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NPR Article:quote:Jay Kennedy tells NPR's Guy Raz that his discovery was partially luck. Looking at Plato's works in their original scroll form, he noticed that every 12 lines there was a passage that discussed music. "The regularity of that pattern was supposed to be noticed by Plato's readers," Kennedy says. BBC: quote:Plato was the Einstein of Greece's Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. So maybe someone knows the history of this better than I do, but as I understand it the Pythagoreans were in power for a very long time in a lot of areas. Eventually they just sort of quietly disappeared and most of what we know about them is written carefully and obliquely, as though it were kind of taboo to talk about. I used to trace most of Western philosophy back to Plato, but more recently have noticed that the Pythagoreans did it first and did it harder. Reading this was pretty vindicating, since I think many of the tenets of the Pythagoreans have stuck with us all the way into Descartes and modern analytic philosophy, and it's a set of blinders that's very problematic in the modern world. There's a subtext to these articles that Plato was sticking up for the little guy and supporting religious freedom, but my take has always been that the Pythagoreans were a zany cult so mesmerized by the discovery of musical scales that they hastily inferred a numerical basis for everything. This opinion is only getting more popular. This is a foundational issue concerning a pillar of Western civilization and a time period that I think is really, really interesting. I'm not sure how many philosophy guys are on this forum, and I doubt many besides me are into the Continental stuff, but this has me jumping up and down shouting "I told you so!"
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 05:42 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 03:34 |
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This has been kicking around for a few years. He has a book out from Acumen on the topic. I can't find any reviews from experts, but I'm very skeptical. There's the evidential questions, but there's also some big questions about how to interpret the data if it exists. For instance, let's take the dialogue I'm most familiar and comfortable with, the Sophist. How would such a discovery of a musical code shed light on being and non-being? Even beyond its existence, the trouble is that I don't think it helps us to make sense of Plato. I can't get his actual paper right now, nor do I have time to read it, but the articles are too cursory for me to really judge what the argument or upshot is. Also I have no idea how this would ever be an "I told you so!" moment in some silly analytic-continental pissing match. (for the record I am getting my PhD in a staunchly analytic department and don't care to get into a slap fight on the topic)
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 06:19 |
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Also I have no idea how this would ever be an "I told you so!" moment in some silly analytic-continental pissing match. Neither do I, and I didn't mean it that way. I was just saying that this is consistent with my views of Plato, but that I wasn't sure people from other backgrounds would see it the same way.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 06:25 |
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No, the Pythagoreans were never "in power" in any way and were pretty much always considered cranks. They refused to eat meat or beans, and not eating meat immediately isolated a person from society: public sacrifices always involved the consumption of meat, so anybody who refused to do so was basically completely cut off from the religious life of the city, and was considered irrational at best and downright dangerous at worst. See Jean-Pierre Vernant's The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks and James Davidson's Courtesans and Fishcakes for an account of the importance of public ritual sacrifice and the social implications of not participating. Also, this dude is not looking at the passages in their original form. We don't know what the original form would have looked like, because even our earliest manuscripts are centuries removed from Plato's own. Length would have varied based on the handwriting of the scribe that was copying them, and would have changed substantially with the invention of lowercase letters in Alexandria. And that brings up another important point: there is absolutely no way that that kind of correspondence wouldn't have been noted in the Alexandrian scholia. The scholars at Alexandria had access to much, much better manuscripts than we do, and a correspondence in form like that would have been remarked upon. Their utter silence on the matter suggests that this dude has just gone off the deep end. Finally, the influence of Pythagoreanism on Plato is already extremely well-documented. We don't need some attention-hungry academic hack to tell us this: it's obvious to anybody acquainted with Greek intellectual history. The Pythagorean regard for mathematics finds its way into the metaphor of the divided line in Republic VI, and metempsychosis is the dominant theme of Republic X, not to mention the mathematical "demonstration" of knowledge-as-recollection in the Meno. Literally nothing discussed in either of those articles is in any way new. I appreciate how this might sound exciting, but this really is a case of the idiotic news media drumming up stories in fields that they're entirely incompetent to discuss.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 06:26 |
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Bel_Canto posted:Also, this dude is not looking at the passages in their original form. We don't know what the original form would have looked like, because even our earliest manuscripts are centuries removed from Plato's own. Length would have varied based on the handwriting of the scribe that was copying them, and would have changed substantially with the invention of lowercase letters in Alexandria. And that brings up another important point: there is absolutely no way that that kind of correspondence wouldn't have been noted in the Alexandrian scholia. The scholars at Alexandria had access to much, much better manuscripts than we do, and a correspondence in form like that would have been remarked upon. Their utter silence on the matter suggests that this dude has just gone off the deep end. His bit about using this to draw out more hidden meanings seemed pretty loopy. I guess I wasn't fully aware of just how indirect our sources are for Plato's writings.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 06:35 |
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The Pythagorean influence on Plato isn't entirely new (plenty of the Neoplatonists were pretty convinced he received much of his inspiration from Pythagaros and there was certainly a strong numerology strain in some of his direct descendants at the Academy). It's been a while since I've spent much time doing Ancient philosophy but I'm leaning somewhat on the 'so what?' side of things as far as what this means for Plato's philosophy. I guess looking more on the Classics side of things it's an important point if true since it gives more weight to interpretations of his work that emphasise mathematics and the more mysticist side of things. Of course as far as 'Analytic' philosophy goes, this isn't going to launch some re-evaluation of Plato. I think most philosophers are post-modern enough to cut out obfuscated authorial intent if it gets in the way of a good set of propositions, even if they're not exactly Derrideans. fake ed: Pretty much what Bel Canto said as well, though I was under the impression that Pythagoreans did exercise undue influence originally due to their engineering know-how (which was kept secret in some form of mystery religion) and later philosophers generally got very  about them and their mathemetaphysics.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 06:38 |
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George posted:His bit about using this to draw out more hidden meanings seemed pretty loopy. I guess I wasn't fully aware of just how indirect our sources are for Plato's writings. Yeah, a good rule of thumb is that anybody who's talking about the "original manuscripts" or the "original form" of an ancient text in anything but the most qualified and speculative way is talking out their rear end. Even "original text" should merit some scrutiny: many texts have been reliably restored by textual critics, but others are beyond our current power to salvage in a useful way. Plato is for the most part a pretty stable text, but there are still spots where it veers off into total nonsense; centuries of accumulated scribal error will do that.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 06:45 |
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George posted:Neither do I, and I didn't mean it that way. I was just saying that this is consistent with my views of Plato, but that I wasn't sure people from other backgrounds would see it the same way. Your views of Plato are that he was a crackpot, number-worshipping cultist? Describe how Pythagorean thought continues to influence the analytic tradition, and why that tradition and/or the Pythagorean influence on it (your claim in this regard was ambiguous) is problematic. I'm having trouble reading your OP as anything but an idiotic and spurious attack on analytic philosophy writ large. (PhD candidate, analytic background, mixed department)
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 07:18 |
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Bel_Canto posted:Finally, the influence of Pythagoreanism on Plato is already extremely well-documented. We don't need some attention-hungry academic hack to tell us this: it's obvious to anybody acquainted with Greek intellectual history. The Pythagorean regard for mathematics finds its way into the metaphor of the divided line in Republic VI, and metempsychosis is the dominant theme of Republic X, not to mention the mathematical "demonstration" of knowledge-as-recollection in the Meno. Literally nothing discussed in either of those articles is in any way new. I appreciate how this might sound exciting, but this really is a case of the idiotic news media drumming up stories in fields that they're entirely incompetent to discuss. Pretty much this. The Pythagorean motifs in Plato are nothing new to recognize, and for my 2 cents they are of not much substance in themselves and more of a quasi-necessary facet of Plato a scholar should understand. I once heard some nutjob try to reduce Platonic philosophy to little more than a strict derivative of Pythagorean doctrines in order to prove Athens was not so unique after all or somesuch. To say the least, it was less than rigorous textual analysis. I'd only add that there is a small strain of Platonic literature from Straussians that makes a big to-do about the possibility of esoteric teachings embedded within the Platonic dialogues. For the most part it's off the wall, but every now and again there's a kernel of plausibility. I could see how this guy caught a whiff of "secret teachings/codes" and then shat himself when he pulled together an apparent thematic and numerological phenomenon. In short, it's the combination of two very peculiar approaches to Plato without the modest imagination and rigor that is present in each of them.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 16:17 |
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Your views of Plato are that he was a crackpot, number-worshipping cultist? My guess here is that our apparently shared view of the Pythagoreans is only compatible with my views of Plato. At any rate, he practiced an extreme form of idealism and used some of their approach to numbers to do this. I don't think he worshipped the numbers himself, but he held up the Good in a very similar way. As for the analytic tradition, it's more that I trace the limits of our current scientific tradition back to Descartes more immediately and Plato more generally. Limited though they may be, these Pythagorean influences stand out to me, but I'm probably just being a dick. I'll go out on a street corner and hand out pamphlets about crypto-Pythagorean lizard aliens or something. Hegel posted:Pretty much this. The Pythagorean motifs in Plato are nothing new to recognize, and for my 2 cents they are of not much substance in themselves and more of a quasi-necessary facet of Plato a scholar should understand. I once heard some nutjob try to reduce Platonic philosophy to little more than a strict derivative of Pythagorean doctrines in order to prove Athens was not so unique after all or somesuch. To say the least, it was less than rigorous textual analysis. For the record, I am not saying that Plato was strictly derivative, but when I read though pre-Socratic philosophy I'm afraid I see their fingerprints on him more than anyone else's.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 17:38 |
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Your views of Plato are that he was a crackpot, number-worshipping cultist? Ah yes, calling someone an idiot, that most sacred tradition of western philosophy.
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| # ? Mar 8, 2013 22:14 |
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Hegel posted:Pretty much this. The Pythagorean motifs in Plato are nothing new to recognize, and for my 2 cents they are of not much substance in themselves and more of a quasi-necessary facet of Plato a scholar should understand. quote:I'd only add that there is a small strain of Platonic literature from Straussians that makes a big to-do about the possibility of esoteric teachings embedded within the Platonic dialogues. For the most part it's off the wall, but every now and again there's a kernel of plausibility. I could see how this guy caught a whiff of "secret teachings/codes" and then shat himself when he pulled together an apparent thematic and numerological phenomenon. In short, it's the combination of two very peculiar approaches to Plato without the modest imagination and rigor that is present in each of them. I wouldn't put it past Plato -- we are talking about a brilliant, meticulous writer -- to put subtle clues/codes in his works, but like you're all saying, without anything close to original manuscripts we're grasping at straws if we're looking at the dialogues like actual treasure maps.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2013 09:48 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 03:34 |
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For one its hard to know what in Plato to be takenseriously and as others have mentioned, his work has been filtered through various writers and sources at this point. Secondly, I don't know why it's news or worth discussion that there are Pythagorean themes in Plato. The Myth of Er has Pythagorean themes to anyone who delves in to it and knows some Greek history.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 19:29 |
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