Philosophers conceptualize the modern world as the realm of quantity. After all, our contemporaries have emptied the material world of its qualitative dimension: in theology, prosperity is indicative of spiritual maturity; in politics, the number of votes determines the fate of the nation; in love, the number of partners grows exponentially. Sociologists try to explain the phenomenon: it is no longer advantageous to repair deteriorated objects; people, so used to it, seek new relationships as soon as the first problems arise, as a result of which they drop the old ties as if they were merchandise.
The truth is that, remaining with this mentality, we will understand neither reality nor the classics, whose main names, even those of mathematicians like Pythagoras, thought of numbers as participants in the realm of quality.
First of all, the Pythagoreans did not separate the sacred and the profane, religion and science, philosophy and beauty. In the school of Pythagoras, the 1 symbolized Reason; 2, Opinion; the 3, Holiness; 4, Justice; 5, Matrimony; 6, the principle of Life; 7, Health; the 8, Love; the 9, Justice; the 10, the Perfection.
Unit of disciplines
So , Pythagoras saw reality as a complete unity, in such a way that he had to develop his theses as a polymath. In fact, the great thinkers of the past were polymaths; including, in the Middle Ages, entire encyclopedias were compiled individually, through the works of Isidore of Seville, Vincente de Beauvais, Hugh of Saint Victor, et cetera. They thought, “The unity of disciplines reflects the unity of the cosmos.” What dominated not only the so-called academic knowledge, but also the eminently practical, which started from prayer to crafts, from carpentry to agriculture.
It took the industrial revolution to change the relationship of the West with the knowledge; more precisely, the 19th century brought with it intellectual specialization and knowledge was divided into parts, the polymath being called dilettante, this term associated with superficiality, in contrast to the expert, with depth.
Pythagoras never wanted to divide reality into several pieces, in order to substitute, like the moderns, concrete reality for scientific reality. The purpose behind the scientistic attitude is not to know the world, but to control it; the subject of knowledge denies the unity – the mystery – and treats the world as a controllable substance within the laboratory – the positivized fact. Pythagoras was no expert or anything like that; he was a mathematician, philosopher and saint.
Reward beyond the grave
By the way, say the Neoplatonists, he was the first to speak of immortality of the soul. He believed that there was a reward beyond the grave for those who led an ascetic life. In this sense, he approached a mystery religion, Orphism. Both had in common the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul, the punishment in Hades and the glorification of the righteous in something like the Elysian Fields; the practice of vegetarianism, the asceticism of the flesh and the purification of the passions. The difference is that the Pythagorean discipline was not limited to contemplative rites and the exercise of moral virtues; it ascended to the knowledge of music, science and philosophy.
First of all, transmigration is the doctrine that the same soul, after a long period in the world of the dead, can return to material reality to animate other bodies, even animals. However, the soul objective is the self-improvement in order to no longer transmigrate, approaching harmony or the principle of life. The Pythagoreans, as Pindar describes it, believed that “from among the dead those whose minds are unjust pay their penalty with hateful necessity. The good receive a less painful life. And those who, while residents of both worlds, have three times the courage to keep their souls pure from all acts of injustice, these walk the way to the Isle of the Blessed.”
Even his disciples believed that Pythagoras was one of those who purified himself. As a god among men, the master would have performed spiritual feats, such as successful prophecies, extreme fasts and mysterious disappearances.
In addition, the school had strict abstinence rules: disciples could not to fan the fire with a sword, to symbolize the immorality that exists in humiliating a man with harsh words; they could not defoliate a crown, symbolizing the prohibition against breaking the laws, which are the crowns of cities; not even sit on a ration of wheat, in order to symbolize how immoral it is to live in idleness.
As for music, Pythagoras believed that it was not a human invention only, but a reflection of the cosmic order above all; that good melodies served to restore soul harmony, by reflecting the numerical scales of the macrocosm, and to purify the body, through cathartic activity, similar to modern music therapy.
Finally, to the master of mathematicians, science and philosophy were conceived as the study of the divine order of the universe, the macrocosm, which must be reproduced in the soul, the microcosm. Thus, he claimed that the number was the beginning and the end – the alpha and the omega – of all things. We ourselves can see that numerical laws order everything when there is: seasons, months, weeks, days, minutes, seconds.
We will understand this if we divest ourselves of the notion modern – vulgar – that number is only part of the realm of quantity, as they used to say. Numbers also lead us to quality – law, order, measure, rhythm, harmony, proportion… In this sense, philosophy can be understood as Mathematics, which clearly reaches the supreme knowledge and demonstrates them according to universally valid principles.
*Natália Cruz Sulman is a philosophy professor
