Plato's Deep Pythagorean Roots

Key Insight

Plato, a monumental figure in Western philosophy whose works rival the Bible in length, drew heavily from an ancient tradition with profound Pythagorean roots. Aristotle, Plato's student for two decades, explicitly stated that Plato's philosophy largely 'followed these thinkers,' particularly agreeing with Pythagoreans that 'the One is substance' and 'numbers are the causes of the substance of other things.' This confirms Plato's acceptance of the core Pythagorean ideas: ultimate unity of all things and mathematics as both an expression and access point to eternal order.

After Socrates's execution, Plato purposefully traveled to Magna Graecia, a Pythagorean stronghold in southern Italy, to study. He became the esteemed guest and student of Archytas of Tarentum, a renowned Pythagorean master mathematician, engineer, and military leader, who himself was a student of Philolaus, a key Pythagorean figure after Pythagoras. This direct tutelage implies a deep, personal transmission of esoteric oral teachings linking Plato directly to the Pythagorean tradition. Plato frequently acknowledged this 'enormous debt' in his dialogues, attributing key ideas to oral traditions from his mentors in southern Italy and maintaining contact with them even after returning to Athens, receiving Pythagorean treatises.

Pythagorean influence is evident in Plato's inclusion of 'mind-bending myths' in his dialogues, which complement rational discussions with evocative imagery on cosmic creation, soul immortality, and spiritual ascent. These myths, traced to Sicily and southern Italy, were Pythagorean strongholds. The 'Timaeus,' a major work, features a philosopher-king modeled on a Pythagorean, explaining the cosmos as 'a work of craft' constructed from disorder into 'a symphony of proportion' by a geometer-god using tiny triangles and tetrahedrons. It views the human soul as a harmonious integration reflecting the universe's structure, suggesting that understanding cosmic harmonies leads to enlightenment and 'most excellent life.' This work encapsulates the Pythagorean belief in a rationally ordered cosmos and souls, and mathematics as a mystical path to divine reality.