Epicureans, Stoics & Sceptics
|
Topic |
Doctrines & Discoveries |
Notes & Quotes |
|
Overview: Overriding Ethical Concerns |
Epicureans & Stoics both stress the ethical side of philosophy How to live the paramount question: seeking a naturalistic answer. Other Questions in subserve this ethical one {1} What is there? How can we know? |
1. Philosophy is like an orchard in which logic is the walls, physics the trees, and ethics the fruit; or like an egg, in which logic is the shell, physics the white, and ethics the yolk. (Saying attributed to Zeno the Stoic) |
|
Epicureans (All the quotes are from Epicurus)
Epicurus c. 341-271 BCE INSCRIPTION ABOVE THE ENTRANCE TO EPIRCURUS’ GARDEN Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here
our highest good is pleasure.
Lucretius c. 99-55 BCE |
Atomistic Metaphysics with Swerve Most conducive to happiness (i.e., pleasure) if death is the end, there's nothing to be afraid of (no harm can befall the dead) {2} get rid of other superstitious fears too: fear of curses, plagues (as gods' punishment), etc. (10) Undetermined atomic swerves accommodate free will Empiricist Epistemology {1} Theology Gods exist: they're also material things universality of human religious belief cannot be otherwise explained Gods aren't interested in human or any other worldly affairs governing the world would be a bother with no conceivable payoff No personal immortality: our soul atoms scatter when we die Ethical Doctrine Egoistic Hedonism {3,4} Hedonism: the only intrinsic good is pleasure Egoistic: for each their own pleasure Kinds of Pleasures Physical (mixed with pain): violent & disturbing short-lived short-sighted (imprudent & upsetting) Intellectual (unmixed): tranquilizing Natural v. Unnatural & Necessary v. Unnecessary necessary (food) v. unnecessary (sex) {6} natural (vittles) v. unnatural (cuisine) Highest Pleasure -- true happiness -- resides in tranquility should try to avoid disturbances (like the gods) live naturally & simply that's most prudent (what maximizes the long-term balance of pleasure) {6} Friendship the chief instrumental good {7,8} |
1. Now the universal whole is a body; for our senses bear us witness is every case that bodies have a real existence; and the evidence of the senses . . . ought to be the rule of our reasonings about everything that is not directly perceived. Otherwise, if that which we call the vacuum, or space, or intangible nature, had not a real existence, there would be nothing in which the bodies could be contained, or across which they could move, as we see that they really do move. 2. [Death] does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more. 3. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin each act of pursuit and avoidance. 4. Beauty and virtue and the like are to be honoured if they give pleasure; but if they do not give pleasure we must bid them farewell. 5. The greatest good of all is prudence: it is a more precious thing even than philosophy. 6. Sexual intercourse has never done a man good and he is lucky if it has not harmed him. 7. Friendship cannot be divorced from pleasure... because without it neither can we live in safety and without fear, or even pleasantly. 8. Of all the things which wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship. 9. [D]eath is nothing to us, for all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is the deprivation of sensation. 10. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. |
|
Cynics
Diogenes c. 413-323 BCE
Stoics
Zeno 333-264 BCE Cleanthes 331-232 BCE
Chrysippus 280-207 BCE
Epictetus 55-135
Marcus Aurelius 121-180
|
The Cynical Background Socratic Inspiration independence of character indifference to circumstance integrity is everything: the amenities are nothing Socratic argument: Nothing bad -- no real harm -- can befall the good. poverty, pain, suffering, and death befall the good Hence: poverty pain, suffering & death aren't bad Cynics rejected conventional virtues in favor of naturalness kind of a slacker ethos: lived like dogs -- hence the name Stoic Logic & Epistemology Explored the logic of complex propositions disjunctive syllogism hypothetical syllogism Nominalistic Empiricism Nominalism (Conceptualism) no transcendent forms (contra Plato) no immanent forms (contra Aristotle) so-called "forms" are mental images or concepts Empiricism: all knowledge and every conception is perceptually based only individuals exist and our knowledge is of these mind is originally a blank slate concepts formed by accretion of perceptual images Problem of the criterion of truth subjectivity of "forms" squares ill with correspondence truth: to say what's red is "red" is true if red is not really out there this is trouble subjective criterion of veracity: vividness or clarity of the images or apprehensions Physics & Metaphysics Neo-Heraclitean Materialism Fire is the basic form of matter fire is god Cycle Universal Conflagration (all things -- including souls -- are destroyed): Limited survival Cleanthes: individual souls survive until the conflagration Chrysippus: only the souls of the good survive Eternal Return: cosmic history exactly repeats God or Nature {1} God is the soul of the world, not separate from it {8} the world is a rationally ordered -- evidenced by us (the microcosm) {1} the Law of Nature is Divine Providence {2,7} All happens as Providence/Nature preordains: fatalism Heraclitean Theodicy {3,6} "Bad" things only appear to be so due to the limitations of our human perspective To God -- sub specie aeternitatus -- all is for the best evil must exist as the correlate of good Ethics the good = amor fati : the love of fate/God/nature {5} this alone is in our power -- to mentally assent or dissent from the dictates of God/ nature all obey God's law the good do it voluntarily {4} Motivation (not results) the only morally relevant consideration Rejection of emotion: practice detachment; keep cool nature -- the divine order -- is rational the emotions are irrational therefore the emotions need to be curbed |
1. God most glorious, called
by many a name, 2. Nay but thou knowest to
make the crooked straight: 3. Comedies have within them ludicrous verses which, though bad in themselves, yet lend a certain grace to the whole play. (Cleanthes) 4. "[I]f to evil prone, my will rebelled, I needs must follow still." (Cleanthes) 5. "Live according to nature." (Stoic Maxim) 6. "There is nothing more inept than the people who suppose that good could have existed without the existence of evil. Good and evil being antithetical, both must needs subsist in opposition." (Chrysippus) 7. Has [the world] no governor? And how is it possible that a city or a family cannot continue to exist, not even the shortest time without an administrator and guardian, and that so great and beautiful a system should be administered with such order and yet without a purpose and by chance? (Epictetus) 8. All things are mutually intertwined . . . and together help to order one ordered Universe. For there is both one Universe, made up of all things, and one God immanent in all things, and one Substance, and one Law, and one Reason, and one Truth, if indeed there is also one perfecting of living creatures that have the same origin and share the same reason.(Marcus Aurelius) SCEPTICISM 1. "Equipollence" we use of equality in respect of probability and improbability, to indicate that no two of the conflicting judgments takes precedence of any other as being more probable. "Suspense" is a state of mental rest owing to which we neither affirm or deny anything. "Quietude" is an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul. (Sextus Empiricus) 2. [I]n order to decide the dispute which has arisen about the criterion (of truth) we must possess an accepted criterion by which we shall be able to judge the dispute; and in order to possess. (Sextus Empiricus)
|
|
Scepticism:
Pyrrho 360-270 BC
Sextus Empiricus fl. c. 200
|
Ethical Aim: Quietude {1} Intellectual Means {1} Destructive Dialectic: Method of Antinomy &Doubt Equipollence: equal probability of contrary judgments Suspension of Belief Concerning the Criterion of Truth {2} can’t be established unless we already have a criterion so it can't be established Concerning perception {3} involuntarily prompted "appearances" not disputed no judgment concerning the nature or independent existence of things can be rationally drawn from "appearances". Academic Scepticism: compare Plato's mistrust of perception Coherence theory of "judgment of truth" {4} |
3. [W]e do not overthrow the affective sense impressions which induce our assent involuntarily; and these impressions are "the appearances." And when we question whether the underlying object is such as it appears, we grant the fact that it appears, and our doubt does not concern the appearance itself but the account given of that appearance . . . . (Sextus Empiricus). 4. [T]he Academic forms his judgment of truth by the concurrence of presentations, and when none of the presentations in the concurrence provokes in him a suspicion of its falsity, he asserts that the impression is true." (Carneades) |
