SOURCE: Jonathan Barnes, "Pythagoras and the Soul," in The Presocratic Philosophers, Vol. 1, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, pp. 100-20.

In the following essay, Barnes analyzes Pythagorean arguments for the immortality and transmigration of the soul.

(a) Gi; (a) ipse Dixit =~ Sipse Dixit

The ancient historians of philosophy distinguished between the Ionian and the Italian tradition in Presocratic thought. … Although the Italian 'school' was founded by émigrés from Ionia, it quickly took on a character of its own: if the Ionians followed up Thaïes' cosmological speculations, the Italians, I judge, had more sympathy for his inquiry into psychology and the nature of man. But that estimate of the scope of early Italian thought is controversial; and before I look more closely at the Italian doctrines, I must indulge in a brief historical excursus.

The prince of the Italian school was Pythagoras, who flourished in the last quarter of the...