letter to Men\nceus, which Diogenes Laërtius has preserved, and in
which Epicurus expresses himself as follows: “The youth must neither
be slow to study philosophy, nor must the old man feel it a burden,
for no one is either too young or too old to study the health of his
soul. We must therefore endeavour to find out wherein the happy life
consists; the following are its elements: First, we must hold that
God is a living Being, incorruptible and happy, as the general belief
supposes Him to be; and that nothing is lacking to His incorruptibility
nor to His happiness. But though the existence of the gods is known
to be a fact, yet they are not such as the multitude suppose them to
be. He is therefore not impious who discards his faith in the gods of
the multitude, but he who applies to them the opinions entertained of
them by the mass.” By these gods of Epicurus we can understand nothing
else than the Holy, the Universal, in concrete form. The Stoics held
more to the ordinary conception, without indeed giving much thought
to the Being of God; with the Epicureans, on the other hand, the gods
express an immediate Idea of the system. Epicurus says: “That which is
holy and incorruptible has itself no trouble nor causes it to others;
therefore it is unstirred by either anger or show of favour, for it is
in weakness only that such find a place. The gods may be known by means
of Reason; they consist partly in Number; others are the perfected
type of man, which, owing to the similarity of the images, arises
from the continuous confluence of like images on one and the same
subject.”[163] The gods are thus the altogether general images which
we receive into ourselves; and Cicero says (De Natura Deorum, 18, 38)
that they come singly upon us in sleep. This general image, which is
at the same time an anthropomorphic conception, is the same to which
we give the name of Ideal, only that here the source assigned to it is
the reiterated occurrence of images. The gods thus seem to Epicurus to
be Ideals of the holy life; they are also existent things, consisting
of the finest atoms; they are, however, pure souls, unmixed with any
grosser element, and therefore exempt from toil and trouble and pain.
Their self-enjoyment is wholly passive, as it must be if consistent,
for action has always in it something alien, the opposition of itself
and reality, and the toil and trouble which are involved in it really
represent the aspect of consciousness of opposition rather than that
of realization. The gods lead an existence of pure and passive self
enjoyment, and trouble themselves not with the affairs of the world
and of men. Epicurus goes on to say: “Men must pay reverence to the
gods on account of the perfection of their nature and their surpassing
holiness, not in order to gain from them some special good, or for the
sake of this or that advantage,”[164] The manner in which Epicurus
represents the gods as corporeal Beings in human likeness has been
much derided; thus Cicero, for instance, in the passage quoted (c. 18)
laughs at Epicurus for alleging that the gods have only _quasi_ bodies,
flesh and blood. But from this there follows only that they are, as it
were, the implicit, as we see it stated of the soul and things palpable
to the senses, that they have behind them what is implicit. Our talk
of qualities is no better; for if justice, goodness, and so on, are to
be taken _in sensu eminentiori_, and not as they are with men, we have
in God a Being in the same way possessed of only something resembling
justice and the other qualities. With this there is closely connected
the theory of Epicurus that the gods dwell in vacant space, in the
intermediate spaces of the world, where they are exposed neither to
rain or wind or snow or the like.[165] For the intermediate spaces are
the vacuum, wherein, as the principle of movement, are the atoms in
themselves. Worlds, as phenomena, are complete continuous concretions
of such atoms, but concretions which are only external relations.
Between them, as in vacuum, there are thus these Beings also, which
themselves are certainly concretions of atoms, but concretions which
remain implicit. Yet this leads only to confusion, if a closer
definition is given, for concretion constitutes what is for the senses,
but the gods, even if they were concretions, would not be realities
exactly such as these. In illogical fashion the general, the implicit,
is taken out of reality and set above it, not as atoms, but just as
before, as a combination of these atoms; in this way this combination
is not itself the sensuous. This seems ridiculous, but it is connected
with the interruptions spoken of, and with the relation of the vacuum
to the plenum, the atom. So far, therefore, the gods belong to the
category of negativity as against sensuality, and as this negative is
thought, in that sense what Epicurus said of the gods may still to
some extent be said. To this determination of God a larger measure of
objectivity of course belongs, but it is a perfectly correct assertion
that God, as Thought, is a holy Being, to whom reverence is due for
His own sake alone. The first element in a happy life is therefore
reverence for the gods, uninfluenced by fear or hope.
Further, a second point with Epicurus is the contemplation of death,
the negative of existence, of self-consciousness in man; he requires
us to have a true conception of death, because otherwise it disturbs
our tranquillity. He accordingly says: “Accustom thyself then to the
thought that death concerns us not; for all good and evil is a matter
of sensation, but death is a deprivation (στέρησις) of sensation.
Therefore the true reflection that death is no concern of ours,
makes our mortal life one of enjoyment, since this thought does not
add an endless length of days, but does away with the longing after
immortality. For nothing in life has terrors for him who has once truly
recognized the fact that not to live is not a matter of dread. Thus it
is a vain thing to fear death, not because its presence but because
the anticipation of it brings us pain. For how can the anticipation
of a thing pain us when its reality does not? There is therefore in
death nothing to trouble us. For when we are in life, death is not
there, and when death is there, we are not. Therefore death does not
concern either the living or the dead.” This is quite correct, if we
look at the immediate; it is a thought full of meaning, and drives away
fear. Mere privation, which death is, is not to be confounded with the
feeling of being alive, which is positive; and there is no reason for
worrying oneself about it. “But the future in general is neither ours,
nor is it not ours; hence we must not count upon it as something that
will come to pass, nor yet despair of it, as if it would not come to
pass.”[166] It is no concern of ours either that it is or that it is
not; and it need not therefore cause us uneasiness. This the right way
in which to regard the future also.
Epicurus passes on to speak of impulses, saying: “This moreover is
to be kept in mind, that amongst impulses some are natural, but
others are vain; and of those that are natural some are necessary
while others are natural only. Those that are necessary are either
necessary to happiness, or tend to save the body from pain, or to
self-preservation in general. The perfect theory teaches how to choose
that which promotes health of body and steadfastness of soul, and how
to reject what impairs them, this being the aim of the holy life.
This is the end of all our actions, to have neither pain of body nor
uneasiness of mind. If we but attain to this, all turmoil of the soul
is stilled, since the life no longer has to strive after something
which it needs, and no longer has to seek anything outside of itself
by which the welfare of soul and body is arrived at. But even on the
supposition that pleasure is the first and the inborn good, we do not
for that reason choose all pleasures, but many we renounce, when they
are more than counterbalanced by their painful results; and many pains
we prefer to pleasures, if there follows from them a pleasure that
is greater. Contentment we hold to be a good, not that we may aim at
merely reducing our requirements to a minimum, as the Cynics did, but
that we may seek not to be discontented even when we have not very
much, knowing that they most enjoy abundance who can do without it, and
that what is naturally desired is easy to procure, while what is a mere
idle fancy can be procured only with difficulty. Simple dishes afford
just as much enjoyment as costly banquets, if they appease hunger.
Therefore when we make pleasure our aim, it is not the enjoyments of
the gourmand, as is often falsely thought, but freedom from both pain
of body and uneasiness of mind. We attain to this life of happiness by
sober reason alone, which examines the grounds of all choice and all
rejection, and expels the thoughts by which the soul’s rest is most
disturbed. It is surely better to be unhappy and reasonable than to be
happy and unreasonable; for it is better that in our actions we should
judge correctly than that we should be favoured by luck. Meditate on
this day and night, and let thyself be shaken by nought from thy peace
of soul, that thou mayest live as a god amongst men; for the man who
lives amongst such imperishable treasures has nothing in common with
mortal men. Of all those the first and foremost is reasonableness
(φρόνησις), which on this account is still more excellent than
philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues. For they show that
one cannot live happily, unless he lives wisely and honourably and
justly: nor can he live wisely and honourably and justly without living
happily.”[167]
Therefore, although at first sight there seems not much to be said for
the principle of Epicurus, nevertheless by means of the inversion of
making the guiding principle to be found in thought proceeding from
Reason, it passes into Stoicism, as even Seneca himself has admitted
(_v. supra_, pp. 302, 303); and actually the same result is reached
as with the Stoics. Hence the Epicureans describe their wise man in
at least as glowing terms as the Stoics do theirs; and in both these
systems the wise man is depicted with the same qualities, these being
negative. With the Stoics the Universal is the essential principle,—not
pleasure, the self-consciousness of the particular as particular; but
the reality of this self-consciousness is equally something pleasant.
With the Epicureans pleasure is the essential principle, but pleasure
sought and enjoyed in such a way that it is pure and unalloyed, that
is to say, in accordance with sound judgment, and with no greater evil
following to destroy it: therefore pleasure is regarded in its whole
extent, that is, as being itself a universal. In Diogenes Laërtius,
however (X. 117-121), the Epicurean delineation of the wise man has a
character of greater mildness; he shapes his conduct more according to
laws already in operation, while the Stoic wise man, on the other hand,
does not take these into account at all. The Epicurean wise man is less
combative than the Stoic, because the latter makes his starting-point
the thought of self-dependence, which, while denying self, exercises
activity: the Epicureans, on the other hand, proceed from the thought
of existence, which is not so exacting, and seeks not so much this
activity directed outwards, as rest; this, however, is not won by
lethargy, but by the highest mental culture. Yet although the content
of the Epicurean philosophy, its aim and result, stands thus on as high
a level as the Stoic philosophy, and is its exact parallel, the two
are nevertheless in other respects directly opposed to one another;
but each of these systems is one-sided, and therefore both of them
are dogmatisms inconsistent with themselves by the necessity of the
Notion, that is, they contain the contrary principle within them. The
Stoics take the content of their thought from Being, from the sensuous,
demanding that thought should be the thought of something existent: the
Epicureans, on the contrary, extend their particularity of existence
to the atoms which are only things of thought, and to pleasure as a
universal; but in accordance with their respective principles, both
schools know themselves to be definitely opposed to each other.
The negative mean to these one-sided principles is the Notion, which,
abrogating fixed extremes of determination such as these, moves them
and sets them free from a mere state of opposition. This movement of
the Notion, the revival of dialectic—directed as it is against these
one-sided principles of abstract thinking and sensation—we now see in
its negative aspect, both in the New Academy and in the Sceptics. Even
the Stoics, as having their principle in thought, cultivated dialectic,
though theirs was (pp. 254, 255) a common logic, in which the form of
simplicity passes for the Notion, while the Notion, as such, represents
the negative element in it, and dissolves the determinations, which are
taken up into that simplicity. There is a higher form of the Notion of
dialectic reality, which not only applies itself to sensuous existence,
but also to determinate Notions, and which brings to consciousness the
opposition between thought and existence; not expressing the Universal
as simple Idea, but as a universality in which all comes back into
consciousness as an essential moment of existence. In Scepticism we now
really have an abrogation of the two one-sided systems that we have
hitherto dealt with; but this negative remains negative only, and is
incapable of passing into an affirmative.
C. THE NEW ACADEMY.
As opposed to the Stoic and Epicurean Dogmatism, we first of all have
the New Academy, which is a continuation of Plato’s Academy in as far
as the followers of Plato are divided into the Old, Middle, and New
Academies; some indeed allow of a fourth Academy and even a fifth.[168]
The most noteworthy figures here are those of Arcesilaus and Carneades.
The establishment of the Middle Academy is ascribed to Arcesilaus,
and the New Academy is said to contain the philosophy of Carneades;
but this distinction has no signification. Both of these are closely
connected with Scepticism, and the Sceptics themselves have often
trouble in distinguishing their standpoint from the Academic principle.
Both have been claimed by Scepticism as Sceptics, but between the
Academics and pure Scepticism a distinction has been drawn, which is
certainly very formal, and has but little signification, but to which
the Sceptics in their subtlety undoubtedly attached some meaning. The
distinction often consists in the meanings of words only, and in quite
external differences.
The standpoint of the Academics is that they express the truth as a
subjective conviction of self-consciousness; and this tallies with the
subjective idealism of modern times. The truth, in so far as it is only
a subjective conviction, has hence been called, by the New Academy,
the _probable_. Although followers of Plato, and hence, Platonists,
the Academicians did not remain at the standpoint of Plato, nor could
they have done so. But we easily see the connection of this principle
with the Platonic doctrines, if we recollect that with Plato the Idea
has been the principle, and that, indeed, on the whole, in the form
of universality. Plato remained, as we saw above (pp. 139, 140), in
the abstract Idea; to him the one great matter in Philosophy is to
combine the infinite and finite. Plato’s Ideas are derived from the
necessities of reason, from enthusiasm for the truth, but they are in
themselves devoid of movement, and only universal, while Aristotle
demands actuality, self-determining activity. Plato’s dialectic has
only attempted to assert the universal as such, and to demonstrate the
determinate and particular to be null, thus leaving nothing at all but
abstract universality. His dialectic has hence very often a negative
result, in which determinations are merely done away with and annulled.
With Plato the working out of the concrete has thus not gone far, and
where he, as in the Timæus, proceeds into the determinate, _e.g._ of
organic life, he becomes infinitely trivial and quite unspeculative,
while with Aristotle matters are very different. The necessity for a
scientific ground has necessarily caused us to be carried on beyond
this Platonic point of view. The Stoics and Epicureans were imbued
with the scientific necessity, not yet recognized by Plato, of giving
a content to the universal of the Idea, _i.e._ of grasping particular
determinateness, but the succeeding Academicians stand in a negative
attitude to them in this regard. To the end they made a point of
holding to the Platonic universality, uniting to this the Platonic
dialectic also. The principle of the New Academy could thus, like the
Platonic dialectic, possess a dialectic attitude and bearing which
proceeded to nothing affirmative; as, indeed, in many of Plato’s
dialogues, mere confusion is what is arrived at. But while with Plato
the affirmative result is essentially the result of dialectic, so that
with him we have really found the universal Idea as species, during all
this time, on the other hand, the tendency to abstract apprehension
is predominant; and as this showed itself in the Stoic and Epicurean
philosophy, it has also extended to the Platonic Idea and degraded it
into being a form of the understanding. Plato’s Ideas were thus torn
from their rest through thought, because in such universality thought
has not yet recognized itself as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness
confronted them with great pretensions, actuality in general asserted
itself against universality; and the rest of the Idea necessarily
passed into the movement of thought. This movement now, however, in
the New Academy turned dialectically against the determination of the
Stoics and Epicureans, which rested on the fact that the criterion of
the truth ought to be a concrete. For example, in the conception as
comprehended by the Stoics, there is a thought which likewise has a
content, although, again, this union still remains very formal. But the
two forms in which the dialectic of the New Academy turns against this
concrete, are represented by Arcesilaus and Carneades.
1. ARCESILAUS.
Arcesilaus kept to the abstraction of the Idea as against the
criterion; for though in the Idea of Plato, _i.e._ in the Timæus and in
his dialectic, the concrete was derived from quite another source, this
was only admitted for the first time later on by the Neo-platonists,
who really recognized the unity of the Platonic and the Aristotelian
principles. The opposition to the Dogmatists thus does not in the case
of Arcesilaus proceed from the dialectic of the Sceptics, but from
keeping to abstraction; and here we perceive the gulf marking out this
epoch from any other.
Arcesilaus was born at Pitane in Æolia in the 116th Olympiad (318
B.C.), and was a contemporary of Epicurus and Zeno. Though he
originally belonged to the Old Academy, yet the spirit of the time and
the progressive development of Philosophy did not now admit of the
simplicity of the Platonic manner. He possessed considerable means, and
devoted himself entirely to the studies requisite for the education
of a noble Greek, viz. to rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, &c.
Mainly for the purpose of exercising himself in rhetoric, he came to
Athens, here was introduced to Philosophy, and lived henceforth for
its sake alone; he held intercourse with Theophrastus, Zeno, &c.,
and it is a subject of dispute whether he did not hear Pyrrho also.
Arcesilaus, familiar with all the Philosophy of those days, was by
his contemporaries held to be as noble a man as he was a subtle and
acute philosopher; being without pride in himself, he recognized the
merits of others. He lived in Athens, occupied the post of scholarch
in the Academy, and was thus a successor of Plato. After the death
of Crates, the successor of Speusippus, the place of honour in the
Academy devolved on Sosicrates, but he willingly gave it up in favour
of Arcesilaus on account of the superiority of the latter in talent
and philosophy. What really happened as regards the transference
of the chair to others, is, for the rest, unknown to us. He filled
this office, in which he made use of the method of disputation, with
approbation and applause, until his death, which took place in Olympiad
134, 4 (244 B.C.), in the seventy-fourth year of his age.[169]
The principal points in the philosophy of Arcesilaus are preserved
by Cicero in his _Academics Quæstiones_, but Sextus Empiricus is
more valuable as an authority, for he is more thorough, definite,
philosophic and systematic.
_a._ This philosophy is specially known to us as being a dialectic
directed against Stoicism, with which Arcesilaus had much to do, and
its result, as far as its main principles are concerned, is expressed
thus: “The wise man must restrain his approbation and assent.”[170]
This principle was called ἐποχή, and it is the same as that of the
Sceptics; on the other hand this expression is connected with the
principle of the Stoics as follows. Because to Stoic philosophy truth
consists in the fact that thought declares some content of existence to
be its own, and the conception as comprehended gives its approbation
to this content, the content of our conceptions, principles and
thoughts undoubtedly appears to be different from thought, and the
union of the two, which is the concrete, only arises by means of some
determinate content being taken up into the form of thought and thus
being expressed as the truth. But Arcesilaus saw this consequence,
and his saying that approbation most be withheld is thus as much as
saying that by thus taking up the content no truth comes to pass, but
only phenomenon; and this is true, because, as Arcesilaus puts it,
conception and thought likewise remain apart. Arcesilaus has certainly
unthinkingly allowed that this content united to consciousness is
a concrete such as was indicated, only he has asserted that this
connection merely gives a perception with a good ground, and not
what he calls truth. This is called probability, but not quite
appropriately; it is a universal set forth through the form of thought,
and is only formal, having no absolute truth. Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c.
33, § 233) puts this plainly in saying that “Arcesilaus has declared
the withholding of approbation in relation to parts, to be a good, but
the assenting to parts to be an evil,” because the assent only concerns
_parts_. That is, if thought is to be retained as a universal, it
cannot come to be a criterion; and that is the meaning of Arcesilaus
when he asks that the wise man should remain at the universal, and not
go on to the determinate as if this determinate were the truth.
Sextus Empiricus gives us (adv. Math. VII. 155, 151-153) a more
particular explanation of this philosophy, which is preserved to us
only as being in opposition to the Stoics. Arcesilaus asserted as
against the Stoics, that everything is incomprehensible (ἀκατάληπτα).
He thus combated the conception of thought (καταληπτικὴν φαντασίαν),
which to the Stoics is the point of most importance and the concrete
truth. Arcesilaus further attacked the Stoics thus: “They themselves
say that the conception of thought is the mean between scientific
knowledge and opinion, the one of which pertains alone to fools and the
other alone to wise men; the conception of thought is common to both,
and the criterion of the truth. Arcesilaus here argued in such a way as
to show that between scientific knowledge and opinion the conception
of thought is no criterion, for it is either in the wise man or the
fool, and in the former it is knowledge, and in the latter, opinion.
If it is nothing excepting these, there remains to it nothing but an
empty name.” For knowledge must be a developed consciousness derived
from reasons, but these reasons, as conceptions of thought, Arcesilaus
states to be just such thoughts as those of the fool. They are thus,
no doubt, the concrete directing power which constitutes the principal
content of our consciousness; but it is not proved that they are the
truth. Thus this mean, as judging between reason and opinion, pertains
equally to the wise man and the fool, and may be error or truth
equally; and thus the wise man and the fool have the same criterion,
and yet they must, in relation to the truth, be distinguished from one
another.
Arcesilaus further gives effect to the distinctions which are more
particularly brought up in modern times, and relied upon. “If
comprehension is the assent given to a conception of thought, it does
not exist. For, in the first place, the assent is not on account of
a conception, but of a reason; that is to say, it is only as regards
axioms that this assent holds good.”[171] That is good; more fully
the purport would be something like this: Thought, as subjective, is
made to assent to an existence which is a determinate content of the
conception. A sensuous image such as this, however, is foreign to
thought, and with it thought cannot accord, because it is something
different from it, something from which thought, on the contrary,
holds itself aloof. It is, in general, only to a thought that thought
finds itself conformable, and only in a thought that it finds itself;
thus only a universal axiom is capable of such accord, for only
such abstract principles are immediately pure thoughts. Arcesilaus
thus holds it up against the Stoics that their principle contains a
contradiction within itself, because the conception of thought is made
to be the thought of another, but thought can only think itself. This
is a thought which concerns the inmost essence of the thing. Arcesilaus
thus here makes the same celebrated distinction as in recent times has
again been brought forward with so much force as the opposition between
thought and Being, ideality and reality, subjective and objective.
Things are something different from me. How can I attain to things?
Thought is the independent determination of a content as universal;
but a given content is individual and hence we cannot assent to such.
The one is here, the other there; subjective and objective cannot
pass to one another—this is a form of thought upon which for long the
whole culture of modern philosophy has turned, and which we still find
to-day. It is important to have a consciousness of this difference,
and to assert this consciousness against the principle of the Stoics.
It was of this unity of thought and reality that the Stoics ought to
have given an account; and this they did not do, and indeed it was
never done in ancient times. For the ancients did not prove that the
subjective element of thought and this objective content are really in
their diversity the passing into one another, and that this identity
is their truth; this was only found in Plato in an abstract form and
as a first commencement. The unity of thought and conception is the
difficult matter; thus if thought, as such, is the principle, it is
abstract. The logic of the Stoics hence remained formal merely, and the
attainment of a content could not be demonstrated. Thought and Being
are themselves such abstractions, and we may move to and fro between
them for long without arriving at any determination. Thus this unity of
universal and particular cannot be the criterion. With the Stoics the
conception as comprehended appears to be immediately asserted; it is a
concrete, but it is not shown that this is the truth of these distinct
elements. Against this immediately accepted concrete, the assertion of
the difference of the two is thus quite consistent.