In the previous article we have appreciated the importance of numbers to the Pythagoreans. Not only these ancient thinkers viewed them in a mathematical way, but also in a cosmological way. There was indeed another 'M' for these rationalist philosophers – the exploration of the nature of soul and the practical implications that resulted from these understandings. Besides mathematics, there is metempsychosis.
Metempsychosis, also known as the transmigration of souls, is an ancient doctrine that sounds like a plot twist from a ghost story. First proposed by Pherecydes, and possibly some other civilizations outside Greece, this weird idea was important for the foundation of ancient philosophy. We can go further to state that the doctrine of metempsychosis is the central theme of Pythagorean philosophy, as that impacts the school's general outlook and ethical attitude.
Metempsychosis is a reincarnation theory that asserts the immortality of the soul. The soul is a metaphysical substance that is eternal and cannot be destructed. As the soul has to combine with a corporal body to form a living whole; once the body has perished, the soul will leave the body and attach to another body. That can be another human body or an animal body (!!). The process will continue due to the eternality of the soul.
While I have mentioned before that the conception of the bodily and corporeality was rather vague and inconsistent for many Presocratic philosophers, it was reasonable to assume that soul was an immaterial substance – a point much stressed by Plato in later times. It was also evident that, while the philosophers from the Presocratic era did not deny the importance of a soul-body unity, they seemed to have elevated the status of the soul and have undermined the corporal aspects of humanity, a preference also carried to the extreme by Plato.
There were practical and ethical implications of metempsychosis for Pythagoras and his followers. The Pythagoreans were committed to a vegetarian diet in the fear that they might 'eat up' their human companions from a previous life. Of course, the idea sounds rather ludicrous for modern readers. The thinkers were also oblivious to the fact that plants also had lives – so they could not rule out the possibility of metempsychosis to a plant. Nevertheless, we could not ask too much from these ancient thinkers, after all. Another implication was ethical in nature. As it was possible to have a transmigration of one's soul to a lower form of animal life, the Pythagoreans behaved in a moral and rational way, to avoid such a punishment from happening for their next lives. The most long-term consequence was their emphasis on the care for their souls. While the corporeal body could be destroyed, it was the immortal soul that should be maintained in a positive way, for the sake of one's well-being.
Pythagoras and Plato
While the Presocratic philosophers endorsed the idea of soul transmigration and were committed to lead a lifestyle that addressed their beliefs, they might not have foreseen the fact that the idea would be instrumental for the construction of a complete philosophical system that influenced much of Western thought. It was up to the intelligent Plato of the Classical Greece to see all the connections, and synthesized the ideas of Pythagoras and Parmenides to build his school of philosophical thoughts.
In general, Plato agreed to the idea of metempsychosis, because the doctrine fitted very well with his own idea of recollection. Though he did not totally agree to all the viewpoints from the Pythagoreans, as expressed through his work, 'Phaedo', one could be assured that Plato endorsed the conclusions of the doctrine and saw the instrumental value of metempsychosis to his own work.
Plato agreed to the notion that soul was eternal and indestructible, and he also stressed the immaterial nature of soul. Being immaterial was important for Plato's dualistic system because that suggested its abstract nature and its inaccessibility from the senses. For Plato, the most perfect things were the Forms, the perfect ideas which were eternal and 'out-of-this-world'. Plato rigorously distinguished between appearance and reality, much like what Parmenides did – the 'appearance' was the imperfect, sensible world we existed in; and the 'reality' was the perfect, ideal, and transcendent world where all the eternal Forms were situated in. The transcendent world was a metaphysical world where we were inaccessible to through our senses – a Holy Grail one could never achieve.
While the soul-body interaction of the Presocratic thinkers were vague, Plato took a more decisive step, by designating the soul to the transcendent world of the Forms, and detached it conceptually from the corporeal aspect of humanity. This notion was best illustrated by the famous myth in 'Phaedrus', where a charioteer controlled a pair of horses (the trio served as an analogy of the soul) towards the realm of enlightenment, a metaphor for the transcendent world of the Forms.
So, next time when you are finding out the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, do not forget the awe inspired by this ancient lover of wisdom!
by Ed Law
Conatus Classics
