Welcome to Episode 342 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 start 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.
We are now in Section 10 of Book 2
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:
As we move into section ten, Lucullus (from the Stoic perspective) attacks those who imply that the mind - a creation of nature - is useless for obtaining knowledge, which has the result of overturning the whole of life.
He then moves to address those who argue that there is a difference between saying everything is uncertain and that nothing can be perceived, and this takes him toward the discussion of Cicero's own position - that it makes sense to say that some things are probable and some are not.
Then as we move into eleven the talk turns more and more to discussing "signs" - and that is the beginning of the point we are looking for - so that we can eventually tackle Philodemus' "On Signs"
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Cassius July 14, 2026 at 10:36 AM
Episode 342 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "Were Our Minds Designed To Be Good At Pursuing Knowledge?"
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