Table Of ContentOn Pythagoreanism
Studia Praesocratica
Herausgegeben von / Edited by
M. Laura Gemelli Marciano, Richard McKirahan,
Denis O’Brien, Oliver Primavesi, Christoph Riedweg,
David Sider, Gotthard Strohmaier, Georg Wöhrle
Band/Volume 5
On Pythagoreanism
Edited by
Gabriele Cornelli, Richard McKirahan,
and Constantinos Macris
The book has been supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level
Personnel (CAPES) of the Ministry of Education of Brazil.
Ouvrage publié avec le concours de l’EPHE (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris).
ISBN 978-3-11-031845-6
e-ISBN 978-3-11-031850-0
ISSN 1869-7143
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A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
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Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über
http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.
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Druck und Bindung: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
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Contents
Introduction I
1 Historiography
Gabriele Cornelli
Pythagoreanism as an historiographical category: historical and
methodological notes 3
Christoph Riedweg
Approaching Pythagoras of Samos: Ritual, Natural Philosophy and
Politics 47
2 Pythagoras and Early Pythagorean traditions
Livio Rossetti
When Pythagoras was still Living in Samos (Heraclitus, frg. 129) 63
Johan C. Thom
The Pythagorean Akousmata and Early Pythagoreanism 77
Marcus Mota
Pythagoras Homericus: Performance as Hermeneutic Horizon
to Interpret Pythagorean Tradition 103
Alberto Bernabé
Orphics and Pythagoreans: the Greek perspective 117
Francesc Casadesús Bordoy
On the origin of the Orphic-Pythagorean notion of the immortality of the
soul 153
3 Fifth and Fourth Century Pythagoreanism
Richard McKirahan
Philolaus on Number 179
Luc Brisson
Archytas and the duplication of the cube 203
VI Contents
4 Reception by Plato, Aristotle and the Early Academy
Carl Huffman
Plato and the Pythagoreans 237
Beatriz Bossi
Philolaus and Plato on method, measure and pleasure 271
Fernando Santoro
Epicharmus and the plagiarism of Plato 307
Leonid Zhmud
Pythagorean Number Doctrine in the Academy 323
Giovanni Casertano
Early Pythagoreans in Aristotle’s account 345
5 Hellenistic and Late Antique traditions
André Laks
The Pythagorean Hypomnemata reported by Alexander Polyhistor in Diogenes
Laertius (8.25–33): a proposal for reading 371
Mauro Bonazzi
Eudorus of Alexandria and the ‘Pythagorean’ pseudepigrapha 385
Dominic O’Meara
Pythagoreanism in late antique Philosophy, after Proclus 405
6 Pythagoreanheritage in Renaissance and modern times
Thomas M. Robinson
Ficino’s Pythagoras 423
Edrisi Fernandes
A modern approximation to Pythagoreanism:
Boscovich’s “point atomism” 435
Curricula 483
Index of Topics 489
Contents VII
Index locorum 499
Index nominum 517
Introduction
ControversyregardingthehistoryofmodernscholarshiponPythagorasandhis
movement still continues. Confronting both the dilemma between excessive
skepticismandexcessivefaith inthesourcesandtheattempttoobtainasingle
hermeneuticalkeytodecidethe“Pythagoreanquestion”,theInternationalSemi-
narOnPythagoreanismheldattheUniversityofBrasíliafromAugust22–26,2011
aimedtofollowthePythagoreantraditionsthroughouthistory,asmomentsofa
historicalrouteresultinginapolyhedralimageofoneofthemostsignificantin-
tellectual phenomena in Western culture.The present book constitutes the pro-
ceedings of that seminar.
The seminar brought together scholars from all over the world who have
dedicated themselves to studying this field during the last 30 years, in order
todefinethestatusquaestionisforthenewwaveofresearchonPythagoreanism
currentlytakingplaceinthe21stcentury.Itisnotanexaggerationtosaythatthis
was a historic meeting,considering the number and caliber of specialists gath-
eredtodiscuss so multifaceted a subject with all its fascinatingdetails and no-
torious difficulties.
The conception and initiative for the seminar’s organization came from the
researchgroupArchai:ThepluraloriginsofWesternthought(Ἀρχαί:asorigensdo
pensamento ocidental)¹ and its coordinator, Gabriele Cornelli, Professor of An-
cient Philosophy at Brasilia University.This meetingconstitutedthe 8th Interna-
tional Archai Seminar and celebrated tenyears of the existence of the research
group, which enjoys the honor of being included in the worldwide web of
UNESCO Chairs – the one and only UNESCO Chair in the field of philosophy
in Brazil.
The focus on the Pythagorean tradition was a natural choice indeed, not
only because it is Professor Cornelli’s field of specialization but also and
above all because of the general approach of the Archai UNESCO Chair,which
tries to reach a historical perspective of the origins (cf. the Greek archai) of
the scientific and cultural ideas which currently guide Western thought. Such
an approach has become drastically relevant in an international, political and
intellectual context of crisis which challenges the cultural paradigms related
to the tradition of the European matrix.This tradition, in turn, has been chal-
lenged to rediscover the “treasures” of its mutating identities through an open
http://www.archai.com.br/; cf. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/brasilia/about-this-office/
single-view/news/unesco_chair_in_archai_the_plural_origins_of_western_thought/#.UjTMmH_
9Wao.
