Philolaus

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Philolaos ( Greek Φιλόλαος ; * probably around 470 BC ; † after 399 BC ) was an ancient Greek philosopher ( Pythagorean ). He was a contemporary of Socrates , but is counted among the pre-Socratics because of his way of thinking .

Life

Little is known about the life of Philolaus. He was probably from Croton . Presumably he later lived in Taranto .

Around the middle or the second half of the 5th century, severe Antipythagorean riots broke out in southern Italy. The meeting place of the Pythagoreans in Croton, the house of the (long deceased) athlete Milon , was set on fire. All the Pythagoreans present except two are said to have died. According to the portrayal of the late ancient Neo-Platonist Olympiodorus , Philolaos was one of the two who escaped. So true Plutarch agree that, however, the process by mistake after Metapont laid and adds Philolaos was then first to Lucania fled. Aristoxenus , whose account is more credible, also knows the story, but instead of Philolaus' name gives another ( Archippus of Taranto ). In any case, some Pythagoreans, including Philolaos, emigrated to Greece because of the persecution in southern Italy. Philolaus settled temporarily in Thebes . In Plato's dialogue Phaedo , which takes place in 399, he is mentioned as the former teacher of two participants in the dialogue, the Thebans Kebes and Simmias. According to a tradition, the reliability of which is uncertain, on his first trip to Italy (around 388), Plato met Philolaos, who in this case must have returned from Greece.

According to a report of dubious credibility, Philolaos was a pupil of the Pythagorean Lysis from Taranto, who also emigrated to Thebes from Italy because of the political unrest. Archytas of Taranto , Eurytus and Democritus are named as students of Philolaos .

plant

Apparently, Philolaos was the first Pythagorean to write a book on Pythagorean natural philosophy. Only fragments of the work, which was written in the Doric dialect, have survived, the authenticity of which is partly uncertain. A large part is considered authentic today. Plato is said to have acquired the book on his first trip to Italy; he was later accused of plagiarizing the teachings set out in his Dialogue Timaeus and that they were in fact from Philolaus.

Teaching

The philosophical thinking of Philolaos revolves around the opposition between the unlimited things ( ápeira ) and the things that create boundaries ( peraínonta ). This contrast is the primary fact for him. The entire reality emerges from the connection of unlimited and limiting things or factors (he always uses the plural), both the cosmos as a whole and its individual components. In contrast to Plato's way of thinking, Philolaos does not mean abstract principles (infinity and finitude), but something sensually perceptible as such. He considers the eternal and nature itself to be unknowable. Everything that can be known is limited, otherwise it could not be known.

Limiting and unlimited things are inherently different; that they nevertheless meet and connect with one another and thereby the world arises, is made possible by the addition of a third factor, which he calls harmony. Harmony holds the world together and gives it a meaningful structure (not every arbitrary limitation of an inherently limitless continuum is harmonic). Unlike some other Pythagoreans, Philolaos apparently does not associate the terms “unlimited” and “limiting” with any moral evaluations.

Since the objects of knowledge are finite quantities, they can be expressed mathematically. Only through the numbers assigned to them do they reveal themselves to human understanding.

It is controversial to what extent, or in what sense, Philolaus and other early Pythagoreans took the view, in a way alien to modern thinking, that physical objects themselves are the numbers corresponding to them (as a possibly misleading interpretation of Pythagorean number theory, which goes back to Aristotle , says). In any case, the numerical understanding of these pre-Socratic Pythagoreans was not yet abstract in the sense common since Plato.

cosmology

As the harmony brings together the two primal givens, the limitless and the limiting things or factors, the cosmos emerges as a well-ordered whole of the world. Philolaos depicts this world order in an astronomical model that perhaps goes back at least in part to himself. The model is particularly interesting from an astronomical point of view because it does not - as was common back then - place the earth at the center of the universe. Rather, Philolaos assumes a hypothetical central fire ("hearth") in the middle, which is orbited by all celestial bodies including the earth. As it revolves around the central fire, the earth rotates its axis, which is linked to its circular motion in such a way that it always faces the same side of the central fire. The central fire is invisible to people because they live on the side of the earth that is always turned away from it. A counter- earth moves on the innermost circular path - always opposite the earth and therefore also always invisible to us . Farther out than the earth, the moon, the sun and the five planets known at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) circle around the central fire, around which the sphere of fixed stars also rotates at the very outside. The fixed star sphere as the outer boundary of the cosmos is everywhere surrounded by an external fire. Philolaos considers the moon to be inhabited; he regards the sun as a glass-like body which, like a lens, collects and transmits light and heat that come from the external fire.

Philolaos imagines the creation of the world ( cosmogony ) in such a way that the world has developed from the center (the central fire) in all directions at the same time and in the same way. He considers this to be necessary because he does not consider any direction to be particularly excellent, but rather regards directions such as “upwards” and “downwards” only as relative, location-dependent statements in a point-symmetrical universe. By connecting unlimited factors such as time and empty space with limiting factors such as the spherical shape of the universe with a center point, the world is created.

Music theory

Nicomachus von Gerasa provides brief information about Philolaus 'music theory in his Harmonikón encheirídion ("Handbook of Harmony"), where he also quotes a passage from Philolaus' lost work. This Philolaos fragment (No. 6a) is considered genuine today. Another quote that Boëthius communicates in his De institutione musica , as well as further information from Boethius, Proklos and Porphyrios come from a later lost treatise wrongly ascribed to Philolaos, which already shows the influence of considerations in the early Platonic Academy were employed. These sources can therefore not be used for a reconstruction of Philolaos' music theory.

The fragment handed down by Nicomachus is striking because of its ancient expression. Philolaos, for example, called the paramese "trite", and for the fourth and fifth he later used unusual technical terms that apparently came from old musical practice. Philolaos probably assumed a seven-string lyre , with the seven strings making an octave in which a tone was missing. The assumed scale is efgahd 'e', ​​the missing note is c '. The parameter is h, not - as is usual - b or c '. According to Nicomachus, this was criticized by critics as a mistake Philolaus.

reception

The ancient Philolaus reception was, as Aelian regretted, relatively weak. Aristotle dealt critically with the cosmology of Philolaos; so his book was still accessible in his time. Later interest in Philolaos waned. In late antiquity, his name had a good sound, as can be seen from some of the fake works ( pseudepigraphs ) attributed to him. In the early modern period it regained a certain importance, since Nicolaus Copernicus was interested in all historically attested alternatives to the geocentric view of the world and was therefore also inspired by Philolaos.

The lunar crater Philolaus is named after the philosopher.

Text output

  • Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-521-41525-X (edition of the fragments of Philolaus and compilation of the other sources with English translation and detailed commentary)
  • Laura Gemelli Marciano (Ed.): The pre-Socratics . Volume 1, Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-7608-1735-4 , pp. 140–151 (Greek texts with German translation, explanations and introduction to life and work)

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, p. 6.
  2. ^ Plutarch, De genio Socratis 13 (583a).
  3. ↑ Plato, Phaedo 61d-e.
  4. ^ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, p. 4 f.
  5. ^ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, p. 4 and note 3; on the relationship between Archytas and Philolaos see also Carl A. Huffman: Archytas of Tarentum , Cambridge 2005, p. 7.
  6. ^ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, p. 15 and note 25.
  7. ^ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, pp. 4 f., 12 f.
  8. ^ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, p. 47 note 1.
  9. ↑ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, p. 56 ff., 205 and Leonid Zhmud: Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion im early Pythagoreismus , Berlin 1997, p. 263 f. plead for restriction to an epistemological understanding, while Hermann S. Schibli: On 'The One' in Philolaus, fragment 7 . In: The Classical Quarterly 46, 1996, pp. 114–130 advocates an ontological interpretation in the sense of Aristotle's conception; see. also the position of Charles H. Kahn: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. A Brief History , Indianapolis 2001, pp. 27-29.
  10. ↑ Carl A. Huffman attempts an interpretation from an astronomical point of view: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, p. 240 ff .; mythical roots emphasize Walter Burkert: Weisheit und Wissenschaft , Nürnberg 1962, p. 315 ff. and Peter Kingsley: Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic , Oxford 1995, pp. 172–213.
  11. ↑ Greek text, English translation, discussion of the question of authenticity and commentary by Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, pp. 145–165.
  12. ↑ Fragment 6b, De institutione musica 3.8; Greek text, English translation and discussion of the question of authenticity with Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, pp. 364-367.
  13. ^ Carl A. Huffman: Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic , Cambridge 1993, pp. 367-380.
  14. ^ Walter Burkert: Wisdom and Science , Nuremberg 1962, pp. 369–372.
  15. ↑ Aelian, Varia historia 1.23.
  16. ^ Charles H. Kahn: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. A Brief History , Indianapolis 2001, p. 26; Walter Burkert: Wisdom and Science , Nuremberg 1962, p. 315; Bronisław Biliński: Il pitagorismo di Niccolò Copernico , Wrocław 1977, pp. 47-71.
personal data
SURNAME Philolaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION ancient Greek philosopher (Pythagorean)
DATE OF BIRTH around 470 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH after 399 BC Chr.