Episode 339- Stoic Views Of Knowledge And The Emperor's New Clothes

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Welcome to Episode 339 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 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 Section 8 of Book Two.

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

Cassius and Joshua continue their review of Cicero’s Academic Questions, Book Two, completing Section 8 and previewing Sections 9 and 10. The central focus is Lucullus’s argument that knowledge must be attainable for any meaningful human action to be possible — if the Skeptic is right that nothing can be known, then nothing will ever be done. Cassius and Joshua identify the Epicurean middle path: knowledge through the senses, prolepsis, and feelings of pleasure and pain is real and achievable, but contextual and particular rather than absolute and eternal in the Platonic or Stoic sense. A passage from Norman DeWitt on Plato’s mistaken transfer of geometric precision to ethics anchors the discussion — justice, like all knowledge, is what the court says it is from time to time, not a timeless ideal reachable by pure reason.

Joshua introduces the Emperor’s New Clothes as an analogy for the Stoic position on knowledge: since only the truly wise man possesses real knowledge, and no Stoic will claim to be the wise man, Stoic knowledge is effectively empty in practice. The episode closes with Lucullus’s report of the Skeptics’ reply — that nature, as Democritus said, has buried truth deep at the bottom of the sea — and Cassius connects this to the self-defeating tension in Democritus himself: his atomism begins with a persuasive foundation but his skeptical conclusions about the senses undermine that foundation and make him subject to the same objections Lucullus is pressing against the Academic Skeptics.

Transcript

Cassius:

Welcome to episode 339 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. When we refer to Lucretius being the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world, that’s a reflection of what we try to do in our podcast and on EpicureanFriends — to give you a complete picture of the philosophy that will allow you to practically understand the big picture and then apply it to the needs of everyday life.

And in going through Academic Questions, the part of the picture that we’re focusing on is that section of the philosophy that’s devoted to the question of whether we can really have confidence in knowledge or not. What does it mean to know something? What is true, what is real, and making sure that we understand that our lives are not just simple illusions that have no significance to us whatsoever, that our lives in fact are the only things that we have. And short as it is, it’s important to us that we understand the necessity of using our lives as productively and efficiently as possible to make sure that we don’t waste the time that we have. Now, the material that we’re going through currently in Academic Questions is very involved and can be very deep, but the ultimate issues are really relatively simple. Last week we spent most of the time talking about: if you take the position that no knowledge is possible, that everything is out of your grasp and is essentially an illusion.

If you really take that seriously, would you ever take any action at all in life? Would you ever even make an effort to understand what the best way of life is, what virtue is, what pleasure is, what anything is, or would you simply give up and do nothing? Which is the thrust of the argument that if you can know nothing, then if you know nothing, you’re essentially going to end up doing nothing. That’s the problem that arises from skepticism in the eyes of both the Stoics and the Epicureans. Although we’re focusing currently on Cicero discussing this debate between the Stoics and the Academics, we’re always attempting to make sure we’re relating this to what Epicurus and the Epicureans were saying. And this is a good time to remind us that Diogenes of Oenoanda’s inscription, in Fragment Five, Diogenes of Oenoanda brought up this topic when he said in Fragment Five, that others do not explicitly stigmatize natural science as unnecessary, being ashamed to acknowledge this, but use other means of discarding it.

And of course, he’s talking about those philosophers who are essentially Skeptics. Diogenes continues and says, for when they assert that things are incomprehensible or unknowable, what else are they saying than that there is no need for us to pursue natural science? After all, who will choose to seek what he can never find? And that’s something we’re going to be extending here today, that Epicureans took the position that there are things that you can find, that you can be confident of. But of course, when you think about it, how could you know that you found something if you don’t already have some conception of what it is that you’ve found? It’s an infinite regression problem — if you don’t have some idea from past experience or from something what it is that you’re looking at, if it’s totally new to you, then you really don’t know what you’re looking at at all.

You have no ability to deal with it. It’s just something that’s totally new. The phrase we use very often: deer in the headlights, who has no idea what’s coming at them and who will likely suffer bad consequences from not knowing what’s coming at them. In this context, the Platonists had come up with these ridiculous theories about remembering things from past lives, which in itself is just sort of a subset of a supernaturalist approach in which others — not necessarily the Platonists, but others — were explicitly saying, as Socrates said explicitly in what we discussed last week when Joshua was quoting him from the Apology, as taking the position that ultimately he knew nothing but a god had told him that he knew nothing and he was therefore better off recognizing that he knew nothing. The implication there, planted in Socrates and carried over through Plato, that ultimately only a god could ever be sure of anything. And that’s why we’re discussing this: in later generations after Socrates and Plato, the Academic Skeptics took that to a much further extension and came to the conclusion that, well, Socrates was right.

Nobody knows anything, and therefore we’re never going to take the position that we can know anything. And various iterations of that argument were developed. Cicero followed the group that said, well, we can’t know anything, but some things are more probable than others. That’s what we’re talking about in this series of podcasts as we go through Academic Questions — this issue of whether knowledge is possible. Again, the Epicureans planted themselves very firmly in the idea that there is a flux in things, that there is constant change. But as Diogenes said, quote: “we on the other hand acknowledge their flux, but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing is at no time apprehensible by sense perception.”

And indeed, in no way would the upholders of that view be able to say what they say — that this is white and that is black, or that another time this is not black, this is white.

If they did not have previous knowledge of the nature of both white and black. And that’s what we’re confronting. How do we deal with anything in life unless we have the ability to come to a conclusion and label things with confidence? In the Epicurean worldview, we’re not referring to past lives, we’re not getting divine inspiration from some supernatural realm. We are, through human experience and over time, using our faculties. In this case, the prolepsis faculty is directly involved to organize in our minds the things that we come into contact with, and confidently come to conclusions about certain aspects of them — just like in the issue of determinism, which goes hand in hand with this issue of skepticism. Epicurus took the very reasonable position that some things are within our control, some things are not within our control.

In this related question of skepticism, there are some things that we can know. There are certainly some things that we will never know, but we do have the ability through our natural faculties and reliance on the senses to come to confident conclusions about certain aspects of the things that we encounter in life. And understanding those things that we can know, understanding those things that we can’t know, understanding where the line between those is, is critically important because you cannot let that line be erased and fall prey to the skepticism that says that well, ultimately nothing’s knowable. Because if you do take the position that nothing is knowable, you’re going to get into the same problem that Lucullus is discussing here. You’re going to end up doing nothing with your life if every moment seems so new to you that you have no ability to put it into any kind of understandable framework. That’s why all this is important. It’s not just philosophy for the sake of philosophy. It’s not just words for the sake of words. It’s very practical, and that’s our job in talking about it here on the podcast — to make it understandable and let you know why this was important in Epicurean philosophy, why it needs to be understood by people who are trying to apply Epicurus. So Joshua, let me pass this back over to you. Where are your thoughts at the moment?

Joshua:

So as we finish Section 8 today and move into Section 9, we’re going to be encountering a word that is very critical to understanding the nature of the argument that we’ve been following since the beginning of Academic Questions on this question of whether it is possible to obtain knowledge. On one side you have skepticism — this is the track that we’ve been on in this entire book — and Lucullus and the Epicureans and other groups in antiquity represent a response to skepticism that was given the label of dogmatism in antiquity: the idea that it is possible to gain certain knowledge. And this argument is going to set up, I think, probably the main conflict between Lucullus and Cicero, because Cicero himself has said repeatedly throughout all of his books that he doesn’t speak with certain knowledge, he only speaks to what he thinks is probable, and Lucullus is on the other side of that debate.

Last week we talked about the word “apodeixis,” which refers to proof, demonstration, deduction — a full demonstration or showing absolute and incontrovertible proof. And for someone like Cicero and for someone from this Academic Skeptical school, this is the core of the argument over knowledge: whether there is anything that meets this standard, whether anything can be regarded as proved or demonstrated or shown or known. We’ve seen Lucullus in previous sections make some striking claims about the nature of knowledge, which he thinks is attainable. It’s attainable perhaps only by a select few, only by the Stoic sage, the wise man, but it is obtainable, and as we’ll see in the last paragraph of Section 8 here, he’s quite strident in some ways about knowledge and about what knowledge is and about how we define and limit knowledge in a way that seems to me to be somewhat extreme.

But I don’t pretend to be an expert on Stoic epistemology. And we’ve come across these statements before in this text, Cassius, and in the past what we’ve done is we’ve just tried to digest the claim and move forward in the text, and we’re hoping that as we move forward these things will start to become clearer. Because we’ve already heard Lucullus say in Section 7, on the topic of false notions or false impressions, that no room at all is 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 I think that you and I both had the same experience when reading this: we can have confidence, but I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to say that everything that we remember must be true because you can’t have memory of what is false.

So we’ve kind of put that on the back burner, and we’re probably going to come across more passages and quotations like this from Lucullus — more claims of this kind about knowledge that are going to have to go into that pot on the back burner while we digest his broader argument — and hopefully eventually we can come to some kind of clarity about them, because a claim like that is so stark and so strident that it almost forces you to consider that you haven’t understood the claim rather than just accepted it at face value. So in the last paragraph of Section 8, Lucullus has been talking about the necessity of knowledge and the attainment of knowledge in motivating the philosopher and motivating the Stoic towards virtue. If you don’t have knowledge of the good, then how can you behave well? If you don’t have knowledge of virtue, how can you make virtuous choices?

And he says here in the last paragraph of Section 8: “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, it is necessary that which occurs to him must appear to him to be true.” So with that as background, we can move into the last paragraph of Section 8, which I will read again. He says: “How can the mind be moved to desire anything if it cannot be perceived whether that which is seen is adapted to nature or consistent with it?” That was in the previous paragraph. And then in the last paragraph he says: “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, 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 an end to? And still will you persist in that wrong-headedness? For it is reason which has brought men the beginning of inquiry, which is 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 apodeixis, is thus defined: reason which leads one from facts which are perceived to that which was not perceived.” So we need to figure out what Lucullus is getting at in his framing at the beginning of this paragraph. Do you have some idea of what he’s talking about there?

Cassius:

Yeah, Joshua, I’ll go back to what we discussed last week. I’m thinking that this question aspect is aimed at Cicero and aimed at those Skeptics who are taking the position that no knowledge is possible. The key phrasing appears to be “if those things are true” and then followed by “still will you persist in that wrong-headedness?” My reading of it is that when Lucullus is referring to that wrong-headedness, he’s referring to the wrong-headedness of the Skeptics — which includes Cicero — in taking the position that no knowledge is possible. To me, the part that is really difficult is the statement about “no one can discover what is false, nor can those things which continue uncertain be discovered.” The issue about not discovering what is false strikes me as similar to the earlier point you’ve raised of memory.

Joshua:

I agree with you that those two claims really are some of the starkest claims that we’ve come across on the subject of knowledge, certainly going through this text, and we’re still not entirely clear what the end game for that argument is. Because it’s very easy for me to think of something in the past that I’ve remembered and then was proven wrong about my memory, right, or I was corrected later. And so the claim that if you have a memory of it, it has to be true is either incredibly extreme on the dogmatism end of things or it’s just incredibly confusing — or perhaps both. And this claim that “no one can discover what is false” I think falls into the same category.

Cassius:

Joshua, I can’t immediately cite what section it was in, but in this part of our discussion, I’m recalling that early on when Lucullus started presenting his position, he distinguished his own view from that of Epicurus and said that he himself, Lucullus, was not going to attempt to argue like Epicurus does — essentially that all sensations are true — and I think we’ve got the same issue playing out here, that Lucullus sees a different definition of truth than Epicurus does. And my best assumption at the moment is that Lucullus and the Stoics are trying to focus on a definition of truth from the perspective that it is so true that it cannot be otherwise — as if there’s some supernatural basis that requires a particular truth — and that what we’re trying to do with reason is to get past the senses and find this level of existence in which something cannot be otherwise than what it is.

And at least my current framework of trying to piece this together is that Epicurus doesn’t buy into that perspective. Epicurus is saying that there is no framework other than the framework that we have here in this world through our senses, and frankly, because there is no supernatural realm, because there is no force of fate, because there is no force that requires something to be always the same, we can’t take that approach. We have to constantly be testing those things that we’re dealing with through our senses, through our prolepsis, through our feelings of pleasure and pain, and when those things report to us a change in the condition that we’re observing, we’re not going to take the position that we can’t change our opinion. We’re going to change our opinion along with the sensations, along with the facts of perception that we have at a particular moment.

We’re not going to take the position that because these changes are so fast that we can never come to a conclusion. We are going to come to a conclusion based on the repeated observations of our own experience, but we’re never going to come to the conclusion that our own experience can be trumped by a supernatural realm in which things are eternally the same and can never be otherwise. The truth of that realm, that whole method of analysis, just makes no sense. There’s something here about his perspective on truth — that he thinks reason can lead to a type of knowledge that can never be otherwise. And Joshua, in that connection, I realize something, and I’ll use your wording as well: when I say in the podcast that certain things are true, what I’m referring to in that phrase is that there are particular things that are true at particular times and places.

I’m not using the word “certain” in the absolute sense that they never change. “Certain” can refer to a particular thing or it can refer to absolute certainty. So I need to be careful myself as I’m using these words — when I say that Epicurus believes that certain things are true, I probably should say Epicurus believes that particular things are true at particular times in particular places, because I think that’s one of the key issues of this analysis here. Epicurus does not hold that there are absolute truths that are always the same for all people, all times, and all places. Truth is what happens in particular combinations of atoms moving through the void at particular times in particular places — I think that’s the direction we’re going on here. And even though we can generalize about what to expect, because our experience tells us that certain atoms in particular places at particular times under particular circumstances are going to react in the same way, that’s not the same thing as saying that there is an absolute perspective that is always correct and that can never vary. And when I see Lucullus talking about “those things which cannot be otherwise than true,” that wording is a problem from the Epicurean perspective — in which atoms moving through the void provide the ultimate basis for everything — and there is no external supernatural guidance or direction for those atoms moving through the void that requires them to move always in the same way.

Joshua:

In response to your point on certain things are true, I always think back to Norman DeWitt’s passage on Plato adopting the language of geometry. He says on this question that it was the romantic aspect of the new knowledge of geometry that captivated Plato, who was no more than up to date as a mathematician himself. In geometry, he seemed to see absolute reason contemplating absolute truth — perfect precision of concept joined with finality of demonstration. He began to transfer the precise concepts of geometry to ethics and politics, just as modern thinkers transferred the concepts of biological evolution to history and sociology. Especially enticing was the concept which we know as definition. This was a creation of the geometers — they created it by defining straight lines, equilateral triangles, and other regular features. If these can be defined, Plato tacitly reasoned, why not also justice, piety, temperance, and other virtues?

This is reasoning by analogy — one of the trickiest of logical procedures. It holds good only between sets of true similars. Virtues and triangles are not true similars. It does not follow, therefore, because equilateral triangles can be precisely defined, that justice can be defined in the same way. Modern jurists warn against defining justice. It is what the court says it is from time to time. I think that’s in line with the direction you’re going in, Cassius, which is that the Epicurean doesn’t go to either extreme on this question. It doesn’t go to the extreme that there is a realm of absolute pure mathematical truth above the world of sense perception, but also doesn’t go in the direction of saying that the world of sense perception is itself a world of lies because it is constantly changing.

Cassius:

Joshua, that’s a great catch on that quote from DeWitt, for exactly the direction you’re going in right now — especially the last sentence, “modern jurists warn against defining justice, it is what the court says it is from time to time.” I think we’ve even talked about this. There are times when I look at that sentence and I think, well, that just means there is no such thing as justice, but that’s not what it means at all. Epicurus says there’s no such thing as absolute justice, but he doesn’t say there’s no such thing as justice. He’s saying that we don’t ground justice in absolute standards that are the same for everybody at every time and every place. It’s just that justice is what is mutually beneficial to particular people at particular times in particular places under particular circumstances, and that type of analysis applies not just to justice — it applies to everything.

There is no supernatural force that compels all combinations of atoms and void to result in the same thing at all times in all places. The ultimate question of the truth of any situation is determined by that situation, just as the ultimate justice of any particular relationship among humans is determined by that particular set of humans at that particular place in time. This is not saying that justice does not exist. This is saying that justice exists through the particulars under that particular circumstance. Don’t throw out the concept of justice. Just realize that justice is contextual according to circumstances. And this applies much further than just justice. It applies to all the virtues. It applies to wisdom. Wisdom is not handed down from the gods. Wisdom does not exist in ideal forms. Wisdom exists, knowledge exists, in the particular context in which you or the people we’re talking about are evaluating it.

That is not to say throw wisdom out the window. That is not to say throw knowledge out the window. It’s saying that knowledge and wisdom are extremely important, but they are not absolute. They are contextual. And it’s very easy to let the pendulum swing too far in one direction. It’s easy to get convinced that there’s an absolute truth that God can put you in communication with and that you can never be mistaken about, and that maybe you can get to it through reason or through geometry, but however you get to it, there exists this truth that cannot be anything other than true — and that’s wrong from the Epicurean perspective. But it’s equally wrong to say that there’s no such thing as truth, that there’s no such thing as knowledge, that there’s no such thing as wisdom. These are concepts that are very important for successful living and for happiness, but you have to understand that they are not grounded in ideal forms.

They are not grounded in gods handing down edicts. They are grounded in the way things are occurring under particular circumstances and times and places and people. And what do you mean when you’re talking about particular times and places and people? You’re talking about the senses, you’re talking about the pleasure and pain of the people who are involved, you’re talking about the experiences and patterns of those people at particular times and particular places. You can’t let the pendulum swing back and forth between two nonsensical and incorrect positions. It’s not a matter of being in the middle. It’s a matter of understanding that there are no gods, there are no absolute truths, but on the other hand there’s no reason to give into nihilism and reject the idea that these concepts don’t even exist at all. They exist, but not in the absolute form. They exist because of our nature as humans and the way we process reality through the senses, and it’s through the senses, through the prolepsis, through the feelings of pleasure and pain that we find true justice and true wisdom and true knowledge.

I think that’s the direction this is going. When you read that sentence again from DeWitt — “modern jurists warn against defining justice, it is what the court says it is from time to time” — you cannot take from that sentence that justice does not exist. Justice does exist. We live in the real world. There are judges, there are juries, there are court systems, and it is a very real thing to us, the way our system operates and the way it finds justice and the way it applies justice. These are very real things. They are not illusions. It’s just that they are not based in any kind of absolute ideal world that has truth that cannot be otherwise.

Joshua:

I think part of our experience going through this book is coming to terms with the Stoics as bedfellows with the Epicureans on a few points while stark enemies on most things. And one of the things I’ve been thinking about as we’ve been recording today’s episode is this story of the Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen — about an emperor who has many fine clothes but who is tricked by his tailors, who claimed a magical fabric invisible to those who are foolish or unfit for office — sometimes to those who are wicked or stupid, or whatever you don’t want to be. People who are those things can’t see these clothes. And the point is, when he puts them on and presents himself to the court, nobody in the court wants to admit to being wicked or foolish or stupid, so they all pretend that they see his clothes even though he is standing there naked. And the person who points it out is a child — a child for whom the social expectation of going along to get along hasn’t quite set in yet — who is the one who points out that the emperor is in fact naked.

And I think about that in response to the Stoic position that only the truly wise have knowledge, and that a lot of what we’re reading in Lucullus’s presentation here is based on that assumption, but we don’t encounter it stated very frequently, so that we can be misled into thinking that this applies somehow to all Stoics. But as Cicero said at the end of the book, by the Stoics’ own words, they know nothing, because only the wise — only the sage, only the wise man — has real knowledge, and no Stoic will claim to be a sage or a wise man. That’s one of the things on my mind as we end. The other thing is I was going to go ahead to Section 10, and there’s a very short paragraph in Section 10 in which Lucullus is kind of complaining about his dealings with the Skeptics.

He says: “Nor can I sufficiently make out what their ideas or intentions really are; for sometimes when we address them with this argument that if the doctrines which we are upholding are not true, then everything must be uncertain, they reply: But what is that to us? Is that our fault? Blame nature, who, as Democritus says, has buried truth deep in the bottom of the sea.” That’s something to think about as we come to the end of today’s episode — this division in philosophy in the ancient world — and we have to come to terms with the understanding that for many of the Skeptics, it’s about the argument more than it is about reaching any firm conclusions. There’s a scene in the HBO Rome series when Caesar crosses the Rubicon with his army and you see this army with their wagons crossing this little stream, and then on the banks of the Roman side of this river, there’s a boy fishing and he’s just watching this army march past. For some reason, that scene really sticks with me — the idea of there’s a kind of witness there that someone like Lucullus is going to deny, because only the sage has knowledge.

Cassius:

Yeah, Joshua, that is a great way to close the episode today. I think we’ve talked about this before. I think we both agree that Cicero’s argument against the Stoics here makes a lot of sense. You’ve got to come to a reasonable understanding of what knowledge means in order to hold your ground in these arguments, and the Stoics failed to do that by their own terms — only the sage, which is essentially somebody in communication with God, a god-like person, has knowledge. And if that’s the case, then Cicero is absolutely right, and Stoics, your definition of knowledge is absolutely worthless because none of us can get to that point. So that’s a great reminder. And then the other thing you just said is also tremendously important because as we all know, Epicurus is thought of as an atomist, Democritus is given credit as being the lead atomist, and people tend to deprecate Epicurus’s position saying, oh, he’s just going along with Democritus.

Cicero says, well, anything that Epicurus has to say that’s correct is what Democritus says, and everything that was unique to Epicurus was wrong. This calls to our attention again how wrong Democritus was, and even though starting with a persuasive foundation in terms of atomism, he ends up himself being essentially a Skeptic and subject to all the criticisms that Lucullus is now making about not being able to take action when you are a Skeptic. But what I read Cicero was doing here — when Lucullus complains that in response to his arguments the Skeptics reply simply, “What’s that to us? Is that our fault? Blame nature” — which is what Democritus says, has buried truth deep in the bottom of the sea — ultimately, that Skeptical position is not a refutation of the truth or falsity of the issue being discussed. It’s shifting to a matter of blame, which in my mind is a total contradiction, because the Skeptic argument goes hand in hand — as it did with Democritus — with the deterministic argument, in which the determinist will argue that no one’s to blame for anything.

Well, blame is not the issue in this discussion. The issue is what is the correct way of understanding knowledge and the correct way of living, and blaming nature makes no sense any more than it does to blame either side of the argument. We’re not looking for blame, we’re looking for the truth of the situation, and even though the Stoics are following the wrong path to their understanding of knowledge, it is essential to have an understanding of knowledge and a valid conception of what it means to know something. I think that summarizes where we’ve been today in this episode. The Epicureans took the position that understanding things, knowing things, is grounded in our perceptions through the five senses, the feelings of pleasure and pain, and through prolepsis we are constantly looking at our circumstances and deriving what is true to us from our circumstances. That does not mean that truth does not exist, that does not mean that knowledge does not exist, just because what we conclude to be true and real in our situation is not always the same for everybody in the universe at all times in all places.

That does not mean that it’s not true to us. And if we let the fact that it’s not true for everyone at every place and every time lead us to conclude that there’s no such thing as truth, then that is a disastrous conclusion for our health, wellbeing, and happiness. You must have an understanding of what’s true and real for you in order to live happily. Okay, there’s a lot more to discuss on this, and we will come back and finally get into Section 9 and eventually into what we just quoted from Section 10 as well in the coming weeks. In the meantime, as always, we invite everyone to drop by the EpicureanFriends forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.