cosmos as in Pythagoreanism. Although the correspondence betweenmicrocosm and macrocosm, the individual and the universe, is found in much ofGreek thought, it received a particularly sharp outline in the Pythagorean view thatbby assimilation to the divine cosmos the self would come to reflect the cosmic orderand harmony. The true self of every person was the soul (see Psych0), the essentialelement in the partnership of body and soul. Pythagoras’ teaching that the soulsurvived the dissolution of the body and reappeared in other bodies was steadfastlyadhered to throughout the history of Pythagoreanism, even if it was sometimes

eclipsed by other interests. The doctrine of the immortality and transmigration of thesoul translated into a practical and clearly defined way of life that combined ritualpurity with high ethical standards and whose precepts were embodied in sayingsknown as akousmata and symbola (see Pythagoras §2). The belief in the kinshipof all life, as a corollary to the belief in transmigration, imposed a great moralresponsibility towards parents, children, friends and fellow citizens, and generallyentailed a respectful attitude towards all forms of life in which soul may beembodied; hence the Pythagoreans were, to varying degrees, vegetarians. Theirdietary laws were also intended to free them from bodily pollution. The body wasseen as a prison, even as a grave (Plato, Gorgias 493a) from which the soul was torise, ever achieving superior reincarnations and culminating in a state of divinity.Thus the Pythagoreans postulated three kinds of rational creatures: ‘gods, men, andsuch as Pythagoras’. Pythagoras was thought to have achieved semi-divine status,which in Greek could be expressed by ‘daemon’. It is in a Pythagorean vein thatEmpedocles (§2) proclaims human beings to be fallen ‘daemons’. (A complex‘daemonology’ was to become an ingredient of Neo-Pythagoreanism.) Therecognition of the religious and moral mandates of the Pythagorean life and of itseschatological meaning constituted wisdom (sophia) and the lover of such a lifewas a philosophos, a term that in this sense, as certain traditions report, was firstcoined in Pythagorean circles.

See also: Mystical philosophy in Islam §2; Orphism; Presocratic philosophyHERMANN S. SCHIBLI

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London: Routledge

References and further reading

Aristotle (c. mid 4th century BC) Metaphysics, trans. in J. Barnes (ed.) TheComplete Works of Aristotle, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.(A primary source on early Pythagoreanism.)

Burkert, W. (1972) Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. E.L.Minar, Jr, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.(A scholarly examinationof the sources of Pythagoreanism and a critical analysis of Pythagoreanteachings; a prerequisite for all serious work on the subject.)

Diels, H and Kranz, W. (eds) (1952) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker(Fragments of the Presocratics), Berlin: Weidmann, 6th edn, vol. 1, 96-113 and375-480.(The standard collection of the ancient sources containing the mainsources on Pythagoreanism.)

Guthrie, W.K.C. (1962-78) A History of Greek Philosophy, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 6 vols.(A comprehensive and readable discussionof early Pythagoreanism can be found in volume 1, pages 146-340; emphasizesthe harmony between its religious and philosophical-scientific elements.)

Huffman, C.A. (1993) Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.(Examines the fragments of a notablePythagorean; pages 57-64 argue that ‘all things are number’ was not an actualclaim of the Pythagoreans but rather Aristotle’s summary of their numbertheory.)

Kahn, C.H. (1974) ‘Pythagorean Philosophy before Plato’, in A.P.D. Mourelatos(ed.) The Pre-Socratics, Garden City, NY: Doubleday; repr. 1993.(A short butuseful introduction.)

Kingsley, P. (1995) Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic: Empedocles andPythagorean Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.(ExaminesPythagoreanism against the background of Greek mystery and magic; alsodiscusses the influence of Pythagoreans on the myths in Plato.)

Navia, L.E. (1990) Pythagoras: An Annotated Bibliography, New York andLondon: Garland. (Includes the literature, up to 1989, not only on Pythagoras butalso on all aspects of Pythagoreanism.)

Philip, J.A. (1966) Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism, Toronto, Ont.:Toronto University Press.(An examination, based principally on Aristotle, of themajor doctrines of Pythagoreanism; in regard to cosmology, holds that thePythagorean opposites are not the first principles of a dualistic cosmos, butrather, given a creation in time, the constituents of one physis, one

world-nature.)Plato (c.380-367 BC) Republic, trans. P. Shorey, Plato: Republic, Loeb Classical

Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann,1930, 2 vols.(Much Pythagorean influence in books VI-VII.)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London: Routledge

Pythagoras (c.570-c.497 BC)

Pythagoras of Samos was an early Greek sage and religious innovator. Hetaught the kinship of all life and the immortality and transmigration of thesoul. Pythagoras founded a religious community of men and women insouthern Italy that was also of considerable political influence. His followers,who became known as Pythagoreans, went beyond these essentially religiousbeliefs of the master to develop philosophical, mathematical, astronomical,and musical theories with which they tended to credit Pythagoras himself. Thetradition established by Pythagoras weaves through much of Greekphilosophy, leaving its mark particularly on the thought of Empedocles, Plato,and later Platonists.

1 Life and deeds

Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, was born on the island of Samos. For the first halfof his life Pythagoras travelled widely, not only in Greece but supposedly also inEgypt, Phoenicia and Babylonia, where he is reputed to have acquired much of hisknowledge and religious wisdom. Perhaps to escape the rule of Polycrates, thetyrant of Samos, he emigrated to Croton in southern Italy. His moral stature andeloquence gained him many adherents. With his followers, both men and women,Pythagoras practised a simple, communal life whose goal was to live in harmonywith the divine. To that end he prescribed a regimen of purification that includeddietary restrictions, periods of silence and contemplation, and other asceticpractices. In addition to the religious and monastic aspects of the Pythagoreansociety, we hear of Pythagorean political associations (hetaireiai) that played animportant role in the public affairs of Croton and other southern Italian cities (itappears they initiated social reforms and supported aristocratic constitutions). Aftera time their dominance came to be resented and a ‘Pythagorean revolt’ ensued, inthe course of which many Pythagoreans were killed or scattered abroad.Pythagoras himself, possibly as a result of this upheaval, moved to Metapontumwhere he died.

Already during his lifetime Pythagoras was regarded with near religious veneration.It is therefore not surprising that the stories told about him after his death shouldturn into hagiology and include many fantastic elements: that Pythagoras was theHyperborean Apollo and had a golden thigh to prove it; that he was seen in twoplaces at one time; that he could converse with animals and control naturalphenomena. Pythagoras’ wonder-working clearly belongs to the realm of legend,although it reinforces the picture of him as a ‘shaman’. A more difficult matter is toestablish what Pythagoras actually taught, since the oral and then the writtentraditions attribute to him not only miracles but also sophisticated mathematical andphilosophical achievements. This habit of tracing all things back to the master,coupled with evidence of the quasi-religious avoidance of uttering his name, istypified in the expression common among Pythagoreans: ‘he himself said’ (autosepha; Latin ipse dixit). However, because Pythagoras wrote nothing and shroudedhis lectures in secrecy, it is impossible to verify all that is ascribed to him. Whatremains certain is that he was a highly influential religious teacher whose maintenets dealt with the soul and the rites required for its purification and salvation.

This made the Pythagorean movement especially popular in Magna Graecia, afertile soil for mystery cults of all kinds. Pythagoras is also connected with certain‘Orphic’ writings, since these share eschatological concerns similar to his oralteachings (see Orphism). For these reasons the following account will emphasizethose doctrines that accord with Pythagoras’ reputation as an early Greek sage andreligious innovator (for the philosophical and scientific theories traditionallyassociated with his name, see Pythagoreanism).

2 Teachings

Pythagoras believed that the world was animate and that the planets were gods.This view of the universe as living and divine was characteristic of early Greekthought (see Thales §2), but what appears unique with Pythagoras is the corollaryhe drew on an anthropological level: there is an element in human beings that isrelated to the universe and that, like the universe in which events recur in eternalcycles, is eternal. This divine, immortal element is the soul (see Psych0). With thedeath of the body the soul passes into another body, human or animal. An earlywitness to Pythagoras’ belief in transmigration (or metempsych>sis) is thepoet-philosopher Xenophanes (§1), who satirizes him for claiming to recognize thesoul of a friend when he heard the voice of a puppy that was being beaten.Pythagoras asserted of himself, as is typical of a religious figure who draws onpersonal experience, that he had once been the Homeric hero Euphorbus, and heexhorted his disciples to recall their own past lives.

The immortality of the soul underlies many of Pythagoras’ practical teachings, forthe soul, as the most important element within a person, required nurture to ensurenot only equanimity in this life but also a better incarnation in the life to come. Theseends could be achieved by bringing the soul into harmony with the divine, cosmicorder (according to a disputed doxography, Pythagoras was the first to pronouncethe world a kosmos, a term that in Greek combines the ideas of adornment, beautyand order). In so far, however, as the soul resided in a body, it needed to be freedfrom the turmoils and corrupting influences of the body. Hence Pythagoraspreached a strict way of life that centred on purification (see Katharsis) andasceticism. Furthermore, he practised a form of musical therapy for both body andsoul. He valued friendship highly as a means of promoting equality and concord; thelove of friends was a specific instance of the universal sympathy existing in thecosmos.

The rules of Pythagoras found expression in short, pithy sayings known asakousmata, a term that implies oral transmission, or, more frequently, as symbola.The latter most likely functioned as secret passwords for Pythagorean initiates but,as the name suggests and their often esoteric and oracular nature prompted, theywere also subjects for ‘symbolic’ interpretation. The symbola range from primitivereligious taboos to simple moral precepts and various dietary prohibitions(abstinence from certain parts of animals and the famous ban on eating beans).

3 Legacy

Pythagoras, according to Plato (Republic X 600b), handed down to his followers adistinctive way of life (bios) ‘they call Pythagorean to this day’. By Plato’s day thePythagorean life meant, besides purifications of the soul, inquiries in philosophy,mathematics, astronomy and music. Did Pythagoras bequeath these enterprises aswell? Empedocles (§2), who was greatly influenced by Pythagoras, praised him asa man of surpassing knowledge, with a vast wealth of understanding, capable of allkinds of wise works. Heraclitus (§1), while agreeing that Pythagoras ‘practisedinquiry beyond all other men’, saw the result as a peculiar wisdom consisting ofpolymathy and evil artifice. From both witnesses, however, Pythagoras emerges as

a figure active in a wide variety of fields and therefore likely at least to havedabbled in those studies for which Pythagoreans were known in Plato’s time. Still,the only sure legacy of Pythagoras is the immortality of the soul. Although this wasprimarily a religious belief, it carried philosophical import. By singling out theimmortal soul as the essential element of life Pythagoras foreshadowed theParmenidean/Platonic distinction between eternal being and changeable becomingand, in general, the dualism of mind and matter that informs so much of Westernphilosophy.

See also: Archytas; Iamblichus; Neo-Pythagoreanism; Philolaus; Presocratic PhilosophyHERMANN S. SCHIBLI

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References and further reading

Burkert, W. (1972) Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. E.L.Minar, Jr, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.(A scholarly and criticalexamination of the sources; Pythagoras the religious figure is sharplydistinguished from Pythagorean philosophy and science which becomeIdentifiable only in the late fifth century BC.)Diogenes Laertius (first half of the third century AD) Lives of the Philosophers,trans. R.D. Hicks, Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, LoebClassical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London:Heinemann, 1925.(VIII 1-50 is a life of Pythagoras.)

Guthrie, W.K.C. (1962-78) A History of Greek Philosophy, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 6 vols.(A comprehensive and readable discussionof Pythagoras and early Pythagoreanism can be found in volume 1, pages146-340.)

Guthrie, W.K.C. (1987) The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, GrandRapids, MI: Phanes Press. (Conveniently collects the main ancient sources.)Iamblichus (c. AD 290-300) On the Pythagorean Way of Life, trans. J. Dillon andJ. Hershbell, Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991.(A Neoplatonic account of thePythagorean life in which Pythagoras appears as the philosopher parexcellence; the most exhaustive ancient source that survives. The editioncontains text, translation and notes.)

Kingsley, P. (1995) Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles andPythagorean Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.(Includes passimcritical, yet sympathetic, discussions of the figure of Pythagoras and thePythagoras legends.)

Navia, L.E. (1990) Pythagoras: An Annotated Bibliography, New York andLondon: Garland. (Covers the literature up to 1989 on all aspects of Pythagorasand Pythagoreanism.)

Navia, L.E. (1993) The Presocratic Philosophers: An Annotated Bibliography,New York and London: Garland.(At pages 591-7, gives an updated bibliographyof works on Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism since 1988.)

Porphyry (c. AD 250-269) The Life of Pythagoras, trans. M. Smith, in M. Hadasand M. Smith, Heroes and Gods: Spiritual Biographies in Antiquity, NewYork: Harper & Row, 1965, 105-28.(The only surviving part of Porphyry’sPhilosophic History, it combines legendary material with historicalinformation.)

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Socrates (469-399 BC)Socrates, an Athenian Greek of the second half of the fifth century BC, wrote no philosophical works but was uniquely influential in the later history of philosophy. His philosophical interests were restricted to ethics and the conduct of life, topics which thereafter became central to philosophy. He discussed these in public places in Athens, sometimes with other prominent intellectuals or political leaders, sometimes with young men, who gathered round him in large numbers, and other admirers. Among these young men was Plato. Socrates’ philosophical ideas and - equally important for his philosophical influence - his personality and methods as a ‘teacher’ were handed on to posterity in the ‘dialogues’ that several of his friends wrote after his death, depicting such discussions. Only those of Xenophon (Memorabilia,Apology, Symposium) and the early dialogues of Plato survive (for example Euthyphro, Apology, Crito). Later Platonic dialogues such as Phaedo, Symposium and Republic do not present the historical Socrates’ ideas; the ‘Socrates’ appearing in them is a spokesman for Plato’s own ideas.

Socrates’ discussions took the form of face-to-face interrogations of another person. Mostoften they concerned the nature of some moral virtue, such as courage or justice. Socratesasked what the respondent thought these qualities of mind and character amounted to,what their value was, how they were acquired. He would then test their ideas for logicalconsistency with other highly plausible general views about morality and goodness that therespondent also agreed to accept, once Socrates presented them. He succeeded in showing,to his satisfaction and that of the respondent and any bystanders, that the respondent’sideas were not consistent. By this practice of ‘elenchus’ or refutation he was able to provethat politicians and others who claimed to have ‘wisdom’ about human affairs in factlacked it, and to draw attention to at least apparent errors in their thinking. He wanted toencourage them and others to think harder and to improve their ideas about the virtues andabout how to conduct a good human life. He never argued directly for ideas of his own,but always questioned those of others. None the less, one can infer, from the questions heasks and his attitudes to the answers he receives, something about his own views.

Socrates was convinced that our souls - where virtues and vices are found - are vastly moreimportant for our lives than our bodies or external circumstances. The quality of our soulsdetermines the character of our lives, for better or for worse, much more than whether weare healthy or sick, or rich or poor. If we are to live well and happily, as he assumed we allwant to do more than we want anything else, we must place the highest priority on the careof our souls. That means we must above all want to acquire the virtues, since they perfectour souls and enable them to direct our lives for the better. If only we could know whateach of the virtues is we could then make an effort to obtain them. As to the nature of thevirtues, Socrates seems to have held quite strict and, from the popular point of view,paradoxical views. Each virtue consists entirely in knowledge, of how it is best to act insome area of life, and why: additional ‘emotional’ aspects, such as the disciplining of ourfeelings and desires, he dismissed as of no importance. Weakness of will is notpsychologically possible: if you act wrongly or badly, that is due to your ignorance of howyou ought to act and why. He thought each of the apparently separate virtues amounts tothe same single body of knowledge: the comprehensive knowledge of what is and is notgood for a human being. Thus his quest was to acquire this single wisdom: all theparticular virtues would follow automatically.

At the age of 70 Socrates was charged before an Athenian popular court with ‘impiety’ -

with not believing in the Olympian gods and corrupting young men through his constantquestioning of everything. He was found guilty and condemned to death. Plato’s Apology,where Socrates gives a passionate defence of his life and philosophy, is one of the classicsof Western literature. For different groups of later Greek philosophers he was the modelboth of a sceptical inquirer who never claims to know the truth, and of a ‘sage’ who knowsthe whole truth about human life and the human good. Among modern philosophers, theinterpretations of his innermost meaning given by Montaigne, Hegel, Kierkegaard, andNietzsche are especially notable.

1 Life and sources

Socrates, an Athenian citizen proud of his devotion to Athens, lived his adult life there engaging in open philosophical discussion and debate on fundamental questions of ethics, politics, religion and education. Going against the grain of the traditional education, he insisted that personalinvestigation and reasoned argument, rather than ancestral custom, or appeal to the authority ofHomer, Hesiod and other respected poets, was the only proper basis for answering thesequestions. His emphasis on argument and logic and his opposition to unquestioning acceptance of tradition allied him with such Sophists of a generation earlier as Protagoras, Gorgias and Prodicus, none of whom was an Athenian, but all of whom spent time lecturing and teaching at Athens (see Sophists). Unlike these Sophists Socrates did not formally offer himself or accept pay as a teacher. But many upper-class young Athenian men gathered round him to hear and engage In his discussions, and he had an inspirational and educational effect upon them, heightening their powers of critical thought and encouraging them to take seriously their individual responsibility to think through and decide how to conduct their lives. Many of his contemporaries perceived this education as morally and socially destructive - it certainly involved subverting accepted beliefs - and he was tried in 399 BC before an Athenian popular court and condemned to death on a charge of ‘impiety’: that he did not believe in the Olympian gods, but in new ones instead, and corrupted the young. Scholars sometimes mention specifically political motives of revenge, based on guilt by association: a number of prominent Athenians who were with Socrates as young men or were close friends did turn against the Athenian democracy and collaborated with the Spartans in their victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian war. But an amnesty passed by the restored democracy in 403 BC prohibited prosecution for political offences before that date. The rhetorician Polycrates included Socrates’ responsibility for these political crimes in his Accusation of Socrates (see Xenophon, Memorabilia I 2.12), a rhetorical exercise written at least five years after Socrates’ death. But there is no evidence that, in contravention of the amnesty, Socrates’ actual accusers covertly attacked him, or his jurors condemned him, on that ground. The defences Plato and Xenophon constructed for Socrates, each in his respective Apology, imply that it was his own questioning mind and what was perceived as the bad moral influence he had on his young men that led to his trial and condemnation.

Socrates left no philosophical works, and apparently wrote none. His philosophy and personalitywere made known to later generations through the dialogues that several of his associates wrotewith him as principal speaker (see Socratic dialogues). Only fragments survive of those byAAeschines of Sphettus and Antisthenes, both Athenians, and Phaedo of Elis (after whomPlato’s dialogue Phaedo is named). Our own knowledge of Socrates depends primarily on thedialogues of Plato and the Socratic works of the military leader and historian Xenophon. Plato was a young associate of Socrates’ during perhaps the last ten years of his life, and Xenophon knew him during that same period, though he was absent from Athens at the time of Socrates’ death and for several years before and many years after.

We also have secondary evidence from the comic playwright Aristophanes and from Aristotle.Aristotle, although born fifteen years after Socrates’ death, had access through Plato and othersto first-hand information about the man and his philosophy. Aristophanes knew Socratespersonally; his Clouds (first produced c.423 BC) pillories the ‘new’ education offered by Sophists and philosophers by showing Socrates at work in a ‘thinkery’, propounding outlandish physical theories and teaching young men how to argue cleverly in defence of their improper

behaviour. It is significant that in 423, when Socrates was about 45 years old, he could plausibly be taken as a leading representative in Athens of the ‘new’ education. But one cannot expect a comic play making fun of a whole intellectual movement to contain an authentic account of Socrates’ specific philosophical commitments.

However, the literary genre to which Plato’s and Xenophon’s Socratic works belong (along withthe other, lost dialogues) also permits the author much latitude; in his Poetics Aristotle counts such works as fictions of a certain kind, alongside epic poems and tragedies. They are by no means records of actual discussions (despite the fact that Xenophon explicitly so represents his). Each author was free to develop his own ideas behind the mask of Socrates, at least within the limits of what his personal experience had led him to believe was Socrates’ basic philosophical and moral outlook. Especially in view of the many inconsistencies between Plato’s and Xenophon’s portraits (see §7 below), it is a difficult question for historical-philosophical interpretation whether the philosophical and moral views the character Socrates puts forward in any of these dialogues can legitimately be attributed to the historical philosopher. The problem of interpretation is made more difficult by the fact that Socrates appears in many of Plato’s dialogues - ones belonging to his middle and later periods (see Plato §§10-16) - discussing and expounding views that we have good reason to believe resulted from Plato’s own philosophical investigations into questions of metaphysics and epistemology, questions that were not entered into at all by the historical Socrates. To resolve this problem - what scholars call the ‘Socratic problem’ - most agree in preferring Plato to Xenophon as a witness. Xenophon is not thought to have been philosopher enough to have understood Socrates well or to have captured the depth of his views and his personality. As for Plato, most scholars accept only the philosophical interests and procedures, and the moral and philosophical views, of the Socrates of the early dialogues, and, more guardedly, the Socrates of ‘transitional’ ones such as Meno and Gorgias, as legitimate representations of the historical personage. These dialogues are the ones that predate the emergence of the metaphysical and epistemological inquiries just referred to. However, even Plato’s early dialogues are philosophical works written to further Plato’s own philosophical interests. That could produce distortions, also; and Xenophon’s relative philosophical innocence could make his portrait in some respects more reliable. Moreover, it is possible, even probable, that in his efforts to help his young men improve themselves Socrates spoke differently to the philosophically more promising ones among them - including Plato - from the way he spoke to others, for example Xenophon. Both portraits could be true, but partial and needing to be combined (see §7). The account of Socrates’ philosophy given below follows Plato, with caution, while giving independent weight also to Xenophon and to Aristotle.

2 Life and sources (cont.)

Xenophon’s Apology of Socrates, Symposium and Memorabilia (or Memoirs) may well reflectknowledge of Plato’s own Apology and some of his early and middle period dialogues, as well as lost dialogues of Antisthenes and others. Xenophon composed the Memorabilia over many years, beginning only some ten years after Socrates’ death, avowedly in order to defend Socrates’ reputation as a good man, a true Athenian gentleman, and a good influence upon his young men.The same intention motivated hisApology and Symposium. Anything these works contain aboutSocrates’ philosophical opinions and procedures is ancillary to that apologetic purpose. Plato’sApology, of course, is similarly apologetic, but it and his other early dialogues are carefullyconstructed discussions, strongly focused upon questions of philosophical substance. Platoevidently thought Socrates’ philosophical ideas and methods were central to his life and to hismission. Xenophon’s and Plato’s testimony are agreed that Socrates’ discussions consistentlyconcerned the aretai, the recognized ‘virtues’ or excellences of character (see Aret0), such asjustice, piety, self-control or moderation (s>phrosyn0), courage and wisdom; what these individual characteristics consist in and require of a person, what their value is, and how they are acquired, whether by teaching or in some other way. In his Apology and elsewhere Plato has Socrates insist that these discussions were always inquiries, efforts made to engage his fellow-discussants in coming jointly to an adequate understanding of the matters inquired into. He does not himself know, and therefore cannot teach anyone else - whether by means of these

discussions or in some other way - either how to be virtuous or what virtue in general or any particular virtue is.Furthermore, given his general characterization of virtue (see §§4-5), Plato’s Socrates makes apoint of suggesting the impossibility in principle of teaching virtue at all, by contrast with theSophists who declared they could teach it. Virtue was not a matter of information about living orrote techniques of some sort to be handed on from teacher to pupil, but required an open-endedpersonal understanding that individuals could only come to for themselves. Xenophon, too, reportsthat Socrates denied he was a teacher of aret0, but he pays no attention to such issues ofphilosophical principle. He does not hesitate to show Socrates speaking of himself as a teacher(see Apology 26, Memorabilia I 6.13-14), and describes him as accepting young men from theirfathers as his pupils (but not for a fee), and teaching them the virtues by displaying his own virtues to them for emulation, as well as through conversation and precepts. Perhaps Socrates did not insist on holding to strict philosophical principles in dealing with people on whom their point would have been lost.

In his Apology Plato’s Socrates traces his practice of spending his days discussing and inquiringabout virtue to an oracle delivered at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. Xenophon also mentions this oracle in his Apology. A friend of Socrates’, Chaerephon, had asked the god whether anyonewas wiser than Socrates; the priestess answered that no one was. Because he was sure he wasnot wise at all - only the gods, he suspected, could actually know how a human life ought to be led - Socrates cross-examined others at Athens with reputations for that kind of wisdom. He wanted to show that there were people wiser than he and thus discover the true meaning of the oracle - Apollo was known to speak in riddles requiring interpretation to reach their deeper meaning. In the event, it turned out that the people he examined were not wise, since they could not even give a self-consistent set of answers to his questions: obviously, true knowledge requires at least that one think and speak consistently on the subjects one professes to know. So he concluded that the priestess’s reply had meant that of all those with reputations for wisdom only he came close to deserving it; he wisely did not profess to know these things that only gods can know, and that was wisdom enough for a human being. Because only he knew that he did not know, only he was ready earnestly to inquire into virtue and the other ingredients of the human good, in an effort to learn. He understood therefore that Apollo’s true intention in the oracle had been to encourage him to continue his inquiries, to help others to realize that it is beyond human powers actually to know how to live - that is the prerogative of the gods - and to do his best to understand as far as a human being can how one ought to live. The life of philosophy, as led by him, was therefore something he was effectively ordered by Apollo to undertake.

We must remember that Socrates was on trial on a charge of ‘impiety’. In tracing hisphilosophical vocation back to Apollo’s oracle, and linking it to a humble recognition of humanweakness and divine perfection, he was constructing a powerful rebuttal of the charges broughtagainst him. But it cannot be literally true - if that is what he intended to say - that Socrates began his inquiries about virtue only after hearing of the oracle. Chaerephon’s question to Apollo shows he had established a reputation in Athens for wisdom before that. That reputation cannot have rested on philosophical inquiries of another sort. In Plato’s Phaedo Socrates says he had been interested as a young man in philosophical speculations about the structure and causes of the natural world, but he plainly did not take those interests very far; and in any event, his reputation was not for that kind of wisdom, but wisdom about how to lead a human life. In fact we do not hear of the duty to Apollo in Xenophon, or in other dialogues of Plato, where we might expect to find it if from the beginning Socrates thought Apollo had commanded his life of philosophizing. However, we need not think Socrates was false to the essential spirit of philosophy as hepractised it if in looking back on his life under threat of condemnation for impiety he chose,inaccurately, to see it as initially imposed on him by Apollo’s oracle.

Despite its impressiveness, Socrates’ speech failed to convince his jury of 501 male fellowcitizens, and he died in the state prison by drinking hemlock as required by law. His speechevidently offended the majority of the jurors by its disdain for the charges and the proceedings;

Xenophon explains his lofty behaviour, which he thinks would otherwise have been lunatic - anddamaging to his reputation - by reporting that he had told friends in advance that as a 70-year-oldstill in possession of his health and faculties it was time for him to die anyhow, before senility setin. Furthermore, his ‘divine sign’ - the ‘voice’ he sometimes heard warning him for his own goodagainst a contemplated course of action - had prevented him from spending time crafting adefence speech. (This voice seems to have been the basis for the charge of introducing ‘new’gods.) So he would do nothing to soften his manner in order to win his freedom. Even if this story is true, Plato could be right that Socrates put on a spirited, deeply serious defence of his life and beliefs - one that he thought should have convinced the jurors of his innocence, if only they had judged him intelligently and fairly.

3 Socratic elenchus, or refutation

In cross-examining those with reputations for wisdom about human affairs and showing their lack of it, Socrates employed a special method of dialectical argument that he himself had perfected, the method of ‘elenchus’ - Greek for ‘putting to the test’ or ‘refutation’. He gives an example at his trial when he cross-examines Meletus, one of his accusers (Plato, Apology 24d-27e). The respondent states a thesis, as something he knows to be true because he is wise about the matter in question. Socrates then asks questions, eliciting clarifications, qualifications and extensions of the thesis, and seeking further opinions of the respondent on related matters. He then argues, and the respondent sees no way not to grant, that the original thesis is logically inconsistent with something affirmed in these further responses. For Socrates, it follows at once that the respondent did not know what he was talking about in stating his original thesis: true knowledge would prevent one from such self-contradiction. So the respondent suffers a personal set-back; he is refuted - revealed as incompetent. Meletus, for example, does not have consistent ideas about the gods or what would show someone not to believe in them, and he does not have consistent ideas about who corrupts the young, and how; so he does not know what he is talking about, and no one should take his word for it that Socrates disbelieves in the gods or has corrupted his young men.In many of his early dialogues Plato shows Socrates using this method to examine the opinions of persons who claim to be wise in some matter: the religious expert Euthyphro on piety(Euthyphro), the generals Laches and Nicias on courage (Laches), the Sophist Protagoras on thedistinctions among the virtues and whether virtue can be taught (Protagoras), the rhapsodist Ionon what is involved in knowing poetry (Ion), the budding politician Alcibiades on justice and other political values (Alcibiades), the Sophist Hippias on which was the better man, Odysseus or Achilles (Lesser Hippias), and on the nature of moral and aesthetic beauty (Greater Hippias).They are all refuted - shown to have mutually inconsistent ideas on the subject discussed (seePlato §§4, 6, 8-9).

But Socrates is not content merely to demonstrate his interlocutor’s lack of wisdom orknowledge. That might humiliate him into inquiring further or seeking by some other means theknowledge he has been shown to lack, instead of remaining puffed up with self-conceit. Thatwould be a good thing. But Socrates often also indicates clearly that his cross-examination justifies him and the interlocutor in rejecting as false the interlocutor’s original thesis. Logically, that is obviously wrong: if the interlocutor contradicts himself, at least one of the things he has said must be false (indeed, all of them could be), but the fact alone of self-contradiction does not show where the falsehood resides. For example, when Socrates leads Euthyphro to accept ideas that contradict his own definition of the pious as whatever pleases all the gods, Socrates concludes that that definition has been shown to be false (Euthyphro 10d-11a), and asks Euthyphro to come up with another one. He does not usually seem to consider that perhaps on further thought the additional ideas would seem faulty and so merit rejection instead.

Socrates uses his elenctic method also in discussion with persons who are not puffed up with false pride, and are quite willing to admit their ignorance and to reason out the truth about theseimportant matters. Examples are his discussions with his long-time friend Crito on whether heshould escape prison and set aside the court’s death sentence (Plato, Crito), and with the youngmen Charmides, on self-control (Charmides), and Lysis and Menexenus, on the nature of

friendship (Lysis). Socrates examines Crito’s proposal that he escape on the basis of principlesthat he presents to him for his approval, and he, together with Crito (however half-heartedly),rejects it when it fails to be consistent with them. And he examines the young men’s successiveideas about these virtues, rejecting some of them and refining others, by relying on their ownacceptance of further ideas that he puts to them. Again, he is confident that the inconsistenciesbrought to light in their ideas indicate the inadequacy of their successive proposals as to the nature of the moral virtue in question.

In many of his discussions, both with young men and the allegedly wise, Socrates seeks to knowwhat some morally valuable property is - for example, piety, courage, self-control or friendship(see §5). Rejecting the idea that one could learn this simply from attending to examples, heinsisted on an articulated ‘definition’ of the item in question - some single account that wouldcapture all at once the presumed common feature that would entitle anything to count as alegitimate instance. Such a definition, providing the essence of the thing defined, would give us a‘model’ or ‘paradigm’ to use in judging whether or not some proposed action or person possesses the moral value so defined (Euthyphro 6d-e). Aristotle says (in Metaphysics I, 6) that Socrates was the first to interest himself in such ‘universal definitions’, and traces to his interest in them Plato’s first impetus towards a theory of Forms, or ‘separated’ universals (see Plato §10).

In none of his discussions in Plato’s early works does Socrates profess to think an adequate finalresult has actually been established - about the nature of friendship, or self-control, or piety, or any of the other matters he inquires about. Indeed, on the contrary, these works regularly end with professions of profound ignorance about the matter under investigation. Knowledge is neverattained, and further questions always remain to be considered. But Socrates does plainly thinkthat progress towards reaching final understanding has taken place (even if only a god, and nohuman being, could ever actually attain it). Not only has one discovered some things that aredefinitely wrong to say; one has also achieved some positive insights that are worth holding onto in seeking further systematic understanding. Given that Socrates’ method of discussion is elenctic throughout, what does he think justifies this optimism?

On balance, our evidence suggests that Socrates had worked out no elaborate theory to supporthim here. The ideas he was stimulated to propound in an elenctic examination which went against some initial thesis seemed to him, and usually also to the others present, so plausible, and so supportable by further considerations, that he and they felt content to reject the initial thesis. Until someone came up with arguments to neutralize their force, it seemed the thesis was doomed, as contrary to reason itself. Occasionally Socrates expresses himself in just those terms: however unpalatable the option might seem, it remains open to someone to challenge the grounds on which his conclusions rest (see Euthyphro 15c, Gorgias 461d-462a, 509a, Crito 54d). But until they do, he is satisfied to treat his and his interlocutor’s agreement as a firm basis for thought and action.Later, when Plato himself became interested in questions of philosophical methodology in hisMeno, this came to seem a philosophically unsatisfactory position; Plato’s demand for justification for one’s beliefs independent of what seemed on reflection most plausible led him toepistemological and metaphysical inquiries that went well beyond the self-imposed restriction ofSocratic philosophy to ethical thought in the broadest sense. But Socrates did not raise thesequestions. In this respect more bound by traditional views than Plato, he had great implicitconfidence in his and his interlocutors’ capacity, after disciplined dialectical examination of theissues, to reach firm ground for constructing positive ideas about the virtues and about how best to lead a human life - even if these ideas never received the sort of final validation that a god,understanding fully the truth about human life, could give them.

4 Elenchus and moral progress

The topics Socrates discussed were always ethical, and never included questions of physicaltheory or metaphysics or other branches of philosophical study. Moreover, he always conductedhis discussions not as theoretical inquiries but as profoundly personal moral tests. Questioner andinterlocutor were equally putting their ways of life to what Socrates thought was the most

important test of all - their capacity to stand up to scrutiny in rational argument about how oneought to live. In speaking about human life, he wanted his respondents to indicate what they trulybelieved, and as questioner he was prepared to do the same, at least at crucial junctures. Thosebeliefs were assumed to express not theoretical ideas, but the very ones on which they themselves were conducting their lives. In losing an argument with Socrates you did not merely show yourself logically or argumentatively deficient, but also put into question the very basis on which you were living. Your way of life might ultimately prove defensible, but if you cannot now defend it successfully, you are not leading it with any such justification. In that case, according to Socrates’ views, your way of life is morally deficient. Thus if Menexenus, Lysis and Socrates profess to value friendship among the most important things in life and profess to be one another’s friends, but cannot satisfactorily explain under pressure of elenctic investigation what a friend is, that casts serious doubt on the quality of any ‘friendship’ they might form (Plato, Lysis 212a, 223b). Moral consistency and personal integrity, and not mere delight in argument and logical thought, should therefore lead you to repeated elenctic examination of your views, in an effort to render them coherent and at the same time defensible on all sides through appeal to plausible arguments. Or, if some of your views have been shown false, by conflicting with extremely plausible general principles, it behoves you to drop them - and so to cease living in a way that depends upon accepting them. In this way, philosophical inquiry via the elenchus isfundamentally a personal moral quest. It is a quest not just to understand adequately the basis onwhich one is actually living, and the personal and moral commitments that this contains. It is also a quest to change the way one lives as the results of argument show one ought to, so that, at thelogical limit of inquiry, one’s way of life would be completely vindicated. Accordingly, Socrates in Plato’s dialogues regularly insists on the individual and personal character of his discussions. He wants to hear the views of the one person with whom he is speaking. He dismisses as of nointerest what outsiders or most people may think - provided that is not what his discussant ispersonally convinced is true. The views of ‘the many’ may well not rest on thought or argument at all. Socrates insists that his discussant shoulder the responsibility to explain and defend rationally the views he holds, and follow the argument - reason - wherever it may lead.

We learn a good deal about Socrates’ own principles from both Plato and Xenophon. Those wereones that had stood up well over a lifetime of frequent elenctic discussions and had, as he thought, a wealth of plausible arguments in their favour. Foremost is his conviction that the virtues - self-control, courage, justice, piety, wisdom and related qualities of mind and soul - are essential if anyone is to lead a good and happy life. They are good in themselves for a human being, and they guarantee a happy life, eudaimonia - something that he thought all human beings always wanted, and wanted more than anything else. The virtues belong to the soul - they are the condition of a soul that has been properly cared for and brought to its best state. The soul is vastly more important for happiness than are health and strength of the body or social and political power, wealth and other external circumstances of life; the goods of the soul, and pre-eminently the virtues, are worth far more than any quantity of bodily or external goods. Socrates seems to have thought these other goods are truly good, but they only do people good, and thereby contribute to their happiness, under the condition that they are chosen and used in accordance with virtues indwelling in their souls (see Plato, Apology 30b, Euthydemus 280d-282d, Meno 87d-89a).

More specific principles followed. Doing injustice is worse for oneself than being subjected to it(Gorgias 469c-522e): by acting unjustly you make your soul worse, and that affects for the worsethe whole of your life, whereas one who treats you unjustly at most harms your body or yourpossessions but leaves your soul unaffected. On the same ground Socrates firmly rejected thedeeply entrenched Greek precept to aid one’s friends and harm one’s enemies, and theaccompanying principle of retaliation, which he equated with returning wrongs for wrongs done to oneself and one’s friends (Crito 49a-d). Socrates’ daily life gave wit

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References and further reading

Aristophanes’ (c.423 BC) Clouds, ed. K.J. Dover, Aristophanes Clouds, Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1968; trans. A.H. Sommerstein, Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1982; trans. A.H.Sommerstein, Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds, Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1973.(Classic comic portrayal of Socrates. Dover is an edition of the Greek

text withexplanatory notes; Sommerstein’s 1982 translation also includes the Greek text andexplanatory notes.) Aristotle (c. mid 4th century BC) Metaphysics I 6, XIII 4, Nicomachean Ethics VII 2-3, Sophistical Refutations 34, Magna Moralia I 1, Poetics 1, in J. Barnes (ed.) The CompleteWorks of Aristotle, revised Oxford Translation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press,1984, 2 vols.(Important testimony on Socrates. The Magna Moralia is possibly by a

followerof Aristotle, and is of uncertain date.)

Benson, H.H. (ed.) (1992) Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, New York: OxfordUniversity Press.(Reprints fifteen of the best journal articles of the 1970s and 1980s

onSocrates and Socratic philosophy; broad coverage of topics, full bibliography.)

Cicero, M.T. (late 45 BC) Tusculan Disputations, trans. J.E. King, Loeb Classical Library,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann, 1927.(Parallel

Latin textand English translation.)

Giannantoni, G. (1990) Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (The Fragments of Socrates andthe Socratics), Naples: Bibliopolis, 4 vols.(Volumes 1 and 2 contain the surviving

Greek andLatin testimonia of Socrates - other than in Plato and Xenophon - and of Antisthenes,Aeschines, Aris

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Socratic schools

For approximately one and a half centuries after Socrates’ death in 399 BC, several Greekphilosophical schools and sects each claimed to be the true intellectual heirs of Socrates. Laterdoxographers emphasized the Socratic pedigree of each of these schools by establishing anuninterrupted succession (diadoch0) between its alleged founder, who was invariably a member of Socrates’ own entourage, and the philosophers who succeeded him as leaders of the school.

Leaving aside Plato, the founder of the Academy, the members of the Socratic circle who left asuccession behind them are Antisthenes, Aristippus of Cyrene, Euclides of Megara, and Phaedo of Elis, considered respectively the founders of Cynicism, and of the Cyrenaic, Megarian and Elian schools. It is these groupings, plus several of their offshoots, that are conventionally known as the‘Socratic schools’. All can be seen as, in their own ways, developing Socrates’ ethical outlook, and several were concerned with exploring the logical and metaphysical implications of his dialectical principles.

1 Cynics, Cyrenaics, Megarians and Dialecticians

The Cynic movement appears intermittently for a period of about ten centuries, from the fourth century BC to the sixth century AD. Its archetypal figure was Diogenes of Sinope, whose bohemian lifestyle and beggarly appearance exemplified the unity of principle and practice governing early Cynicism. Although Antisthenes (§1) was looked back on as the founder of Cynicism, his connection with the movement is problematic. Lacking any institutional structure, it could not, in any formal sense, have a founder. Nor can he be considered the forerunner of the kind of philosophical instruction practised by the Cynics, since unlike Antisthenes they ndermined curricular education, preferred practical example to philosophicalargumentation and adopted informal means of instruction (see Cynics §1).

However, there is a sense in which the claims that Antisthenes is the predecessor of the movement and that the Cynics as a Socratic school are legitimate. Antisthenes is often considered the closest associate of Socrates, as reflected in both his logic and his ethical doctrine.

In ethics, he shared the intellectualism of the Platonic Socrates, in that he considered virtue an understanding which, once acquired, amounts to wisdom and cannot be lost. But he also stressed the importance of physical and mental exercise, and the strength of character by which one overcomes one’s weaknesses and achieves virtue. This moderated version of Socratic intellectualism provides a substantial common ground between the doctrine of Antisthenes andthose of various Cynics.

The Cyrenaic school clearly counted as Socratic because founded by an associate of Socrates, Aristippus of Cyrene, whose own descendants succeeded him as the leaders of the school. Philosophically however, its doctrines have often been considered un-Socratic. For in ethics the Cyrenaics held various versions of hedonism, and several of them maintained that the bodily pleasure experienced at the present moment is the moral end. Again, in epistemology they developed a radical scepticism regarding our knowledge of the properties of external objects, whereas much of the evidence for Socrates suggests that, at least in the period in which Aristippus would have known him, he was concerned primarily with ethics. None the less,there were ways in which the Cyrenaics could reasonably claim that they remained faithful to the spirit of Socratic philosophy (see Cyrenaics §5; Aristippus the Elder).

The Socratic pedigree of the Megarian school is secured through Socrates’ friend Euclides, who founded the school in his native Megara, although it is widely held to have been influenced also by the Eleatic philosopher Parmenides. Its doctrines were ethical and metaphysical, and also concerned philosophical methodology and logic. Euclides taught an ethical monism related to the doctrine of the unity of virtue held by the Platonic Socrates and, perhaps, to the belief of Xenophon’s Socrates in a providential universe that, presumably, is wholly good (see Megarian school).

The Megarians overlapped for about fifty years with the rival school of the Dialecticians, linked with Socrates via its founder, Clinomachus of Thurii, himself a pupil of Euclides. Although this school’s speciality was apparently the development of dialectical skills for their own sake, it was classified as one of the ten ethical sects which developed the ethical part of philosophy that originated with Socrates (see Dialectical school).

2 The Elian and Eretrian schools

The Elian school was founded by Socrates’ associate, Phaedo of Elis, soon after Socrates’ death. Its founder is recorded as the author of several Socratic dialogues, of which only the Zopyrus and Simon were certainly his own works (see Socratic Dialogues §1). The evidence suggests that both dialogues explored ethical subjects. The Zopyrus, named after a fifth-century physiognomist, probably aimed to modify the principle that there is an intrinsic relation between natural disposition and bodily form by arguing that the first can be entirely transformed - as in Socrates’ own life - by the power of philosophy. Simon may have discussed various conceptions of virtue and its relation to pleasure, and perhaps defended a position according to which certain joys or pleasures are compatible with virtue. The themes linking the two works and securing a Socratic pedigree for Phaedo are the healing and reformative power of philosophy, its appropriateness for every person in every condition, the gradual and imperceptible effects of good and evil habits, and the importance of spiritual freedom with regard to external circumstances.

Phaedo’s immediate successor was Plestanus of Elis, otherwise unknown. Anchipylus and Moschus, also from Elis, are listed as members of the Elian school, although Cynic features are attributed to them as well.But the most important philosophical heir of Phaedo was Menedemus of Eretria, after whom the school was relabelled the ‘Eretrian school’. His criticisms of Plato, of Xenocrates, of the Cyrenaic Paraebates, of the Megarian Alexinus and of Aeschines suggest that he too was bidding for the mantle of Socrates. Even the testimony that he wrote nothing and did not adhere firmly to any doctrine may point to deliberate imitation of Socrates. However, a number of logical, metaphysical and ethical tenets are attributed to him. Reportedly, he accepted affirmative

propositions and simple propositions but disallowed negative, complex or conditional statements. Although the point of this position is unclear, it may have been related to his beliefs that each thing can only be called by its own name, and that nothing must be at once one and many.These led him to remove the verb ‘to be’ from sentences such as ‘that man is pale’ and to remodel them with a periphrasis involving no use of the copula. In these respects, as well as in the commendation of tautologies, Menedemus’ doctrine approaches Antisthenes’ logic (see Antisthenes §4). Although he argued with great keenness and occasionally used paradoxes, he rejected Megarian eristics; on this account too Menedemus could claim to be faithful to the spirit of Socrates.

In ethics, Menedemus maintained that virtue is one thing called by many names, and probably implied that names which conventionally designate the different virtues are in fact synonyms - a point on which the Platonic Socrates is notoriously ambiguous. He espoused Euclides’ position concerning the unity of the good (see §1) and he probably identified the good with virtue. He shared the intellectualism of other Socratics in that he placed the supreme moral good in the soul and believed that it can be achieved only by means of philosophical education which, therefore, is the single most important activity. But his bodily habits indicate that, like Antisthenes and the Cynics (see §1), he attributed moral importance to physical training as well. His proneness to superstition may suggest that he believed in a providential universe and, perhaps, in a divine creator. If so, his beliefs are comparable to those of Xenophon’s Socrates and of Euclides. He took an active part in politics (a fact much resented by the Cynics), but similarly to manySocratics he kept his dignity, frankness and spiritual independence in the face of the powerful men of his day. His end, sadly, is reminiscent of Socrates’ own: he was unjustly denounced for treason but, unlike Socrates, he left Eretria and died in exile by his own hand.

3 How Socratic are the Socratic schools?

Apart from the fact that the Socratic schools are founded by the entourage of Socrates, one should perhaps not attempt to find one single common thread unifying them. The links between them consist rather in family resemblances, between Socratics of the same generation or of different generations, many of them attributable with greater or lesser plausibility to Socrates himself. For example: Antisthenes and Aristippus stressed the importance of self-mastery and self-control regarding pleasure; Antisthenes and Phaedo considered some pleasures entirely compatible with virtue; Aristippus and the Cynics adopted the political attitudes of cosmopolitanism and of detachment from obligations to any particular city; Menedemus veeredtowards the ethics of the Cynics, and also held similar positions to Antisthenes in logic; the Megarians and the Dialecticians also worked on similar logical topics, such as modality, although their inquiries differed in scope and depth; Antisthenes, Stilpo, Menedemus and, perhaps the Dialecticians, subscribed to various forms of the doctrine that each thing has only one essence and that there is only one logos describing it (see Logos §1).

Some of the schools appear more formally organized than others. Aristippus and Phaedo probably ran proper schools, Antisthenes had a steady number of followers identified as ‘the Antisthenians’; the Cynics and the later Cyrenaic sects were dispersed; and Menedemus was entirely informal in his teaching. Nevertheless, the label ‘Socratic’ is to a certain extent justified. The doctrinal links both with each other and with the views attributed to the historical Socrates are symptomatic of the competition, widespread in the fourth century BC and after, to recover and expound Socrates’ authentic teachings.

See also: Plato; Socrates §8; XenophonVOULA TSOUNA

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References and further reading

Diogenes Laertius ( c. early 3rd century AD) Lives of the Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks, Diogenes

Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925, 2 vols.(Greek text with English translation; see especially book II on the Socratics and book VI on Antisthenes and the Cynics.)

Giannantoni, G. (1990) Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (The Fragments of Socrates and the

Socratics), Naples: Bibliopolis.(The standard collection of Greek and Latin testimonies on the Socratic schools.)

Vander Waerdt, P. (1994) The Socratic Movement, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.(Collection of

essays.)Zeller, E. (1869-82) Die Philosophie der Griechen (The Philosophy of the Greeks), 3rd edn, Leipzig:

Reisland; relevant part available in English trans. by O.J. Reichel, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, Leipzig: Fues’ Verlag (Reisland), 3rd edn, 1988.(Still in most ways the best overall account.)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London: Routledge