Episode 335 - Epicurean Analysis Of Stoic Claims About Notions And Memory
Listen to “Episode 335 - Epicurean Analysis Of Stoic Claims About Notions And Memory” on Spreaker.
Welcome to Episode 335 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote “On The Nature of Things,” the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
This week we start are continuing our series reviewing Cicero’s “Academic Questions” from an Epicurean perspective, which gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato’s Academy and helps us understand Epicurus’ position on the same issues. This week will continue in Book Two, where we will take up Section 8
Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We’ll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we’ll also refer to the Rackham translation here: Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 335 completes Section 7 of Academic Questions Book 2 and introduces Section 8, tracking Lucullus’s Stoic argument from sense perception through to reason.
The main focus of the first half is Lucullus’s claim about notions (ennoia) and memory. Lucullus argues that things “perceived by the senses after a fashion” — such as white, sweet, tuneful — already involve the mind categorizing and labeling raw sensory input. Once the mind has formed these notions, they can be built into syllogistic arguments (“if he is a man, he is a mortal animal partaking of reason”). His most striking claim is that memory cannot be of what is false: if an impression has passed the kataleptic test and can be held in the mind, it must be true; if it cannot be held, it slips by and leaves no memory. Cassius and Joshua work through whether Lucullus’s “notions” correspond to what Epicurus calls preconceptions (prolepseis) or to fully formed concepts — concluding that the syllogistic examples (man = mortal animal) are clearly concepts, which Epicurus does not claim are invariably true.
Joshua’s digression on geometry explores Lucullus’s example of the geometer who perceives objects with no physical existence — lines with no width, points with no mass. Epicurus rejected this kind of abstraction as overreaching, though Cassius notes that Epicurus likely accepted geometry as useful within its proper domain. Joshua recounts the story of Aristippus, founder of the Cyrenaic school, who was shipwrecked and upon seeing geometrical figures drawn in the sand declared “We are among civilized people” — illustrating that geometry carried special cultural prestige in antiquity that Epicurus consciously rejected.
Section 8 is then read: Lucullus argues that the virtues themselves — wisdom, equity, good faith — presuppose reliable knowledge. A man who endures torture rather than betray his duty must have grasped something that cannot be false; wisdom cannot call itself wisdom if it is ignorant of its own character; action requires the concept of hormē (impulse), which must have a trustworthy object to aim at. Reason, Lucullus says, “leads one from facts which are perceived to that which was not perceived.” Cassius finds most of Section 8 agreeable in its general direction — both Epicurus and Lucullus oppose radical skepticism and defend the possibility of knowledge — but flags suspicion about the absolutist treatment of virtues and the equation of wisdom with a “fact that cannot be false,” which conflicts with the Epicurean view that virtues are always evaluated against sensations, anticipations, and feelings rather than treated as self-standing truths. The episode closes with a preview of upcoming discussion: Philodemus’s On Signs as the Epicurean positive theory of knowledge, and the Zeno-to-Arcesilaus dynamic in which the Academic Skeptics will attack the kataleptic impression head-on.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 335 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote “On The Nature of Things,” the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. We’re continuing through Book Two of Cicero’s “Academic Questions” so that we can get a better understanding of the debate that was going on in the ancient world about skepticism versus the possibility of knowledge. “Academic Questions” of course is Cicero — who is an Academic Skeptic — arguing mainly against the Stoic position represented here by Lucullus, who in the sections we’re talking about right now is discussing the Stoic theory of knowledge and where it comes from, its major positions, and the conclusions that it reaches about why it’s important to have a working theory of knowledge.
This is of course deep material with many implications, but even as we go through it in a relatively quick manner, I think we’re picking up some very important information about how to distinguish the Stoic theory of knowledge from the Epicurean theory of knowledge. And the point we’ve been focusing on for the last several episodes is that the Stoics held that certain impressions are so clear — or involve what is called a kataleptic grasp — that they take the position that some impressions are true while others are false, with the issue being how you distinguish between the true and the false. That of course is different from the Academic Skeptics, who took the position that no impressions are ever true, and it is different from the position of Epicurus, who took the position that all sensations are true in a particular sense. Even stating the positions as we always do in a very general way, you have to make clear that Epicurus’s view of true sensations does not mean that they are reporting opinions and are giving you a comprehensive understanding of the issue.
Epicurus is simply saying that the sensations are reported honestly without opinions of their own, that they’re not deceptive and that you can rely on them for what they are, but that what they are is not an opinion. The Stoics are taking the position that some are true and some are false, so they have two categories of sensations. The Academics and the Epicureans only have one category — it’s just that the Academics say all of them are false and the Epicureans say all of them are true. Now we’ve been in Section Seven of Book Two for quite a length of time over the last several weeks. We will be completing that this week and moving into Section Eight, but again in general our goal is to understand the respective positions so that we can prepare ourselves to further explore the Epicurean position as presented by Philodemus in his On Signs, which is the longest surviving explanation of the Epicurean theory of knowledge that we have left to us. Okay, with that, Joshua is now going to give his own summary of where we are, and when he’s ready to reread for us the last part of Section Seven we’ll go through that and then move on to Section Eight. So Joshua, whenever you’re ready.
Joshua:
Before we go into the final paragraph in Seven, I think it’s going to be important to go back a sentence or two and figure out very precisely where we are here. We had talked about how according to the Stoic view of knowledge, some sense perceptions are true or reliable and some sense perceptions are false or unreliable, and we talked about how the distinguishing factor seems to be this kataleptic grasp that allows you with some perceptions to get a good grip on them while other ones are more fleeting perhaps, and we can continue to talk about that as we go forward. Then he builds an interesting — maybe not an argument exactly — but he’s building up to something that is beyond mere sensation, because he said in the third paragraph in Section Seven: “such as those things are which we say are perceived by the senses, such also are those things which are said to be perceived not by the senses themselves but by the senses after a fashion.”
And the things that he’s talking about that fall under this category of things perceived by the senses after a fashion are things like white and sweet and tuneful and fragrant and rough. And he says what distinguishes these from sense perception is that these are ideas already comprehended by the mind, not by the senses. Then what we do in the process of getting from sensation to reason is we’ve got these ideas already comprehended by the mind — that such and such a thing is white, for example. The moment you apply the word “white” to it, that is your mind engaging and acting on the sensory input. So you have left the realm of sensation and you’ve moved into the application of mental ability of some kind — maybe not logic, maybe not reason, but by the very fact that you’ve labeled the thing, the fact that the label exists is proof or demonstration that the mind has been involved in this in more than just a passive and receptive way, taking in information.
It is acting on this information and categorizing this information. So once you’ve got these ideas comprehended by the mind and not by the senses, then you can start to build them up into arguments — what Lucullus calls “the full comprehension of things.” So one of these ideas might be that so-and-so is a man, and then you build the argument: well, if he is a man, he is a mortal animal partaking of reason. And Lucullus says it’s from this class of arguments that the notions of things are impressed upon us, without which nothing can be understood nor inquired into nor discussed. And it is these notions that we’re going to be talking about as we go forward in the text today. “Notion” is the word that is being used by Yonge as a translation of the Greek word ennoia, and if I go to a dictionary for the ancient Greek word ennoia, we get definitions like: the act of thinking, or thought, or consideration; a thought, notion, or conception; a thought, intent, or design; in lexicography, the sense of a word; and in rhetoric, a thought put into words — that is to say, a sentence.
So ennoia deals with thought, deals with how you conceive of things, and this is what he’s talking about today. We have moved on from sensation and into the world of thought as we go into today’s text. So in the second-to-last paragraph he says: “Then the rest of the series follows connecting the more important links, such as these which embrace as it were the full comprehension of things: if he is a man, he is a mortal animal partaking of reason. From which class of arguments the notions or ennoia of things are impressed on us without which nothing can be understood nor inquired into nor discussed. But if those notions were false — if I say they were false, or impressions or perceptions of such a kind as not to be able to be distinguished from false ones — then I should like to know how we were to use them and how we were to see what was consistent with each thing and what was inconsistent with it.”
That is from the Yonge translation. Let me read the Rackham edition. The Rackham edition says: “Next follows the rest of the series, linking on a chain of larger precepts. For instance, the following, which embrace as it were a fully completed grasp of the objects” — that word “grasp” has been important all throughout this conversation, because we’re talking about the kataleptic grasp of Stoic sense perception, the thing that allows them to determine that some sensations are true — “if it is a human being, it is a rational mortal animal; from this class of precept are imprinted upon us our notions of things without which all understanding and all investigation and discussion are impossible. But if false notions existed, if there were these false notions or notions imprinted on the mind by appearances of a kind that could not be distinguished from false ones, how could we act on them? How moreover could we see what is consistent with any given fact and what inconsistent?”
So the key takeaway here is what he’s trying to convey — that these notions are true. The senses can be true or false, but the notions are always true. Cassius, do you think I have that right?
Cassius:
Joshua, as we read this paragraph of Section Seven here, I think this gets back to the complexity that has to be separated in the word “notion,” because I’m not sure if what Lucullus is referring to here is what Epicurus would call a preconception or prolepseis, or whether he is referring here to a fully formed concept. Because if he’s talking about a mortal animal partaking of reason, I would classify that as a concept. Epicurus agrees that a concept such as that exists, but I don’t think Epicurus would say that “mortal animal partaking of reason” is a prolepseis or a pre-concept. I think we all are going to agree that concepts and conclusions can be right or wrong, but that a concept is not the same thing — at least in Epicurean terms — as a pre-concept or a pre-notion or a prolepseis. And I think we’re in agreement that pre-concepts are always true in the sense of always being honestly reported, but that a pre-concept is neither true nor false in the sense of an opinion. As we’re reading this paragraph and we’re seeing the word “notion,” is Lucullus talking about what Epicurus would say is a pre-concept, or is he talking about what Epicurus would probably say is a concept?
Joshua:
I think that in the beginning of this paragraph we get something that is maybe closer to preconception — things that are perceived by the senses after a fashion. This is where he is talking about when you look at something and you instantly recognize it as white — it’s like pattern recognition, it just fits the pattern for white. But when he’s using the word “notion” or ennoia, he is using that not in the way that Epicurus is using “preconception” or prolepseis. But he does nevertheless insist that these notions are never false — that’s the whole thing today that we’re going to get into. No room at all is left here for memory: “for what memory can there be of what is false?” You cannot have a memory of these notions that is false.
Cassius:
Yeah, as I read that, he’s trying to say that if you can grasp something — if that’s what you comprehend, that’s the kataleptic impression — those are always going to be true. But not everything obviously is a kataleptic impression, and you can have concepts or notions that are false. And Joshua, I think there’s an aspect of this where we can see where he wants to go — he’s trying to build a system just like Epicurus is building one where you can come to a clear understanding of something and then use that clear understanding to understand something else, to build on it. He’s building a system maybe like mathematics or whatever where you can reach point 1 and be sure that point 1 is correct, and then move on and use point 1 to understand point 2. And that process — that’s what I’m calling conceptual reasoning. Certainly that process is valid and people do it and it’s important.
This is where Epicurus talks about words needing to be clear so that you don’t keep on explaining things forever. You clearly have to be precise and make sure that your explanations and definitions are clear and usable so that you can talk about something else. His example here is “a man is a mortal animal partaking of reason.” Well, that is an example of setting up a concept of a man and giving a definition, and now you can start talking about men in other contexts. And I think Epicurus does that too. The dispute we’re getting into is — as you’re saying — the Stoics are trying to define this thing of a kataleptic impression and say that those alone are true and those alone can be relied on, and everything else is slippery and you can’t even really get a firm memory of it because you can’t ever get this clear grasp of it. Well, let’s keep talking about it, because I think what we have to decide is whether “notion” is the same thing as a “concept” or not — and I’m saying that in the context of Epicurus also distinguishing between a concept and a pre-concept.
Joshua:
I mean, if we’ve already reached the point where we’re talking about complex arguments like “if he is a man, he is a mortal animal partaking of reason” — if the notions are derived from those arguments, we can’t be talking about pre-concepts.
Cassius:
Yeah, I can’t unwind this in any way other than referring to the examples that are being used here in this paragraph, because when he says “this is a house” or “that is a dog” or “a man is a mortal animal partaking of reason” — those to me are conceptual reasoning. Those points are concepts, and those concepts can be true or false.
Joshua:
Cassius, he says in the starkest terms: you cannot remember what is false.
Cassius:
What do you think he’s saying there — “you cannot have a memory of that which is false”?
Joshua:
Well, I think on that point the Rackham translation is useful, because he says: “for how can there possibly be a memory of what is false? Or what can anyone remember that he does not grasp and hold in his mind?” In other words, if it has not passed the test of the kataleptic grasp in sense perception — if it has not passed that test — then you can’t hold it. That’s the whole point of the grasp. If you can’t hold it, then it’s just slipping by you. But if you can hold it and it passed that test, then it has to be true. And if you remember it, you must be holding it, and if you’re holding it, it has to be true.
Cassius:
Okay, what does “true” mean in that context? Does “true” mean — in Epicurean terms — that it’s honest? Or does “true” mean that it is true to the facts?
Joshua:
Well, he hasn’t very clearly stated what he means by “false” necessarily.
Cassius:
Yeah, and Joshua, this is where at least in my mind — and this may be a mental block that I’m having — I can’t get past these examples that he’s using. “This is a house, that’s a dog. This is white, this is sweet, this is tuneful, this is fragrant, this is rough. A man is a mortal animal partaking of reason.” To me, there’s no way to mistake any of those for anything other than conceptual conclusions that he is apparently saying are true.
Joshua:
Invariably true.
Cassius:
Invariably true. And if those things are not invariably true — “invariably” being the key word there — we can make mistakes about whether that’s a dog or whether that’s a house.
Joshua:
I would think so, yeah. I mean, this is very different from the Epicurean approach, but it’s worth pinning down. The listeners are going blind right now, so let me read this last paragraph and that way we’ll have some better sense of what he’s talking about. And we may also want to be looking at the Rackham version, because there are a number of outstanding questions here. What exactly does he mean by “true” and “false”? What does he mean by claiming that there can be no memory of what is false? There’s a lot that needs to be cleared up here if we’re going to make sense of the case that he’s building. So anyway, he says: “Certainly no room at all is here left for memory, which of all qualities is the one that most completely contains not only philosophy but the whole practice of life and all the arts. For what memory can there be of what is false? Or what does anyone remember which he does not comprehend and hold in his mind? And what art can there be except that which consists not of one nor of two, but of many perceptions of the mind?
“And if you take these away, how are you to distinguish the artist from the ignorant man? For we must not say at random that this man is an artist and deny that that man is, but we must only do so when we see that the one retains the things which he has perceived and comprehended and the other does not. And as some arts are of that kind that one can only see the fact in one’s mind, and other arts are such that one can design and effect something — how can a geometer perceive those things which have no existence or which cannot be distinguished from what is false? Or how can he who plays on the lyre complete his rhythm and finish verses? And the same will be the case with respect to similar arts whose whole work consists in acting and in effecting something. For what is there that can be effected by art unless the man who exercises the art has many perceptions?”
Cassius:
Joshua, what do you think about that? My reaction to it is that again, the general direction he’s going in is something that we can be sympathetic with, because he wants to establish how important it is to be able to have clear memories and how we can use words and how important it is in general to defend the concept of knowledge so that we can build on our knowledge and do these things that he’s talking about in this paragraph. So the direction is something to be sympathetic with, and we’ve leapfrogged over for the moment in this paragraph the issue of how we get there. But my general impression of this paragraph is that much of it could be argued by Epicurus himself. What do you think?
Joshua:
The thing that strikes me the most about this paragraph is we have a pivot pretty early on where he says “what memory can there be of what is false? Or what does anyone remember which he does not comprehend and hold in his mind?” And then we get a shift to art, and it’s art that dominates the rest of the paragraph.
Cassius:
Joshua, I read the last part of that paragraph that you’re talking about there as being examples of people who do things with their mind that clearly are building on knowledge that they have gained of their subject. He’s pointing out artists and other artisans who are clearly able to manipulate ideas and produce something that we appreciate as being true. And so I’m reading all of this as further articulation of the general position that knowledge is critical and that we use knowledge, we are able to rely on it, and these are examples of how ridiculous it would be to say that knowledge is impossible — because if knowledge is impossible, then these people we’re talking about could not do what they’re doing. I think the point we’re tripping over — the point we’re disagreeing with — is this categorization of memory as “how can you remember something that is false?”
I would say you certainly can remember things that are false, but apparently he’s coming at that from a different direction. However, there’s only so far I think we’re going to be able to reconcile this. We’re going to be able to reconcile the general direction of defending the idea of knowledge, the usefulness and importance and essentialness of knowledge. But I think where we end up going back and disagreeing is that we’re not going to be able to agree that there is a kataleptic impression — that the senses themselves tell us what is true and what is false. The opinion of what is true and what is false is always a judgment of the mind validated against the data from the senses. But our mind does not simply assent to a statement by the eye that “that’s a tree” or “that’s a dog” or “that’s a house.” The eyes don’t tell us “house,” “dog,” “cat,” “tree” — but he seems to be saying that they do.
Joshua:
Yeah, it’s all very confusing. The one that stands out to me — I’m departing from our discussion about true and false for a moment — is his discussion of the geometer. I’m always interested in what people have to say about geometry in the ancient world because Epicurus was so skeptical of geometry, and yet for many other thinkers in antiquity, including non-orthodox thinkers like Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school, who was in a shipwreck on — I don’t know — the island of Rhodes or something, and when he came ashore saw geometrical shapes that had been drawn in the sand and said, “We are among civilized people.” And then he marched off to the agora and just started arguing philosophy. That’s an interesting story, and it’s interesting that Epicurus consciously separates himself from that broader culture. What Lucullus says about the geometer is, as you were saying, Cassius — you’ve got what the Yonge translation calls —
The only thing you can see in this art is the fact in one’s mind: “how can a geometer perceive those things which have no existence or which cannot be distinguished from what is false?” Because in geometry you’ve got lines and points, but those lines and points do not have volume. They don’t have body, they don’t take up space. They exist purely as concepts in this three-dimensional Euclidean space that geometry works in — or worked exclusively in antiquity. And you’ve got these objects which not only don’t exist in reality, but even in this abstract mental space, the line doesn’t have any mass or volume to it and neither does the point. “How can the geometer perceive these things which have no existence or which cannot be distinguished from what is false?” When Epicurus talks about geometry, he’s talking about the fact that these features in geometry don’t correspond with what we see in nature.
In nature, everything that has real physical existence is made of atoms, and atoms have mass and they take up physical space. And so to talk about lines and points, you’re already positing a space in which the laws of nature don’t work. And this is part of why Epicurus throws out geometry. And I’ve done a video on this and we’ve talked about geometry many times over the years because it’s a really interesting part of Epicurean philosophy and part of Greek philosophy in general — this is kind of like any given philosopher’s opinion on geometry tells you a little bit about them. Unfortunately, it brings me no closer with Lucullus to determining what exactly he means by the claim that he starts with, which is “what memory can there be of what is false.”
Cassius:
Joshua, there — as you pursue the geometry — my comment would be that I don’t think we take the position that Epicurus throws out every aspect of geometry or every use of geometry. The main problem with geometers is their overreaching and concluding things from their geometry that they don’t have a basis to claim — or especially claiming things that contradict the facts of reality that we determine through our senses. I don’t think that Epicurus would say that a calculation made on the basis of geometry about where to dig your canal or how to build your arch — I don’t think he had a problem with those uses of geometry. I think even Epicurus could have written this sentence here that says “a geometer can think about things that have no true existence in the sense of lines with no width and things like that.” Epicurus would be quick to say “don’t overreach with that kind of a process,” but the fact that a geometer can talk about a line with no width and talk about formulas and so forth —
I think Epicurus would agree that geometry works within its field, that syllogisms work within their field, and that if you truly do have a clear identification of a thing with a symbol then you can manipulate symbols and get useful information out of it. So I’m saying all that to just go back in the direction of saying that I could reconcile this as being something Epicurus could live with, because I read this paragraph as saying that artists and geometers and flute players and so forth do in fact use their minds to generate things that show us that knowledge is possible. And I don’t take this paragraph much further than that. Between the Stoics and Epicurus, we are going to agree that knowledge is possible and we can align ourselves and fight against the Academic Skeptics who say that knowledge is impossible. I see us in this part of Section Seven as being basically on the same side, as long as you exclude the originating point of this kataleptic impression — which I think Epicurus would disregard. So Joshua, let’s hold all of that in suspension for a moment and make some more progress today in our reading of the text, because we can now go into Section Eight and I think that will give us a little more to work with. So when you’re ready, read for us Section Eight.
Joshua:
Okay, Section Eight. Lucullus starts this way: “And most especially does the knowledge of virtues confirm the assertion that many things can be perceived and comprehended. And in those things alone do we see that science — or maybe the better word is knowledge — exists, which we consider to be not a mere comprehension of things, but one that is firm and unchangeable. And we consider it also to be wisdom, the art of living, which by itself derives consistency from itself. But if that consistency has no perception or knowledge about it, then I ask once it has originated, and how I ask also, why that good man who has made up his mind to endure every kind of torture, to be torn by intolerable pain rather than to betray his duty or his faith, has imposed on himself such bitter conditions when he has nothing comprehended, perceived, known, or established to lead him to think that he is bound to do so.
“It cannot then by any possibility be the case that anyone should estimate equity and good faith so highly as to shrink from no punishment for the sake of preserving them unless he has assented to those facts which cannot be false. But as to wisdom itself, if it be ignorant of its own character and if it does not know whether it be wisdom or not — in the first place, how is it to obtain its name of wisdom? Secondly, how will it venture to undertake any exploit or to perform it with confidence when it has nothing certain to follow? But what we call wisdom doubts what is the chief and highest good, being ignorant of the end toward which everything else is referred — how can we call it wisdom?
“And that also is manifest: that it is necessary that there should be laid down in the first place a principle which wisdom may follow when it begins to act. And that principle must be adapted to nature, for otherwise the desire — that is how I translate the Greek word hormē, by which we are impelled to act and by which we desire what has been seen — cannot be set in motion. But that which sets anything in motion must first be seen and trusted, which cannot be the case if that which is seen cannot be distinguished from what is false. But how can the mind be moved to desire anything if it cannot be perceived whether that which is seen is adapted to nature or inconsistent with it? And again, if it does not occur to a man’s mind what his duty is, he will actually never do anything, he will never be excited to any action, he will never be moved. But if he ever is about to do anything, then it is necessary that which occurs to him must appear to him to be true.
“But if those things are true — is the whole of reason, which is as it were the light and illumination of life, put to an end? And still will you persist in that wrong-headedness? For it is reason which has brought men the beginning of inquiry, which has perfected virtue after reason herself had been confirmed by inquiry. But inquiry is the desire of knowledge, and the end of inquiry is discovery. But no one can discover what is false, nor can those things which continue uncertain be discovered. But when those things which have as it were been under a veil are laid open, then they are said to be discovered. And so reason contains the beginning of inquiry and the end of perceiving and comprehending. Therefore the conclusion of an argument — which in Greek is called epagōgē — is thus defined: reason which leads one from facts which are perceived to that which was not perceived.”
Okay, there’s going to be a lot to talk about here next week. I see he’s talking about whether what is perceived can be adapted to nature or consistent with it — this is related to something called the correspondence theory of truth. We’re going to have to talk about that next week. That last line — where he describes reason as that which leads from perception to what is not perceived — this might be the key to understanding the whole argument and its relationship to what he calls truth and falsity. So we are going to have our work cut out for us. Cassius?
Cassius:
Yes indeed. Joshua, we had a long episode last week and I don’t think we’ll make this week quite so long. We can begin to come to a conclusion here after having read and exposed ourselves for the first time to what’s in Section Eight, but we can certainly spend a little more time putting it in perspective as you just did. My first reaction to this in general — as I’ve been saying today — is I think most of this is intended to drive home the essential importance of knowledge: that we cannot do anything in life unless we can be confident of certain aspects of things that we conclude after examination. Most of what he’s saying here I think fits into that general category of sort of exhorting everyone to understand — because he’s talking to Cicero, the Academic Skeptic, and he knows that Cicero is going to be disputing everything he’s saying here.
And so the main thing I think he’s doing is setting up the importance of being able to express and understand that knowledge of some kind is possible. I think you are right that that last sentence about the role of reason here is going to be particularly key. But again, in general in his defense of knowledge, I think Epicurus is in agreement with the direction that it is critical to have an understanding of what knowledge would be and that you can reach conclusions and then move on to discuss things that are unseen based on things that are seen. Also keeping in mind what we’re doing here — even discussing all this in the first place — is getting ready to discuss Philodemus on On Signs. And I think that perspective also is really what’s going on here: when can you decide that something is true versus when must you conclude that it is false?
Again, the Academic Skeptics are saying you can never do that — nothing is ever anything more than probable in the sense of Cicero; nothing’s ever even probable if you want to go full-blown Pyrrhonist, radical skepticism. So that’s the big picture: is confidence possible at all? But the point that we’ve got to keep in mind in distinguishing this from Epicurus is that there’s clearly an emphasis on reason going on here with Lucullus’s description that we can put in the category of things to be suspicious of. And I think we can also put in that category a lot of this discussion of virtue as well. Certainly wisdom and all the virtues are considered to be important by Epicurus for the good life — you can’t live the good life, you can’t live the happiest life, without virtues. But whether we can really consider wisdom and the virtues to be something “true or false” in the way that Lucullus appears to me to be talking about this, I’m suspicious of some of the direction he’s going in there.
Wisdom itself — even as a virtue — justice itself as a virtue — especially justice as Epicurus talks about it — justice does not exist in itself, wisdom does not exist in itself. There’s always a context that Epicurus takes everything back to: the sensations, anticipations, and feelings all the time as the point of validation. And I get the sense when I listen to Lucullus discussing this here that he is thinking that he’s able to look at wisdom or other virtues — like “there can’t be any possibility that one should estimate equity and good faith so highly as to shrink from any punishment for the sake of preserving them unless he has assented to those facts which cannot be false.” I get uncomfortable in equating equity and justice with facts that cannot be false. And the next thing Lucullus says is: “wisdom itself — could it be ignorant of its own character and does not know whether it be wisdom or not in the first place? How is it to obtain the name of wisdom?” You can go some distance in that direction — that you must understand what you’re talking about in order to even discuss wisdom. But from the Epicurean perspective, what is going to be wise in any situation is not something that you can necessarily judge before you get into that situation, because you’ve got to compare the results in terms of feelings, anticipations, and sensations in order to decide whether a course of action is wise or not. So I think there’s buried within this a more absolutist stance about what is right or wrong than what Epicurus would agree with, but from the general perspective that confidence in some kind of knowledge is possible, we’re still moving in the same general direction. So Joshua, we probably should begin to bring today’s episode to a conclusion. What other thoughts do you have as we begin to close?
Joshua:
I think the thing that strikes me here about Sections Seven and Eight is that cumulatively they describe the process — which I don’t fully understand, partially because we haven’t gone into detail in Eight, but partially because there are things in Seven that are still opaque to me. Sections Seven and Eight by Lucullus here describe the process by which the Stoic gets from sense perception — “in the very first sentence of Section Seven, let us begin with the senses” — to reason at the very last sentence in Section Eight: “therefore the conclusion of an argument is thus reason which leads one from facts which are perceived to that which was not perceived.” So we’re starting with sense perception and we’re working our way toward reason and to things that are not perceived. And you made the point: he’s preparing this argument for Cicero, not for us, but Cicero is a talented and capable orator — he’s going to poke holes in every inch of this fabric.
And so Lucullus has been preparing his argument in that way. And when you understand that Sections Seven and Eight are building up from sense perception to reason, you kind of see part of his project here — which is: Cicero doesn’t find sense perception to be especially reliable, but he does value reason. And so if the case that Lucullus is going to present to Cicero is “how can you even get to reason if you don’t have raw material to work on? If you don’t have the raw material of sense perception to input into your logical argument — after these objects are perceived and have been assigned labels — then how are you getting to reason in the first place?” — this goes back again to where he talks about you’ve got things perceived by the senses, and then you’ve got things perceived not by the senses themselves but by the senses after a fashion: such as white, sweet, tuneful, fragrant, and rough. And this is all part of that project of getting from sense perception — which is non-rational — to reason, which is the climax of things rational. No doubt there are more surprises to come, and I probably even don’t have that little summary totally accurate, but we’ll get into all of that next week.
Cassius:
That’s right, Joshua — there’s a lot more to cover. The one thing I would add at the end would be to refer us back to something we’ve discussed over the last couple of episodes about Zeno’s original argument in the first place and the Academic Skeptic attack on it. I seem to recall — and I don’t know that I have the steps in Zeno’s argument directly in front of me here — but I seem to recall that what the authorities are telling us to be on the lookout for is: the skeptic position is that it is impossible to distinguish a true from a false impression, that there is nothing about an impression that allows us to distinguish which ones are true and which ones are false. That seems to be the iceberg on which the Stoic argument is going to crash as soon as Cicero starts relaying the Academic position.
So we’ll keep a lookout for that as we continue reading further. We’re not quite finished with Lucullus, but I think we’re going to find that this classic setup by Zeno is something that we can begin to understand to pull everything together for us. And it’s going to come back to this question of whether some impressions are true and some impressions are false, and this entire notion of a kataleptic grasp being able to distinguish between the two. But again, let’s close for today on that point and come back and look at this further next week. As always, we invite everyone to drop by the Epicurean Friends Forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time this week. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.