A History of Pythagoreanism

Carl A. Huffman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781107014398
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139898355
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

This is a comprehensive, authoritative and innovative account of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophies in the West. In twenty-one chapters covering a timespan from the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century AD, leading scholars construct a number of different images of Pythagoras and his community, assessing current scholarship and offering new answers to central problems. Chapters are devoted to the early Pythagoreans, and the full breadth of Pythagorean thought is explored including politics, religion, music theory, science, mathematics and magic. Separate chapters consider Pythagoreanism in Plato, Aristotle, the Peripatetics and the later Academic tradition, while others describe Pythagoreanism in the historical tradition, in Rome and in the pseudo-Pythagorean writings. The three great lives of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus are also discussed in detail, as is the significance of Pythagoras for the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Pythagoras
• Chapter 2 Philolaus
• Chapter 3 Archytas
• Chapter 4 Sixth-, fifth- and fourth-century Pythagoreans
• Chapter 5 The Pythagorean society and politics
• Chapter 6 The Pythagorean way of life and Pythagorean ethics
• Chapter 7 Pythagoreans, Orphism and Greek religion
• Chapter 8 The problem of Pythagorean mathematics
• Chapter 9 Pythagorean harmonics
• Chapter 10 The Pythagoreans and Plato
• Chapter 11 Aristotle on the “so-called Pythagoreans”: from lore to principles
• Chapter 12 Pythagoreanism in the Academic tradition: the Early Academy to Numenius
• Chapter 13 The Peripatetics on the Pythagoreans
• Chapter 14 Pythagoras in the historical tradition: from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus
• Chapter 15 The pseudo-Pythagorean writings
• Chapter 16 Pythagoreans in Rome and Asia Minor around the turn of the common era
• Chapter 17 Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Pythagoras
• Chapter 18 Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras
• Chapter 19 Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Life in context
• Chapter 20 Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in late antiquity and the Middle Ages
• Chapter 21 Pythagoras in the Early Renaissance
• Bibliography
• General index
• Index locorum
• Greek index