Episode 343

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Welcome to Episode 343 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 10 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

Transcript

Cassius:

Welcome to episode 343 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 text 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 in our series reviewing Cicero’s academic questions from an Epicurean perspective, because that gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato’s academy and helps us understand Epicurus’s position on the question of knowledge, whether it’s possible to obtain it and how to obtain it if it indeed is possible. We are now in Book 2, and we’re moving today into Section 11, after wrapping up Section 10, and we’ll be moving into a topic that is perhaps more familiar than some of the other things we’ve been discussing, in that Lusolus, on behalf of the Stoics, is about to launch into his attack on those who say that it’s not necessary to have knowledge because we can go with what is simply probable. In other words, the use of the word probable is asserted by certain people as a way to sort of ride the fence and get past the question about whether certainty or confidence in knowledge is possible at all. These people say it’s not necessary to be certain about anything, as long as you can come up with some notion that something is more probable than something else, that’s the best you can do, that’s good enough, or that’s the way we’re going to go in our school, depending on which of the different people was making the statements about it. Cicero, of course, being one of this school that began down this road of saying that probability probability is the best we can do. So soon after the material we’ll be reading today and perhaps next week, we’ll see Cicero come back in and respond on behalf of these people and defend the idea that probability is the way to go. But for now, we’re continuing with Lusolus’ summation and conclusion of his attack on the idea that knowledge is impossible and his assertion that knowledge is not only possible, but it’s vital to have so that you can understand what virtue is, so that you can make decisions based on strong confidence that you understand the truth of the way things really are. Just one quick comment on where we ended up last week. We may not go back into it today very much, but in Lucian’s dialogue Hermotemus, that’s where we concluded last week with the observation that Lucian’s character in that dialogue had taught a Stoic student, Hermotemus, through an understanding of the quandary that he himself was in, in that he had devoted his life basically to the study of Stoicism and was planning on devoting the rest of his life to the study of Stoicism, even though he really, as it turned out, wasn’t sure that Stoicism was really correct, that he had not checked into all of the other competing opinions the way he had checked into Stoicism. And as we left last week, that was an example of someone who concluded that there are limits to, that it is much more important to actually live your life, to actually go out and buy a nice coat, to engage in life, and to some extent run from philosophy if that philosophy is going to turn you into what is essentially a deer standing in headlights, frozen and immobile, because you absolutely have no idea what to do. Hermotemus does not end with a ringing endorsement of Epicurus, doesn’t mention Epicurus at all, much through the dialogue. But the basic position that it is important to live your life and make decisions based on a confident assessment of what you really need to do, ends up being, ends up as an endorsement of a kind of the idea of knowledge. The idea that you can make decisions based on the information that nature gives you in the Epicurean case, based on the anticipations, feelings, and sensations. And that because you indeed do have a limited time in which to live, you must move forward with your life and not attempt to resolve every possible philosophical question that can come before you before you make decisions. You just simply do not have that luxury. You have to live your life as it comes to you. So with that as an introduction to where we are, Joshua, let’s go back and see if you have any thoughts to wrap up from section 10, and then we’ll eventually move into section 11. Where are your thoughts this morning?

Joshua: You know, hearing you talk about the Hermotimus dialogue from Lucian puts me in mind of something about that dialogue. What it really is, is Lucian using the Socratic method to wage war on the Socratic method. That’s kind of where that dialogue ends up, right? Is the Socratic method from Socrates, from the dialogues of Plato, as kind of a cornerstone of this dialectic approach to philosophy, is being taken up to discredit philosophy and to convince people through the same kind of sinuous, circuitous arguments that Socrates himself would make. Not with the narrow scope of Socrates, who’s trying to point out to people that their conceptions of piety or their conceptions of justice or their conceptions of virtue are maybe limited, limited by the human mind’s access to knowledge, but instead with a view to tearing down this entire method of seeking knowledge and seeking clarity on these important issues. And for that reason, it’s difficult to recommend to people that they go to the same place where Hermotimus himself ends up and say, like, Romeo, hang philosophy, right? Who needs philosophy? We just need to get about the business of living our lives. And my own view on this is that what we need to do instead is take the point that Licinus in that dialogue is trying to make about epistemic humility, about not trying to climb an unclimbable mountain, the mountain of virtue and stoicism and so on. Take the message away on that point, but don’t necessarily go as far as Hermotimus himself does and say, if I see a philosopher, I’m going to kick him in like he was a dog in the street, right? Philosophy is useful, I think, in part because it gives us a language and a tradition and a vocabulary to talk about subjects that it’s very difficult to talk about with clarity without using specialized language. It’s very difficult to talk about theories of knowledge, theories of consciousness, theories of metaphysics and so on without having the jargon and the broader cultural tradition and conversation to plug all of that into, right? It’s the reason why when I talk about whether there’s purpose in nature, I use Aristotle’s language of teleology because it’s hard to talk about this stuff if you don’t have the right words. Philosophy is useful for that reason. It’s useful because it prompts us to consider questions that we probably wouldn’t have considered if we hadn’t studied it in the first place, right? It never would have occurred to me to ask the question, is motion possible? Or is time an illusion? Or what are the fundamental building blocks of nature? Are there fundamental building blocks of nature? These are questions that people have grappled with and that we can interface with these same challenges, these same questions, these same critiques without having to do all of the original thinking ourself. By the same token, you also don’t want to hand your brain over to someone else and say, all right, you’ve got this figured out. You do all the thinking for me. But there’s a balance there you’ve got to strike. And when it comes to philosophy, (..) I think that balance is this. Don’t let philosophy or the study of philosophy ruin your happiness. Don’t let the study of philosophy convince you that you are happy or that you’re on the road to being happy when you’re not actually happy, right? You’ve got to fix real problems in your life. And just studying philosophy is not necessarily going to do that for you magically, right? You have to also put in the work and just reading the dialogues of Plato is not putting in the work. But nevertheless, there is value to be gained from reading the dialogues of Plato. So you take the best of both worlds. You take the best of what is available to you in philosophy. You take the best of what is available to you from practical living and practical traditions that have very little to do ultimately with philosophy, except that philosophy can be brought to bear on those traditions to critique them.

Cassius:

Joshua, you’ve brought a lot of fascinating issues up in what you just said. And I certainly can’t give them all the attention that they deserve. But just to list a couple of them, maybe what you’ve done is remind us that one of these days, if we have enough time, we’re going to go through the Hermotimus dialogue all the way through from start to finish, because it is fascinating in the detail that it provides us about these issues. But your summary of it reminds me, first of all, this is why Epicurus says that prudence is a more important thing than philosophy itself. This is why Epicurus rejects dialectic as a tool for getting at the truth. It’s useful to pursue dialectic at certain times. And I think what you’re saying here is that Lucian has used dialectic to attack dialectic-based philosophy. One comment that Hermotimus makes that comes to my mind, he says something to the effect that he wished he could take some kind of purgative or hellebore or some drug to cause him to vomit out all of the stoicism that he had partaken in and studied for so many different years. And the dialectic method that Lucian has employed in this work is exactly the purgative that causes Hermotimus to do exactly that. It’s certainly a key aspect of Epicurus’s argument that reason alone, divorced from the anticipations, senses, and feelings, divorced from the evidence of reality, is not going to get you where you need to be. And I think this Hermotimus dialogue stands for that premise, that you cannot simply syllogistically, logically reason your way to a happy life unless you’re going to base that reason on connections with reality. Another thing that comes to my mind, when we’ve gone through Francis Wright’s A Few Days in Athens, one of the more interesting characters that Francis Wright includes in that book is Hedea, the young woman who it’s not clear what her relationship with Epicurus really is. But she stands for the proposition and talks aggressively in the book about how she doesn’t have time for this kind of dialectical, philosophical debating about angels dancing on the head of a pen. She’s going to live her life happily because she knows how to do it, whether it’s instinctively or through experience or whatever. She is laughing at these philosophers and rejecting their ridiculous positions that they take and the way they ridiculously live their lives. And she’s saying that in discussions with Epicurus. And Francis Wright does not have Epicurus rebuke her on that. He does not call her down and say that she is wrong. It’s very interesting to try to determine exactly how Francis Wright is having Epicurus react to Hedea. But the very fact that he does not denounce her attitude, I think, speaks volumes about the truth of the matter is, is that the result is what is important in Epicurian philosophy. And if you’re living happily, then other examples you’ve used, maybe you would have been better off. Maybe we would have all been better off, Joshua, never to have heard an argument that motion was impossible or an argument that time is an illusion or that we are living in an illusion. Are we really better off having been exposed to those things? Truth of the matter is, we are exposed to them. We can’t live our lives today without having been exposed to those. So we need to know the responses and the answers to the questions that are posed in those illustrations. And that’s why we do need to study philosophy to at least some extent. But there are all sorts of fascinating issues here arising from this question of how to approach philosophy and what its role really is and what Epicurus means when he says prudence is more important than philosophy.

Joshua:

Yeah. And the perfect example of this, Cassius, comes from another work of Lucian’s. It comes from his Alexander the Oracle Monger, right? His letter to Celsus. In this letter, Lucian talks about how this transparent fraud and charlatan has successfully managed to pass himself off as an oracle. And it was bad enough when he was just fooling the locals in the area he set up shop, right? But he’s drawing in people from Rome. He’s drawing in messengers from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself, who was sending to inquire what he should do in an important campaign in wartime. And in his letter, he says to Celsus, he says, well, it was war to the knife between Alexander, this false prophet, and Epicurus. And no wonder what fitter enemy for a charlatan who patronized miracles and hated truth than the thinker who had grasped the nature of things and was in solitary possession of that truth. As for the Platonists, the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, they were all his good friends. He had no quarrel with them. But the unmitigated Epicurus, as he used to call him, could not but be hateful to him, treating all such pretensions as absurd and querile. Alexander consequently loathed the city of Amastris beyond all the cities of Pontus, the Black Sea, knowing what a number of Lepidus’ friends and other like-minded it contained. And so here we have an important episode in Lucian’s life in which the primary concern was not philosophy. The primary concern was these practical affairs, the practical things of life, and dealing with this guy who Lucian alleges tried to have him murdered by paying a sea captain and a crew to throw him over the edge of the ship while they were out to sea. And Lucian, as he’s going through all of this, he’s tallying up who rallies and who does not. And he finds that the Epicureans of this region of Asia Minor have rallied to this cause. And who is silent on this question? It’s the academic skeptics, right? It’s the Stoics. It’s the Pythagoreans. It is groups, and the Stoics are exempted from this criticism to some extent, but it is groups who devote themselves entirely to skepticism and to inquiry and to never settling on a confirmed view of anything that they can say is true. Where better to apply your talent in skepticism than in the offices of a person who claims to be a prophet, but none of them show up. None of them show up to challenge this guy because they’re too busy arguing amongst themselves about the nature of knowledge to actually apply what they think they know or what they think they don’t know in this very real and important practical situation in real life. So I think part of Lucian’s criticism of philosophy, of Socratic method, of all the rest of it, is he sees and he has seen in his own life that when the rubber meets the road, as they say, these people are nowhere to be found on the most pressing and urgent practical matters of the day. And if you can’t rely on them to show up when there’s a real need for skepticism, when there’s a real need for doubt about the claims that another person is making, then what do we need them for at all is really, I think, part of his critique of this academic skeptic school of philosophy.

Cassius:

So Joshua, that’s a very good summary of the situation. It is important to be able to have friends who are going to be there with you, who have the confidence to stand up for what’s right versus what’s wrong. You’re not going to have the confidence and you’re not going to have the strength of will to do that if you think that, well, nothing can be known. We can just simply never know what’s right or what’s true. We just have to go with the flow, accept what comes our way and try to reconcile ourselves to it in the way that Pyrrho is identified with Ataraxia. He’s just going to take a position. I’m not concerned about it. Essentially, everything is an illusion and I’m just going to drift along in my illusion until the end of my days. Not everyone comes to that extreme of a conclusion, however, and as we go into section 11, we’re going to begin to deal with the position that is ultimately associated with Cicero himself. The argument being that all this discussion about knowledge and certainty is pie in the sky. You really cannot be certain of anything, but I’m not going to be so stupid as a deer in the headlights to stand there and do nothing. I’m going to be practical and say, you can debate truth all you want. All I need to know is what is probably true in my situation, what is probably the thing to do, what is probably not the thing to do, and that’s going to solve the problem for me because if I just rely on probability, then I’m free to reach any conclusion I might want to reach at any particular time. As we’ve regularly cited Cicero as saying, you’re the only one who’s really free because you’re not bound by any dogma if you simply take the position that you’re going to throw all dogma out the window and just go with what’s probable. So the solution to this problem of knowledge that some people assert is not to just throw knowledge out the window completely, but to try to adapt the terminology of probability to stand in the place of knowledge. So as we move into section 11, Lusoulis is going to start to address that. And Joshua, whenever you’re ready, if you will, please read section 11 for us.

Joshua:

So before I get into 11, we’ll be good to refresh our minds before we plunge right in. So in section 10, Lusoulis had made the claim that those who affirm that nothing can be comprehended take away by their assertion all the instruments and ornaments of life, utterly overturn the whole of life and deprive the animal itself of mind. So that it is difficult to speak of their rashness as the merits of the case require. I know, Cassius, that was a line that you pulled out last week as being of particular importance that Lusoulis cannot emphasize enough how foolhardy these people are for going to these extremes in their skepticism. But in the last paragraph of section 10, Lusoulis makes a distinction. He says, but others defend themselves more elegantly who complain also that we accuse them of calling everything uncertain. And they endeavor to explain how much difference there is between what is uncertain and what cannot be perceived and to make a distinction between them. Let us then now deal with those who draw this distinction between what is uncertain and what cannot be perceived. And let us abandon as incurable and desperate those who say that everything is as uncertain as whether the number of the stars be odd or even. For they contend that there is something probable and, as I may say, likely, and that they adopt that likelihood as a rule in steering their course of life and in making inquiries and in conducting discussions. So that is an important distinction that he’s making here. The first group that says nothing can be perceived, nothing can be comprehended. If they were consistent in their speech and in their actions, they wouldn’t even be able to do anything. They wouldn’t even be able to move because they have nothing to guide their actions if nothing can be perceived and if nothing can be comprehended. However, the second group, the group that contends that there is something probable and maybe even likely, that group is able to adopt that likeliness or that probability as a rule in steering their course of life. On the one hand, you have a group of people who are so far gone into absolute skepticism, it’s a wonder they can even put their pants on in the morning. And on the other hand, you have a group of people who are skeptics, but who are nevertheless able, at least in their own minds, and at least as they’re going to argue in their own defense, who are able to steer their course of life, not by certainty, not by confidence necessarily, but by probability. And Lusoulis thinks this is a very important distinction because one group has a compass that will point them through life and the other group does not. And they’re just flailing. They’re like a kite flailing in the wind. And what he says is we are going to abandon the group that says that nothing can be known, nothing can be perceived, everything is uncertain, and that can’t even speak in terms of probability. So as we go forward into section 11, we’re only talking about this second group, the group that says that we may not have certain knowledge, but we can determine what is most probable. We can determine what is most likely. And we can use that to navigate our way through the discussion and through life. That’s the group we’re going to be dealing with as we go forward. And the other group he has abandoned as incurable and desperate. Cassius, do you have anything else to say before I read section 11?

Cassius:

Just as a reminder, that’s exactly what Lucretius says in book four about those who basically put their head where their feet should be. We can’t even really talk to them at all because they’re not interested in talking. They’re not interested in understanding. They simply have to be ignored because you’re never going to get anywhere with them. They have nothing certain at all. So you can’t agree on anything and discussion becomes pointless.

Joshua:

That’s right. Now, in section 11, Lucille follows on the claim made by this second group of people that we can talk in terms of probability. And he says, But what rule can there be if we have no notion whatever of true or false, because it is impossible to distinguish one from the other? For if we have such a notion, then there must be a difference between what is true and what is false, as there is between what is right and what is wrong. If there is no difference, then there is no rule. Nor can a man to whom what is true and what is false appear under one common aspect, have any means of judging of or any mark at all by which he can know the truth. For when they say that they take away nothing but the idea of anything being able to appear in such a manner that it cannot possibly appear false in the same manner, but that they admit everything else, they are acting childishly. For though they have taken away that by which everything is judged of, they deny that they take away the rest, just as if a person were to deprive a man of his eyes and then say that he has not taken away from him those things which can be seen. For just as those things are known by the eyes, so are the other things known by the perceptions, but by a mark belonging particularly to truth and not common to what is true and false. Wherefore, whether you bring forward a perception which is merely probable, or one which is at once probable and free from all hindrance, as Carniades contended, or anything else that you may follow, you will still have to return to that perception of which we are treating. But in it, if there be but one common characteristic of what is false and true, there will be no judgment possible, because nothing peculiar can be noted in one sign common to two things. But if there be no such commonality, then I have got what I want, for I am seeking what appears to me to be so true that it cannot possibly appear false. They are equally mistaken when being convicted and overpowered by the force of truth. They wish to distinguish between what is evident and what is perceived, and endeavor to prove that there is something evident, being a truth impressed on the mind and intellect, and yet that it cannot be perceived and comprehended. Or how can you say distinctly that anything is white, when it may happen that that which is black may appear white? Or how are we to call those things evident, or to say that they are impressed faithfully on the mind, when it is uncertain whether it is really moved, or only in an illusory manner. And so there is neither color, nor body, nor truth, nor argument, nor sense, nor anything certain left to us. And owing to this, it frequently happens that whatever they say, they are asked by some people whether they understand this result of their original claim. But they who put this question to them are laughed at by them. But they do not press them hard enough so to prove that no one can insist upon any point, or make any positive assertion, without some certain and peculiar mark to distinguish that thing which each individual says that he is persuaded of. What then is this probability of yours? For if that which occurs to everyone, and which at its first look, as it were, appears probable, is asserted positively, what can be more trifling? But if your philosophers say that they, after a certain degree of circumspection and careful consideration, adopt what they have seen as such, still they will not be able to escape from us. First of all, because credit is equally taken from all these things which are seen, but between which there is no difference. Secondly, when they say that it can happen to a wise man, that after he has done everything and exercised the most diligent circumspection, there may still be something which appears probable, and which yet is very far removed from being true. How can they then trust themselves, even if they, to use their own expression, approach truth for the most part, or even if they come as near to it as possible? For in order to trust themselves, the distinctive mark of truth ought to be thoroughly known to them. And if that be obscure or concealed, what truth is there which they can seem to themselves to arrive at? And what can be so absurd a thing to say is this, that this indeed is a sign of such and such a thing, or a proof of it, and on that account I follow it, but it is possible that that which is indicated may either be false or may actually have no existence at all.

Cassius:

Hey Joshua, thank you for reading that passage. It’s got a lot of depth to it, and we’re going to have to go through it carefully to pull out some pieces that need to be pulled out. But I think in the end, the general point being made here is relatively clear. To say that something is probable still says that you have an understanding of true or false. To say that it is probable means you have some kind of understanding of the word it. It’s probable that it’s white, or it’s probable that it’s black, presumes some knowledge of white or black. And in the end, I think that’s basically the ultimate point that Lusola’s is making here. It’s just because you’re employing the word probable as a kind of crutch to insulate yourself from the word knowledge, or no, that doesn’t solve the problem for you. Because by talking about something at all, you’re using a concept or an understanding of that thing that implies a truth or falsity to that concept. Now, I don’t know if you want to comment on that as a sort of general summary of it, or just dive back into some of the specifics in section 11 at the beginning. But in the end, as we come up for air after going through passages complex as that, I don’t think in the end that it’s that dark, that difficult. And we can probably summarize it as pointing out the inadequacies of the whole approach to probability in the first place. But there’s a lot of specific passages in here that we can comment on profitably, I think. So whichever direction you feel appropriate, let’s dive back into 11.

Joshua:

Yeah, I think your summary of his argument is a good one. He keeps using this word mark, which I was going to look up in the Latin text, and I don’t know if I’ll get to that in time. And he uses this word perception as sort of the main point of what he’s talking about. But the point is, he is like someone walking through the woods, finding traces, footsteps here, a bit of fur hanging on a twig or leaf here. You know, he’s picking up these little traces that are left, holding them up, and saying that this is a mark. This is going to lead me to an understanding of what is true. And as he says in the very last paragraph, almost the last sentence of the text, how can these skeptics justify their own position and their own defense of probability as in any way useful in either philosophical discussions or the conduct of life? Because they are walking through the same woods I’m walking through. And they’re seeing the same footprints. And they’re seeing the same little tuft of fur stuck to a branch or whatever. And they’re seeing scratch marks in the bark of a tree. They’re seeing all of these marks, these signs. But these signs do not avail them, even if they speak in terms of probability about them. Because it is possible, according to them, that that which is indicated by the mark or by the sign may either be false, or it may not even exist at all. I mean, that is a great point that Lou Solis is making here, I think, Cassius, that if we are on the ground ferreting out evidence and holding it up and looking very closely at it and saying, what can I learn from this? This is argument here is if you were Cicero, you can’t learn anything from it. Because if it’s possible for the sign to not indicate what it clearly indicates, or if it’s possible that the sign doesn’t even exist, and you’re just hallucinating it or imagining it, then every single mark and every single sign, every piece of evidence, every scrap of data that you come across, ultimately you have to reject. You have to subject to the same standard. And the standard is none of this is actually reliable. If we can only talk in terms of what is probable, none of what I’m seeing can really be relied upon. And if you can’t rely upon it, how can you use it as a guide, as a compass to help you navigate your way through life? It’s an interesting historical anecdote that when Cicero himself was the Roman rank of Quaester in the city of Lili Bayum on the island of Sicily, he went to Syracuse on the other side of the island. And while he was there, he set himself the task of rediscovering the lost grave of Archimedes himself. Archimedes, by the way, who died in the Roman conquest of Syracuse, Cicero, a later Roman, now is going to the city and he’s looking for the grave of Archimedes. And he knows because of the texts that he has read, that Archimedes left a will that determined what his gravestone would look like. And it would be crowned by a geometric proof that he had solved, that he considered to be one of his crowning achievements. And on the gravestone would be written quatrain of verse or whatever. And so Cicero is armed with this knowledge and he goes looking and he is able to make out in the distance, in the overgrown bramble of this untended and unmaintained graveyard, he’s able to make out the headstone based on the description. And this to me, I love this story because Cicero is so interested in the past, just as we are. And he gets a front row seat to the rediscovery. Indeed, he’s the main character in the rediscovery of the grave of one of the greatest geometricians and mathematicians from the ancient world. But the techniques that he’s using to rediscover this grave, Lucilus is talking about the same techniques here. You’re looking for the sign. You’re looking for the mark. You’re looking for something that stands out and that indicates a certain fact. And if you say that you can only speak in terms of what is probable, then it’s not a fact. It is potentially true, maybe even likely true, but just as possibly it’s false. And just as possibly as that, the sign or mark doesn’t even exist. He’s really making, I think, a very interesting and a strong case against Cicero here. And because of Cicero’s own life experience and his own work and the record that we have of all of that, it’s interesting to see the case that he makes and how he plays that out.

Cassius:

Yeah, Joshua, I think you’re definitely right. It is fascinating and it is helpful and it is useful for us in studying Epicurean philosophy because there’s parts of this that we agree with. And in this particular moment, probably a lot of it that we agree with. But there’s also parts that we don’t. And there’s going to be a lot more to say about this. But as you describe what his position is, you’re using the word signs a lot. And that’s why we’re reading this. We’re going to be eventually taking up Philodemus’ own signs. And so we’re going to have to drill down to exactly what that word and the discussion is really about. Clearly, Epicurus would agree that if no amount of evidence is sufficient to let you reach a conclusion, then just like Lucullus here, Epicurus is going to take the position that you’re just going to be drifting along and totally worthless, totally unable to make the decisions you need to make. If you go through the forest and you find all sorts of evidence of a certain thing, you’ve got to be able to take a position on. You have to decide whether a particular mushroom is edible or whether it’s poisonous. You have to come to practical conclusions about the way the world operates. Now, the caveat that we’ll talk a lot more about as we go further on is that, again, Lucullus is talking about signs and indicating that there are certain signs that cannot possibly be false. And I think that’s where we’re going to get into a very interesting difference with what Philodemus is going to explain to us. Because I think what we’re going to find is that Philodemus is going to argue on behalf of Epicurus that if you’re looking for something in nature that is intrinsically true, that cannot be false, that you cannot be mistaken about, and that you’re going to be able to reach that conclusion by some process of logical deduction, you’ve got a severe problem. Because from the Epicurean point of view, in a universe of atoms moving through the void in which there is no divine direction or divine logic, you have to constantly test what’s in front of you according to the anticipations, feeling, and the senses. And you’re going to be going through a process that is similar, perhaps, to what Lucullus is discussing, but you’re always testing according to the evidence. You’re not reaching a conclusion that there is a particular perception that is so clear that it cannot possibly be false. That’s going to take a lot of development and a lot of explanation, both as we go forward through the rest of academic questions and as we get into Philodemus’ own signs. But I think we’re going to find something like that is the dispute here between the Stoics and the Epicureans. And it has major practical implications because the Stoics are looking for some kind of firm, absolute truth they can lock onto and claim that it’s going to be true at all times, for all places, and all people. Because it is indeed emanated from and ordained by a divine being that has ordained everything in the universe to be the way it is. Epicurus throws out all of that kind of orientation and says that knowledge does not come to us by looking to some divine organizer. The confidence that we need in knowledge comes to us through the use of our senses, anticipations, and feelings to evaluate the evidence that is before us at particular times, in particular places, and with particular people. And that’s a major, major, major difference of orientation. We do have to have confidence in our conclusions. The Epicureans and the Stoics are agreed upon that. But the method that they’re going to use is going to be dramatically different and lead to dramatically different conclusions about the nature of the universe and about how to act on a day-to-day basis. Joshua, it’s time for us to bring today’s episode to a conclusion. What are your thoughts as we reach the end of today’s episode?

Joshua:

Well, we’re going to have to remember to come back next week and talk about the distinction that he’s making here with reference to Carniades, right? Because with Carniades, he says, whether you bring forward a perception which is merely probable or one which is at once probable and free from all hindrance, as Carniades contended. So there are further layers to the skeptic position here that Lusoulos is dealing with. And he thinks his argument applies to all of them, and he may be right, but we are going to have to pay close attention to these distinctions. One thing I would just point out as we come to an end here today, you’ve already referenced the quote from Lucretius about these thinkers standing with their head where their feet should be. And the point I just wanted to make is that the Latin word that he uses is vestigia, something that is left behind. And vestigia was a common way of saying footprint, right? He’s saying they’re standing with their head in their own footprints. And I think, I don’t know if this is an intentional move on his part. But with all this discussion of signs and marks and stuff, it’s almost as if he’s saying, you claim you can’t find the mark, you claim you can’t find the sign, you claim you can’t find the evidence, you’re literally standing with your head on top of it, right? I think that’s an interesting connection and one I certainly wouldn’t have made if we hadn’t gone through this text today. (…) As I said earlier, I still haven’t had much time today to get into the language that he’s using of perception and mark and sign and so on, and what the Latin words are that he’s using there. And that is something I’m going to have to pay attention to before we come back. I’m going to have to try to remember to do that. I see that in section 12, we’re going to start to get back into the use of a Greek word, at least one at least. But that connection to Lucretius, I think is an interesting one. And that’s always been a difficult line for us, because it’s not entirely clear what Lucretius is saying. But one thing that I think he could be saying is, if you can’t find it, it’s because your head is sitting on it right now. You know what I mean? I think that’s a kind of a funny response to this skeptic position.

Cassius:

That’s why I think you’re right. I think that’s a very creative way to understand what Lucretius is saying, and probably exactly on the mark. You know, how many years have many of us read Lucretius and almost dismissed book four as being irrelevant to anything because of all of its discussions of images and illusions and so forth? But when you consider it in the context, as you’re talking about, of exactly this debate that the academic skeptics and the Stoics and basically everybody was having about the nature of knowledge, book four and its discussion of how we gain knowledge through the movement of particles, call it images, call it eyesight, call it hearing, call it smelling. It’s all a motion of particles. And the proper evaluation of the motion of these particles is how we come to knowledge. So book four is not just some tangent that’s not worth our time to read. It really is diving directly into these issues that are being discussed here in Academic Questions and that we will get to further eventually when we get into own signs, because we have to have confidence in our decisions. We have to know when we are confident about something and when we’re not. We have to know when to wait. But in order to make any of these decisions, just like Luscellus is arguing against probability here and Cicero’s position. If you’re even talking about these things at all, that presumes that you have some position on what they are. If you talk about white and you talk about black and you say it’s probable one is black and one is white, by even talking about it, you’re presuming some kind of knowledge of the subject. And that’s what Epicurus is going to give us a solid foundation for instead of doing like the Stoics do and try to base it on some type of divine ordinance or divine revelation. We’ll continue to address those issues next week as we go forward. Thanks for your time today. As always, we invite you to drop by the Epicurean French Forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our discussions of Epicurus. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.