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A Community of Possessions

Skutsch, O. 1959. Notes on Metempsychosis. Classical Philology 54(2): 114-116. [JSTOR]

Allegorical philology is a feature of Orphic and Pythagorean speculation. The name itself of Pythagoras was interpreted as "the mouthpiece of the Pythian," and it would seem that the Master also owed his soul-ancestor Euphorbus to an etymology of that name as "he who eats the right food." I find this possibility alluded to by P. Corssen; nobody else seems to have considered it. And yet an explanation why Euphorbus of all people should have been chosen for that role is urgently required. "Why Euphorbus?" asked E. Rohde, and had no answer. I do not know how it could be proved that etymology was responsible; but, having discussed the matter with classical colleagues for more than a dozen years, I still have to find one to whom this explanation, as soon as it is pointed out, does not seem self-evident. If we accept it, as I think we must, we may well begin to wonder whether it is an accident that the patronymic Mnesarchides fits Pythagoras so singularly well as "the man who remembers his origin." If, however, it is not an accident, which would be prior: the name of the father, or the story that Pythagoras remembered his origin? (Skutsch 1959: 114)

Sounds a bit like Dune - the man who can see where no woman can.

Undoubtedly the number three, reinforced in the number nine, plays a great part in chthonic cults, whether or not the cause be that "the number three originally is the final number of primitie humanity." (Skutsch 1959: 114)

With citation to H. Usener. This must be the idea that primitive people could only count up to three, and had no care for numbers beyond that.

Ennius is supposed to have chosen the peacock because in Pythagorean southern Italy and apparently elsewhere the peacock is a symbol of immortality, and because he is the bird of Samos and thus connected with Pythagoras. (Skutsch 1959: 115)

Did not know that.

Minar, Edwin L. Jr. 1944. Pythagorean Communism. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 75: 34-46. [JSTOR / DOI: 10.2307/283308]

Most writers on Pythagoreanism have rejected or ignored the statements of ancient authors about the communistic organization of the early society. Their objections arise partly from a priori doubts of the involvement of a philosophical society in political matters, but also from the uncertainties of the ancient tradition. (Minar 1944: 34)

Pretty close to Fourier's point about philosophers not touching social or political, particularly financial, questions (until, of course, it becomes convenient to do so).

The scholiast says, "When the youths came to him and wished to spend their time with him, he did not allow them immediately, but said that it was necessary also for the property of those associated with him to be common." After the word "immediately," on the other hand, Iamblichus continues, "until he had made his test and judgment of them," and goes on to describe the method of testing the character of applicants for membership and the stages to be passed through before attaining the highest grade of membership. (Minar 1944: 35)

"Association" already a loaded word.

After tentative admission to the society, a candidate must first go through a three-year probationary period, and then, in addition, a five-year period of "silence." The phrasing of Iamblichus and Diogenes makes it clear that this silence is purely a ritual matter connected with the mystery-like instruction and religious ceremonies of the order. The ceremonies are conducted by Pythagoras behind a veil of curtain. Those who have passed this five-year test may pass behind the curtain and see him face to face during the ceremonies; the others must merely listen. (Minar 1944: 39)

"The man behind the curtain", quite literally.

It has sometimes been imagined that the whole concept of communism in the Pythagorean society was deduced by Timaeus from their reported use of the phrase κοινά τά φιλων. But the whole character of the exposition of Timaeus has to be considered in this connection, and his casual use of the proverb renders this interpretation unlikely. Some have thought that the idea of communism was imported into Pythagorean history under the influence of Plato's Republic; but even if we supposed Timaeus himself to be influenced by Plato, what motive could he have had for devising such a fiction, and then elaborating it by fitting it into his account of the organization of the society? The detail of his exposition goes far beyond anything suggested by Plato. (Minar 1944: 41)

Could a simple phrase, everything is common between friends (sõpradele on kõik ühine) ["the possessions of friends are common", ibid 41], beget a whole system?

By the time of Archytas' political leadership in Tarentum (perhaps 366-360 B.C.), the society had certainly abandoned the custom. However, at about this time the Tarentines, probably under Pythagorean influence, adopted a custom for political purposes which is reminiscent of the earlier communism. Aristotle says, "By sharing the use of their own property with the poor, they gain their good will." Whatever the details of this scheme may have been, it obviously does not mean that the members of the society or of the governing class held their property in common. (Minar 1944: 43)

More or less what Fourier was going for, I think. At least the point is same: the rich can stay, as long as they guarantee a minimum to the rest.

In the first place, although Pythagorean communism, like Plato's, was restricted to the leaders in the community, it was not an official aspect of the state organization, but was practiced by the members of an exclusive society; and it was not so extensive as that which plato envisaged, since it did not include the community of wives and children. Secondly, Plato was not particularly interested in historical precedents. Though his states are, of course, developed in the context of Greek political thought, the Republic especially is expected to stand on its logical perfection rather than on actual [|] examples. It is sometimes completely new and different. Finally, it should be remembered that even if Plato had wished to use an historical example, he might have hesitated because of the Pythagoreans' lack of permanent success. The state he devised was to last forever, and community of property among the Guards was to help insure this, whereas in Southern Italy this very community of property was one of the important grounds on which the Pythagoreans were thrown out of power after a few years. (Minar 1944: 43-44)

Sounds like something Bernie accused of modern America: socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.

Another important fact is that the member's goods were renounced in favor of the group. It is "friends" whose possessions are rightfully considered as common. The central point of Pythagorean thought throughout its history was harmony, the fitting together of the parts in any whole - the cosmos, society, or the individual. Men are naturally members of the human family and must not allow individual and separatist tendencies to supersede their loyalty to the group. This does not mean without qualification, however, that all men are brothers and must share their fortune; obviously the "friends" intended in the slogan are a rather select group united by religious beliefs and capable of passing rigorous tests lasting several years. It is not out of line with Pythagorean thought that some should thus be treated differently from others, for the Pythagorean harmony was an "agreement of dissentients," a fitting together of unequal parts, not as equals, but in accordance with their natural differences and varying merit. Thus the members of the society undoubtedly considered themselves as the group naturally suited and intended to rule over their fellow-citizens, and they felt that it was truly for the good of all that they set themselves off as a special group. (Minar 1944: 45)

Hence, "to absorb egoism and individual discords in the accords of the masses" (Fourier 1971: 160-161).

Reiche, Harald A. T. 1993. Heraclides' Three Soul-Gates: Plato Revised. Transactions of the American Philological Association 123: 161-180. [JSTOR / DOI: 10.2307/284327]

Thus, too, he alludes to the Timaeus passage cited (where the sun's fiery "midday light" is said to draw out, by force of the attraction of like to like, the fiery light from inside our eye toward the object of vision), even while exchanging that fiery light (both solar and intraocular) for luminous ether, the new fifth element. (Reiche 1993: 163)

That's how you see the stars during high noon. Just turn on the light from your own eyes.

[...] according to Ptolemy's epigram (in Boll's reconstruction, 1950: 143-55), inspired him with purely intellectual (κατὰ νοῦν) intimations of immortality. (Reiche 1993: 163)

A pair of words to clobber rational action theorists with?

As Plato saw it, physical vision is wholly distinct from thought and optimal during noontime sunlight. Thereafter, it presumably declines in proportion as the fading of daylight "dampens" our intraocular fire, eventually causing our eyelids to close in sleep. Any mental activity while asleep is merely rehearsing, in the form of dreams, strong visual stimuli received during the preceding daylight (Tim. 45E-46A). (Reiche 1993: 167)

Very logical explanation, whereas the actual reason is physiological.

By day as well as by night, effluences emanating from outer space as well as from our own astronomical cosmos demonstrably draw from our souls an outlflow of its own inherent ethereal lumen intellectuale. (Reiche 1993: 168)

Vaimuvalgus.

On the difference between, and the original overlap (never coterminousness) of the 11, later 12, unequal constellations and the 12 equal signs, see H. G. Gundel [...] (Reiche 1993: 171)

Define:coterminous - having the same boundaries or extent in space, time, or meaning.

There are and will be those in many places of the earth who interpret matters divine and inaccessible to our senses in accordance with inspirations both divine and demonic. These interpreters fall into two groups: those who recount what they have physically experienced, as is reported of Empedotimus, and those who recount what they have learned without benefit of their own bodies, as is reported by Clenymus of Athens. Concerning each group, moreover, there exist full-bodied traditions. Not surprisingly, there are fewer reported instances of the first kind. For human beings who can experience matters divine through their bodies, i.e., their physical selves, are few and chronologically far in between. (Reiche 1993: 178)

Reads like a summary of Kantianism. This is, if I'm reading it correctly, a translation of Proclus (not completely sure).

Stapleton, H. E. 1958. Ancient and Modern Aspects of Pythagoreanism. Translated by G. J. W. Osiris 13: 12-53. [JSTOR]

The original title of this paper was "The Meaning of the Pentagram to the Early Pythagoreans": bu the undesirability of limiting enquiry to the source of this symbol, or the uses to which it was put, soon became evident. In particular, the work done during the last 30 years by Neugebauer and his colleagues on the ancient cuneiform tablets that deal with mathematics has conclusively proved that Pythagoras must have derived his Number Theory of the Universe as well as the so-called "Pythagorean Theorem" from the vastly superior mathematical knowledge that is now known to have been at the disposal of Babylonian temple priests more than 1200 years before Pythagoras was born. (Stapleton 1958: 12)

I'm more partial to the Star of David but still might be interesting.

Fundamentally, therefore, the old Babylonian system of Mathematics (and presumably that of still earlier Sumer) was based on the use of the Thumb and 4 Fingers of one hand similar to the method still employed in India for counting the number of Pies in the Anna (12) or the Annas in the Rupee (16). All that the Indian operator does is to apply the tip of his thumb to the inside of the remaining fingers. By the 3 joints in each finger Pies can be counted: and Annas by counting 4 along each finger. If the joints of the fingers were used in this way for calculations in Mesopotamia of, say, 3000 B.C., on the analogy of 3 multiplied by 4 making 4, if 12 were then multiplied by the number of fingers on one hand, viz. 5, the result would be 60. (Stapleton 1958: 14)

I wonder if this is the same method still employed in China. I recall a video of a young foreigner counting with his hand in "the traditional Chinese manner" and native onlookers being amazed.

The first of two or three comments by Dr. Derek Price (the Cambridge authority on Astrolabes) was: "How is it that a woman's eye, in particular, is able to detect whether a picture on a wall is hanging straight? It is possible that this may be due to some physiological (? stereoscopic) mechanism within the human eye which enables the person to know whether the side of the picture is parallel to some fairly adjacent vertical or horizontal line on the wall itself?" (Stapleton 1958: 19)

Common knowledge that a woman's field of vision is more peripheral, and a man's more direct. Venus and Mars have different sights to see?

Mr. Brice had laid out the corners of the hut with string, using the right angle in a semicircle method: but he found that neither this, nor the more ancient method of constructing a right-angled triangle with sides of 5, 4 and 3 respectively, were known to these modern Asiatic villagers. He concluded that their huts were simply laid out by guess-work. (Stapleton 1958: 20)

Very obviously the "universal analogy" behind Fourier's favoured proportions (cf. Gide 1971: 24-25).

It [the 6th cent. B.C.] was a century marked by a sudden outburst of revolutionary [|] thought along the great highway of the Steppes over which - for, probably, thousands of years - the tide of humanity has ebbed and flowed. Basically, this current of thought was intellectual - an upsurge or desire to understand and solve various mental problems: of how the world and mankind came into existence: the relationship of men to both their human and divine rulers: and, generally speaking, what things should be regarded as good, and what were evil. In China, the leader and guider of man's thought was Confucios: in India, Gautama, the Buddha: in Iran, Zoroaster: in Greece, Pythagoras: and, however different the gospel was thta each of these men preached, their teaching may be summed up in the Pauline phrase that henceforward men should "waîk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit." In all four teachers, a single common aim is discernable. viz: the realisation by their disciples of the Ultimate Truth - whether it concerned things seen by the eye or the proudcts of human thought. Separated as they were from one another by distances that seem to forbid the possibility at that time of any communication between the countries in which they lived, they are linked not only by this urgent demand for further and more certain understanding both of themselves and of their environment, but also by such peculiarities of the beliefs taught that it would seem difficult to explain how this could have occurred except on the hypothesis that the different people concerned sprang originally from a common stock that once inhabited a single Asiatic racial centre. In other words, these four inspirers of thought and action may have been unconsciously drawing on more ancient wisdom that had been stored up in the sub-conscious mind of the original stock, but almost forgotten by the communities into which this stock had divided. (Stapleton 1958: 25-26)

"Minu repliigile, et kogu see konstruktsioon on vaid järjekordne variatsioon kaotatud paradiisi teemal, vastas ta, et tema meelest on asi just vastupidi: kaotatud paradiis, kuldne ajastu, Atlantis ja suur kiht erinevate rahvaste mütoloogiat on kindla baasmüüdi reflektsioon, mida ei peaks nimetama mitte "kaotatud paradiisi", vaid "kaotatud lauda" müüdiks." (M. Lotman 2012: 167) - not "paradise lost" but "barn lost".

Many links can be traced between the ideas of all the four countries that have just been referred to. The Pythagorean pairs of Opposites, e.g Odd and Even: Good and Evil: and Male and Female, illustrate a common belief in the existence of what J. E. Raven has called "Eternal Dualism." (Stapleton 1958: 26)

John Earle Raven's Pythagoreans and Eleatics (1948, Cambridge University Press) sounds interesting, but it has been removed from Internet Archive, Google Books doesn't even have a preview, and Amazon sells reprints of it for 180 dollars. Someone's making bank on keeping this work out of reach.

Unlike previous Ionian philosophers - Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, who were Gallios in regard to the existence of either Gods or belief in the possibility of any existence after death - Pythagoras was a Mystic who believed - through intuition alone - that an operative Reality exists behind the phenomena of Nature and that, through the volition of this Creator, the Universe and everything in it has been brought into existence. Music served as the foundation of his spiritual thought and most of his teaching: and the knowledge that musical Harmony depended on certain numerical relations between the notes deepened his previous interest in Numbers, and, finally, crystallised into a belief that the Universe is a Harmony of Numbers. (Stapleton 1958: 31)

Not exactly that "the Universe is made of Numbers", but Harmony inserted into that formula. He could have equally well said that the universe follows physical laws.

In another way, too, Pythagoras differed from his predecessors. For them, Matter was composed of one, or all, of 4 fundamental sub-strates, Fire, Air, Water and Earth - all endowed with a life-like energy of their own and capable of transmutation into one another. Pythagoras, on the other hand, seems to have firmly believed that theorising on these lines was both unwarranted and superfluous until everything in the Universe had been assigned its allotted Form - the harmonic arrangement of its Numbers in Space. (Stapleton 1958: 32)

I didn't know that the elements were capable of that.

This statement of the otherwise untrustworthy Syrian writer Lucian (fl. 150 A.D.) is, however, confirmed by the alabaster disc in the Bâle Museum dating from Alexandrian times. It was probably used as a mould for making ritual cakes: and incised on it is a Pentagram with the individual letters of the Greek word ΥΓΕΙΑ (Health) at its 5 points (M. C. Ghyka: Le Nombre d'Or I, 38, n. 1). (Stapleton 1958: 35; fn)

What would modern teenage satanists think of this?

In the Near East from very ancient times, there has been a marked predilection for employing the number 12. Examples are 1) the division of the day into 12 parts; 2) the 12 Signs of the Zodiac: 3) the 12 Tribes of Israel: 4) the 12 Stones in the pectoral of the Jewish High Priest: and 5) the 12 Apostles. As C.P.S. Menon has shown in his "Early Astronomy and Cosmology" this seems to have been ultimately derived from an astrological expansion of the Chinese and Babylonian idea that the Square World could be divided into 4 parts, and that round the World, the Signs of the Zodiac were located in a belt of 12 squares, each equal in area to one of the Four Quarters of the Square world. (Stapleton 1958: 41)

Quick! Inform the flat Earthers!

In this [Keith 1909] it is argued that Pythagoras' teaching on the subject was "a genius' version" of contemporary popular beliefs, previously incorporated in Orphism, and that Indian ideas on metapsychosis were not probably formulated till a later date that 500 B.C. (Stapleton 1958: 45; fn)

Yet another similarity with Fourier, who evidently read some classics but mainly just newspapers.

Pythagoras himself may have regarded the Monad not as the Eternal Entity from which all things visible and invisible are created by auto-volition, but only as the Creator's operative agent. Such an idea might very well have been included in the traditional account of the tetaching of Pythagoras that Plato is said to have received from Archytas of Tarentum c. 390 B.C. (Stapleton 1958: 49; fn)

Auto-affection, auto-volition, and auto-cognition?

On the other hand, the possibility of a much less philosophic line of thought cannot be ignored. Raven accepts a suggestion of Cornford that the world was regarded by Pythagoras as a living and breathing creature and that everything in the knowledgeable world must have originated from a Seed. Quoting in support a verse of Parmenides - the immediate successor and critic of Pythagoras - to the effect that the feminine spirit that governs all things devised Love, the first of all the gods, Raven thought it possible that the early Pythagoreans may have considered the cosmological process as the implanting by the male principle of Limit in the midst of the surrounding Unlimited that seed which, by progressive growth, developed into the visible Universe." (Op. cit., p. 47). (Stapleton 1958: 50)

Possibly where Fourier derived the idea that planets (globes) are living organisms.

Cf. what Iôn of Chios, Poet, writer of Tragedies, and Philosopher, wrote c. 450 B.C. "The beginning of my work is: everything is Three and nothing more or less than these three. The virtue of each thing is a Triad: Intelligence, Strength, Luck." (Stapleton 1958: 50; fn)

Yep, that's the triad I'm interested in. Funny how "Luck" now makes some sense in light of Fourier's "Luxury".

Knox, Peter E. 1999. Lucretius on the Narrow Road. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 99: 275-287. [JSTOR / DOI: 10.2307/311485]

The pronuncement of H. A. J. Munro, the great 19th-century Lucretian commentator, may be taken as typical:
In Greek literature too his tastes seem to have carried him to the older and more illustrious writers. In this as in so many other respects he appears to have stood quite aloof from the prevailing fashions of his day; for the great mass of contemporary poets, among them even Catullus at all events in his heroic and elegiac poems, chose to form their style after Euhorion of Chalcis and the affected Alexandrine school of poets, Callimachus and the rest, whose influence extended far into the Augustan age, though they wrote in what was to themselves really a dead language.
The reversal of this position in classical scholarship of the Anglo-American world may be traced to the publication in 1970 of an influential article by E. J. Kenney, although, as Kenney acknowledged, some voices against this view had been raised earlier. (Knox 1999: 275)

Good quote, though this paper, on the face of it, shouldn't have anything to do with Pythagoras. I hope it proves me wrong.

Since the appearance of Kenney's article others have made important contributions on the affinities of the De rerum natura with "neoteric" poetry, and the position these scholars have staked out has many compelling features. It is extraordinarily unlikely that Lucretius lived and wrote in an intellectual vacuum, unaware of an uninfluenced by the works of the poets best known to his generation. (Knox 1999: 276)

Define:neoteric - new or modern; recent. A modern person; a person who advocates new ideas.

The author of a recent history of Latin literature goes so far as to assert that "in the poem to book 4 [...] when Lucretius presents himself as the poet who is the first to arrive at 'the trackless lands of the Pierian Muses' in order to reach a new source of poetry and to win glory, he is reproducing the gesture of self-consciousness that Callimachus had made a commonplace in Hellenistic poetry." [.|.] The imagery of the untrotten path is clearly related to the Prologue of Callimachus' Aetia, in which he relates the instructions given to him as a young poet by Apollo [...] (Knox 1999: 276-277)

The imagery is certanly vivid. Is there untrodden, trackless land even in Hyperborea?

Olympiodorus notes there that "it was a Pythagorean maxim to avoid the highway." The context that elicits this comment by Olympiodorus is worth serving, as well as the text [|] of Olympiodorus' commentary. Socrates describes the road takes by the few who busy themselves with philosophy and the state of their souls, contrasting it with the path taken by the many who care more for the body. (Phd. 82d) [...] There is much in Socrates' discussion of the fate of the soul that evokes Pythagoreanism, and it is this background that provokes the remark by Olympiodorus cited by Pfeiffer (In Phaedonem 65d, p. 30, 25 Norvin) [...] (Knox 1999: 279-280)

I'm on the right path.

The idea that a person must choose between two roads that represent alternative paths in life is as old as Hesiod (Erg. 287 ff.), who represents the roads to kakotes and arete as respectively smooth and easy and steep and difficult. This imagery is common also in Roman philosophical prose, and, importantly for the question at hand, Epicurus, although the extant fragments offer no useful parallel for this particular Lcuretian usage. (Knox 1999: 282)

Calls to mind the fact that one of those old ~18th century French philosophers (possibly Montesquieu) collected quotes about delayed gratification, in other words, the steep and difficult road.

Analysis of other passages in the De rerum natura for which similar programmatic significance has been claimed will yield, I believe, similar results. Much has been made, for example, of the programmatic importance of 4.180-182, where Lucretius is apparently adapting Antipater of Sidon [...] (Knox 1999: 286)

This was a pretty interesting piece. I wouldn't have guessed that such a vast literature exists for just a single poetic trope. Plus, thanks to searching for some citation I stumbled upon a thesis which examines Pythagoreanism in Peirce. I'll finish with this lexical curiosity - "programmatic" is one of those words that have vexed me for almost a decade. "Programmatic music" was in use in Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, and basically means any music with an intended meaning, a story to tell, or the like. What this author intends with this word, I guess, is something along the lines of "genre-defining", i.e. some passages have programmatic significance/importance because they set the agenda for future comers. In this new sense it might even be useful in discussing the influential passages I'm working on.

Brown, C. C. 1970. The Mere Numbers of Henry More's Cabbala. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 10(1): 143-153. [JSTOR / DOI: 10.2307/449700]

This article challenges the bland assumption of one "numerological" critic, M-S Røstvig, that Henry More was "the English professional numerologist" of the seventeenth century. Like Milton, professing a cautious, rational attitude to symbolic numbers themselves, More attributed no inherent efficacy to them. This hit controversy with the occultist Thomas Vaughan shows. More himself applied Pythagorean numbers to the days of Creation in Conjectura Cabbalistica; but, under Copernican and Cartesian influence, and determined to avoid superstition, More redefined the significance of the Pythagorean "cabbala." For him the authentic Pythagorean lore gained its special significance merely from the Mosaic lore hidden within it; only later Pythagoreans superadded magic. Numbers are "dry," not vital, symbols. They provide a suitable mnemonic and rational system in which the tradition could be embodied. So too Theophilus Gale reports that the "New Philosophers," Pythagorean-wise, began their teaching with mathematics "as a method most proper for the fixing the Volatile vagrant spirits of YOUNG STUDENTS." (Brown 1970: 143)

That is one thick abstract. Very keen to find out if "symbolic numbers" could apply to Peircean use of numer-ness.

What I want briefly to trace is not More's use of numbers but his attitude to them. Pythagoras was for More a particularly important figure, and in Conjectura Cabbalistica, which Miss Røstvig treats as a seventeenth-century English handbook on numerology, More turns to the "Pythagorick" mystery of numbers to provide a "philosophick" interpretation of the six days of Creation. It was of course a life-long preoccupation of the English Platonist to reconcile the "best" Greek philosophers with the Christian/Hebraic faith, so that there is every justification in the most general terms for seeing More as a late member of a long Renaissance tradition with its main roots ni Florentine Neoplatonism, and for putting, therefore, Conjectura Cabbalistica alongside Pico's Heptaplus. (Brown 1970: 144)

Always someone tries to reconcile some tradition with some other.

More taunts in reply, using some expressions not unlike Milton's:
THERE IS A LABYRINTH AND WILDE OF MAGICK WHERE A WORLD OF STUDENTS HAVE LOST THEMSELVES. And you PHILALETHES! have not scaped scot-free. For you have lost your reason before as I told you, and your so much and so confidently conversing with mere Unities and Numbers, which in themselves design nothing, will teach you in time, to speak words without any inward phantasm of what you say. So that you shall bid fair for the losing of your fancy too, and then you will be as you are near it always, VOX, PRAETEREA NIHIL, a mere noise and clatter of words.
I tell you once more, ANTHROPOSOPHUS! that TERNARIES, and QUATERNARIES, and DECADS and MONADS, and such like words of number have no useful sense nor signification, nor virtue, if unapplied to some determinate substance or thing. But our great Theomagician having no project in this writing that I can see, but to amaze the world, contents himself only to rattle his chain, and to astonish the [|] rude and simple as if some Spirit or Conjuror was at hand, and so those words that are most sonorous and consist of the greatest number of syllables, please him better, then what have more solid signification, and a more setled and sober sense. (Observations, 1656 edn., pp. 118-119. My italics.)
Clearly More's reservations about number must be taken seriously. In the forefront of developments in rational theology and philosophy at Cambridge, More was enough in sympathy with the rising mathematical and mechanical sciences to be willing to recognize Pythagorean arithmology as a study quite apart from quantitative arithmetic, and irreconcilable with it. (Brown 1970: 145-146)

God damn, More goes hard on Vaughan. I don't think I've ever met "design" in that sense; "inward phantasm" is a creative equivalent of signified; "a mere noise and clatter of words" sounds like a paraphrase of flatus vocis. The other quote is reminiscent of Herbert Spencer's Style, which didn't harangue but merely pointed out that Latin variants often have more syllables.

But such ARITHMETICAL nugacities as are ordinarily recorded for his, in dry numbers, to have been the riches of the Wisdome of so famous a PHILOSOPHER, is a thing beyond all credit or probability. (p. 155)
The adjective "dry" and adverb "meerly" mark the force of More's stand. (Brown 1970: 148)

Define:nugacity - triviality or frivolity; a trivial or frivolous thing or idea.

But how unlike these Beironites [brutish livers] was the divine communiality of PYTHAGORAS followers [|] (as IAMBLICHUS describes it, DE VITA PYTHAG. LIB.I.CAP.33.) not onely supplying friendly one another in the necessities of life, but mutually cherishing in one another the divine life of the soul, and maintaining an inviolable concord in the best things. [...] For they often admonished one another not to dissipate the Deity in them: Wherefore their friendship wholly in words and works seemed to aim at a kind of commixtion and union wit hGod, and communion wit hthe divine Intellect and Soul.
The insistence of More's rational attitude to number and the equation of the Pythagorean with the mnemonic system can be traced by following summarily and selectively the controversy that surrounded the Pythagorean tetractys. (Brown 1970: 150-151)

Define:commixtion - (obsolete) The action of mixing or blending together; commingling. The blending (of wines, etc.); garbling. Coition; copulation; sexual intercourse.

Johnson, Franklin P. 1956. A Philosophic Allegory? American Journal of Archaeology 60(1): 57-61. [JSTOR / 10.2307/500089]

In 1910, soon after the Boston throne became generally known, Salomon Reinach ascribed to John Marshall the opinion that the two pieces constituted an allegory of birth and death. In the following year there appeared in the same journal a communication from Marshall, in which he denied having held any such opinion, and it has never reappeared in the discussions of the thrones. It is clear that the position occupied by this hypothesis is not a commanding one, and yet perhaps it deserves consideration. For the present purpose a term, which would have had little tendency to reconcile Marshall to the idea, may be added: it is suggested that the two monuments present a philosophic allegory of birth and death. (Johnson 1956: 57)

Discussion of Ludovisi Throne, an ancient sculpture depicting naked women. Salomon Reinach has written Orpheus: A History of Religion. "Through him [Iôn] too we learn that Pythagoras ascribed some of his writings to Orpheus" (Stapleton 1958: 50).

However, it is a commonplace of Greek philosophy that death is good; a release for the soul from the prison of the body, an escape from the burden of matter; and correspondingly that birth is a descent into matter, an entrance into the prison of the body. Hence it is reasonable, from the philosophical standpoint, that he descended scale-pan, symbolizing death, should be hailed with joy; and that the rising one, foretelling continued captivity for the soul, should be marked with sorrow. (Johnson 1956: 57)

Antinatalism was widespread in Greek philosophy?

The English Platonist, Thomas Taylor, was faithfully following his ancient teachers when he prayed that his soul [|]
"soon may pass
Beyond dark Hyle's dire-resounding sea
And gain her long-lost Paradise of rest."
After consideration of many ancient passages, Cumont writes: "La comparaison du monde matériel avec une mer houleuse, où l'âme est engloutie, est traditionnelle." And Again: "la comparaison traditionnelle dans l'école [des Pythagoriciens] de la matière (ΰλη) constamment agitée, avec une mer houleuse." (Johnson 1956: 58-59)

Evidently the "sea of consciousness" figure (e.g. Rimbaud, Peirce, and Freud) is an ancient one.

According to Iamblichos (V. Pyth. 111) Pythagoras accepted the lyre, but condemned the flute, just as Plato (Republic, 3. 10.399 E) excludes the flute from his ideal state, but admits the lyre. Aristides Quintilian (2.19) discusses the matter at some length and says that Pythagoras warned his followers against the corrupting influence of the flute, but commended the lyre as a defence against irrational passions. The rhetorician Quintilian (Inst. Orat. 1. 10.12) ascribes to Pythagoras and his followers the view that the lyre imitated the harmony of the universe. (Johnson 1956: 59)

Reminds me of the discussion about the musical theme of the Game of Thrones TV show. The flute they considered too hoakey, too much associated with everything "medieval", and hence went with stringed instruments.

Morrison, J. S. 1956. Pythagoras of Samos. The Classical Quarterly 6(3/4): 135-156. [JSTOR]

The poet Xenophanes, who must have been Pythagoras' contemporary, appears to have described him, in two elegiac couplets, as a person who believed in the transmigration of souls. Ion of Chios, in the next century, is quoted as saying that Pherecydes 'was endowed with manliness and honour and enjoyed after death a happy existence, if Pythagoras the wise is to be believed, who more than all other men perceived and learnt men's opinions'. Ion here, besides [|] attesting Pythagoras' belief in the immortality of at any rate Pherecydes' soul, is making a literary allusion to Heraclitus' derogatory remark about Pythagoras: that 'he practised inquiry of all men the most, and making a selection composed from these writings his own wisdom, a knowing of many things, a base concoction'. Heraclitus had attacked this 'knowing of many things' on another occasion when he declares that it does no teach wit: 'if it did, it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecateous'. Again, Heraclitus calls Pythagoras 'the prince of swindlers'. Ion of Chios also charged Pythagoras with dishonesty, but for a different reason. He wrote, Ion said, some pieces and 'fathered them upon Orpheus'. (Morrison 1956: 135-136)

Is knowing many things a bad thing? This criticism might have been due to Pythagoras being the first to call himself a philosopher, a lover of knowledge. "Pythagoras is a wise man with a professional repertory of wisdom." (ibid, 136)

Later in the same book Herodotus refers specifically to the doctrine of the soul's immortality (2. 123). He has been speaking of an Egyptian logos which declares that 'the soul of man is immortal and that, when the body perishes, it clothes itself with another living creature which constantly comes to be'. (Morrison 1956: 137)

I wonder if Peirce's phrasing in "future self" might have been a subtle nod to metempsychosis, and James made it too literal in his theory of time-splintered selves.

The identification of 'some formerly, others latterly' with the Orphics and Pythagoreans is made all the more probable by the circumstance that Heraclitus say sopenly what his younger contemporary hints at, that Pythagoras claimed as his own knowledge what he got from others. And Ion's statement that Pythagoras fathered writings on Orpheus only underlines the identity of doctrine which Herodotus noticed in the case of the doctrine of the soul. (Morrison 1956: 137)

Even the ancients couldn't stand for plagiarism.

Aristoxenus is a biased witness. He knew the last of the Pythagoreans, who left Archytas behind at Tarentum and migrated to the mainland of Greece in the first decade of the fourth century; and was concerned to defend them against their calumniators. (Morrison 1956: 141)

Define:calumniator - to make false and malicious statements about; slander. A person who calumniates (slanders, or makes personal attacks upon, others).

Apollonius specifically derives the hetaireia or companionship from the teaching activities of Pythagoras. 'It came about when those youths whom Pythagoras had taught grew up and began to be important in their own families as well as jointly to manage the affairs of the city they formed a large hetareia'. Iustinus speaks of 300 iuvenes living segregated from the other citizens and bound by a kind of oath 'like a brotherhood'. And as a result of the anti-Pythagorean movement after the annexation of Sybaris, Democedes and the epheboi secede from the city. In the twenty years of teaching between 529 and 509 it appears that Pythagoras had established a firm hold on the boys and young men of Croton, and that he had founded for the neoteroi, i.e. the men of military age, an institution of common life. The common life consisted in meetings in a synedrion, was bound by an oath, and could be described as a hetaireia. Logoi were read and discussions took place in which the novices did not share for the first five years. There was a community of possessions. So much we have on sound fourth-century authority. (Morrison 1956: 150)

A curious social system. On the community of possession there's an article above.

The references to the two grades of membership esoterikoi >< exoterikoi, mathematikoi >< akousmatikoi, pythagoreioi >< pythagoristai, are too frequent to be ignored, and the features which recall the initiation rite as found elsewhere can hardly be inventions. (Morrison 1956: 150)

The separator (><) looks suspiciously lie Fourier's symbol for the pivot.

Closely bound up with this is the doctrine attributed to Pythagoras and Empedocles by Sextus Empiricus of the communion which must exist not only [|] between all men but between all living creatures. And this doctrine is brought into connexion with the other great Pythagorean subject, mathematics, by Plato in the Gorgias: 'The wise say, Callicles, that heaven and earth and gods and men are held together by communion and friendship, by orderliness, temperance, and justice; and that this is the reason, my friend, why they call the whole of this world by the name of order (kosmos), not of disorder or of dissoluteness. Now you, as it seems to be, do not give proper attention to this, for all your cleverness, but have failed to observe the great power of geometrical equality among both gods and men. You hold that self-advantage is what you ought to practise because you neglect geometry.' (Morrison 1956: 152-153)

Similar sentiments can be found in Fourier, particularly the emphasis upon order and sympathy with other creatures, whom Fourier would include in the order of man (as helpers of various sorts).

If we may accept the evidence of Eudemus and Aristoxenus we can, then, find an example of the educational use of number in an extract from Philolaus who was himself a Crotoniate. 'The position with regard to the nature of the physical world and harmonia is as follows. The reality of things, which is eternal, and indeed the nature of the physical world itself, admits of divine and not human knowledge, indeed it is only possible for anything to be known to us because the reality of those elements out of which the world-order is composed consists of limiting and unlimited factors. But since the primary elements (archai) are neither similar nor of the same kind, it would from the first be impossible for them to be included in a system of order if there was not somehow or other a harmonia. Things which are similar and of the same kind have no need of harmonia, but it is necessary for things which are dissimilar and not of the same kind nor of the same rank to be bound together by such a harmonia if they are going to form part of the world-order.' Philolaus then described the actual nature of the harmonia, or numerical relationship of notes in the musical scale, which is a perfect example of number being the reality of a physical thing. Philolaus began his treatise concerning the nature of the physical world with the sentence: 'Physical nature has been brought into a harmony in the world-order out of the unlimited and limiting factors; the same is true of the whole world-order and of everything in it.' (Morrison 1956: 153)

The limiting and unlimited factors are reminiscent of Kant's categories. I have a suspicion that his underlying logic, which is so similar to Fourier's, is indeed based on this aspect of Pythagoreanism. That harmony is established from dissimilar, and not similar, elements is exemplified by Fourier explicitly with musical notes. That numbers signify notes and thus have reality touches upon More's polemic on "dry numbers" (above).

The world is an infinite arnge of differences in many categories. To this continuum number is applied as a limiting factor and produces a thing: in the case of the musical scale, a concord, in the case of physical nature the world-order. The terminology used by Philolaus suggests that the city was conceived to be a third sphere for the application of limit to the unlimited. The words 'like', 'unlike', 'of the same kind' (or tribe), 'of the same rank', are all political. The numerical bond is a kind of formula for producing unity in a city as it makes concord in music and a harmonious universe. (Morrison 1956: 154)

There's definitely something here. It is becoming less and less surprising that Peirce was some sort of a Pythagorean. Just in case, I'll tag this excerpt with #semiosis.

Archytas is credited with the 'invention' of the harmonic progression, and the Republic was written after Plato had met Archytas. In the Gorgias, which was probably written before that meeting, he speaks of the geometric 'equality'; and it is geometry that Pythagoras made into a liberal education. If any particular theory is to be attributed to the early Pythagorean society it must be the one Plato gives in the Gorgias. But from Archytas we can at least gain a valuable insight into the way in which a numerical formula could be applied to politics. Pythagoras' essential preoccupation is with man and society. He scans nature's book not as an end in itself but to provide lessons for man and, above all, for man in association with his fellow men. The unifying principle of the world, once grasped, will supply a pattern on which human society can build its harmony. The Pythagorean revelation was a revelation of dike, of society ordered by principles which claimed recognition as being part of the natural order. (Morrison 1956: 156)

This screams Fourierism.

Burnyeat, M. F. 1962. Time and Pythagorean Religion. The Classical Quarterly 12(2): 248-251. [JSTOR]

It is, I think, a fair presumption to suppose that there was some bond uniting all the different aspects of Pythagoras' thought, a bond strnog enough to satisfy Pythagoras himself, but loose enough for the μαθεματικοί to be able, later, to cast off the religious and mystical doctrines without endangering the rest. If we reject Cornford's suggestion for the reconciliation of Pythagorean religion and science, namely that they were both based on the concept of Unity, the One, the obvious candidate is simply numbers in general, the number-mysticism which is common both in archaic Greece and in other primitive societies. (Burnyeat 1962: 248)

Same with Fourier, who scrapped his first publication and scribbled maniacally until his whole system was in order. The concept of Unity makes a frequent appearance in his writings.

As for politics, we might be justified in inferring that Archytas' theory of political άρμονία was held in some form by Pythagoras himself, especially since άρμονία is the mark of the aristocratic state - not equality, but proportion in an unequal ratio - and the opposition to Pythagorean domination came from the democrats. (Burnyeat 1962: 248)

Another aspect in common with Fourierism.

Dr. E. R. Leach, in an essay in which he tries to discover why we include under one concept two basic but different experiences, the repetition of certain phenomena in nature and the irreversible process of ageing, writes:
'Indeed in some primitive societies it would seem that the time process is not experienced as a "succession of epochal durations" at all; there is no sense of going on and on in the same direction, or round and round the same wheel. On the contrary, time is experienced as something discontinuous, a repetition of repeated reversal, a sequence of oscillations between polar opposites: night and day, winter and summer, drought and flood, age and youth, life and death. In such a scheme the past has no "depth" to it, all past is equally past; it is simply the opposite of now. [...]
Here, then, is a connexion between time and reincarnation. (Burnyeat 1962: 249)

Somewhat reminiscent of Pjatigorski & Mamardašvili's discussion of time and death. From: "Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Chronos" in Rethinking Anthropology (1961: 126).

Finally, for what it is worth, there is the theory of the soul held by Alcmaeon, who seems to have been in some sort of contact with the Pythagoreans. The soul, he thought, is immortal, because it is always in (circular) motion like the heavenly bodies. Yet man dies because he cannot join the beginning to the end; the inference seems clear - the body can only traverse half the circle, and it is left to the soul to complete the journey, arriving eventually for its next reincarnation at the place where the circle began. (Burnyeat 1962: 250)

Inspiring stuff. In a Fourieristic twist, there should be an addendum: the body traverses one third of the circle, that of the senses, of individual life. The second third is social, post-mortem: you survive in living persons' memories, your footprints are still visible. And the third, the distributive proceeds to ever-after: if you left your mark, it will be fought, it will be commended, and it will be mixed with the Totality in the process.

Morrison, J. S. 1958. The Origins of Plato's Philosopher-Statesman. The Classical Quarterly 8(3/4): 198-218. [JSTOR]

When Plato was an old man he wrote, in the seventh Letter, an account of the political developments that took place in Athens when he was in his twenties, how they involved his friend Socrates, and how he himself became increasingly disillusioned with the aristocratic kinsmen with whom he would naturally have been associated if he had entered politics. 'When I considered all this,' he proceeds, 'the more closely I studied the politicians and the constitution and practice of the city, and the order I grew, the more difficult it seemed to me to govern rightly. Nothing could be done without trustworthy friends and supporters, and these were not easy to find ready to hand - for the city was no longer organized according to the customs and institutions of our ancestors - and it was impossible to find new friends at all easily [...] with the result that though I had been full of eagerness for a political career, the sight of all this chaos made me giddy, and though I never stopped thinking how things might be improved and the constitution refromed, I postponed action, waiting for a favourable opportunity. (Morrison 1958: 198)

Here lies the genius of Pythagoras: instead of looking for new friends in high places, he tutored a generation of young men who were loyal to him.

In section IV I set out the course of Plato's thought on the relations of philosophy and politics, starting with the Apology and Euthydemus where he is still under strong Socratic influence, proceeding to the Gorgias where he is beginning to feel the compulsion of Pythagorean ideas, and concluding with the Republic where the full effects of direct contact with the surviving Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia are displayed. (Morrison 1958: 199)

Ground plan for reading Pythagoreanism in Plato. Though I can't stand dialogues where every reply is some affirmative (what's the point of conversing with a "yes-man"?), I might take it up in due time.

And do not be offended at my telling you the truth: for the truth is that no man who opposes you or any other crowd and tries to prevent the many unjust and illegal acts which are done in the State, will save his life: he who fights for the right, if he would live even for a brief space, must have a private station not a public one.' (Morrison 1958: 199)

Too true. If you're an investigative journalist who uncovers the massive wrongdoings of a government agency, you might just find yourself "suicided" with two bulletholes in your head. The person who uncovered the Panama Papers, too, can attest to Plato's point.

The latter had been scathingly described a few pages earlier by Callicles. Philosophy, he says, is all very well for a schoolboy, but 'when I see an elderly man still going on with philosophy and not getting rid of it, that is the person, Socrates, whom I think in need of a whipping. For, as I said just now, however well endowed he may be, he is bound to become unmanly, through shunning the centres and marts of the city, in which, as the poet said "men get them renown and glory"; he must duck down and spend the rest of his life whispering in a corner with three or four lads, and never utter anything free or high-spirited.' (Morrison 1958: 200)

Description of the "life of philosophy" in ancient times. "Renown" a significant trope in the obscure theory of phatic communion I'm intending to build. So is uttering free and high-spirited things by which, it seems to be implied, men in city centers and marketplaces gain renown.

To this Tubero objects that the Platonic Socrates, even when he is discussing ethics and politics, is 'eager to introduce arithmetic, geometry, and harmony, after the manner of Pythagoras'. Scipie replies: 'what you say is quite true, but I expect you have heard, Tubero, that after the death of Socrates Plato went first to Egypt for the purpose of study, and after that to Italy and Sicily to make a thorough study of the discoveries of Pythagoras. Also, that he spent much time with Archytas of Tarnetum and with Timaeus of Locri, and that he acquires the commentaries of Philolaus. Also, that since the name of Pythagoras was still well known in those regions he gave his attention to the Pythagoreans (hominibus Pythagoreis) and their peculiar studies. The result of this was that being devoted heart and soul to Socrates and wishing to attribute everything to him, he wove together into one fabric the charm and conversational dexterity of Socrates with the Pythagorean mystique and the metaphysical importance they attached to certain arts. (Morrison 1958: 201)

The overall point being that Plato evidently made a conscious effort to familiarize himself with the philosophy of Pythagoras.

In Croton the new sophos developed a new paideia based largely on mathematics and issuing in political action. In this institution Plato clearly found the solution to his problem. It was a drastic solution indeed, mare drastic than the Socratic politike, in which the individual 'cared for' the souls of his pupils, one or two at a time. The drawback to the Socratic politike had been its ineffectiveness, the fatal isolation and vulnerability of the politikos. It is true that the Pythagorean synedria had run into trouble in the end, but they had achieved much and enjoyed a long period of ascendancy, and Archytas remained as a surviving example of a successful Pythagorean statesman. Plato's contact with the surviving Pythagoreans seems to have convinced him that something like the Crotonian synedrion would provide 'the trustworthy friends and supporters' necessary for successful political reform. (Morrison 1958: 211)

Fourier's major fault lies in not even considering teaching his system. Instead, he waited for a capitalist on a white horse to come and finance his plans for sociopolitical reforms.

It is at any rate certain that shortly after his return from Italy he founded the Academy, an institution which took the form of a thiasos devoted to the worship of the Muses, as the Crotonian synedrion may have been, and 'designed primarily as a training school for practical statesman'. At about the same time he wrote the Republic, to expound a theory of justice as the bond which under ideal conditions holds together the three parts of the soul in the individual man, and the three classes in the city, in such a way that the rational part rules. The bond which holds together the cosmos of soul and state is, however, no longer the geometric progression as in the Gorgias, but a numerical bond of the same general kind, the harmonic progression. The change is significant, and I shall revert to it in an appendix. (Morrison 1958: 211)

Now this is more like it. Now I know for sure that I have to read the Republic in short order. Primarily to confirm that "the three parts of the soul" are indeed the same that I've noted throughout the ages of philosophy, from Pythagoras to Kant and beyond.

I noticed, when the theory of justice or social order put forward in the Republic was being considered, that it differed from the theory mentioned briefly in the Gorgias. In the latter dialogue the formula which is the basis of the social and physical order is the geometric proportion, progression of mean, 2:4:8. [|] The series is called in Greek an ίσότης or equality because it represents a fair system of what we should call differentials between powers which are not in fact equal. In the geometric proportion the difference between one power and the next is similar, four is twice two, eight is twice four, and so on. Such an equitable system of differentials is regarded as a bond, because it does hold together the different powers in a numerical system of framework. In the case of the simple arithmetical progression 2:4:6 the difference between one power and the next is also the same, four is two more than two, six is two more than four. The superiority of the geometrical progression as a basis for social order lies in its greater fairness. Whereas in the arithmetical progression the differential was the same (i.e. in our example two) whatever the power of the terms might be, in the case of the geometrical progression the differential ('twice') although in one sense the same is nevertheless absolutely greater in proportion to the power of the terms (i.e. four is twice two, and eight is twice four, but the differential is two in the case of the lower pair of terms and four in the case of the higher pair). The application of a mathematical formula to politics is exactly in the Pythagorean manner, and in view of the early society's preoccupation with geometry we can have little hesitation in regarding it as part of the doctrine of the first Pythagoreans which had found its way to Athens. (Morrison 1958: 213-214)

Not the 5:4:3 I'm more partial to, but still very interesting.

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