About this Event
| Free event | |
My presentation summarizes the arguments about Pythagoras’ harmony of the spheres’ theory and its influence on Plato and Platonic authors, from pagan thinkers to the early Christian Fathers, including Clement of Alexandria in the East and Augustine in the West.
While keen on the mathematical–musical speculation about the origins of the world, Plato is decidedly focused on its moral implications. For Plato, this speculation is useful to the point that it illustrates the analogy between the human soul, the state, and the universe.
Thus, in the Republic and more explicitly in the Laws, Plato discusses musical education as a way of disseminating philosophical insight to the citizenry and training them in the most important civic virtue of sōphrosynē (moderation). Only through sōphrosynē can the citizens of the ideal state attune to the divine principle that ordered the cosmos, thus fulfilling their goal of becoming godlike.
I then explore the reception of these ideas in Neoplatonic writers, like Plotinus, and their adaptation in Christianity. Here, the role of Clement of Alexandria in propagating the identification of the Pythagorean One and the Platonic Good with God is stressed.
Finally, I turn my attention to the West where Ambrose introduces Augustine to hymn singing influenced by Neoplatonic views about the anagogic power of music. While Augustine was frustrated by his experience of Neoplatonic spiritualism, his writings on music reveal a little discussed but firm appreciation of the power of music in distinctly Platonic terms.
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The image is a detail from "Divine Monochord" (Monochordum Mundanum) an illustration in Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi, published in1617.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Kathleen Syme Library and Community Centre, 251 Faraday Street, Carlton, Australia
AUD 0.00
