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The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy (Treasures of the World's Religions)
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About The Golden Chain: An Anthology Of Pythagorean And
Product description The goal of the ancient philosophers was to understand how to live in harmony with nature and to transcend the limitations imposed by sense experience and discursive reasoning. Review Algis Udavinys' anthology The Golden Chain will surely be of great help in the revival of the Neoplatonic spiritual tradition -- Jay Bregman The decline of philosophy, from sacred knowledge of the Eternals to individualistic opinion and virtuoso speculation, is one of the -- Mark Perry There is a uniquely Western spiritual tradition that has been lost to postmodern culture. And, to our delight, we find -- M. A. B. Mineo From the Publisher Plato compares philosophy with preparing for death (Phaedo 67cd) and its goal with becoming like god (Theaetetus 176b). This view of philosophy implies two doctrines central to the Platonic tradition: the immortality of the soul and the community (koinonia) of the human and divine. These ideas were not new with Plato nor did they die with him. It is the nature of the philosophical endeavor to borrow and transform the ideas of others and to pass these ideas on for others to use and adapt. Plato is arguably the single most important ancient Greek thinker, although his strength lies not merely in his innovation but also, and perhaps especially, in his critical understanding of the philosophical tradition. The Golden Chain provides important texts in the history of Platonism. It begins, perhaps startlingly but certainly correctly, with excerpts about Pythagoras, moves through the Pythagorean tradition, then comes to Plato himself, and continues with excerpts from the major Neoplatonist writers. What unfolds is an evolution of a philosophy, a Platonic philosophy, one that starts before Plato is born and continues to grow after his deathand indeed well beyond the times and writings of the pagan Neoplatonists presented here. We do not know much about Pythagoras. Given his fame and large numbers of followers, that may seem strange. We know of multiple biographies of him (four of which are excerpted in Part I, below), but they are all late and suspect. As is the case with all famous individuals, the history of Pythagoras took on a life of its own. Stories of miracles, of divine genealogy, and of superhuman wisdom became associated with the philosopher. Making the matter murkier, others began writing treatises under his name. (See the works collected in Part II, below.) It is therefore very difficult to separate truth from fiction, Pythagoras doctrine from later additions. This wealth of information, however, is not so troubling. All philosophy evolves over time, but there are kernels of original doctrines present. We may not know precisely what Pythagoras taught his students, but we can be sure that his teachings included the souls immortality, the cycle of birth, and the existence and beneficence of the gods. From the Back Cover Review by Christos Evangeliou in on : "This Anthology will be very precious for the serious scholars and students of philosophy, because it comprises in one volume rare Platonic, Neo-Platonic, Pythagorean and Neo-Pythagorean texts, which constitute a truly golden chain of philosophic wisdom. There was a time when Plato and Platonism were considered as synonymous with Hellenic philosophia, understood as the love of wisdom, which was expressed in theoria and, especially, in praxis, as a way of perfecting the human soul and its noetic life. Pythagoras and Socrates were acknowledged as predecessors of Plato, while succeeding generations of philosophers, including Aristotle, were seen as precious links in this continuous golden chain of wisdom. This concatenation lasted for more than a millennium, until fanaticism broke it in 529 B.C., when Justinian closed down the philosophical schools in Athens. Since that time Hellenic philosophy was forced to lead an atrophic existence and to serve successively such alien masters as dogmatic theology, scientific technology and political ideology. As a result of this long enslavement, the "philosophy" of our times, especially in the West, has become a false homonym, that is an amorphous, confused, disoriented and petty sophistry. Of course, it is not what it used to be, a path to lead the philosophers soul and mind to their divine perfection. There is hope, then, that the present Anthology will help some serious and curious students of philosophy to rediscover, reconnect with, and revive the lost spirit of Platonic philosophy as a way of taking care of and perfecting the human soul in the Socratic manner. With the re-emergence of religious fanaticism and its concomitant terrorism, this Hellenic wisdom of reason and tolerance will be needed more than ever before. About the Author Dr. Algis Uzdavinys is a research fellow at the Institute of Art and Culture, and the Institutes of Philosophy and Sociology at the Lithuanian Academy of Science in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a published scholar in English, French and his native Lithuanian. He has translated the works of Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Plotinus into Russian and Lithuanian. Dr. Uzdavinys work regularly featured in journals such as Sophia and Sacred Web. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Though Pythagoras (born c.570 B.C.E.) did not invent philosophy as such, his role as a spiritual guide who reinterpreted and synthesized all available religious and philosophic knowledge (including the mysteries of Egypt and the science of Babylonia, inherited from Sumer) was crucial to the rise of the Hellenic intellectual tradition and the establishment of the so-called esoteric "house of mysteries." In a sense, Pythagoras exemplified Heracles (Melqart of the Phoenicians), i.e., as being an archetype of the spiritual hero who practiced the rites of incubation, oracular dreams, and was immortalized through the theurgic (or alchemical) fire. He joins the company of the gods in Heaven, thus following certain Phoenician and Hittitian cultic patterns. By emphasizing the sacred (both cosmogonical and soteriological) aspect of Number as reflecting the One and its irradiations, Pythagoras maintained the presence of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the orderly hierarchical cosmos. While asserting that unity was the principle of all things, he set up Limit (peras) and the Unlimited (apeiron) as the two most basic archetypes of theophany. Several comparatively late accounts devoted to the life and teachings of Pythagoras have survived. They are based on much earlier sources and reflect, at the very least, the universally accepted and partly idealized views regarding this legendary hero, who not only "established science" (i.e., brought it from the East), but promoted the distinctive Pythagorean way of life (bios Puthagorikos). According to the Hellenic tradition, Pythagoras restricted the use of the word wisdom (sophia) so as to make it refer only to the science of immaterial realities treated as true Being, against the fluid material world of becoming whose very flow imitates the archetypes of true Being and derives from them. Before him wise men in Greece called themselves sages (sophoi, tantamount to those "exceeding in wisdom" who bear the attributes of the god Ea in Mesopotamia), but Pythagoras was the first among the Greeks to call himself a lover of wisdom, philosophos. He regarded philosophia as a form of purification, a way of life aimed at assimilation to God and the gaining of immortality.
