Some Notes on Philolaus and the Pythagoreans

Leonid Zhmud
Institute for the History of Science and Technology, St. Petersburg

Ο Φιλόλαος ο Κροτωνιάτης (500 π.Χ.), Κάτω Ιταλία, ήταν μαθητής του Πυθαγόρα.

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1. Philolaus and the Pythagorean Tradition
In the history of Presocratic philosophy Philolaus was for a long time almost as controversial a figure as the founder of the Pythagorean school himself. But in contrast to Pythagoras, who, as we know, wrote nothing1, the debate on Philolaus concentrated on the question of the authenticity of his fragments. During the 19th and the first half of the 20th century the majority of scholars took the fragments attributed to him as inauthentic; attempts to prove the contrary, which were not infrequent at this time, did not have much success. As W. Burkert subsequently showed2, the problem was that among the fragments attributed to Philolaus only a small part could be acknowledged as genuine while the rest clearly bear traces of the later (e.g. Platonic and even Neoplatonic) ideas and terminology foreign to the Presocratics. Thus, it was possible to “save” Philolaus’ fragments only by sacrificing a part of them. The principal conclusions of the famous book by Burkert, who was the first to divide the fragments into two unequal parts and to prove convincingly the authenticity of one part, were surprisingly quickly accepted by the overwhelming majority of the students of Presocratic philosophy.
After Burkert, there were no serious attempts to dispute the authenticity of those fragments that he found genuine (B 1–7, 13, 17 DK), and now there is an opinio communis in this field, something that is quite rare in the history of Pythagorean studies. It should nevertheless be said that Burkert “saved” some of Philolaus’ fragments but not Philolaus himself as a philosopher
and scientist. His Philolaus conforms to Burkert’s general notion of Pythagoreanism, according to which neither Pythagoras nor the early Pythagoreans had anything in common with philosophy and science. As C. Huffman noted later, Burkert’s Philolaus is not responding to problems raised in the Presocratic tradition; he is not a natural philosopher. Rather he is attempting to translate an essentially religious view of the world inherited from Pythagoras into the foreign language of Ionian physiologia3. It is only natural, therefore, that in his own book about Philolaus Huffman, although drawing largely on Burkert’s work…

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