Search results for "Pythagoreanism"
showing 5 items of 5 documents
Music and Medicine
2020
The relationship between music and medicine involves the notions of affinity between the human body and musical structures, relief, catharsis and therapy. The Homeric poems attest to the use of healing songs (paeans) and spells (epaoidai). The early Pythagoreans used musical catharsis for both the soul and the body. The doctrine of musical ēthos (whose main source is Plato) presupposes a relationship between music and character based on mimēsis, also establishing a link between therapy and ēthos. According to Aristotle, melodies performed in the rites are able to arou-se the emotions and purify from their excesses (the same dynamics appear in Theophrastus). The musical notions first detecta…
Correcting ēthos and Purifying the Body. Musical Therapy in Iamblichus’ De vita pythagorica
2015
The tradition relating to the Pythagoreans and music therapy is most widely attested in two Neoplatonic works, Porphyry’s The Life of Pythagoras, and Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Way of Life. Although the chronological distance from the early Pythagoreans makes their accounts controversial, they offer interesting evidence on the beneficial effects of music. Iamblichus, whose work will be focused on in this paper, describes the effects of music on health through the notion of catharsis, which he often links with musical ēthos. The latter is not in fact attested before Plato, but Iamblichus, presenting Pythagoras in Platonic terms, emphasizes the importance he gives to the improvement of th…
La musicoterapia nella Grecia antica
2007
Music in ancient Greece was believed to heal both the soul and the body, and especially to soothe wrath and low spirits. According to the ethos theory, music has a prominent role in the education of the young people. With both its medical and magic connotations, the notion of musical catharsis is involved in the performance of music and dance in the Dionysiac rites. The medical thought on music therapy is mainly linked with theories concerning the pulse, where musicology and medicine share a common ground.
Women and Pythagorean Philosophy. Review of D.M. Dutsch, Pythagorean Women Philosophers. Between Belief and Suspicion. Oxford: Oxford University Pres…
2021
In the last few decades, Pythagorean women and their intellectual status have aroused the interest of several scholars (C. Montepaone, S. Pomeroy and others). Against this background, the present book is a most welcome instrument for scholars interested in Pythagoreanism and in women in antiquity, for it deals with Pythagorean women philosophers between ‘critique and compliance’, that is, as the subtitle says, with both belief and suspicion, the two foundations of hermeneutics highlighted by P. Ricœur. Such a critical positioning induces D. to analyse anecdotes and pseudepigrapha in search for a possible identity of Pythagorean women philosophers at the margins of official discourses and te…
Commune Ius Animantium (Clem. 1.18.2): Seneca's Naturalism and the Problem of Animal Rights
2013
The present paper focuses on an intriguing passage of Seneca's treatise 'On Clemency' (De Clementia) dealing with the topic of human and animal rights (1.18.1-2). This is the only passage in which the Latin philosopher employs the juridically and philosophically significant expression 'commune ius animantium', thus referring to a form of nature-based 'animal right'. In Seneca's words, there would be a common right of living beings forbidding to perpetrate certain acts of violence. On the whole, however, the passage seems to aim at maintaining the inviolability of human rights, paying special attention to the pitiful condition of slaves. Given the presence of such a man-centered context, sch…