A History of Pythagoreanism

In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell famously described Pythagoras as a cross between Einstein and Mary Baker Eddy. He has had an immense influence on Western thought, but there are no contemporary sources about him and the best-known biographies were written several hundred years after his death. This volume is quite simply the most impressive resource available to Pythagorean scholars and brings the scholarship of the last 50 years right up to date. Much of this has derived from the work of two scholars who took a different view – Walter Burkert and W.C.K Guthrie. It is apparent that the rigorous and systematic nature of modern scholarship does not correspond to the way the ancient mind operated, and it is interesting that one contributor observes that, while modern scholarly consciousness is largely instrumental, the approach of Pythagoras was more receptive, in other words open to insights from the right hemisphere.

The introduction gives an overview of the volume as well as a critical summary of the contributions. It is clear that scholars take very different views depending on how they read the evidence. One area of controversy, for example, is the relationship between Orphism and Pythagoreanism and whether the followers of these traditions all believed in metempsychosis and vegetarianism. A number of myths are discarded, for instance that Pythagoras was the originator of the ratios and concords in music. The scope of the work is immense, treating Pythagoras and his influence up to the early Renaissance with the work of Ficino. I learned about the importance of his successors Philolaus and Archytas, with whom I was not previously acquainted. Other chapters cover politics and society, the Pythagorean way of life and Pythagorean ethics, religion, harmonics, his influence on Plato and Aristotle and then in the Roman culture. The three lives of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus each have a separate chapter. While the volume as a whole is aimed at scholars, general readers can benefit from the extraordinary scholarship displayed in their particular areas of interest.