I will deal with a much-discussed passage of Aristophanes’ Birds, in which Socrates is depicted as a psuchagogos, a conjurer of souls. This is the only passage in Socratic literature in which such an activity is attributed to Socrates. In the Clouds, which was staged nine years prior to Birds, Aristophanes defines Socrates’ school as the ‘thinkery of wise souls’, and the endeavors of his pupils as a ‘taking care’ of their own souls. In the Clouds, Socrates is portrayed training (...) his pupils in natural philosophy, eristic arguments and Orphic-Pythagorean rituals: but what Socrates specifically does with the souls of his pupils is not clear at all. For this, we have to look to Birds, and in particular to verses 1553-1564, a passage I examine in detail. I first discuss the passage itself and how it relates to the comedy as a whole, I then provide a reading of parallel passages from the Clouds and Pythagorean literature, before finally returning to the verses in the Birds to draw some conclusions. (shrink)

In both ancient tradition and modern research Pythagoreanism has been understood as a religious sect or as a philosophical and scientific community. Numerous attempts have been made to reconcile these pictures as well as to analyze them separately. The most recent scholarship compartmentalizes different facets of Pythagorean knowledge, but this offers no context for exploring their origins, development, and interdependence. This collection aims to reverse this trend, addressing connections between the different fields of Pythagorean knowledge, such as eschatology, metempsychosis, metaphysics, (...) epistemology, arithmology and numerology, music, dietetics and medicine as well as politics. In particular, the contributions discuss how the Pythagorean way of life related to more doctrinal aspects of knowledge, such as Pythagorean religion and science. The volume explores the effects of this interdependence between different kinds of knowledge both within the Pythagorean corpus and in its later reception. Chapters cover historical periods from the Archaic Period (6th century BC) to Neoplatonism, Early Christianity, the European and Arabic Middle Ages, and the Renaissance through to the Early Modern Period (17th century AD). (shrink)

Der Bezug zwischen ›Erscheinung‹, ›Schein‹, und ›Wa h rheit‹ spielt in Platons Politeia eine wichtige Rolle. An mehre-ren Stellen im II., VI. und X. Buch wird die ›Wahrheit‹ im Gegensatz zu einer›Unwahrheit‹ definiert, die in einem irre-führenden ›Erscheinen‹ von Gegen-ständen be-steht. Die aus dem Erscheinen hervor-gehende Sichtbarkeit der Gegenstände ist zugleich trügerisch und erkennt-nisstiftend: Einerseits trägt nämlich das Erscheinen dazu bei, die Wahrheit zu verbergen, andererseits kann nur durch dieses verbergende Erscheinen die Wahrheit hervortreten. Diese Ambiva-lenz wird im vorliegenden Aufsatz (...) in Bezug auf das irrtümliche Erscheinen des Gottes, die Mimesis und die Manifestation der alêtheia näher untersucht. (shrink)

CORNELLI, G. (2013). In Search of Pythagoreanism. Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category, “Studia Praesocratica” 4, de Gruyter, Berlin.

Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue provides the most complete study of the immediate literary reaction to Socrates, by his contemporaries and the first-generation Socratics, and of the writings from Aristotle to Proclus addressing Socrates and the literary work he inspired.