Pythagoras was born around 580 BC on the island of Samos, near the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, and died at the beginning of the V century.
Some say that he was the son of a wealthy citizen named Mnesarchus, while others believe that he was the son of the god Apollo.
According to legend, Pythagoras studied in Egypt, traveled a lot.
About 532, hiding from the tyranny of Polycarp, he settled in Croton, where he quickly gained wide fame and founded a union of his students, which enjoyed influence in this city.
Tradition attributes the authorship of the term “philosophy”to Pythagoras.
He claimed that he was not an embodiment of wisdom a sage (sophos), but only a lover of wisdom a lover of wisdom (philosopher).
Most of the biographies of Pythagoras should not be trusted too much: there is no reliable information about the activities of Pythagoras - many of the works attributed to him are falsifications.
It is possible that the philosopher expounded his teaching only or mainly orally (this is quite likely, because in that era spiritual truth was usually considered the lot of the initiated elect; writing meant giving it to the general court) In addition, soon after his death, he became a legend: miracles and magical abilities were attributed to him, every word of his was given the meaning of a prophecy.
Historians find it difficult to separate the words of Pythagoras himself from the statements of his disciples, which is why they talk about the so called Pythagoreans who lived in a community where no one could be singled out.
The teaching of the early Pythagoreans is known to us from the testimonies of Plato and Aristotle, as well as from a few fragments from the writings of Philolaus, which are recognized as authentic.
And therefore, of course, it is difficult to reliably separate the original essence of the Pythagorean teaching from the later layers.
Nevertheless, it is generally believed that the ideology of Pythagorism includes three main components: religious, mythological, magical, scientific(related to the development of mathematics), and philosophical(demonstrating the desire to find the "beginning" of everything that exists and with its help explain the world, man and his place in the cosmos).
According to tradition, the followers of Pythagoras were divided into acusmatics ("listeners") and mathematicians ("students").
The acusmatics dealt with the religious and ritual aspects of teaching, the mathematicians dealt with the studies of arithmetic, geometry, harmonics and spheres.
The religious views of the Pythagoreans were very closely connected with their political ones: Pythagoras considered religion and morality to be the main attributes of the ordering of society - social harmony, in his opinion, was based on the subordination of the demos to the aristocracy.
But the "aristocrats of the spirit" should be in power - people who are initiated into higher knowledge.
To some extent, the Pythagorean Union was formed for these purposes.
It was not a party or a simple community, but a real religious order.
The ritual of initiation into the members of the Pythagorean brotherhood was surrounded by sacraments, their disclosure was severely punished.
Having entered the order after a strict selection, the newcomers could only listen to the teacher's voice from behind the curtain, only after several years of purification by music and ascetic life were they allowed to see him himself.
However, Pythagorean asceticism for a novice was primarily reduced to a vow of silence, unlike the Christian asceticism that mortifies the flesh, which is familiar to us.
Pythagoras preached the idea of reincarnation the transmigration of souls: because of original sin, the human soul is doomed to a series of transmigrations, and it settles not only in human bodies, but also in animal bodies, the body is only a temporary shell of the immortal soul.
A person should remember that warring forces are fighting in his soul, and in order for the soul to be freed from the body, it must be cleansed, therefore these forces must be brought into balance.
Only a perfect life can bring bliss to the soul in this life and in the future.
In this regard, the Pythagoreans had a special way of life that required harmony, measure in actions, feelings and thoughts.
The Pythagorean had to cultivate chastity, restraint, and peacefulness.
They also considered it possible to achieve purification and union with the deity with the help of science.
According to Pythagoras, all living beings came from the same substance, so they are related to each other.
Pythagoras also adhered to the idea of cyclism: everything that happened in the world repeats itself after a certain period of time, but nothing new happens at all.
From the religious teaching of Pythagoras, a number of "prohibitions" and "restrictions" followed, having a mystical character, the form of prejudices.
The collection of these sayings, called akusmas, replaced the charter of the society.
If the prohibition of eating animal food is easily explained by the belief in the transmigration of souls, then the situation is more complicated with other "commandments".
These acusmas are interpreted symbolically, for example:
- Do not eat the heart (i.e., do not undermine the soul with passions or grief)
- Do not stir up fire with a knife (i.e. do not touch angry people)
- When leaving, do not look back (i.e., do not cling to life before death)
- Do not sit on a bread measure (i.e., do not live idly), etc.
Or, for example, it was forbidden to touch beans and human meat.
According to one myth, beans came from drops of blood of the torn Dionysus Zagreus, so they were forbidden to eat.
But there is an opinion that initially the Pythagorean acusmas were understood in the literal sense, and their interpretations were invented later.
Of course, the religious and mystical side of the Pythagoreans ' activity had no significance in the history of culture.
The greatest contribution of the Pythagoreans was related to mathematics.
Most of the sciences were associated with a number of false beliefs: astronomy had a connection with astrology, chemistry – with alchemy.
Mathematical knowledge, on the other hand, seemed definite, precise and applicable to the real world, moreover, it seemed that this knowledge was obtained without resorting to observation - based on pure reflections.
On the basis of mathematics, we concluded that thought and intuition are higher than feeling and observation, and began to look for research methods that are closest to the mathematical ideal.
This
the form of philosophy begins with Pythagoras, and mathematics begins with him in the sense of evidence based justification, in which a new position is derived from an old one.
The main philosophical orientation of Pythagoras was the doctrine of numbers.
For us, the number is an abstraction extracted by the mind, for the Pythagoreans, the number was the beginning of all things, the cause of any thing, expressed the essence of the relationship of everything that exists.
The Pythagoreans derive the physical world from the concept of number, this was based on the geometric understanding of numbers by the Pythagoreans: one is a point, two points define a straight line, three points - a planar figure and four points - a spatial figure.
The sum of these numbers gives ten, a perfect number.
According to the Pythagoreans, a number consists of two elements: even - indefinite, unlimited and odd - defining, limiting.
The unit comes from both elements: it is even and odd together.
All numbers originate from one(the ancient mathematicians were decidedly unfamiliar with zero), and numbers form the universe.
The number is born as a harmony of the finite and the infinite, this harmony gives life to everything else.
It is curious that the Pythagoreans called odd numbers masculine, and even numbers feminine.
Even numbers seemed rectangular to them, and odd numbers seemed square (odd numbers arranged in the form of a set give a square, even numbers give a rectangle).
Suddenly it turns out that everything can be represented by a numerical ratio.
The Pythagoreans saw numerical patterns even in music: they deduced that the sound of musical instruments depends on the ratio of string lengths and the weight of hammers hitting the strings.
It was the Pythagoreans who established the harmonic ratios of octaves, fifths and quarts, thereby laying the foundation for musical literacy.
The Pythagoreans also described numerical patterns of the year, season, days and months, incubation periods of embryo maturation, cycles of biological development.
Sometimes they were too fond of numerical games and lost their sense of proportion (some of the Pythagoreans identified justice with the number 4 or 9, the square of two and the square of three, even and odd, science and reason were designated by one, and changeable opinion - by two).
Pythagoras is also credited with geometric discoveries, such as the well known theorem on the ratio of the hypotenuse and the legs of a right triangle, the doctrine of five regular bodies, in arithmetic the doctrine of even and odd numbers, the beginning of the geometric interpretation of a number, etc.
Mathematics becomes an instrument of Pythagoras ' knowledge of the world.
And mathematics is followed by philosophy, because philosophy is the dissemination of accumulated special (in this case, mathematical) knowledge to the field of worldview.
This is how the famous Pythagorean thesis is born: "Everything is a number”, and mathematics and philosophy are born in the depths of the Pythagorean union.
In the cosmology of the Pythagoreans, we meet with the same two basic principles of limit and infinity, which were mentioned earlier.
According to the Pythagoreans, the infinite is simply a circle within which the world is born.
The number is the basis of everything: points, lines, figures arise from numbers, sensually perceived bodies arise from figures, in which there are four bases(fire, water, earth and air).
Moving and transforming entirely, they generate an animated, intelligent, spherical world divided into ten spheres.
At the center of the world is fire.
The extreme sphere that encompasses the Universe consists of the same fire, the center and the periphery are separated from each other by a number of empty intervals and intermediate spheres.
Ten divine bodies revolve around the central fire: the sky of fixed stars, five planets, followed by the Sun, Moon, Earth and anti earth (antiterra) - a special tenth planet that the Pythagoreans accepted for round counting (since they collected and systematized everything related to numerical harmony, if there was a lack of any element, the gap was filled in to make the teaching coherent).
The planets rotating from west to east are always facing the fire with the same side, so the inhabitants of the Earth do not see the central fire.
Our hemisphere perceives the light and heat of the central fire through the solar disk (the Sun rotates from east to west), which only reflects its rays, and itself is not a source of heat and light.
Thus, the Pythagoreans turned the earth into one of the stars, ceasing to be the center of the world.
The world is a multitude consisting of opposites, and God is a unity.
Harmony, consisting in numerical relations, leads opposites to unity and connects everything into the cosmos (Pythagoras was the first to call the Universe by this term: heaven, earth, gods and people are adjacent to each other according to a certain law, for this reason the integrity of existence is called the cosmos, that is, order).
The Pythagorean cosmology represents a significant step forward.
They recognized the spherical shape of the Earth, rejecting geocentrism and explained solar eclipses by the passage of the Moon between the Sun and the Earth, and the seasons by the inclination of the Earth's orbit relative to the solar one, which was a significant approximation to the truth.
The significance of the Pythagorean worldview for antiquity is great, it retained its influence in the Middle Ages.
In particular, this was manifested in the educational concept of the quadrivium of disciplines.
Also, on the material of Pythagoreanism, the formation of philosophy from mythology under the influence of scientific knowledge (especially mathematics) is clearly visible.
And their scientific research led to many astronomical discoveries and, as a result, to a new picture of the world.
List of literature:
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
3rd ed.
- Moscow, 1969-1978.
Men A. History of religion.
vol.
4. Part II.
God and Nature.
- M., 1992 .
Russell B.
The Wisdom of the West.
- M., 1998.
Reale D., Antiseri D. Western Philosophy from the origins to the present day.
vol.
1. Antiquity.
- St. Petersburg, 1994.
Asmus V. Ancient Philosophy*.
- *M., 2003.
