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What we value, truth or knowledge?

Last time I ended class with this thought: Xenophanes changed the Homeric views on god. It helps us question if religions define god for what it truly is. With the progression of their theories, I see the Milesians and Xenophanes and think that maybe the mind needs to be constantly evolving to get closer to the truth.

Reading Pythagoras made me think about the relationship between truth and knowledge.
Curd shows us a fragment were Plato makes a parallel between Homer and Pythagoras. They look alike in the fact that they both had people that followed them. The major distinction is Pythagoras striving for knowledge, his followers the mathematikoi and akousmatikoi both looking to gain knowledge in what they each venerated, while Homer convinced his followers by  his stories that reflected some of the truth about their society.  

Curd mentions this fragment “Much learning does not teach insight. Otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras and moreover Xenphanes and Hecataeus.” Does that mean that truth and knowledge cannot have a relationship? To what extent can knowledge skew you from the path of the truth? Pythagoras was hugely known for constructing his wisdom, his theory on numbers setting the order for existence. There is some truth about this knowledge on numbers but did this bring him closer to the truth? Maybe not as much because he was ridiculed for his theory on transmigration of souls. This is a question that I still do not know how to answer, but I thought that it was an important observation to make.

In addition to all that was said, the path that early philosophers took to develop the concept of morality is getting more evident. As it is known the akousmatikoi is the branch of Pythagoreans who are not solely philosophical but pursue the proper way to live. This is showing that there is starting to be a sense of what is right or wrong, no matter if the way in which the akousmatikoi lived was the right way.

Comments

  1. Anne-Marie SchultzJanuary 24, 2017 at 6:14 AM

    That is a good question about the relationship between truth and knowledge and insight. I would say the relationship is less necessary than we think.

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  2. UnknownJanuary 25, 2017 at 9:24 PM

    I think that what the fragment is saying is that despite learning many different things, they were far from being able to see the world in a coherent and accurate way, organizing their disparate bits of knowledge appropriately.
    Traditionally knowledge is thought to include access to truth. But maybe we can distinguish a kind of truth that involves the Person, and not just the person's beliefs, making contact with reality...

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