Also known as the southern Italian school. Founded by the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras. It was formed at the end of 6th century BC. In its heyday, its activities spread throughout almost all Greek settlements in southern Italy, and its influence continued until the Renaissance. Most of the members are mathematicians, astronomers and physicists. This school mainly studies philosophy and aesthetics from the point of view of natural science, and is the earliest school in the history of western aesthetics to explore the essence of beauty.
They believe that number is the origin of all things, number exists independently before all things, and the principle of number is the principle of all things. The whole celestial body is a number, a sum. At the same time, it puts forward the viewpoint that "opposition is the starting point of existence" and summarizes the principle that opposites such as finite, infinite, one and many are all things. From this point of view, they brought the concepts of "number", "harmony" and "order" into aesthetic research, focusing on exploring the quantitative proportion relationship in the form of things, exploring the quantitative proportion that can produce beautiful effects, and drawing some empirical norms. If you think the most beautiful plane figure is round; The most beautiful line shape is a rectangle with a certain proportion of length and width (golden section). Put forward the famous view that beauty lies in harmony. It is believed that the harmony of music rhythm is composed of different tones in a certain proportion, and "music is the harmonious unity of opposing factors" There are two different kinds of music, one is celestial music, which is formed by the powerful melody generated by the air field aroused by the operation of stars in the universe; The other is human music, which is produced by musicians imitating nature and spreading eternal harmony in the sky to the world. It is believed that the beauty of human body comes from the proportional symmetry among all parts of the body, and it is pointed out that the success of artistic works also depends on the accurate proportional symmetry among all parts. Without the coordination and unification of various factors in works, there will be no harmonious beauty of works of art. They also studied people's psychological activities from the viewpoint of number and harmony, and put forward the principle of "simultaneous reaction", arguing that only when people's internal harmony and external harmony are coordinated can they love beauty and appreciate art, which involves people's aesthetic feelings in art appreciation.
The aesthetic view of this school is objective idealism, but it has dialectical factors, including the earliest neat and changeable bud of literary thought. His formalistic aesthetic thought had a far-reaching influence on Plato, Neo-Platonism and Renaissance artists. In the fifth century BC, the alliance was forced to dissolve, and some members still followed the precepts of Pythagoras. Others turned to scientific research and made some achievements in mathematics, astronomy, physics and medicine.