Folia Theologica 19. (2008)
Perendy László: Judging Philosophers - Theophilus of Antioch on Hellenic inconsistency
JUDGING PHILOSOPHERS 189 As we can see, the references to pre-Platonic philosophers are surprisingly numerous. The first philosopher criticized by Theophilus is Pythagoras (IluGayôpaç) of Samos, who was born c. 570 BC. He emigrated to Croton, which is in southern Italy. I quote Simon Blackburn to sum up his teaching. It is not without interest to compare what are the essential parts of the philosophy of Pythagoras for Theophilus and the author of a modem handbook. In Italy "he founded a religious society (...). Membership of the society entailed self-discipline, silence, and the observance of various taboos, especially against eating flesh and beans. Pythagoras taught the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the cycle of reincarnation, and was supposed able to remember former existences. The soul, which has its own divinity and may have existed as an animal or plant, can, however, gain release by a religious dedication to study, after which it may rejoin the universal world-soul. (...) This tremendous success inspired the view that the whole of the cosmos should be explicable in terms of harmonia or number. The view represents a magnificent break from the Milesian attempt to ground physics on a conception of a prime matter, or undifferentiated basis shared by all things, and to concentrate instead on form, meaning that physical natures receive an intelligible grounding in different geometric structures. (...) Cosmologically Pythagoras explained the origin of the universe in mathematical terms, as the imposition of limit on the limitless by a kind of injection of a unit. (...) He died between 500 and 490 BC."6 As we have just seen, Theophilus thinks that Pythagoras went to the shrines and pillars of Heracles in vain. His travels and other efforts to acquire more knowledge were useless. Empedocles (’EjJ.7l£5oKÀ,rjç) of Acragas (Agrigentum in Sicily) was born c. 493. He "attained a remarkable personal and religious importance, being a poet, orator, scientist, statesman, miracle worker, and in his own eyes a god. (...) In his principal philosophical poem, On Nature, he replaces the Parmenidean One with a universe whose changes were the recombination of four basic and permanent elements, air, earth, fire, and water, mixing and separating under the influence of two forces, attraction (Love) and repulsion (Strife). The universe moves through cycles according to whichever one of these is predominant. He 6 S. Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford-New York, 1996, 311-312.
