Kalofotis, Ioannis; (2025) Harmony as an efficient cause in Philolaus. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text HARMONY AS AN EFFICIENT CAUSE IN PHILOLAUS.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 December 2025. Download (2MB)

Abstract

The Presocratic philosopher Philolaus of Croton (c.470–c.385 BC) was credited with writing the first published book on Pythagorean doctrines. It is extant in few fragments, but it is a vital source for our knowledge of early Pythagoreanism. Like earlier Presocratics, Philolaus offered a comprehensive cosmology. According to the traditional ontological account, Philolaus posited an antithetical pair of pre−existing principles: ‘limiters’ and ‘unlimiteds’. Unified by ‘supervening’ harmony, these two principles form the physical world as an orderly ‘cosmos’. In this study, I submit that the traditional interpretation overlooks the status of harmony as a third principle, which is relational, whose supervening function is better interpreted as ‘fulfilling’, and which acts as a formal and an efficient cause. The latter would fill the gap in Philolaus’ possible view of causation, compared to other Presocratics who were known to have been engaged with the problems of agency and change. Using Aristotle’s ideas of causation as a conceptual framework, especially what modern scholarship has identified to be causation as the transmission of form, I propose that harmony functions as a formal cause and an efficient cause. From this perspective, my research reaches the conclusion that harmony can be seen as a formal cause for defining the particular identity and features of physical beings. Most of all, it can be thought of as an efficient cause for causing the union of the antithetical elements out of which the cosmos arises.

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