Welcome to Episode 319 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.
Last week we completed our series on Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations," and this week we start a new series that will help us with canonics / epistemology. We will eventually move to Philodemus' "On Signs" / "On Methods of Inference," and when we do we will refer to David Sedley's article on "On Signs," and the appendix in the translation prepared by Philip Lacey, both of which are very good but difficult.
To get us acclimated to the issues, we need a little more Cicero from his work "Academic Questions." This is much shorter than On Ends and Tusculan Disputations but gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato's Academy and shows how Aristotle and the Stoics (and Epicurus) responded to those controversies.
Once we get that overview we'll be prepared to tackle Philodemus and get a deeper explanation of the Epicurean view. This wee will will start with a general introduction and get into Section 1.
Out text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We'll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we'll also refer to the Rackam translation here: