Numenius and Pythagoras: Why does Numenius view Pythagoreanism as the cornerstone of Platonism ?
Numénius et Pythagore Pourquoi Numénius fait-il du pythagorisme le fondement du platonisme ?
Résumé
Numenius and Pythagoras. Numenius : a Pythagoreanising Platonist or a Platonizing Pythagorist ?
Scholars always hesitate about the school Numenius belonged to: is this philosopher of the 2nd century A. D. who places Pythagoras at the origin of Plato’s thought and is eager to bring him back to his true Pythagoreanism, not himself a Pythagorist? He, however, who always returns to Plato and who refers only to his writings , even when he wants to explain the Pythagoreanism of Plato’oral teaching, is he not rather a (medio-)Platonist ? The paper deals with this question differently: the detailed examination of Pythagoras’ sacralisation in Numenius’ fragments reveals its polemical aspect. To reach a Platonism that is really one and authentic, Numenius places Pythagoras at its origin, portrays Plato and Socrates before Plato as his pupils, and excludes from this line of thought all that is foreign to his own interpretation of Plato. In this way, he is in conflict with those who on the contrary have recourse to inclusion to reconstruct the unity of the Academy and thus accept other trends in it: Antiochus, Plutarch and every other mind similar to the one of the author of the Anonymous Commentary of the Theaetetus. If, from the point of view of the history of philosophy, Numenius is indisputably a Platonist, in his own point of view, his Christian readers, who called him without hesitating “a Pythagorist”, would probably have been right. They would at least have understood and recognized him as he wished to be.
L’appartenance de Numénius à une école laisse dans l’hésitation les historiens de la philosophie. Tantôt il est considéré comme pythagoricien, tantôt comme platonicien. Michael Frede semble trancher le débat en le qualifiant de « platonicien pythagorisant ». L’article aborde la question en examinant la manière dont Numénius sacralise Pythagore. Il découvre la dimension polémique de sa démarche. Pour parvenir à un platonisme un et authentique, Numénius situe Pythagore à son origine, fait de Socrate et Platon ses disciples, et exclut de cette lignée tout ce qui s’éloigne de sa lecture de Platon. Ainsi s’oppose-t-il à ceux qui procèdent par inclusion pour reconstruire l’unité de l’Académie. Si, d’un point de vue historiographique, il est sans conteste platonicien, il s’estime sans doute lui-même pythagoricien.
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