The Golden Chain

  World Wisdom

  The Library of Perennial Philosophy

  The Library of Perennial Philosophy is dedicated to the exposition of the timeless Truth underlying the diverse religions. This Truth, often referred to as the Sophia Perennis—or Perennial Wisdom—finds its expression in the revealed Scriptures as well as the writings of the great sages and the artistic creations of the traditional worlds.

  The Perennial Philosophy provides the intellectual principles capable of explaining both the formal contradictions and the transcendent unity of the great religions.

  Ranging from the writings of the great sages of the past, to the perennialist authors of our time, each series of our Library has a different focus. As a whole, they express the inner unanimity, transforming radiance, and irreplaceable values of the great spiritual traditions.

  The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy appears as one of our selections in the Treasures of the World’s Religions series.

  Treasures of the World’s Religions series

  This series of anthologies presents scriptures and the writings of the great spiritual authorities of the past on fundamental themes. Some titles are devoted to a single spiritual tradition, while others have a unifying topic that touches upon tradition from both the East and West, such as prayer and virtue. Some titles have a companion volume within the Perennial Philosophy series.

  Cover: The Acropolis, Athens

  The Golden Chain

  An Anthology of Pythagorean

  and Platonic Philosophy

  Selected and edited by

  Algis Uždavinys

  Foreword by

  John F. Finamore

  The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

  © 2004 World Wisdom, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced

  in any manner without written permission,

  except in critical articles and reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The golden chain : an anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy/selected and edited by Algis Uždavinys ; foreword by John F. Finamore.

  p. cm. --(Treasures of the world's religions)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0-941532-61-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Philosophy, Ancient. I. Uždavinys, Algis. II. Series.

  B171.G65 2004

  182’.2--dc22

  2004018009

  Printed on acid-free paper in Canada

  For information address World Wisdom, Inc.

  P.O. Box 2682, Bloomington, Indiana 47402-2682

  www.worldwisdom.com

  FOREWORD

  Plato compares philosophy with preparing for death (Phaedo 67cd) and its goal with becoming like god (Theaetetus 176b). This view of philosophy implies two doctrines central to the Platonic tradition: the immortality of the soul and the community (koinonia) of the human and divine. These ideas were not new with Plato nor did they die with him. It is the nature of the philosophical endeavor to borrow and transform the ideas of others and to pass these ideas on for others to use and adapt. Plato is arguably the single most important ancient Greek thinker, although his strength lies not merely in his innovation but also, and perhaps especially, in his critical understanding of the philosophical tradition.

  The Golden Chain provides important texts in the history of Platonism. It begins, perhaps startlingly but certainly correctly, with excerpts about Pythagoras, moves through the Pythagorean tradition, then comes to Plato himself, and continues with excerpts from the major Neoplatonist writers. What unfolds is an evolution of a philosophy, a Platonic philosophy, one that starts before Plato is born and continues to grow after his death—and indeed well beyond the times and writings of the pagan Neoplatonists presented here.

  We do not know much about Pythagoras. Given his fame and large numbers of followers, that may seem strange. We know of multiple biographies of him (four of which are excerpted in Part I, below), but they are all late and suspect. As is the case with all famous individuals, the history of Pythagoras took on a life of its own. Stories of miracles, of divine genealogy, and of superhuman wisdom became associated with the philosopher. Making the matter murkier, others began writing treatises under his name. (See the works collected in Part II, below.) It is therefore very difficult to separate truth from fiction, Pythagoras’ doctrine from later additions.

  This wealth of information, however, is not so troubling. All philosophy evolves over time, but there are kernels of original doctrines present. We may not know precisely what Pythagoras taught his students, but we can be sure that his teachings included the soul’s immortality, the cycle of birth, and the existence and beneficence of the gods.

  Plato traveled to Sicily and southern Italy and studied with Pythagoreans. He had already imbibed philosophy from Socrates and was devoting himself to the major ethical questions to which Socrates had introduced him. We do not know what impelled Plato to study with Pythagoreans, but we can certainly make some educated guesses. Plato was concerned with ethics and politics, to be sure, but also with their relation to the human life, to the soul. His own beliefs in immortality and perhaps already in transmigration would have been piqued by what he had read and heard about Pythagorean philosophy. Philosophers are by nature curious and eager to learn. Plato would have been no different.

  The later Pythagoreans and the later Platonists (“Neopythagoreans,” “Middle Platonists,” and “Neoplatonists,” we call them) came to believe that Plato was a Pythagorean. We need not be so naïve. Plato studied Pythagorean texts and held discussions with Pythagorean philosophers, but he was far too independent a thinker to adopt their philosophy wholesale. He was clearly taken with their ideas of the soul’s immortality, for example, but his initial beliefs certainly pre-dated his encounter with Pythagoreans. Their doctrines shaped his to some degree, but he also would have reworked theirs to fit his own grand view. Here I am thinking especially of Plato’s evolving doctrine of the Forms, which is certainly not Pythagorean but was probably fine-tuned in accordance with their doctrines of rebirth. Moreover, I would argue that their doctrine of transmigration is not the same as Plato’s. The Platonic version stresses philosophical wisdom in a way that I see as foreign to the more religious thinking of the Pythagoreans. For Plato it is the rational soul that serves the individual in the time between its taking on human bodies. In the Myth of Er, it is the soul’s philosophical aptitude that allows it to make a wise choice of life. In the Phaedrus, it is the rational part of the soul that makes possible a clear vision of the Forms and an eventual escape from the cycle of rebirth. We thus see Plato adopting and adapting the Pythagorean doctrines and fitting them into his own larger philosophical structure.

  The Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists continued to expand Plato’s philosophy. (See Part IV, below.) The crucial thinker in this ever-evolving melting pot of Platonism is Iamblichus, who lived during a time of major crisis in ancient philosophy. The world was changing. Christianity was coming to the fore, presenting what to pagan philosophers seemed like new and impious doctrines. (Porphyry, an older contemporary of Iamblichus, wrote a detailed attack of the new religion. Christian religious authorities deemed it so dangerous that it was publicly burned in later years and exists now only in fragments.) Iamblichus presented a unified theory of paganism. He not only saw Plato as a Pythagorean, but he saw both philosophers (and indeed all pagan Greek philosophers, with the exception of the materialists) as part of a continuing source of true knowledge. His unified theory included not only Greek philosophers and poets, but also Egyptians, Chaldeans, and other non-Greek pagans. All were teaching
the same Truth, which the upstart Christians had abandoned.

  The later pagan Neoplatonists (Hierocles, Proclus, Damascius, and others) embraced Iamblichus’ vision, while of course tinkering with some of his philosophical doctrines. (Philosophers cannot help themselves from making such revisions.) Whether or not Iamblichus ever used the phrase, it is certain that Proclus adapted the Homeric “Golden Chain” to the Neoplatonic heritage of wisdom. Platonism now stood in the proper relation to thousands of years of human thought. It was part of the Golden Chain of knowledge, ultimately secured from the highest realms of the universe, from the gods and the One itself. Pythagoras, Plato, and the ancients had tapped this source of wisdom, kept it alive, and passed it on to the Neoplatonists, who continued to keep the flame of truth burning.

  John F. Finamore

  University of Iowa

  INTRODUCTION

  The present anthology of the Pythagorean and Platonic tradition disagrees in certain important respects with the modern understanding of philosophy in general and of Platonism and Pythagoreanism in particular. Following the valuable insights of Pierre Hadot (supported by the witness of countless traditional sages throughout the world) we regard ancient philosophy as essentially a way of life: not only inseparable from “spiritual exercises,” but also in perfect accord with cosmogonical myths and sacred rites. In the broader traditional sense, philosophy consists not simply of a conceptual edifice (be it of the order of reason or myth), but of a lived concrete existence conducted by initiates, or by the whole theocentric community, treated as a properly organized and well-guided political and theurgical “body” attended to the principle of maat—“truth” and “justice” in the ancient Egyptian sense of the word.

  In Plato’s definition of philosophy as a training for death (Phaedo 67cd) an implicit distinction was made between philosophy and philosophical discourse. Modern Western philosophy (a rather monstrous and corrupted creature, initially shaped by late Christian theology and post-Descartesian logic) has been systematically reduced to a philosophical discourse of a single dogmatic kind, through the fatal one-sidedness of its professed secular humanistic mentality, and a crucial misunderstanding of traditional wisdom. The task of the ancient philosophers was in fact to contemplate the cosmic order and its beauty; to live in harmony with it and to transcend the limitations imposed by sense experience and discursive reasoning. In a word, it was through philosophy (understood as a kind of askesis) that the cultivation of the natural, ethical, civic, purificatory, theoretic, paradigmatic, and hieratic virtues (aretai) were to be practiced; and it was through this noetic vision (noesis) that the ancient philosophers tried to awaken the divine light within, and to touch the divine Intellect in the cosmos. For them, to reach apotheosis was the ultimate human end (telos). Christos Evangeliou correctly observes that, “Neither Aristotle nor any other Platonic, or genuinely Hellenic philosopher, would have approved of what the modern European man, in his greedy desire for profit, and demonic will to power, has made out of Hellenic philosophia.”1

  The purpose of our highly selective anthology is to glimpse the Pythagorean and Platonic tradition from the traditional Hellenic and especially Neoplatonic perspective. However, one ought to remember that the term “Neoplatonism” itself was an artificial invention of the 18th century Protestant scholars and preachers of the Enlightenment era, who rejected the claim that Plato’s philosophy was propounded in unwritten doctrines and oral teachings, and the “Neoplatonic presumption” of harmony between Plato and Aristotle. These founders of modern philosophical hermeneutics pretended to understand Plato better than the latter understood himself. Looking down upon Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus from the tower of their so-called “Enlightenment,” they claimed to have discovered “the real Plato”—one who had to be thoroughly cleansed from the filth of Neoplatonic interpretations. Thus, Neoplatonism was pictured as the root and source of all evils. This highly prejudiced opinion prevailed as unquestioned dogma despite the heroic resistance of such Platonic scholars as Thomas Taylor, and is still prevalent among the contemporary “priests” of current scientistic ideologies. According to the narrow Protestant mentality of the 19th century, and even that of modern secular scholarship, the ancient Hellenic Neoplatonists were madmen, liars and foolish forgers, who preferred illusions and imaginations to sound reason. They were regarded as “men inflated by metaphysical dreams, who always opposed Plato to Christ,” trying “to find a new way of impeding the progress of Christianity.”2 It is little wonder, then, that in reading certain texts of classical scholarship (even those that are quite sympathetic), and thereafter proceeding to the ancient authors themselves, one cannot escape an impression of hearing two different stories and following two different paths that never really meet, despite certain appearances to the contrary.

  The essential aspect of the ancient philosophical tradition was its oral transmission and living praxis. Theory, therefore, was never regarded as an end in itself, but was put in the service of practice, often understood in terms of an “alchemical” transformation and an elevation of the soul through the rites of purification and the cultivation of the virtues. In most cases this cultivation was so all-encompassing as to make the philosopher—as a “lover of wisdom”—strange to the world of mortals and close to the immortal gods, or archetypal principles (archai) of cosmic manifestation. Since putting oneself in accord with the divine principles allowed one to experience the eternal irradiation of the Good, Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy was not simply a discourse about the gods and the world, but an anagogic path leading the soul to a concrete union with the divine Intellect and the ineffable One. All complementary sciences and arts served as the direct or indirect means to this goal and provided meaningful symbols and icons for contemplation. In a sense, there was a lived logic, a lived hermeneutics, physics, and ethics. Hence, as Pierre Hadot has pointed out, the practice of philosophy did not ultimately consist in “producing the theory of logic, that is the theory of speaking well and thinking well, nor in producing the theory of physics, that is of the cosmos, nor in producing the theory of acting well, but it concerned actually speaking well, thinking well, acting well, being truly conscious of one’s place in the cosmos.”3

  Most narrow-minded modernists—for whom philosophy as such is tantamount to an abstract philosophical discourse based on the rationalistic scientific method and its methodically obtained “truths”—believe that Thales of Miletus must have been the first to use a rational method to investigate the interrelationship of visible things and their inner causes. In a highly presumptuous and uncritical manner, they assert that Thales made a deliberate break with the mythology of the past and was seeking a new, rational account of the cosmos. They therefore installed him as the founder of philosophia as such and pictured him as a distant forerunner of modern Western thought, without, however, presenting any evident and reliable support for this view. As S.H. Nasr has remarked:

  The perspective within which the origin of modern philosophy is conceived and the choice of which philosophers to include and which to exclude in the account of the history of philosophy all reflect a particular “ideology” and conception of philosophy and are related to modern man’s view of himself.4

  In this respect the Safavid Persian hakims were perhaps closer to the truth when they identified the water of Thales with the Breath of the Compassionate (nafas al-Rahman) of the Sufis, and considered the so-called Presocratic philosophers to have used a symbolic language in order to reveal the unity of Being. Indeed, “when one reads the Presocratics with an open mind and sensitive ear, one cannot help being struck by the religious note in much of what they say. Few words occur more frequently in their fragments than the term ‘god.’”5 To conventionally assume that Thales simply opposed myth to “rational account” (logos) is to misunderstand the Greek word logos and follow the modern reductionist tendency to render it exclusively as “reason” or “discursive reasoning” (dianoia). But even Plato himself, who finally recognized that
the only thing worth being serious about was God, made no clear distinction between attitude to myth and philosophical reasoning. If practiced with real wisdom, he maintained, both myth-telling and dialectic could lead towards truth; but otherwise they would misguide. Since the ultimate God was beyond human speech, “Plato repeatedly tends to set up the two apparently opposing categories of myth and logic only to end up merging and demolishing them.”6 But the Greek word logos can also mean divine speech (the demiurgic word of Ra rendered into operative wisdom by Thoth, to use the Egyptian theological terms) as well as noetic apprehension of the first indemonstrable and sacred principles, archetypes, or gods (Gr. Theoi; Eg. neteru), which are transcendent and immanent at the same time. In addition, logos can mean analogy and proportion.

  In the original Orphico-Pythagorean sense, philosophy meant wisdom (sophia) and love (eros) combined in a moral and intellectual purification in order to reach the “likeness to God” (homoiosis theo, [Plato, Theaet. 176b]). This likeness was to be attained by gno-sis, knowledge. The same Greek word nous (“intellect,” understood in a macrocosmic and microcosmic sense) covers all that is meant both by “spirit” (spiritus, ruh) and “intellect” (intellectus, ‘aql) in the Medieval Christian and Islamic lexicon. Thus Platonic philosophy (and especially Neoplatonism) was a spiritual and contemplative way of life leading to enlightenment; a way which was properly and intrinsically intellectual; a way that was ultimately based on intellection or noetic vision (noesis), which transcends the realm of sense perception and discursive reasoning. Through an immediate grasp of first principles, the non-discursive intelligence lead to a union (henosis) with the divine Forms. “Knowledge of the gods,” says Iamblichus, “is virtue and wisdom and perfect happiness, and makes us like to the gods” (Protr. 3). Even for Aristotle, who seems to be a much more earthly-minded rationalist, the highest and eternally active Intellect, or God, as the ultimate metaphysical telos of any true philosopher, erotically attracts and harmoniously moves everything in the multi-dimensional cosmos: