Episode 343 - EATAQ25 - In The Search For Knowledge, Is "Probable" Good Enough?

Welcome to Episode 343 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, moving into Section 11.

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:

• Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

As we moved into section ten, Lucullus (from the Stoic perspective) attacked 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 will move 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"

Episode 343 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "In The Search For Knowledge, Is 'Probable' Good Enough?"