Gorgias

The ancient tradition's tendency to depict Pythagoras as a major source of Plato's philosophy complicates the question of what influence early Pythagoreanism actually had on its development. With Pythagoras himself having written nothing and the works of Philolaus and Archytas surviving only in a few fragments and testimonia, Pythagoreanism as Plato would have known it remains obscure. Fortunately, Aristotle's treatment of the Pythagoreans has facilitated its reconstruction. Although he also remarks on the relation between the Pythagorean and Platonic principles, this chapter will concentrate on the recognizable uses of Pythagorean material in Plato's own writings. Of course, the fact that Plato's uses of the Presocratics tend to be more or less transformative, coupled with the poor state of our evidence for early Pythagoreanism, makes it difficult to determine in some instances how much of what is implicit in his uses may properly be regarded as Pythagorean. Still, one may identify Plato's more important uses of Pythagorean ideas, provided one is more careful than the ancient tradition (and some modern historians) about where one detects them. Not every mention of mathematics, for example, signals a debt to the Pythagoreans, for many mathematicians of Plato's day were not Pythagoreans. Likewise, although the doctrine of metempsychosis was central to early Pythagoreanism, Plato's association of it with the mystery cults and their initiatory rituals in both the Meno and later the Laws (Meno 81a–b, Leg. 9.870d–e) likely indicates that he did not regard it as originating with Pythagoras. Similar caution should be extended to the detection of Pythagorean elements in the eschatological myths of the Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus, for their background is broader and Plato develops his material in a creative manner that makes it difficult to identify definitively any material as a source.

The Pythagoreans’ influence on Plato figures most deeply in the way he understood them as advocating a vision of value, goodness and well-being that he found amenable and highly adaptable to his own purposes as he began to range beyond his Socratic inheritance. The Socrates of the Gorgias and Republic differs from the Socrates of earlier dialogues in having a much more definite conception of what is properly good or beneficial for humans as such and thus of what constitutes human well-being.