A distinct version of tripartition is also attested in a similar format by one of the best sources for Hellenistic Pythagoreanism, Alexander Polyhistor, in his Successions of the Philosophers, where he claims to have obtained
the information from a work known as the Pythagorean Notebooks (Pythagorika
Hypomnêmata), which also seem to date from the late 2nd-mid-1st Century BCE (D.L. 8.25,
8.30). The fragment of ps-Aresas/Aesara represents what is perhaps the most complete
surviving evidence for the psychological theory of the Hellenistic Pythagoreans. Indeed, ps-
Aresas/Aesara shows us a very original psychological theory, for he claims that three goods,
friendship, love, and kindness, sprout from all three parts of the soul.
intellect closely inspecting and tracking things; spirit conferring
impulse and might upon what is inspected; and desire, being akin to affection,
adapts to the intellect, exalting pleasure as its own and surrendering
circumspection to the circumspect part of the soul.
How does this happen?
According to ps-Aresas/Aesara, the three parts of the soul, when they have been
harmonized into eunomia, work quite effectively together. Each performs its own duties,
preserving the ‘justice’ so defined as ‘minding one’s own business’ in Plato’s Republic (433b-d).
The intellect performs preliminary inspections, and manages to persuade the other parts of the soul to act on its preliminary inspections; desire, persuaded to act, seeks to protect its own
interests by pursuing courage, which, properly persuaded by the intellect, acts to defend the
whole, and to attack the (external) enemy. How does the intellect accomplish this?
Interestingly, ps-Aresas/Aesara claims that it mixes together pleasure and pain and, by doing
so, effects the adjustment of the courageous part of the soul (called ‘tense and impetuous’),
where pain belongs, to the desirous part (called ‘light and dissolute’), where pleasure is
located. The consequence of this adjustment, which finally leads to total psychic
harmonization, is that the courageous and desirous parts of the soul obtain their own peculiar
types of reason, exemplified by their capacities for diverse types of ‘forethought’ (promatheia).
The intellect inspects and tracks objects it pursues; courage impels the soul towards things
being further inspected and endure what is to come; and desire discovers its own important
role in this process, which is to acquire pleasure and refer intellectual pleasures, which belong
not to itself, upwards to the intellect. Ps-Aresas/Aesara claims that humans are at their best
when they combine the objects of contemplation and enjoyment together in this psychic
system. This is no discourse of the intellect enslaving or controlling the lower parts of the soul
– the intellect’s primary role in ‘ruling’ the lower parts is to get the ball rolling in the process of
inquiry, rather than to supervise at all times each part of the soul’s activity, or to chastise the
other parts of the soul for being disobedient. There is no familiar moderation of emotions, nor
yet their extirpation, as one would find elsewhere in Hellenistic Philosophy: the Pythagoreans
of this period advocated a psychology of blending and harmonization of the parts, to achieve
maximal performance across the whole system.
https://philarchive.org/archive/HORPAS-3
Thus ps-Aresas/Aesara, the Lucanian Pythagorean, espouses a tripartite structure of
the soul, without any reference to bipartition that would eventually come to be understood as
the ‘truer’ version of the Platonic soul in Plutarch (de Virt. Mor. 3.441d-442a), in the late 1st
Century CE, and that can be found in some parts of the corpus of Pythagorean
pseudepigrapha.26 The notion that Pythagoras initiated the claim that the soul is tripartite is
advanced by Poseidonius, writing sometime around 100 BCE, citing some writings of
Pythagoras’ pupils that cannot be identified with confidence.
intellect that closely inspects persuades, desire loves, and the spirit is filled
with might:
the links between the notion of logos and the notion of
“harmony” in Heraclitus’ thought. Harmony (as in the harmony of op-
posites) is also seen as a key concept in Heraclitus’ thought, as it is in
Pythagorean thought. So both Pythagorean thought and Heraclitean
thought are constantly playing with the twin notions of ratio and har-
mony, and using these as their main explanatory concepts in natural phi-
losophy. The Pythagorean resonances in Heraclitus would, of course, be
Philosophy’s Numerical Turn: Why the
Pythagoreans’ Interest in Numbers is Truly
Awesome.
Catherine Rowett
Simmias uses the illustration to argue that a soul of that kind does not and cannot outlast
the body, because the lyre’s tuned condition cannot survive damage to the body
and strings of the lyre
Simmias tenders the idea that the soul may be a
harmony or attunement of this kind, such that when the body has well balanced
tension between opposites pulling in divergent ways, such as hot and cold and
dry and wet, the soul supervenes on that condition like the tuning of an instru-
ment.¹⁵ A harmony is something incorporeal, so to that extent Socrates is right to
associate it with the invisible incorporeal class of things. But that is only because
it is an emergent property, which supervenes upon something corporeal, and is
metaphysically dependent upon the temporary fine-tuning of the physical sub-
strate. So as Simmias observes, a soul of that kind will be as temporary as the con-
dition of the body, or the tensed bodily structure, which is its underpinning phys-
ical basis.
– he’d have to say that the harmonia itself must still exist somewhere, and
that the wooden parts and the strings must rot away first, before anything bad could happen
to that harmonia.
https://www.academia.edu/8297012/On_being_reminded_of_Heraclitus_by_the_motifs_in_Platos_Phaedo
but about a tension of opposing forces
in the bodily structure – its dynamic functioning under tension. This seems Her-
aclitean in feel and content
they do not understand how differing it agrees with itself: a harmonie that turns back, like
that of a bow and a lyre.
(Heraclitus DK 22 B 51 as quoted by Hippolytus Hear. IX.9
The hidden harmony is stronger than the evident one.
(Heraclitus B 54 as quoted by Hippolytus Ref. IX.9)
Simmias wants to say that the invisible incorpo-
real harmony or soul is not really stronger after all, because it cannot outlast or
survive the loss of harmony in the body. It is weaker and more quickly destroyed
than the body, contrary to what Socrates had claimed in his Affinity Argument.
Thus Simmias and Heraclitus both have the same image of the soul as an
invisible harmony supervening on its supporting instrument, but they draw
opposite conclusions: Heraclitus claims that the hidden harmony is stronger,
while Simmias claims that it is weaker.
in Empedocles the daimon is eventually returned to the divine unity in the Sphere after many
incarnations).
Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that all is one.
(DK 22 B 50
Heraclitus meant that this kind of exchange of things and of opposites was
indeed a kind of life after death, and does also apply to mortal souls – a connec-
tion exactly like that made by Socrates in the Cyclical Argument in the Phaedo.
These ‘opposites’ which come and go are now abstract properties
or tropes, considered as incorporeal and existing in themselves, and they are then
alternately admitted by the entities that are periodically hosting them.
But since the limit is the outermost one, it is complete
From all sides, like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere
Equal in every direction from the centre.
Parmenides B8.42–44.
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