Pythagoras versus Plato: A Love of God Story
How the nature of deity changed everything
In the free discussion we’ve been having over the past weeks, I’ve tried to unearth the roots of the profound malaise haunting our society: the feeling of meaninglessness, of an absurd existence, and the derived psychological consequences of our current zeitgeist (depression, anxiety, nihilism).
In order to understand the philosophical underpinnings of our world view, it’s necessary to go back to a time when the Gods still roamed the earth: pre-Christian Greece. This will be helpful on two accounts: (1) it’ll show how the idea of time changed and set the stage for the explosion of rationality and science, and (2) it’ll present two opposing narratives about the nature of reality and ultimately, God.
Is God immanent to this world? (Pythagoras)
Enter Pythagoras: mathematician extraordinaire, mystical philosopher and budding alchemist avant la lettre. The more I plunge into his work, the more I fume over how wrong our basic school teaching is. Pythagoras’ triangle equation is taught to everyone, yet it’s symbolism and significance is rarely understood. These were Socratic times, when things weren’t as clear-cut as today and where the relationship with God was all that mattered. Pythagoras didn’t “study” the triangle or discover complicated equations, he was revealing God in the world. The Pythagoreans understood mathematics as a means to elevation, as a way of accessing the Eternal. The square root of the triangle’s hypotenuse, which is where we stop, was the starting point for a new psycho-technology capable of transforming the human self.
Pythagoras believed in an immanent God, i.e., a God who is present in this world, who we can come into contact with through meditation and geometrical study. He was a kooky dude: If Pythagoras were alive today, we’d have thrown him in a psychiatric hospital a long time ago. His belief in metempsychosis is well documented; he thought the mind could wander, travel and inhabit other bodies and species. Once, while walking round the polis, Pythagoras suddenly broke down, crying. When a student asked him what was wrong, he said one of his friends, recently deceased, was now trapped in the body of a dog he saw walking by. He was convinced he’d felt his friend’s presence when the dog barked!
Pythagoras’ whole purpose was accessing this immanent God. Numbers to him were fine and dandy; his real passion was doing astral voyages, leaving his body and touching the eternal, as he said on many occasions. If Pythagoras were alive today, we’d most likely find him tripping on shrooms in the middle of an ecstatic dance at Burning Man, than at M.I.T.’s mathematics department.
God is transcendent, baby (Plato)
Plato, on the other hand, has a radically different approach. He thinks God exists in a different plane of existence, outside the cave where all we see is shadows. God isn’t directly in the world, as Pythagoras would have it, he’s in the realm of ideas and perfect forms (eidos) of which we only have mediocre copies. Through this dichotomy of illusion/bad copy versus Truth and Beauty in the Eidos ; Plato plants the seeds of the gnostic teachings that will appear centuries later with Hermes Trismegistus.
However, Plato is more exclusionary, thinking realization of this state of affairs is only accessible to some people. The large majority will succumb to the Demiurge, thinking he is the real God; only the enlightened few get to see outside the cave and understand Reality. For Plato, there’s no point in going around convincing people who don’t want to be convinced about how corrupt “reality” is in this world.
A paradigmatic change
You can easily see how these views differ: a God-in-the-world accessible to everyone and proven through mathematics; versus an inaccessible God to the masses, only revealed to a select few who cannot communicate the Truth. Now, my point here isn’t to make a mystical argument, and I think one of the great mistakes of our time is the advancement of block headed literal readings of theology that have spurred snarky neo-atheism. The point isn’t whether you believe in God or not: the point is to show you how these ways of looking at the world inform our views today.
With these two competing theories mucking about, most religious organizations chose a Platonic approach to the deity, since this kept control in the priest/Imam/Rabbi ‘s hands. It seems like the idea of having everyone running about in ecstasy, doing astral voyages and meditating on triangles isn’t very productive when you’re trying to found a Church and “reveal” reality to your followers.
This choice marks the beginning of a turn away from nature and the cosmos, towards a more contemplative and inner worldview. Immanence is abandoned: the idea that we can be in contact with the deity in this world starts to fade. God stops “talking” directly to us: this sets the stage for the arrival of his Son, who will be the intermediary with the transcendent deity.
By moving towards a more individual notion of transcendence, Man’s worldview shifted: from an integrated, cosmic approach to reality, we began thinking in terms of our individual salvation.
These ideas also form the basis for the shift in our conception of time. We’ll talk about that next time, I hope!
P.S.: Not really sure what’s the point, but I’ll be activating the Substack chat (once the Android app is available) in case you have things you’d like to add. I’m far from being an expert on the subject, so don’t hesitate to write your thoughts and/or references you may have.