Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.24141/1/3/1/2
Southern Italian Doctrine of the Soul
Željko Kaluđerović
orcid.org/0000-0002-6572-4160
; Department of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, Serbia
Abstract
The paper investigates directly and indirectly preserved views of Pythagoras and Pythagoreans who, according to the author, represent the antecedents of deviations from the mainstream Western philosophy and anticipate the majority of later modalities of non anthropocentric approaches. Fragments of italic thinkers, in other words can serve almost as guidelines for today highly actual (bio)ethical requirements for a new and different resolution of the relation between humans and so called non-human living beings. The Pythagorean idea that all forms of life are kindred brought into connection not only humans with animals and plants, but also indicated that human soul, however only after purification, can achieve melding with eternal and divine soul, to which it belongs by its own nature. The link and analogy that may be established between a man and universe is referred to in Aristotle’s statement that, according to Pythagoreans it is possible for any soul to enter any body. This kinship of all varieties of life, eventually, was a necessary prerequisite for the Pythagorean doctrine on immortality and the transmigration of souls. Xenophanes reports about palingenesia by a well known statement that once when Pythagoras saw some people beating a dog and advised them to stop, since in the yelping of the dog he recognized the soul of his friend. From Colophonian fragment (DK21B7) it is evident why kinship of all beings which is associated with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls is at the basis of the Pythagorean ban on the eating of animal flesh. Pythagoras’ recognition of his friend’s soul embodied in a dog illustrates the transfer of personal identity on the psyche, which means that a
personality somehow survives in the migrations of the soul and that there is a continuity of identity. The conclusion that can be derived, at least implicitly, is that ensouled beings, therefore animals, but also certain plants, in a sense, are conscious beings.
Keywords
Pythagoras and Pythagoreans; non-anthropocentrism; kinship; life; soul; doctrine; immortality; palingenesia
Hrčak ID:
183288
URI
Publication date:
26.6.2017.
Visits: 2.067 *