Douglas Hedley: From the Cave of Pythagoras

Ralston College presents a lecture by University of Cambridge Professor Douglas Hedley on the influential and mysterious pre-Socratic philosopher Pythagoras.

Given in the very cave in Samos in which Pythagoras taught, the brief lecture touches on the philosopher’s influence on the Western tradition and the importance of the cave as an imaginative motif. Professor Hedley explores this recurring symbol as a place of birth and rebirth, of contemplation and illumination, and of tremendous inspiration to later thinkers such as Plato and the early Christian scholars.

The lecture took place during the first term of Ralston College's inaugural MA in the Humanities in autumn of 2022.

Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode

Eusebius
Werner Jaeger
Ralph Cudworth
Pythagoras
The Lyceum
Lloyd P. Gerson
St Ambrose
Johannes Reuchlin
St Augustine
Metempsychosis
Orphism
Empedocles
Plato’s Cave
Socrates
Mithraism
Cave of the Apocalypse in Patmos
Parmenides
Aristotle
Pindar
Immanuel Kant
Gottlob Frege

Links of Possible Interest

Douglas Hedley’s Cambridge Profile
https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/douglas-hedley

Living Forms of the Imagination
https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0567032957/breviaryinfo-21

Dr Stephen Blackwood
https://www.stephenjblackwood.com

Ralston College Short Courses
https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-short-courses

Ralston College Humanities MA
https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-ma

Timeline

0:00 – Introduction
3:26 – Professor Douglas Hedley’s Lecture
7:25 – Introduction to Pythagoras
9:42 – The importance of the cave as a symbol
12:29 – Cave in Christianity and the ancient world
17:13 – Q & A: Plato’s and Pythagoras’ appeal to numbers as example of non-material realities
20:50 – Influence of Pythagoras on Plato
24:20 – The realness of number and mathematics