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Hellenistic Philosophy Hellenistic Philosophy • Hellenistic Period: Last quarter of the 4th century BCE (death of Alexander the Great) to end of the 1st century BCE (fall of Egypt to the Romans). • 3 Schools: • Epicureans: Founder = Epicurus • Stoics: Founder = Zeno of Citium • Sceptics: Founders = Arcesilaus (Academic Sceptics); Pyhrro (Pyhrronian Sceptics) Hellenistic Philosophy • 3 Schools, 1 goal: ataraxia or peace of mind. • 3 methods of attaining this goal: • Epicureans: • Maximize pleasure & minimize pain. • Eliminate fear and the false beliefs that cause it through philosophy. • Stoics: • Eliminate the passions entirely. • Resign oneself to fate. • Sceptics (both Academic & Pyhrronian): completely and systematically suspending belief. Hellenistic Philosophy • 2 Systems: Epicurean, Stoic (the Sceptics were self-consciously un- systematic). • Epicureans: 3 Divisions: Physics, Epistemology, Ethics • Stoics: 3 Divisions: Physics, Logic (including Epistemology), Ethics • Both the Epicureans and the Stoics were materialists. Hellenistic Philosophy • Principal Figures • Epicureans: • Epicurus (341-270 BCE). • Lucretius (94-55 BCE). • Stoics: • Zeno of Citium (335-263 BCE). • Chrysippus (280-207 BCE). • Seneca (4 BC - 65 CE). • Epictetus (55-135 CE). Hellenistic Philosophy • Principal Figures • Sceptics: • Academic Scepticism: • Arcesilaus (316-242 BCE). • Carneades (214-129 BCE). Hellenistic Philosophy • Principal Figures • Sceptics: • Pyhrronian Scepticism: • Pyrrho (365-275 BCE). • Timon (320-230 BCE). • Aenesidemus (fl. 1st cent. BCE). • Sextus Empiricus (fl. 200 CE). The Epicureans Physics • Epicurean physics ≈ Democritean atomism: • Macroscopic change explained by combination and separation of atoms. • Universe is … • ultimately made up of unsplittable atoms and void. • infinitely large and contains an infinite number of worlds. • mechanistic, non-teleological, and (for the most part, as we will see) governed by causal necessity. The Epicureans Psychology • Primary functions of the soul: • consciousness • transmission of impulses to the body • The soul can’t survive the body for 2 reasons: • It is corporeal. • The soul and the body are functionally interdependent. The Epicureans Psychology • Corporeality of the soul: • “The soul is a body [made up of] fine parts distributed throughout the entire aggregate, and most closely resembling breath with a certain admixture of heat.” (1A, §63) • 4 material parts of the soul with 4 functions (1B): 1. “Breath” 2. “Air” 3. “A certain fiery stuff” 4. Nameless stuff that provides sensation. The Epicureans Psychology • Main argument for the soul’s corporeality (1A, §67): 1. If we want to say that the soul is incorporeal we shall have to say it is made of void. This is because void is the only incorporeal substance. 2. But if the soul is made of void, it cannot act or be acted on, because only bodies have this nature. 3. Thus, if the soul is to perform any of its functions, it cannot be incorporeal. The Epicureans Psychology • Main argument for the functional interdependence of the body and the soul (1A, §64-6): 1. The soul is responsible for sense perception, but it could not see if it did not have eyes, and it could not hear if it did not have ears, etc.. 2. The eyes, ears, and other sense organs, in turn, share in sense perception but they could not do so without the soul. 3. Thus, it makes no more sense to talk of a disembodied soul seeing than it does to talk of a corpse seeing. 4. So the activities of the soul, i.e., movement and sensation, are joint activities of the soul and the body, and can’t be carried on without the body. The Epicureans Psychology • Epicurean Theory of Sensation, Imagination & Memory (2A & 2B): • Sensation • Purpose of the theory • The senses: Vision, Hearing, & Smell • The Veracity of Sensation • Memory, Imagination, Dreams and Error The Epicureans • Argument for the truth of all impressions (3A): a) Either all sensations are false or b) some sensations are true and some are false, or c) all sensations are true, but the first two options are false, so the last must be true. The Epicureans Epistemology • The criterion of truth: “So, in The Canon Epicurus is found saying that sense-perceptions, basic grasps, and feelings, are the criteria of truth, and the Epicureans add the applications of the intellect to presentations.” (Diogenes Laertius, 4A) • Canon = kanôn, which means “yardstick” or “ruler”. • Epistemology = to kanonikon. • Criteria of truth = metaphorical yardsticks. The Epicureans Epistemology • The 4 criteria of truth: 1. Sense-perceptions (4D): 2. Basic grasps (prolêpsis) (4E) 3. Feelings (4F) 4. Applications of the intellect to presentations (4B, 4C, 4F). The Epicureans Epistemology • Scientific methodology: • Scientific theory: explains an “evident” explanandum by means of a “non-evident” explanans, where … • a “basic grasp” is “testimony for” the “evident” explanandum and • the existence of the “non-evident” explanans is established by the “lack of testimony against” it (its consistency with “the evident”). The Epicureans Epistemology • But consistency ≠ implication. • Epicurus’s response (5C): • Sometimes there are no other explanations consistent with the observed data (§86). • In case where there are other consistent explanations, since the universe is infinitely large, each alternative explanation will hold somewhere at some time (§87). • For there to be “lack of testimony against” a non-evident explanation, the non-evident explanans must be analogous to the evident explanandum (§87-8) The Epicureans Epistemology • Language (6A): • The origin of language: • First stage: spontaneous, onomatopoetic, uninflected, expressive of the immediate content of sensation. • Second stage: spontaneous utterances come, by convention, to denote visible things • Third stage: invention of names for invisible things • So words have a natural connection to their referents. The Epicureans Ethics • Free Will • Democritean physics: mechanistic, non-teleological, governed by causal necessity. • Problem: No room for free will. • Solution: The “atomic swerve”: • Random & undetermined. • Doesn’t disturb the way that macroscopic objects behave but it makes motion at the atomic level indeterministic. • Problem: Free behavior ≠random behavior. The Epicureans Ethics • Free Will • Atomic swerve = necessary condition of free will ; a “starting point” that opens up a field of possibilities within which will can operate. (7C) • Problem of bivalence in future-tensed sentences: • Same solution as Aristotle in De interpretatione 9, viz., future tensed sentences are neither true nor false. (7D The Epicureans Ethics • Pleasure • Pleasure is the highest good because (8A, §§29 ): • One can observe (through sensation) that all animals naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain. • One can feel oneself that pleasure is the greatest good and pain is the worst evil. • It is a basic grasp of reason and the intellect that pleasure is the greatest good and pain is the worst evil. The Epicureans Ethics • Pleasure • Socratic Themes: • All pleasures are good, just insofar as they are pleasurable, and all pains are bad, just insofar as they are painful (8A, §32). • Knowledge is required to “pursue pleasure rationally.” Knowledge = “comparative measurement” of pleasures and pains (8B, §130). The Epicureans Ethics • Pleasure • Epicurus’ Innovations: • Negative Conception of the Summum Bonum: • “The greatest pleasure is that which is perceived when all pain is removed.” (8A, §37) • “The removal of all feeling of pain is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures.” (8C, §3) • Health of the body and freedom of the soul from disturbance is the goal of a blessed life. (8B, §128; 8F, §33) • Socrates’ hedonism in the Protagoras vs. Epicurus’. The Epicureans Ethics • Pleasure • Epicurus’ Innovations: • Types of Pleasure (8H) : • katastematic vs. kinetic • Types of Desire (8B, §§127-32; 8E, §30) • Natural vs. Unnatural/Groundless • Necessary vs. Unnecessary The Epicureans Ethics • Society • An evolutionist account of social concepts like justice: • Justice is not a thing in its own right, but a historically conditioned concept based on utility, i.e., a social contract to avoid mutual harm. (9A, §33) • The existence of justice depends on the ability to make such contracts. (9A, §32) • Since justice derives from utility, and since utility is ephemeral and relative to communities, then the concept of justice will vary. (9B, §§36 & 37 ) The Epicureans Ethics • Friendship (9C, § 23; 9D, §66-7) • The gods (10A) The Epicureans Ethics • Ethics • Death: • Arguments against fearing death: 1. The only rational reason for fearing something is because it is painful. But death is not painful because we will not exist to experience it. Therefore, it is irrational to fear death (11A). 2. A person who grieves for pleasures missed after death, imagines that he is still around to want them. But it is irrational to grieve for missing things that you don’t want. (11C) The Epicureans Ethics • Ethics • Death: • Arguments against fearing death cont’d.: 3. It is irrational for the living to mourn the dead, since the dead are experiencing nothing bad. (11C) 4. Hell is what the conscience of the guilty create for themselves here on earth. (11D) 5. We are not distressed at the thought of not existing before we were born, so why should we worry about not existing after we are dead? (11C) The Epicureans Ethics • Ethics • Death: • Arguments against fearing death cont’d.: 6. What if “time collected after death the matter of our frames and set it all again in place as now, and … again to us the light of life were given?” In that case, the resurrected person wouldn’t be you because she would have no recollection of her previous life. (11C) 7. Since time is infinite, no prolongation of your life will reduce the time that you are dead. (11E).
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