Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Carl Huffman and Leonid Zhmud, for example, two of the major Pythagorean people writing now, accept that Pythagoras existed, though we know almost nothing about him. I'm always ready to learn. If you know of mainstream scholars who deny that Pythagoras existed, please enumerate them. It doesn't advance any question simply to throw "Are you kidding?" out there.

I just did a search on JSTOR for "Pythagoras never existed" OR "Pythagoras did not exist." Zero hits. Obviously, there are other search terms one could enter. A typical mainstream view is that which appears in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which begins by giving the approximate dates of the "historical Pythagoras":

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/


I am eager to hear of mainstream scholars who deny his existence. I mean people who publish in refereed venues.

Thanks, ficino.

ficino wrote:Carl Huffman and Leonid Zhmud, for example, two of the major Pythagorean people writing now, accept that Pythagoras existed, though we know almost nothing about him. I'm always ready to learn. If you know of mainstream scholars who deny that Pythagoras existed, please enumerate them. It doesn't advance any question simply to throw "Are you kidding?" out there.

I just did a search on JSTOR for "Pythagoras never existed" OR "Pythagoras did not exist." Zero hits. Obviously, there are other search terms one could enter. A typical mainstream view is that which appears in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which begins by giving the approximate dates of the "historical Pythagoras":

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/


I am eager to hear of mainstream scholars who deny his existence. I mean people who publish in refereed venues.

Thanks, ficino.

Hi ficino,

Apologies. I wasn't sure whether you were joking when you suggested that your observation that "no mainstream scholar I've heard of thinks that Pythagoras did not exist" should count as evidence of historicity.

Let's regroup for a moment.

The SEP article is a great overview, but let's be honest: I don't think its author was attempting at any point to establish the existence of Pythagoras as an historical personage.

If it's not obvious already, I regard proof by "hey, no mainstream scholars have objected yet, right?" as less than conclusive.

Regardless, it is certainly the case that skepticism regarding the existence of "Pythagoras" (given that such skepticism has been explicitly expressed by true historical figures like Aristotle ...) is well-warranted.

In any case: all crass appeals to authority should obviously be discarded post-haste.

Cheers,
Theo

OK, but I did not say that the views of mainstream scholars, that there existed a historical Pythagoras, count as evidence for P's existence. Nowhere did I propose an argument to authority, and I wouldn't trot out views of modern scholars as evidence of an ancient person's existence. I was implicitly raising doubt, though, against a claim that P. did not exist.

I'd like to know what mainstream scholars deny the existence of Pythagoras, so that I can read their works and become better informed about that branch of the study of ancient philosophy (and/or religion). If no mainstream scholar denies P's existence, then that silence is worth knowing about.

Thanks.

It's basically the same problem we have with many figures of the ancient world.

Did a historical person become mythologized, or did a mythical person become historicized?

We will never know, but I'm skeptical that the default position should always be the former. Such a position greatly devalues the human imagination.

It doesn't matter if "Pythagoras" was real or not, any more that it matters if "Anacharsis" was real. The discussion should always pivot on ideas attributed to Pythagoras, not "the historical Pythagoras."

When I was in grad school, my thesis advisor recommended Erich Frank's very skeptical book on Pythagoreanism, Plato und die sogennanten Pythagoreer. Frank held that all the discoveries attributed to Pythagoras in later tradition were really achievements of Southern Italian Greek mathematicians of Plato's time, who had no connection to religious sectarians. It's really not a huge leap forward to the views that you referenced in your earlier post, Blood. Basically the problem is the infection of sources by Platonism. So, the mathematical teachings of Pythagoras may just be unrecoverable behind Plato.

Still, it's hard for me to think whom Xenophanes means by "he" if not Pythagoras in the fragment where X. writes, "and they say that when he (μιν) was walking by at some point, and a dog was being beaten, he pitied it and said this: 'stop, don't beat it, since when I hear it I recognize the soul of a friend crying out.'" The point is not, is this story fact, but that Xenophanes' dates are something like 570-478 BCE. Heraclitus also attacks Pythagoras as a sort of intellectual jack of all trades. So some references to Pythagoras' existence are pre-Plato and bear a certain probability that I can't quantify.

ficino wrote:When I was in grad school, my thesis advisor recommended Erich Frank's very skeptical book on Pythagoreanism, Plato und die sogennanten Pythagoreer. Frank held that all the discoveries attributed to Pythagoras in later tradition were really achievements of Southern Italian Greek mathematicians of Plato's time, who had no connection to religious sectarians. It's really not a huge leap forward to the views that you referenced in your earlier post, Blood. Basically the problem is the infection of sources by Platonism. So, the mathematical teachings of Pythagoras may just be unrecoverable behind Plato.

Still, it's hard for me to think whom Xenophanes means by "he" if not Pythagoras in the fragment where X. writes, "and they say that when he (μιν) was walking by at some point, and a dog was being beaten, he pitied it and said this: 'stop, don't beat it, since when I hear it I recognize the soul of a friend crying out.'" The point is not, is this story fact, but that Xenophanes' dates are something like 570-478 BCE. Heraclitus also attacks Pythagoras as a sort of intellectual jack of all trades. So some references to Pythagoras' existence are pre-Plato and bear a certain probability that I can't quantify.

Although there almost certainly was a historical Pythagoras, the issue is not IMO that his mathematical teachings are unrecoverable. The issue is that the historical Pythagoras may not have been concerned with mathematical (or numerological) issues at all.

Andrew Criddle