Pythagoreanism: the personal is cosmological

[This is the fourth part in a series on Cosmic Sympathy.]

Carl Hufman is one of the most important contemporary scholars of Pythagoreanism. While no writings of Pythagoras survive (and probably none ever existed in the first place), Huffman has produced editions of the extant fragments from the writings of the early Pythagorean philosophers Philolaus and Archytas, which are of inestimable value to anyone with any interest in Pythagoreanism.

Here is how Huffman describes the cosmology of Pythagoras (from his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry -- Huffman also wrote the entries for Philolaus and Archytas):

It remains controversial whether [Pythagoras] engaged in the rational cosmology that is typical of the Presocratic philosopher/scientists and whether he was in any sense a mathematician. The early evidence suggests, however, that Pythagoras presented a cosmos that was structured according to moral principles and significant numerical relationships and may have been akin to conceptions of the cosmos found in Platonic myths, such as those at the end of the Phaedo and Republic. In such a cosmos, the planets were seen as instruments of divine vengeance (“the hounds of Persephone”), the sun and moon are the isles of the blessed where we may go, if we live a good life, while thunder functioned to frighten the souls being punished in Tartarus. The heavenly bodies also appear to have moved in accordance with the mathematical ratios that govern the concordant musical intervals in order to produce a music of the heavens, which in the later tradition developed into “the harmony of the spheres.” It is doubtful that Pythagoras himself thought in terms of spheres, and the mathematics of the movements of the heavens was not worked out in detail. But there is evidence that he valued relationships between numbers such as those embodied in the so-called Pythagorean theorem, though it is not likely that he proved the theorem.

Pythagoras' cosmos was developed in a more scientific and mathematical direction by his successors in the Pythagorean tradition, Philolaus and Archytas. Pythagoras succeeded in promulgating a new more optimistic view of the fate of the soul after death and in founding a way of life that was attractive for its rigor and discipline and that drew to him numerous devoted followers.

Pythagoreanism, then, is a way of life, and both Plato and Aristotle refer to Pythagoras as a "founder of a way of life" (see Huffman's online article). In this way of life there is no separation between ethics and cosmology, just as there is no separation between the nature of the human soul and the nature of the Cosmos and the Gods. The ethical principles that human beings should strive to implement in our lives reflect the moral order that can be observed at work in the cosmos. And in the same way, the human soul internally mirrors the external order of the cosmos and, therefore, the fate of the soul is bound up with our progress in aligning our lives with the cosmic order.

Christoph Riedweg (a Professor of Classics at the University of Zurich and Director of the Swiss Institute in Rome) is another scholar of Pythagoreanism. His Pythagoras: His Life and Teachings is now available in English. Here is how it begins

A peculiar kind of splendor surrounds the name of Pythagoras of Samos -- a splendor probably due in no small measure to the fact that in his person enlightened modern science seems happily fused with ancient wisdom teachings and insights into the mysterious interconnections of the world. The first is presented by the Pythagorean Theorem that we all learn in school, a² + b² = c², ... as well as by Pythagoras' recognition of the mathematical character of the basic musical concords. The transfer of these musical proportions to the cosmos (the "harmony of the spheres") and the use of music for therapeutic ends, and the transmigration of souls are key terms for the second aspect. Pythagoras has a guaranteed place not only in musicology, mathematics, and the history of science but also in the history of philosophy and religion....

Pythagoreanism's tight integration of the cosmological and the personal is very similar to the Indian conceptions of Rebirth and Karma, as can be seen in what the modern Hindu sage Sri Aurobindo says here:

The one question which through all its complexities is the sum of philosophy and to which all human enquiry comes round in the end, is the problem of ourselves, -- why we are here and what we are, and what is behind and before and around us, and what are we to do with ourselves, our inner significances and our outer environment. In the idea of evolutionary rebirth, if we can once find it to be a truth and recognize its antecedents and consequences, we have a very significant clue for an answer to all these connected sides of the one perpetual question. A spiritual evolution of which our universe is the scene and earth its ground and stage, though its plan is still kept back above from our yet limited knowledge, -- this way of seeing existence is a luminous key which we can fit into many doors of obscurity. But we have to look at it in the right focus, to get its true proportions and, especially, to see it in its spiritual significance more than in its mechanical process. The failure to do that rightly will involve us in much philosophical finessing, drive on this side or the other to exaggerated negations and leave our statement of it, however perfect may be its logic, yet unsatisfying and unconvincing to the total intelligence and the complex soul of humanity.
[Rebirth and Karma, pp. 35-6]

Aurobindo is describing the Hindu concept of "evolutionary rebirth" which is remarkably similar to the Pythagorean concept of metempsychosis, the quintessential idea associated with the Pythagorean view of the "fate of the soul". The close kinship of Pythagorean metempsychosis with Hindu karma/rebirth is further demonstrated by the very practical dietary conclusion that both traditions reach: the ethical necessity of vegetarianism.

Writing half a millennium after Pythagoras, Ovid produced a poetic explication of metempsychosis and vegetarianism that is a monument to the impact of Pythagoreanism throughout Greco-Roman culture. In the concluding book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pythagoras himself appears after being introduced as

.... the first
to speak against the use of animals
as human food, a practice he denounced
with learned but unheeded lips.
[Book XV, Allen Mandelbaum's translation is used throughout in the following.]

And then Pythagoras himself begins to speak, and his very first words are

O mortals, don't contaminate your bodies
with food procured so sacrilegiously.

After a long and passionate exhortation to vegetarianism, Ovid's Pythagoras proclaims that "I'll reveal the truths of heaven, all the oracles that highest wisdom holds." Central to what Pythagoras now reveals is that

all things flow; all things are born
to change their shapes. And time itself is like
a river, flowing on an endless course.
Witness: no stream and no swift movement can
relent; they must forever flow; just as
wave follows wave, and every wave is pressed,
and also presses on the wave ahead;
so, too, must moments always be renewed.
What was is now no more, and what was not
has come to be; renewal is the lot
of time.

But this is still just a very general statement about the constant state of becoming that is the essence of the physical universe. A little further on, Pythagoras/Ovid gets down to details:

Just so, our bodies undergo
the never-resting changes: what we were
and what we are today is not to be
tomorrow. Once we were but simple seeds,
the germ from which -- one hoped -- a man might spring;
we dwelled within our mother's womb until,
with hands expert and wily, nature willed
that we not lie so cramped in narrow walls...

But even this is only birth, not yet is there mention of rebirth. The poet/philosopher goes on to describe the arc of life from birth to old age, but then, at death's door as it were, he suddenly returns to the broader theme of impermanence in general -- as opposed to mere human mortality. Indeed, we are now told that "[n]ot even things we call the elements persist", and this serves as an introduction to a brief digression on the transformations of "earth, water, air, and fire". Pythagoras is obviously shifting back and forth between, on the one hand, the personal, individual experience of life, death and impermanence, and, on the other hand, the infinite dance of beginningless and never-ending transformations as seen from a cosmic perspective.

Having reminded us (of what we knew even before we were born, according to Plato's "doctrine" of anamnesis) that birth, death, and all other forms of transformation are not just our own personal fates, but the fate of all that is, Pythagoras reveals the connection between impermanence and immortality:

There is no thing that keeps its shape; for nature
the innovator, would forever draw
forms out of other forms. In all this world --
you can believe me -- no thing ever dies.
By birth we mean beginning to re-form,
a thing's becoming other than it was;
and death is but the end of the old state;
one thing shifts here, another there; and yet
the total of all things is permanent.

I think there's nothing that retains its form
for long: the world itself has undergone
the passage from the age of gold to iron.
And places also change: for I have seen
what once was solid land turn into sea,
and what before was sea turn into land.
Seashells lie distant from the oceanside;
old anchors have been found on mountain tops,
and waters flowing down the slopes have made
plains into valleys; and the force of floods
has carried mountains down into the sea;
what once were marshlands have become dry sands,
and lands that once were parched are now wet marsh.
Here nature has new fountains flow, and here
she blocks their course; the tremors of the earth
at times make rivers rush, at times obstruct
and curb a stream until it's seen no more.
The Lycus, swallowed by the yawning earth,
emerges at a point far off, reborn
in other guise; the Erasinus' flow
is swallowed by the soil and glides along
beneath the earth until it surfaces --
a mighty stream -- in the Argolic fields;
and, discontent with its old banks and source,
in Mysia the Caicus changed its course;
whereas the Amenanus, bearing sands,
at times will flow through Sicily and then,
at other time -- its sources blocked -- dries up.

Ovid's Pythagoras goes on (and on - remember, this was long before cable) stating and restating this strangely positive teaching of impermanence and immortality, but he eventually decides that perhaps he has finally succeeded in driving the point home, or that perhaps his audience is in danger of loosing sight of the forest for the trees:

But lest I gallop far beyond my reach
and, so, forget what I had meant to teach,
know this: the heavens and all things beneath
the heavens change their forms -- the earth and all
that is upon the earth; and since we are
parts of the world, we, too, are changeable.
For we're not only bodies but winged souls;
and we can dwell in bodies of wild beasts
and hide within the shapes of cows and sheep.
And so, let us respect -- leave whole, intact --
all bodies where our parents' souls or those
of brothers or of others dear to us
may well have found a home; let us not stuff
our bellies banqueting, as Thyestes.

And so finally the connection between metempsychosis and vegetarianism is laid out in no uncertain terms. Thyestes, of course, was famously tricked into eating the cooked flesh of his own sons. And the fact that he did not realize this at the time made it no less horrific when he discovered the truth (as we all inevitably must)!

Addenda
1. To learn more about Pythagoreanism in general, in addition to Riedweg's book mentioned above also check out The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie and David Fideler, and also Charles Kahn's Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism: A Brief History.
2. The striking image at the very top of this post is from the cover of Mary Zimmerman's 2002 Metamorphoses: A Play. Zimmerman's theatrical adaptation actually doesn't mention either Pythagoras or King Numa, the person being addressed by Pythagoras (although they were both, naturally, included in all their Ovidian glory in the complete free-verse translation by David R. Slavitt, which was the basis for Zimmerman's play). However, Zimmerman did insert the story of Eros and Psyche, which is not in Ovid at all but is rather from our old friend Apuleius of Madaurus! And of course Apuleius' book, from which the story of Eros and Psyche was taken, was also titled Metmorphoses (the story is found in Books Four, Five and Six). When asked why she put Eros and Psyche in the play Zimmerman's very reasonable explanation was simply that "I love it [Apuleius' Eros and Psyche] so much I just had to put it in." As far as I know no one has asked why she took Pythagoras and King Numa out, but I suspect that a long harangue on vegetarianism was not what she had in mind for the play's ending.

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!

In honor of the 220th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille here, in it's entirety, is Chapter XII of Peter Kropotkin's The Great French Revolution: The Taking of the Bastille (the footnotes are clickable - but they will take you to another site):

FROM the dawn of July 14, the attention of the Paris insurrection was directed upon the Bastille, that gloomy fortress with its solid towers of formidable height which reared itself among the houses of a populous quarter at the entrance of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Historians are still inquiring how the thoughts of the people came to be turned in this direction, and some of them suggest that it was the Permanent Committee at the Hôtel de Ville, who wanted to furnish an objective for the insurrection in directing it against this emblem of royalty. There is nothing, however, to confirm this supposition, whilst several important facts contradict it, It is more probable that the popular instinct, which, ever since the 12th or 13th, understood that in the plans of the Court to crush the people of Paris the Bastille would play an important part, decided in consequence to get possession of it.

We know, indeed, that in the west the Court had Besenval camped with his thirty thousand men in the Champ de Mars, and that in the east it relied for support upon the towers of the Bastille, with their cannon trained on the revolutionary Faubourg Saint-Antoine and its principal thoroughfare, as well as on that other great artery, the Rue Saint-Antoine, which leads to the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais Royal and the Tuileries. The importance of the Bastille was, therefore, only too evident, and from the morning of the 14th, according to the Deux amis de la Iiberté, the words "A la Bastille!" flew from mouth to mouth from one end of the town to the other.¹

It is true that the garrison of the Bastille numbered only one hundred and fourteen men, of whom eighty-four were pensioners and thirty Swiss, and that the Governor had done nothing towards victualling the place; but this proves only that the possibility of a serious attack on the fortress had been regarded as absurd. The people, however, knew that the Royalist plotters counted on the fortress, and they learned from inhabitants of the quarter that ammunition had been transferred from the arsenal to the Bastille on the night between the 12th and 13th. They perceived, also, that the Governor, the Marquis de Launey, had already placed his cannon in position on the morning of the 14th, so that the people could be fired on if they massed themselves in the direction of the Hôtel de Ville.

It must also be said that the people had always detested prisons, such as the Bicêtre, the donjon of Vincennes and the Bastille. During the riots of 1783, when the nobility protested against arbitrary imprisonments, the minister Bréteuil decided to abolish incarceration at Vincennes. This famous donjon was then transformed into a granary, and to conciliate public opinion Bréteuil permitted visitors to inspect the terrible oubliettes. There was much talk, says Droz, about the horrors that were to be seen there, and of course it was also said that in the Bastille there were even worse things to be seen.²

In any case, it is certain that on the evening of the 13th some musket shots were being exchanged between the detachments of armed Parisians, who passed dose to the fortress and its defenders, and that on the 14th, from the earliest hours of the morning, the crowds, more or less armed, who had been moving about the streets all through the preceding night, began to assemble in the thoroughfares which led to the Bastille. Already during the night the rumour ran that the King's troops were advancing from the side of the Barriére du Trône, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the crowds moved off eastwards and barricaded the streets north-east of the Hôtel de Ville.

A successful attack on the Hôtel des Invalides gave the people an opportunity of arming themselves and provided them with some cannon. Since the previous day middle-class men, delegated by their districts, had been calling at the Hôtel des Invalides to ask for arms, saying that their houses were in danger of being plundered by the thieves, and Baron de Besenval, who commanded the royal troops in Paris, happening to be at the Invalides, promised to obtain authorisation for this from Marshal de Broglie. The authorisation had not yet arrived when, on the 14th, by seven o'clock in the morning--the pensioners, commanded by Sombreuil, being at their guns with match in hand ready to fire--a mob of seven or eight thousand men suddenly poured out of the three neighbouring streets at a quick pace. Helping one another, "in less than no time" they crossed the fosse, eight feet in depth and twelve feet wide, which surrounded the esplanade of the Hôtel des Invalides, swarmed over the esplanade and took possession of twelve pieces of cannon, 24-, 18- and 10-pounders, and one mortar. The garrison, already infected with a "seditious spirit," made no defence, and the mob, spreading everywhere, soon found their way into the cellars and the church, where they discovered 32,000 muskets concealed, as well as a certain quantity of powder.³ These muskets and cannon were used the same day in the taking of the Bastille. As to the powder, on the previous day the people had already stopped thirty-six barrels which were being sent to Rouen; these had been carried off to the Hôtel de Ville, and all night long powder had been distributed to the people, who were arming themselves.

The removal of the guns by the mob from the Hôtel des Invalides was done very slowly. At two o'clock in the afternoon it was not yet completed. There would therefore have been quite enough time to bring up troops and disperse the people, especially as infantry, cavalry, and even artillery were stationed close by at the Military School and in the Champ-de-Mars. But the officers of these troops did not trust their soldiers; and besides, they must themselves have hesitated when they were confronted with this innumerable multitude, composed of persons of every age and every condition, of which more than 200,000 had flooded the streets for the last two days. The people of the faubourgs, armed with a few muskets, pikes, hammers, axes, or even with simple cudgels, were moving about in the streets, thronging in crowds to the Place Louis XV. (now the Place de Ia Concorde) surrounding the Hôtel de Ville and the Bastille, and filling the thoroughfares between. The middle classes of Paris were themselves seized with terror on seeing these masses of armed men in the Street.

Hearing that the approaches to the Bastille were invaded by the people, the Permanent Committee at the Hôtel de Ville, of which mention has been made, sent on the morning of the 14th some persons to parley with de Launey, the Governor of the fortress, to beg him to withdraw the cannon levelled on the streets, and not to commit any act hostile to the people; in return, the Committee, usurping powers they did not possess, promised that the people "would not set on foot any vexatious proceedings against the place." The delegates were received very affably by the Governor, and even stayed to breakfast with him until nearly midday. De Launey was probably trying to gain time while waiting for definite orders from Versailles, which did not come, as they had been intercepted in the morning by the people. Like all the other military chiefs, de Launey must have realised that it would be difficult for him to stand against the whole people of Paris assembled in the streets, and so he temporised. For the time being he ordered the cannon to be drawn back four feet and closed the embrasures with wooden planks, so that the people should not see through them.

About midday the district of Saint-Louis-la-Culture on its own account sent two delegates to speak in its name to the Governor; one of them, the advocate Thuriot de la Rosiére, obtained from the Marquis de Launey the promise that he would not give the order to fire if he was not attacked. Two more deputations were sent to the Governor by the Permanent Committee at one and three o'clock; but they were not received. Both of them demanded of the Governor the surrender of the fortress to a body of the middle-class militia, which would guard it jointly with the soldiers and the Swiss.

Luckily, all these compromises were baffled by the people, who understood that the Bastille must be captured, cost what it might. Being in possession of the muskets and the cannon from the Hôtel des Invalides, their enthusiasm was steadily increasing.

The mob thronged the streets adjacent to the Bastille, as well as the different courtyards which surrounded the fortress itself. Presently a fusillade began between the people and the soldiers posted on the ramparts. Whilst the Permanent Committee arrangements for proclaiming at the Place de la Grève that de Launey had promised not to fire if they refrained from attacking him, the crowds, shouting "We want the Bastille! Down with the bridges!" rushed towards the fortress. It is said that on seeing from the top of the walls the whole Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the street leading to it quite black with people marching against the Bastille, the Governor, who had ascended thither with Thuriot, almost swooned. It appears immediately to the Committee of Militia, but that the Swiss opposed it.⁴

The first drawbndges of that exterior part of the Bastille which was called the Forecourt (l'Avancée) were soon battered down, thanks to one of those audacious deeds of some few persons who are always forthcoming at such moments. Eight or ten men, with the help of a tall, strong fellow, Pannetier, a grocer, took advantage of a house that was built against the exterior wall of the Forecourt to climb this wall, astride of which they moved along as far as a guard-house standing close to the little drawbridge of the Forecourt, and thence they leaped into the first court of the Bastille proper, the Government Court in which was the Governor's house. This court was unoccupied, the soldiers having retreated with de Launey into the fortress itself, after the departure of Thuriot.

The eight or ten men, having dropped into this courtyard, with a few blows of an axe lowered first the little drawbridge of the Forecourt and opened its gate, and afterwards the larger one. More than three hundred men then rushed into the Government Court, and ran to the other two drawbridges, the greater and the lesser, which, when lowered, served to cross the wide fosse of the actual fortress. These two bridges, of course, had been raised.

Here took place the incident which wrought the fury of the people of Paris to its full pitch, and afterwards cost de Launey his life. When the crowd thronged into the Government Court, the defenders of the Bastille began to fire upon them, and there was even an attempt to raise the great drawbridge of the Forecourt, so as to prevent the crowd from leaving the Government Court and obviously with the intention of either imprisoning or massacring them.⁵ Thus, at the very moment when Thuriot and Corny were announcing to the people in the Place de la Grève that the Governor had promised not to fire, the Government Court was being swept by the musketry of the soldiers posted upon the ramparts, and the guns of the Bastille began to hurl cannon-balls into the adjoining streets. After all the parleying which had taken place that morning, this opening fire upon the people was evidently interpreted as an act of treason on the part of De Launay, whom the people accused of having lowered the two first drawbridges of the Forecourt, for the purpose of drawing the mob under the fire from the ramparts.⁶

It was then about one o'clock. The news that the cannon of the Bastille were firing on the people spread through Paris and produced a two-fold effect. The Permanent Committee of the Paris militia hastened to send another deputation to the Commandant, to ask him if he would receive there a detachment of militia who would guard the Bastille jointly with the troops. But this deputation never reached the Commandant, for a close fusillade was going on all the time between the soldiers and their assailants, who, crouched along some of the walls, were firing at the soldiers serving the guns. Besides, the people knew that the deputations from the Committee would only throw cold water on the attack. "It is no longer a deputation they want; it is the siege of the Bastille; it is the destruction of this horrible prison; it is the death of the Governor for which they are loudly clamouring" reported the deputies when they returned.

This did not prevent the Committee at the Hôtel de Ville from sending a third deputation. M. Ethis de Corny, Procureur of the King and of the town, and several citizens were charged once more to allay the people's ardour, to check the assault, and to parley with de Launey, for the purpose of persuading him to receive a guard from the Committee into the fortress. The intention of preventing the people taking possession of the Bastille was evident.⁷

As to the people, as soon as the news of the firing spread through the town, they acted without any one's orders, guided by their revolutionary instinct. They dragged the cannon which they had taken from the Hôtel des Invalides to the Hôtel de Ville, and about three o'clock, when Corny's deputation was returning to report their failure, they met about three hundred French Guards, and a number of armed men belonging to the middle class under the command of an old soldier named Hulin, marching to the Bastille, followed by five pieces of artillery. The firing by this time had been going on for more than three hours. The people, not in the least dismayed by the great number killed and wounded,⁸ were maintaining the siege by resorting to various expedients. One of these was the bringing up of two cartloads of straw, to which they set fire, using the smoke as a screen to facilitate their attack on the two entrances, the greater and lesser drawbridges. The buildings of the Government Court were already in flames.

The cannon arrived just at the moment they were wanted. They were drawn into the Government Court and planted in front of the drawbridges and gates at a distance of only 90 feet. It is easy to imagine the effect that these cannon in the hands of the people must have produced on the besieged. It was evident that the drawbridges must soon go down, and that the gates would be burst open. The mob became still more threatening and was continually increasing in numbers.

The moment soon came when the defenders realised that to resist any longer was to doom themselves to certain destruction. de Launey decided to capitulate. The soldiers, seeing that they would never get the better of the whole of Paris which was coming to besiege them, had some time before advised capitulation, and so about four o'clock, or between four and five, the Governor ordered the white flag to be hoisted and the drums to beat the chamade (the order to cease fire), and descend from the battlements.

The garrison capitulated and demanded the right of marching out with their arms. It may be that Hulin and Elie, standing close to the great drawbridge, would have agreed to these terms in the name of the people; but the people would have none of them. A furious cry of "Down with the bridges!" was raised. At five o'clock, therefore, the Commandant passed out through one of the loopholes near the lesser drawbridge a note in which it was said, "We have twenty-thousand-weight of gunpowder; we shall blow up the whole quarter, with the garrison, if you do not accept the terms of capitulation." However, even if de Launey thought of so doing, the garrison would never have permitted him to put this threat into effect. At any rate, the fact is that de Launey himself gave up the key that opened the entrance of the lesser drawbridge.

Immediately, the mass of the besiegers took possession of the fortress. They disarmed the Swiss and the Invalides, and seized de Launey, who was dragged towards the Hôtel de Ville. On the way the mob, furious at his treachery, heaped every kind of insult on him; twenty times he was nearly killed, despite the heroic efforts of Cholat and another.⁹ These two men protected him with their own bodies, but, when only a hundred steps from the Hôtel de Ville, he was dragged out of their hands and decapitated. De Hue, the Commandant of the Swiss, saved his life by declaring that he was devoted to the Town and the Nation, and by drinking to them, but three officers of the Bastille staff and three soldiers were slain. As to Flesselles, the Provost of the Merchants, who was in correspondence with Besenval and the Duchess de Polignac, and who had, as appears by a passage in one of his letters, many other secrets to hide that were very compromising for the Queen, the people were about to execute him when an unknown man shot him dead. Did this unknown man think that dead men tell no tales?

As soon as the bridges of the Bastille had been lowered the crowd rushed into the courtyards and began to search the fortress and free the prisoners entombed in the oubliettes. There was great emotion, and tears were shed at the sight of the phantoms who issued from their cells, bewildered by the light of the sun and by the sound of the many voices that welcomed them. These poor martyrs of royal despotism were carried in triumph by the people through the streets of Paris. The whole town was soon delirious with joy on hearing that the Bastille was in the hands of the people, and their determination to keep their conquest was redoubled. The coup d 'état of the Court had failed.

In this way the Revolution began. The people had won their first victory. A material victory of this kind was essential. It was necessary that the Revolution should endure a struggle and come out from it triumphant. Some proof of the strength of the people had to be given, so as to impress their enemies, to arouse courage throughout France, and to push forward everywhere towards revolt, towards the conquest of liberty.

[The whole book, and much besides, is available at The Anarchy Archives.]

"Peace is the way."

Quick: who originally said "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."??

That quote is often attributed to either Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. But it is actually a quote from A.J. Muste.

A.J. who?

A.J. Muste was a revolutionary socialist and one of the most important American labor organizers of the 1920's and 30's. He was also a pacifist and a Christian minister who played a critical role in the anti-war movement during the 1960's.

In 1912 Muste voted for Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate for president of the United States. Soon thereafter he left the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church and became a Congregationalist pastor, but his activism and outspokenness cost him his pastorship after only three years, and then he became a Quaker.

In 1919, Muste was involved in strike support work during the strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which was part of a nationwide labor uprising that approached being a nationwide General Strike (in part inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia). In 1921 he became the founding director of the Broockwood Labor College, which was dedicated to promoting class consciousness among American workers. Although officially allied with the American Federation of Labor, Brookwood was far more radical than the AFL and quickly became an embarrassment.

In 1929 Muste helped to form the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, which was committed to industrial unionism as opposed to the narrow craft-union approach of the AFL. During the early years of the Depression the CPLA became increasingly radical and its members helped to launch the American Workers Party (AWP), which openly proclaimed itself to be "revolutionary". By this time Muste, now leader of the AWP, considered himself a Marxist.

In February 1934 workers at the Electric Auto-Lite company of Toledo, Ohio went on strike demanding recognition of their union. The newly formed American Workers Party played a key role in supporting and leading the strike. The AWP had been very active among unemployed workers in Toledo. One of the tried and true tactics for breaking a strike is to bring in unemployed workers (affectionately known as "scabs") to replace the workers on strike, thus effectively ending the strike and "busting" the union. But the AWP turned the tables on the employers and brought thousands of unemployed workers to encircle the Auto-Lite plant in sympathy with the strikers.

Why would unemployed workers do such a thing? The simple two-word answer is "class consciousness", an idea to which A.J. Muste was deeply committed. The AWP had convinced unemployed workers that, first of all, they were still workers regardless of not being employed. Workers, from a socialist perspective, are all those who must rely on their own "labor power" in order to survive. When unemployed workers side with the employers and help to break strikes, they are working against their own class interests, according to this way of looking at things. Rather than fighting each other, workers must stand together and demand improvements for all.

The Toledo Auto-Lite strike was one of the most successful and important labor actions in U.S. history, and is considered to have paved the way to the eventual formation of the (once) powerful Council of Industrial Organizations. But Muste had wanted the strike to go much further than it did. He believed that the situation was ripe for an industry wide general strike to shut down the entire US automobile industry. Even once the strike was settled, against Muste's urging, he continued to agitate for "welding the militants" together in order to form "a fighting force", and if this wasn't done immediately he warned that "There will be no unions worth the name", a prophecy that took a little longer than Muste had anticipated, but turned out to be true nevertheless.

By 1937 Muste had become disillusioned with the Marxist left, and he returned to Christianity and pacifism. In 1940 he became president of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a position he held for the next 13 years. But despite changing religious and political affiliations Muste's commitment to radical social change never wavered. He befriended leaders of national liberation movements in Africa, worked for the civil rights and nuclear disarmament movements in the US, defended draft resisters, etc, etc.

By the time of the outbreak of the Vietnam War A.J. Muste was a legendary figure among social and political activists, but essentially unknown to the general public. He was possibly the only person who commanded respect from all of the groups and grouplets that came to make up the anti-war movement. Muste was equally comfortable talking to deeply religious pacifists and revolution-plotting Marxists, and he had the admiration of leaders and followers of both the old and the new left. Muste's crucial contributions to the anti-war movement are discussed at length in Fred Halstead's first hand account Out Now!

In 1966 Muste wrote an article for Liberation magazine (which he and David Dellinger had begun 10 years earlier) on The Movement to Stop the Vietnam War. He assessed the burgeoning anti-war movement by expressing doubt as to whether or not "the movement is about to come into existence .... But I am convinced that movement revolt cannot be suppressed." In other words, at age 81, and 45 years after casting his vote for Eugene Debs, Abraham Johannes Muste was still idealistically looking forward to the revolution, but was clear headed enough to realize that it would take more than college students and peaceniks, even in large numbers, to bring it about.

During the 1919 Lawrence textile strike, when Muste was elected as executive secretary by the 30,000 strikers, this is how he had advised them:

I told them, in line with the strike committee's decision, that to permit ourselves to be provoked into violence would mean defeating ourselves; that our real power was in our solidarity and our capacity to endure suffering rather than to give up the fight for the right to organize; that no one could "weave wool with machine guns;" that cheerfulness was better for morale than bitterness and that therefore we would smile as we passed the machine guns and the police on the way from the hall to the picket lines around the mills. I told the spies, who were sure to be in the audience, to go and tell the police and the mill managements that this was our policy.
[Sketches for an Autobiography, p. 70]

Personally I don't subscribe to the idea of pacifism, but that doesn't prevent me from admiring many of its proponents. I think that all too often the memories of great revolutionaries like Gandhi, Muste and King are subjected to the insidious process of "santaclausification". There was nothing non-confrontational about Gandhi, Muste or King, in fact in their time they were viewed, correctly, as militants, radicals and dangerous trouble makers. This was primarily because they were completely uncompromising in their goals. After all, the word "radical" literally means "of or going to the root or origin". I won't presume to say what pacifism does mean, since I am not a pacifist, but it is very clear that to Gandhi, Muste and King pacifism did not mean negotiating away the just demands of the oppressed in the interest of making peace with the oppressors.

Much more information about A.J. Muste can be found at the website for the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute.

Seek, and ye shall find

My last post was devoted to Anthony Kaldellis' 1999 book on the Byzantine philosopher Michael Psellos, The Argument of Psellos' Chronographia. Much of what I had to say was critical of Kaldellis' approach to Platonism in general and to the late antique Platonism of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, the Emperor Julian and Proclus in particular (so-called "neo-" Platonism).

It's quite fascinating, at least to me, that I should so strongly disagree with Kaldellis concerning the essential nature of both Paganism and Platonism, and yet nevertheless find his research so valuable on both subjects! I do not pretend to have any deep understanding of Leo Strauss, but it seems pretty clear that Kaldellis' work is strongly influenced by Strauss. This is hardly surprising since Strauss was keenly interested in Plato and many of Strauss' disciples have devoted themselves to the study of classical philosophy and Plato in particular (Alan Bloom, Seth Bernadette, and Stanley Rosen, for examples).

Personally I find a great deal of value in what very little I know of Strauss' work. (While at the same time I tend to find little of value in the output of most of his minions, including those just named.) I am especially interested in Strauss' theory that philosophers often write "esoterically" in order to avoid "persecution", as advanced in his Persecution and the Art of Writing. Strauss seemed to think of this as a nearly universal rule, but I have serious doubts about its broad applicability. However, certainly in the specific cases of societies dominated by monolithic oppressive ideologies, such as Christianity, Islam, Nazism and Stalinism it is almost too obvious to even bother mentioning that serious writers will naturally express themselves "esoterically" under such circumstances.

The reason that Strauss' theory of philosophical esotericism turns out to be useful, and not just a simplistic overgeneralization, is that in Western intellectual discourse it has never been the consensus that Christendom, qua Christendom, should be categorized along with Nazi Germany, etc. That is to say, the oppressive nature of the Christian religion, especially from 381 onward, has been fiercely contested by Christian intellectuals (and some others) to this day.

But Strauss' theory of philosophical esotericism can be applied to Christendom without "singling out" Christianity, and this puts the Christians somewhat off their guard. Another thing that accomplishes the same is the fact that Strauss was a critic of modern "liberalism" "atheism" and "moral relativism". Because of that, to the extent that his ideas and writings have any popular appeal, this is usually the case among people with "conservative" political and social leanings. The reception of Alan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind nicely demonstrates this point: conservatives hailed it, liberals panned it (personally I think the book is very close to being worthless, at best).

I don't think Kaldellis is a Straussian "true believer". Rather I think he is a brilliant young classical scholar who has been inspired and influenced by at least some of Leo Strauss' ideas. There are three "Straussian" ideas in particular that seem to play significant roles in Kaldellis' work so far: (1) the already mentioned concept of "esoteric philosophy", (2) Strauss peculiar conception of the "political" nature of Platonism, and (3) Strauss "third campism" with respect to monotheistic Judeo-Christianity versus atheism. Of these I think the first is by far the most important, and is the key to Kaldellis' importance as a historian of philosophy -- especially of the history of Platonic philosophy under Christendom.

To the extent that there were Platonic philosophers in Byzantium who were anti-Christian, obviously they could not express themselves openly. Many scholars take the position that anyone who explicitly professes Christianity must be a Christian. It should be, but evidently is not, obvious that this "logic" cannot be taken seriously in an oppressive society in which non-adherence to Christianity is punished with death by torture. Kaldellis apparently started out, apparently under the influence of Strauss, with the assumption that Byzantine philosphers, and Platonists in particular, should be automatically suspected of dissembling -- and he thereby avoids the boneheaded assumption that everyone who professes Christianity under pain of death is a sincere believer.

The second "Straussianism" embraced by Kaldellis (concerning the "political" nature of Platonism) is, in my opinion, the source of most of the important errors in his work. This is particularly the case with respect to Kaldellis' near complete misunderstanding of late-antique Platonism. The third "Straussian" idea (avoidance of either atheism or any "orthodox" form of Judeo-Christianity) doesn't make Kaldellis automaticallty sympathetic to polytheistic Paganism, but it does serve to inoculate him against the pernicious influence of the mentality that refuses to take seriously any world view that is not either monotheistic or atheistic. This is especially crucial in the case of Plato, who obviously has to be treated as a "serious" thinker! But for those who have taken the blue pill of the spiritual two-party system Plato must have been either irreligious or a proto-Christian. Kaldellis is not forced into that straightjacket - and it shows.

I think that Kaldellis' work is especially important to modern day Pagans, although I doubt that we make up a significant part of his intended target audience. Kaldellis has bothered to look for important non-Christian and even anti-Christian elements in the intellectual history of Byzantium (a culture that is profoundly important for the intellectual history of "the West"). Having looked, Kaldellis has found a great deal of evidence. Although it has not been his intention, and he might not appreciate this characterization, Kaldellis has thereby made fundamental contributions to a better understanding of Pagan history.

Plato was a Pagan, and late antique Platonism was one of the forms of Paganism that most stubbornly and effectively resisted coercive Christianization. Kaldellis' research supports the view that Platonism continued on as an "underground" form of resistance to Christianity long after this was no longer possible in the open. Kaldellis has helped us to better understand this important aspect of Pagan history not because he is a Pagan partisan, but because he is a good historian who happens to prefer to do his own thinking, and so he doesn't automatically toe the line of "scholarly consensus" - a consensus to which Kaldellis' work is providing a serious and spirited challenged, a challenge that should be warmly welcomed by Pagans.

Which Plato, and which Platonism?

At the very beginning of his The Argument of Psellos' Chronographia, Anthony Kaldellis sets out to demonstrate that Michael Psellos

was a serious philosopher rather than a mere polymath or intellectual dilettante, and that he used his considerable rhetorical skills to disguise the revolutionary nature of his political thought, which was consciously anti-Christian and deeply influenced in some respects by the political philosophy of Plato.

He then immediately adds: "This book is therefore a contribution to the history of Platonism. But which Platonism, and which Plato?"

Kaldellis then embarks on a digression in which he briefly provides his assessment of contemporary (20th and early 21st century) Platonic studies in the English speaking world. Kaldellis claims (rightly, in my opinion) that such leading figures in the study of classical philosophy as A.E. Taylor, W.K.C. Guthrie and Gregory Vlastos (all of whom, Kaldellis indelicately points out, were not themselves philosophers) have "seriously misrepresented the great philosophers' [Plato's] thought."

Although this is a good start, things quickly go horribly wrong. Having just found fault with Terence Irwin for saying that "much of what Plato says is false, and much more is confused, vague, inconclusive, and badly defended", Kaldellis himself then proceeds to agree completely with Irwin, only adding his Straussian twist that much of what Plato wrote was intentionally false, confused, vague, inconclusive and badly defended! For example, Kaldellis repeats the old chestnut that Plato intentionally has Socrates present flawed logical arguments for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo, and also that Plato, in the Republic, promoted the use of deception by rulers in order to better control their subjects (the so-called "Noble Lie"). This amounts to rather glaring special pleading on Kaldellis' part, since he is critical of those who "extract" bits and pieces of Plato's dialogues, and then crudely take these "at face value" without considering the "dramatic and literary context" -- in other words, exactly what Kaldellis does when it helps him to further his own agenda.

Despite the strong reservations just expressed, I think Kaldellis is definitely on the right track when he says the following about Michael Psellos and his Chronographia:

Psellos explicitly identified himself as a Platonist. It is clear from many of his writings that he had studied Plato carefully and had an intimate and thorough knowledge of the dialogues.... In 1054 he was accused by his erstwhile friend, the future Patriarch John Xiphilinos, of forsaking Christ to follow Plato. Psellos has no illusions about the seriousness of the charge: 'you have separated me from Christ and enrolled me among the followers of Plato.' Psellos realized that, according to Xiphilinos, devotion to Plato was equivalent to a renunciation of Christian Orthodoxy.
[p. 4]

Psellos never denied his allegiance to Plato, but he also had little choice other than to claim "that Plato's teaching was ultimately compatible with the Christian faith". Kaldellis insists that this claim of compatibility was "hardly supported by the meager evidence" that Psellos adduces in his written response to Xiphilinos. Kaldellis is right to point out that regardless of Psellos', or anyone else's, protestations on behalf of the compatibility of Plato and Jesus, "the argument between these two men demonstrates that Psellos' involvement with Platonism was viewed by some as improper on religious grounds." But despite running the risk of having his Christian faith questioned ("the worst possible accusation" that one could face in Byzantium) "Psellos was still unwilling to renounce Plato."

Immediately Kaldellis once again raises the question: "But which Plato?" -- that is to say, "which Plato" is Psellos so "unwilling to renounce", even at the potential risk of his own life? Unfortunately, Kaldellis then proceeds to once again succumb to the same type of error that he accuses others of making. In the case of Plato Kaldellis rejected the "analytical" approach common in the contemporary English speaking world, only to replace it with Leo Strauss' equally anachronistic (mis-) understanding of Plato as some sort of riddling crypto-rationalist. It also turns out that Kaldellis uncritically accepts the modern "consensus" concerning late antique Platonism (so called "neo-" Platonism) a consensus that is thoroughly and transparently Christianizing:

The Platonism which prevailed in late antiquity and Byzantium was created by Plotinos and his successors, the so-called Neoplatonists, who centered their thought around definite metaphysical and religious principles. Those thinkers [Plotinus, etc.] completely disregarded the political aims of Plato's teaching [that's the Straussian part], and focused exclusively on his doctrine about the supernatural world of the Forms. Their profoundly mystical mentality transfored it into a divine realm worthy of worship adn filled it with a host of luminous entities that formed a chain of being stretching from the One (lying "beyond belief"), through the Forms and the various grades of demons and angels, down to the Soul, and finally to inert matter.
[p. 5]

Kaldellis then really puts his foot in it when he claims that this "profoundly mystical" Platonism of Plotinos & Co. "was easily modified to accord with the official Church doctrine, as the influential works of pseudo-Dionysos and others testify." [p. 6]

Recall that Kaldellis has already stated up front that his intention is defend Psellos as a (1) a serious philosopher who (2) held "revolutionary" ideas that were (3) "consciously anti-Christian" and also (4) deeply influenced in some respects by the political philosophy of Plato, and (5) all the while masquerading as a good Christian. The problem, though, is that Kaldellis has merely exchanged one Christianizing paradigm of Platonism for another.

Kaldellis uncritically accepts the standard talking points concerning the "neo-" Platonism of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Julian and Proclus: that it is otherworldly, highly compatible with Christianity, and utterly different from Plato's "true" philosophy. But in the process Kaldellis becomes entangled in a number of hopeless inconsistencies:

(1) On the one hand he claims that late-antique Platonism (what Kaldellis insists on calling "neo-" Platonism) is utterly otherworldly, being "focussed exclusively on ... the supernatural" while completely disregarding all things political. But on the other hand Kaldellis glosses over the fact that this supposedly otherworldly worldview was the guiding philosophy for the Emperor Julian, a man of action who was an extremely successful military commander in Gaul, and who literally fought his way to the throne.

(2) On the one hand he claims that late-antique Platonism was all too easily reconciled with Christianity and therefore utterly foreign to Psellos' robustly anti-Christian Platonism. But on the other hand Kaldellis acknowledges that Porphyry was "an archenemy of Christianity who developed a definition of piety strikingly similar to Psellos'."[p. 73] And also Kaldellis is perfectly aware that Julian was the archenemy of Christendom!

(3) On the one hand he claims that despite Psellos' obvious fascination with late-antique Platonism, and with Proclus in particular, that this interest was nevertheless purely objective and intellectual and in no way amounted to an endorsement of their philosophy. On the other hand Kaldellis is perfectly aware of, and even partially quotes, the section of Psellos' Chronographia in which he refers to the philosophy of Proclus as "the mighty harbor of the admirable Proclus" -- even Plato does not receive this kind of praise from Psellos! In fact, in his little philosophical autobiography (wherein Psellos modestly describes how he "single-handedly resurrected true philosophy", see Chronographia Book VI. 35-40) Psellos only names six philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus, and of these the only one singled out for special praise is Proclus.

(4) Kaldellis insists that late-antique Platonism was monolithically dualistic in the morbidly life- and world-negating sense that sees the human body (indeed, the entire physical world) as something inherently evil, and that we must escape from as quickly as possible. In fact, however, the Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus, Julian and Proclus affirmed the value of the physical world and the human body, and had no room for a principle of evil anywhere. Some aspects of Plotinus' and, especially, Porphyry's philosophy may have tended in the direction of the kind of dualism imagined by Kaldellis (for all of late-antique Platonism), but to the extent that is true, Theurgical Platonism (of which Proclus is the single most important proponent in history) very specifically counteracts that tendency.

(5) Kaldellis claims that it is because of his interest in late-antique Platonism that Psellos is mistakely viewed as a Christian. But this is nothing more than circular logic. Kaldellis asserts (wrongly, see point #2 above) that late-antique Platonism is highly compatible with Christianity. Therefore, by Kaldellis' circular logic, anyone who genuinely embraces the Platonism of Proclus is automatically very close to being a Christian and will likely, and justifiably, be thought to be one. Kaldellis must certainly know that both Psellos and his most senior student, John Italos, whom Psellos hand-picked as his successor, faced suspicion, and rightly so, precisely because of their fondness for Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus, who were all die-hard Pagans who defiantly resisted the coercive Chritianization of late-antiquity. Anna Comnena, in her Alexiad, states quite clearly that Italos was persecuted because the "transmigration of souls" and the Platonic "theory of ideas" (i.e. "Forms") were among the heresies he promulgated -- resulting in his trial and condemnation (his life was spared after he recanted). Another heresy to which Italos confessed and recanted was the theory of "the eternity of the world", a position strongly associated with Proclus.

Basil Tatakis, in his Byzantine Philosophy, paints a much more subtle picture of Psellos' relationship with the late antique Platonists (Proclus, Iamblichus, Porphyry and Plotinus). Tatakis is at great pains to claim Psellos as a good Christian, and for that reason Tatakis is eager to put as much distance as he can between Psellos, on the one hand, and the Theurgy and "Chaldaism" associated with Proclus & Co on the other hand. Ironically, Tatakis in his quest to Christianize Psellos adopts the same strategy that Kaldellis uses to argue that Psellos only pretended to be a Christian. That is, both Tatakis and Kaldellis claim that despite Psellos' enthusaistic expertise in Theurgy and Chaldaism, he nevertheless viewed that form of Platonism as aberrant.

Tatakis and Kaldellis both wish to cast Psellos in a thoroughly rationalist light. Tatakis assumes and asserts that Paganism is inherently irrational and therefore portrays Psellos as a Christian rationalist, while Kaldellis assumes and asserts that Christianity is inherently irrational and therefore portrays Psellos as a Hellenic rationalist. Kaldellis is much closer to the truth, but his analysis is hobbled by his distorted view of precisely the subject he most wishes to contribute to: the history of Platonism.

Anthony Kaldellis is probably the most important scholar of Byzantine studies in the English speaking world today. His Argument of Psellos' Chronographia is an important book that is at the very least groundbreaking, and is potentially revolutionary in it's impact if it receives the attention it deserves. It is unfortunate that Kaldellis fails to realize that his primary arguments, as he states them in his own words (namely that (1) Psellos was a serious philosopher, and (2) Psellos' Platonism was consciously anti-Christian) would be much better served by an analysis less colored by an ideological agenda that is extraneous (indeed, anachronistic) when applied to the time and place of Michael Psellos.

"the Milesian view that the whole world is alive"

[This is the third part in a series on Cosmic Sympathy.]

In his An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy Arthur Hillary Armstrong, probably best known for his masterful translation of Plotinus' Enneads (used in the Loeb edition of Plotinus), talks about the early development of Greek philosophy in Ionia, that is, the Greek city-states along the western coast of Anatolia (modern day Turkey), which at the time were "probably the richest and most highly civilized of the Greek communities."

The early Ionian philosophy is represented by a succession of three men, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes [the first, Thales, was born sometime around 625 BC, and the last, Anaximenes, died around 528 BC], all from Miltetus, at that time the richest and most powerful of the Ionian cities. Hence the group collectively are sometimes called the Milesians. The first, Thales, by tradition one of the "Seven Wise Men" of Greece, seems to have written nothing and our scanty knowledge of his teaching depends on a tradition which goes back no further than Aristotle, and though the other two each seem to have written a work in prose, these works have perished, and Aristotle is again our earliest source for their teaching. Our knowledge of it therefore is uncertain and fragmentary .... There do, however, seem to be a few things about the three men's personal interests and activities and about the picture of the universe they put forward of which we can be fairly certain. First of all, they were much concerned with those technical skills which along with magic and astrology formed the substance of the ancient priestly wisdom of Babylonia and Egypt, and which the Ionians introduced into the Greek world, mainly from Babylonia. They were practical astronomers, land-surveyors and geographers. Thales predicted eclipses, Anaximander is said to have invented the sundial, made the first map, and been responsible for several important astronomical discoveries. They were greatly interested in the 'meteora', the phenomena of the regions above the surface of the earth, the weather and the movements of the heavenly bodies.... Practically all that we know about the philosophy of the Milesians concerns their cosmogony, their account of how the world came into being. They postulate as the first reality a single living stuff, indefinite in extent and character, from which the world and all things in it develop spontaneously. Thales called this 'moisture' or more accurately 'the moist' (to hugron0, moisture being the principle of life according to simple observation and primitive common sense. Anaximander called it the 'Apeiron', a word which means either 'indefinite' or 'unbounded' rather than 'infinite'. He may have thought of it as spherical like the Orphic world-egg; for later Greek geometers the sphere was 'apeiron'. Anaximenes called it air or breath. It appears that, like many other ancient philosophers, he held that the life of the universe resembled that of man, with air, the breath of life of which the human soul is made, for its principle. This stuff they call 'divine' by which they probably mean no more than that it is living and everlasting, two characters which it must have if it is to be for them a sufficient explanation of the cosmic process. [pp. 1-4]

One very important thing to emphasize about Milesian cosmogony is that it starts with some kind of pre-existing material, and the rest of the cosmos "develop[s] spontaneously" from that. In other words their approach is exactly the opposite of the Christian notion of "creation out of nothing". Another crucial thing to note is that the "first reality" (as Armstrong calls it) is already living, in addition to being everlasting and uncreated. This is the exact opposite of the modern secular humanist view of "dead matter". The conclusion is pretty obvious: these ancient Greek Pagans had a view of the world utterly different from either Christians or modern day atheists/secularists. Theirs was a cosmos that required no "Creator" in the Christian sense, nor did it require an explanation for how life could "evolve" from dead matter. Theirs was a cosmos that had always existed, and had always been alive.

The following is from the entry for Presocratic Philosophy in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philsophy (the author of this entry is Patricia Curd, a philosophy Professor at Purdue University):

The pattern that can be seen in Thales and Anaximander of an original basic stuff giving rise to the phenomena of the cosmos continues in the views of the third of the Milesians, Anaximenes. He replaces Anaximander's apeiron with air, thus eliminating the first stage of the coming-to-be of the cosmos (the something productive of hot and cold). Rather, he returns to an originating stuff more like Thales' water. In 13A5, Aristotle's associate Theophrastus, quoted by Simplicius, speculates that Anaximenes chose air because he agreed that a basic principle must be neutral (as Anaximander's apeiron is) but not so lacking in properties that it seems to be nothing at all. Air can apparently take on various properties of color, temperature, humidity, motion, taste, and smell. Moreover, according to Theophrastus, Anaximenes explicitly states the natural mechanism for change; it is the condensation and rarefaction of air that naturally determine the particular characters of the things produced from the originating stuff. Rarified, air becomes fire; more and more condensed, it becomes progressively wind, cloud, water, earth, and finally stones. “The rest,” says Theophrastus, “come to be from these.”

It is significant that the last of the three Milesians, Anaximenes, settled on air/breath as the most basic "stuff" of the cosmos. Stoics did not adopt this view exactly, but they did keep the idea that the entire cosmos is everywhere permeated with pneuma, and that it is by way of this everpresent, continuous pneuma that the effects of cosmic sympathy are transmitted. Cicero, in his De Rerum Natura (I.10.26) says that Anaximenes called air "the divine". Thomas McEvilley in his The Shape of Ancient Thought says that Cicero believed that Anaximenes "may have been influenced by the belief that air, or breath, is soul-stuff, that is the carrier of consciousness. The universe, on that account, is a pantheos which has the divine air element as its breath-soul." McEvilley then links this to later Pythagorean thought:

The Pythagoreans, not long after, would teach similarly that the universe is a living organism which breathes one vast breath ... the universe was viewed as a living god.
[p. 34]

Sanskrit: some GOOD news

The news of the untimely demise of the Clay Sanskrit Library is at least somewhat offset by something just posted over at the Hindu Blog on the subject of the Revival of Sanskrit – Urban Young Indians Enrolling for Sanskrit Classes.

That post, in turn, links to an article over at Outlook India on the trend in India of young people rediscovering the lure of Sanskrit.

Tens of thousands of young Indians are now enrolled in Sanskrit courses that utilize the Bhagavad Gita as the primary text. Those classes are part of a broader effort that started with just 7 people studying Sanskrit together in 1981. In 2008 more than 2,000 people enrolled in Sanskrit classes in Delhi alone, and well over half of them were between 18 and 28 years of age -- in all, over 7 million people have enrolled in these Sanskrit classes since 1981. These classes also emphasize spoken Sanskrit and tens of thousands of Indians now claim Sanskrit as their "mother tongue".

Origins of the concept of Cosmic Sympathy

[This is the second part in a series on Cosmic Sympathy.]

 Katerina Ierodiakonou provides a very handy overview of the ancient Greek philosophical concept of sympatheia, in her article The Greek Concept of Sympatheia and Its Byzantine Appropriation in Michael Psellos, which appears as the second chapter in the anthology The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, edited by Magdalino and Mavroudi (here is the book at googlebooks - most of this chapter can be viewed there):

A. In ancient Greek sympatheia has different, though obviously interrelated, meanings: it is used in medical writings, as for example in the Hippocratic corpus (De alim. 23.1), to refer to the fact that when a part of the human body somehow suffers another part may be affected, too; it is also used to talk about the fact that people may share the feelings of their fellow citizens, for instance in Aristotle's Politics (1340a13); finally, it is used to refer to the supposed phenomenon that all beings on earth and in the heavens are inextricably linked together. That is to say, the ancient notion of sympatheia indicates a close connection between things which are parts of some kind of a whole, either at the same level, as different parts of the body are in relation to the body as a whole, or at different levels, as the body and soul are in relation to the living being as a whole. Thus sympatheia could refer to the close connection between different parts of the same body as a whole, or the close connection between everything in the world as a part of the world as a whole, or between the body of the world and its soul as parts of the world.
[p. 99]

Note the three different uses of sumpatheia (and also note that Ierodiakonou states that these three uses are "obviously interrelated"): (1) in medicine to describe the relationship between different parts of the body, (2) to describe shared feelings among human beings, and (3) to describe the phenomenon by which everything in the universe is inextricably linked together. Ierodiakonou calls this last kind of sympatheia (which includes "the close connection ... between the body of the world and its soul as parts of the world") cosmic sympatheia, about which she says:

B. The notion of cosmic sympatheia was introduced by the Stoic philosophers in the Hellenistic period. Some scholars have attributed the full development of this notion to Posidonius at the end of the second and beginning of the first century BC [see especially K. Reinhardt, Kosmos und Sympathie], but there is no doubt that even the early Stoics, and in particular Chrysippus, believed in a close affinity among the different parts of the universe; and for this close affinity they most probably used the term sympatheia, as well as the nouns synecheia or synochem symphyia, symmone, sympnoia, syntonia, and the corresponding verbs and adjectives. According to the Stoics there is nothing particularly mysterious about sympatheia, and especially about the relation between the things in the heavens and those on earth. In Stoic physics the whole cosmos is presented as a perfect living body whose parts, though, are imperfect, insofar as they are not self-sufficient and autonomous; for they cannot function by themselves and always depend on their being parts of this whole and its other parts. What holds the system together is a certain internal tension, a tonos, created in the universe by the so-called pneuma, which consists of a mixture of fire and air and permeates the entire world as its soul, sustaining everything. Thus the Stoics thought of the world as a unified living organism, a zoon: just as pneuma permeates a human body and makes it as its soul a living and organic whole, with each single part grown together in a close connection with all the rest, in the same way the whole world is permeated and given life by pneuma; this pneuma the Stoics identified with God who, in creating the world, becomes its soul.
[pp. 100-1]

Ierodiakonou has packed quite a lot into that paragraph! First she states the commonly held (and more or less correct) position that sumpatheia is a Stoic concept. And then she reports, without endorsing, the commonly held (and more or less misleading) position that the "full development" of sumpatheia is due to Posidonius, for which she cites the work of Karl Reinhardt. As Ierodiakonou correctly points out "there is no doubt that even the early Stoics, and in particular Chrysippus, believed in a close affinity among the different parts of the universe; and for this close affinity they most probably used the term sympatheia." Posidonius is routinely cited as the first clear cut case of a philosopher using the term sympatheia in the sense of "cosmic sympathy", but, as Ierodianokou strongly implies, this is almost certainly an artifact of the extremely fragmentary nature of the extant primary sources from earlier (prior to Posidonius) Stoics.

Here is what P.A. Meijer has to say in his Stoic Theology on the concept of sumpatheia and its origins, based on the writings of Cicero and Sextus:

C. There is an elaborate argument which develops the idea of the coherence of the universe, because there is everywhere the all encompassing power. It unites the things in this world and the natural events, which follow each other in an eternally repeating ordered motion.

We have this argument in Sextus and a limited version in Cicero. Scholars more or less agree that this argument is to be ascribed to Chrysippus [one of the early founders of Stoicism, predating Posidonius by about a century]. This most interesting argument is not only important as a typical piece of Stoic philosophy, but it has largely influenced later Greek philosophy, i.e. Neoplatonism, by its stressing the unity in this world. Unity as a consequence of the influence of the One was a favorite theme in Plotinus.
[pp. 85-6]

And here is part of the passage from Sextus (his Against the Physicists, I 78 ff.) that Meijer is referring to (see Meijer, or the original, for the complete passage):

D. Of bodies some are unified, some are formed of things conjoined, some of separate things. Unified bodies are such as are dominated by one structure, such as plants and animals. Those formed of conjoined parts are such as are composed of adjacent elements which tend to combine into one main structure, like cables, turrets and ships. Those formed of separate things are such as compounded of things which are disjoined and isolated and existing by themselves. like armies and flocks and choruses. Since the cosmos is also a body, it is either unified or of conjoined or of separate parts.

But it [the cosmos] is neither of conjoined nor of separate parts, as we proved from the sympathies it exhibits. For in accordance with the waxings and wanings of the moon many sea and land animals wane and was and ebb-tides and flood-tides occur in some parts of the sea. And in the same way, too, in accordance with certain risings and settings of the stars alterations in the surrounding atmosphere and all varieties of change in the air take place, sometimes for the better, sometimes fraught with pestilence. And from these facts it is obvious that the cosmos is a unified body. For in the cases of bodies formed from conjoined or separate elements the parts do not 'sympathize' with one another, since if all the soldiers, say, in an army have perished (save one), the one who survives is not seen to suffer at all through transmission; but in the case of unified bodies there exists a certain sympathy, since when the finger is cut, the whole body shares in its condition. So then, also the cosmos is a unified body.
[p. 86]

In his De Natura Deorum (II 19) Cicero speaks of "the harmony, unanimity, and unbroken affinity in nature" and then provides several examples of this, such as "the diverse courses of the stars [being] maintained in the single rotation of the entire heavens" and then he says "these processes could not take place through harmonious activity in all parts of the universe, unless they were each embraced by a single divine, all pervading, spiritual force [pneuma]".

Although it offers fewer details, Meijer is right in saying that Cicero's version is more "typically Stoic in that it describes the superior divine power as breath, pneuma. Pneuma is the Stoic element that causes structure in the inorganic, forms the psyche in animals and is also responsible for the mind in men. So it is the cause for the coherence of all things." Meijer also adds that this "concept of pneuma is characteristic of Chrysippus' thought." The point of this being that we needn't (and probably shouldn't) view cosmic sympathy as some later innovation by Posidonius, but rather as part of the foundational teachings of Stoicism qua Stoicism.

Returning now to Ierodiakonou (the passage labeled B above), she goes on to say that "there is nothing particularly mysterious about sympatheia, and especially about the relation between the things in the heavens and those on earth." Ierodiakonou doesn't tell us precisely (or even approximately) what she means by "mysterious", but later on (see passage E below) it will become evident that she is here imposing her own anachronistic (mis-) understanding of Stoic physicalism -- in particular she is conflating the very subtle ancient conception of physicalism (shared, in different forms, by the Stoics and Epicureans) with the much more narrow and crude modern conception of materialism. At the same time she is trying to draw a straight bright line between the supposed "dualism" of the Platonists and the physicalism of the Stoics, with the assumption that Stoic physicalism is not "mysterious" whereas Platonic "dualism" is.

After her cursory exorcising of all "mystery" from Stoic sumpatheia, Ierodiakonou goes on to write that "In Stoic physics the whole cosmos is presented as a perfect living body whose parts, though, are imperfect, insofar as they are not self-sufficient and autonomous." This is not only a correct statement about Stoic physics, it is also practically a direct quote from Plato's Timaeus. A little further down she acknowledges that the cosmological view that "the universe is a unified whole" in which "even parts of it which are separated by a large distance may affect each other in a conspicuous way" [see passage E below] is to be found in Plato's Timaeus. However, she fails to point out that Plato also wrote in the Timaeus that the universe as a whole is perfect and self-sufficient, while the parts of the universe are not. The Stoics are also in agreement with the Timaeus in that the universe as a whole is divine. In a word, Ierodiakonou, even while acknowledging some of the similarities, systematically exaggerates the differences between Platonic and Stoic cosmology.

Now here is one last passage from Ierodiakonou:

E. The Platonists were influenced by the Stoic notion of cosmic sympatheia to such an extent that it is only possible to fully grasp their use of the notion against its Stoic background. They also, following in this Plato's Timaeus, stressed the fact that the universe is a unified whole, and they also assumed that even parts of it which are separated by a large distance may affect each other in a conspicuous way, while the intervening parts seem unaffected. Plotinus, for instance, like Plato and the Stoics, thought of the world as living organism. Nevertheless, the Platonists' understanding of cosmic sympatheia significantly differs in certain respects from that of the Stoics. For their supreme God is transcendent and not part of the world, the way the Stoic God is immanent. In addition, on their view there is a sharp distinction between the material and immaterial world, of which the material world is a living image. Hence the Platonists strongly opposed the Stoics' doctrine of a direct commingling of the Divine with matter; they claimed that the Divine rather employs in the formation of the world certain incorporeal powers.
[p. 102]

First of all Ierodiakonou clearly overstates the Stoic "ownership" of the concept of sympatheia -- and she does so in a very bizarre way. Apparently forgetting that she has previously acknowledged that Plato's Timaeus already contained a similar concept to sympatheia, Ierodiakonou now claims that later Platonists must have been "influenced" by Stoic sympatheia. In fact, by the time of Posidonius the situation was increasingly just the opposite: Stoics were more and more being influenced by Platonism. A. A. Long has expressed the opinion that Posidonius marked a transition from "Platonizing Stoics", who appropriated Plato's words and ideas for their own (Stoic) purposes, to "Stoicizing Platonists", who, like Posidonius, significantly blurred any clear distinction between the two schools.

The details of Ierodiakonou's arguments are what makes it so bizarre. In his Timaeus, Plato presented a view of the cosmos in which everything is inextricably linked to everything else. Obviously Plato presented this idea in the context of a universe containing both physical and non-physical "stuff". The Stoics, however, took Plato's cosmological vision, and retooled it to fit into their purely "physical" universe. Therefore when later Platonists, from Plotinus to Proclus (etc) are found to have had a notion of cosmic sympathy of the sort found in the Timaeus (that is, in a cosmos comprised of things both physical and non-physical), this doesn't at all imply that these later Platonists have "modified" the Stoic, physicalist, notion of sympatheia -- it only means that they are consistently Platonic in their cosmology. Plotinus, et al, may certainly have borrowed and built upon some of the Stoic refinements to the conception of cosmic sympathy, but nothing more than that is at work.

To understand late antique Platonism it is necessary to study Stoicism. At the same time it is absolutely essential to study Plato in order to be able to have any grasp of Stoicism. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the theory of cosmic sympathy: it turns out that Stoicism and Platonism are inextricably intertwined with each other, like everything else in the cosmos.


Cosmic Sympathy:

1. "an inescapable network of mutuality"
2. Origins of the concept of Cosmic Sympathy
3. "the Milesian view that the whole world is alive"
4. Pythagoreanism: the personal is cosmological