Verify Citation - 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
From The Observatory
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Yet at the same time, “Astronomy, music, mathematics, and all the branches of philosophy were not ends in themselves, …but simply preparations for leading the life of virtue and piety which allowed the human spirit to leap into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Philo thus “imagined the Lord as a Socratic teacher.” In his essay “On the Change of Names”[1] (72–73) Philo asked:
“For what purpose do you investigate the choral dances and revolutions of the stars? Why have you leapt from earth up to the region of the ether? Is your purpose merely to busy yourself idly with what is there? And what great advantage may be gained from all that idle labor? How does it serve to purge pleasure, to overthrow lust, to suppress grief and fear? What surgery has it for passions which rock and confound the soul? For just as trees are useless if they bear no fruit, so also is the study of nature useless if it does not lead to the acquisition of virtue.”[2]
Can someone with access to the original text check the number in parentheses (72–73)? We think it’s 72–73 based on this source link, but originally it was written as 723.
Verify, build on, or correct the text as written. Join the research!
- ↑ Philo of Alexandria, “On the Change of Names,” in Philo: In Ten Volumes (And Two Supplementary Volumes), F.H. Colson (tr.), Vol. 5 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1929), p. 179, 72–73.
- ↑ James L. Miller, Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (Toronto: 1986), p. 74.
