Pythagoras

Before I start, let's get this straight: I don't math. So I sat down my friend Clara, who happens to be majoring in the mathematical arts, and subjected her to a reading of the entire seven pages devoted to Pythagoras in our little book. This is what we came up with together.

Pythagoras wanted to be able to explain the entire world by rules that he could understand. He had such a mathematical mind that the method he used to make sense of it all was numbers. From there, he was able to apply it to life, nature, and the kosmos.

So we started with the last aphorism, the one with the lists that looked like a first grader's exercise in recognizing opposites. Pythagoras was so insistent in applying his "rules" to understanding the world, that he took the things that are confusing about human nature, picked them apart, and then defined them. In the words of my own math nerd, Clara, "we like concrete definitions, things that are true and solid." Well there you have it folks, it took math to get the ball rolling on the purpose of philosophy.

At this point another friend from the realm of math joined us to make sense of aphorism 18. We decided that, apparently, Pythagoras doesn't math either. On the advice of the math kids in the room, "he needs to define limited and unlimited and be clearer"... and "he can't just say stuff." Although it did end with the redeeming comment, "and numbers, as I have said, constitute the entire universe."

In conclusion, based on the number of characters and words, (which are even), I will receive an unlimited grade on this assignment. And then multiply it by 10, because apparently that is the perfect number.

Xenophanes

What I found most interesting about Xenophanes was his views of god. He starts by completely rejecting the traditionally acknowledged Olympian gods. Everything that everyone has grown up being taught about the gods depicted by Homer and Hesiod, Xenophanes discounts on the grounds that the poets “have ascribed to the gods all deeds which among men are matters of reproach and blame.” It makes sense—how is it that the divine, something that supposedly transcends worldly things, embodies all of the things that make man base? I think Xenophanes was on the right track here. He even continues to tear down these man-made gods by showing how the Olympians are only a reflection of men themselves; for instance, they were born, which means they had a beginning and thus there was a time in which they did not exist, and they had distinctly human characteristics and lead human-like lifestyles. If the gods that the Grecians were worshipping were merely reflections of themselves, then those same gods would be very different to other peoples to reflect their own life. If the gods are so fickle and mutable to the world around them, they don’t project a nature that transcends earthly things.

Thus far, Xenophanes has been doing all well and good in not going along with the popular views without thought, but he rejected them after pointing out the flaws. Then he looses me. He tore down the views of the gods of the poets, which he replaces with his own god, which lacks as much evidence as what he just denied. He says there is one greatest god, not like mortal in form or thought. The god is immutable and immovable, all seeing, hearing, and thinking, working all things through his mind. I’m not saying he’s wrong or right. He just lost me in the shift form needing evidence to ascribe to Homer and Hesiod’s depictions of the gods, to creating his own version of god without any evidence to support it.

Although on a side note, I think it’s interesting how man seems to intrinsically know there is something greater than himself. Xenophanes knew that the Olympian gods were no better in their exploits than man, and they didn’t adequately represent the higher things of this world. So instead, he grasped for whatever was in reach and fashioned his own idea of a god to try to fill the void.