Welcome to Episode 357 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 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. This week will continue in Section 18 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: Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
As we proceed through the end of Academic Questions, these are the topics we expect to cover:
24. Lucullus's Extended Rebuttal of the Academic Doctrine, and His Concluding Appeal to Cicero (2:XIII)
25. Cicero Begins His Reply (2:XX)
26. Cicero Lays Out the Syllogism About Assent and Opinion (2:XXI)
27. Cicero Turns to Antiochus's Own Inconsistency (2:XXII)
28. Cicero Defends His Citation of the Ancient Philosophers (2:XXIII)
29. Cicero Adds Chrysippus and the Cyrenaics, Then Returns to Arcesilas and Zeno (2:XXIV)
30. Cicero Returns to Attacking the Senses (2:XXV)
31. Cicero Presses the Sun's Size and the Limits of Trained Perception (2:XXVI)
32. Cicero Turns the "Art" Argument Back on Lucullus (2:XXVII)
33. Cicero Multiplies Examples From Madness (2:XXVIII)
34. Cicero Attacks Reason and Dialectics: The Sorites Paradox (2:XXIX)
35. Cicero Presses the Liar Paradox (2:XXX)
36. Cicero Presents Carneades's Own Positive Doctrine of Probability (2:XXXI)
37. Cicero Distinguishes the Academic Position From Epicurus's (2:XXXII)
38. Cicero Defends Probability Against the Charge That It Cannot Support Memory or Action (2:XXXIII)
39. Cicero Answers the "Self-Refuting" and "Two Incompatible Propositions" Objections (2:XXXIV)
40. Cicero Broadens the Argument Beyond the Stoics (2:XXXV)
41. Cicero Reflects on His Own Position Among the Competing Schools (2:XXXVI)
42. Cicero's Survey of Disagreement Among the Natural Philosophers (2:XXXVII)
43. Cicero Presses the Problem of Providence and the Limits of Physics (2:XXXVIII)
44. Cicero's Survey Continues: The Soul, the Antipodes, and the Motion of the Earth (2:XXXIX)
45. Cicero Asks Which Natural Philosopher He Would Even Choose to Follow (2:XL)
46. Cicero Turns to Ethics: Even the Gods Are Disputed (2:XLI)
47. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part One (2:XLII)
48. Cicero's Roll Call of Rival Schools on the Chief Good, Part Two (2:XLIII)
49. Cicero Weighs Zeno Against Antiochus on Virtue and the Happy Life (2:XLIV)
50. Cicero Catalogs the Stoic Paradoxes About the Wise Man (2:XLV)
51. Cicero's Climactic Debate Between Pleasure and Honor (2:XLVI)
52. Cicero Turns to the Canon of Truth, and Zeno's Hand (2:XLVII)
53. The Dialogue's Close (2:XLVIII)
Cassius October 31, 2026 at 3:44 PM
Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 357 is now available: "A Brief Word On Sextus Empiricus And The Goal Of Skepticism"
ummary
With Joshua and Kalosyni away this week, Cassius records a short solo episode to tie up a couple of loose ends before Section 19 of Book Two of Cicero's Academic Questions. First, background on Antiochus of Ascalon and Philo of Larissa from David Sedley's 1981 review of John Glucker's Antiochus and the Late Academy: the quarrel at Alexandria in 87 BC, when Antiochus, traveling with the quaestor Lucullus, received a new work of Philo's that outraged him, set two of Cicero's own teachers against each other over whether knowledge is possible. Second, a look ahead to Sextus Empiricus: in Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.12 the Skeptic's end is "quietude in respect of matters of opinion," reached by suspending judgment, like the painter Apelles who threw his sponge at the picture and got the horse's foam by accident. In I.31 Sextus says this quietude is "the opposite" of the Cyrenaic end of pleasure. Cassius reads the abstract of an article asking whether a Greek skeptic can be eudaimon, and lyrics from Ray Davies's song "Quiet Life," posted in a forum thread, as a picture of the skeptical attitude: "No ambition to rock the boat." He argues that this is the reverse of Epicurus, who searched for the truth, took firm positions in the Letter to Menoeceus, founded a school, and fought for what he thought was correct. Ataraxia is one pleasure among others, not the goal; the goal is pleasure.
Transcript
Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 357 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're continuing in our series reviewing Cicero's Academic Questions from an Epicurean perspective. Last week we finished Section 18, and we would be going into Section 19 this week, but for the fact that both Joshua and Kalosyni are unavailable this week. So I'm just going to say a few words about where we are, and we'll have a very short episode, and then come back next week to continue on into 19, complete Lucullus, and get started with Cicero.
One bit of background I'd like to add about the material that we've been covering is in regard to Antiochus of Ascalon and Philo of Larissa, who are not particularly important characters in the great scheme of things, but knowing this about their background may be helpful in terms of where we are going. Most of us don't need to know too much about them. Those who are interested can pursue the review by David Sedley, published in 1981 and entitled "The End of the Academy," of the book Antiochus and the Late Academy by John Glucker. Dr. Sedley says, quote:
"In 87 BC, the upheavals of the First Mithridatic War had driven Philo of Larissa, scholarch of the Athenian Academy, to exile in Rome. Meanwhile, his pupils Antiochus of Ascalon and Heraclitus of Tyre were to be found in the eastern Mediterranean with the entourage of the quaestor Lucullus."
That, of course, is the Lucullus who is speaking here in Academic Questions.
"It was while the party was at Alexandria that there occurred the celebrated furore described by Cicero at Academic Questions II.11–12. Antiochus received from Rome a copy of Philo's latest work, the contents of which so outraged him that he pretended to doubt their authenticity. Heraclitus, when challenged on this, could cite no Academic precedent for them. Yet the work's authenticity was confirmed by two witnesses who had recently been with Philo in Rome. This scene of discord between his two revered masters, Antiochus and Philo, must have been distressing to Cicero."
Dr. Sedley says it must have been distressing to Cicero to see two of his own teachers fighting among themselves, and fighting over this issue of the possibility of knowledge and how to construct a criterion of truth to decide whether anything can be judged to be true or false. That's the issue that we'll be addressing as we continue through Academic Questions.
But as we've also said before, we're doing that in preparation for Philodemus's On Signs, or On Methods of Inference. And that will also enable us to eventually take up the most important summary of these skepticism issues that is available to us, and that is in the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus.
To briefly touch on that today, I'm going to turn to Sextus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book One, Chapter 12, which is entitled "What Is the End of Scepticism?" Let me read just a little bit of that, because that will help identify the direction in which Cicero's skepticism eventually leads. Here's what Chapter 12 says, quote:
"Our next subject will be the End of the Sceptic system. Now an 'End' is 'that for which all actions or reasonings are undertaken, while it exists for the sake of none.'"
And let me insert here that that is almost exactly the way that Torquatus starts off his introduction to Epicurean ethics in Cicero's On Ends. Continuing on, Sextus says:
"We assert still that the Sceptic's End is quietude in respect of matters of opinion and moderate feeling in respect of things unavoidable."
So there are two categories that Sextus is addressing. For things that are unavoidable, he says, he wants moderate feeling. But for those things that are avoidable, which he calls "matters of opinion," his goal is quietude.
"For the Sceptic, having set out to philosophize with the object of passing judgement on the sense-impressions and ascertaining which of them are true and which false, so as to attain quietude thereby, found himself involved in contradictions of equal weight, and being unable to decide between them suspended judgement; and as he was thus in suspense there followed, as it happened, the state of quietude in respect of matters of opinion.
"For the man who opines that anything is by nature good or bad is for ever being disquieted: when he is without the things which he deems good he believes himself to be tormented by things naturally bad and he pursues after the things which are, as he thinks, good; which when he has obtained he keeps falling into still more perturbations because of his irrational and immoderate elation, and in his dread of a change of fortune he uses every endeavour to avoid losing the things which he deems good.
"On the other hand, the man who determines nothing as to what is naturally good or bad neither shuns nor pursues anything eagerly; and, in consequence, he is unperturbed."
So this is a clear statement of where the skeptics are going. Their goal is quietude. They aren't going to concern themselves with whether something is good or bad. They aren't going to concern themselves with anything that they don't have to concern themselves with. Further on, Sextus admits that pain, at least, is something which cannot be avoided, so he does have to concern himself with it. But he's not going to take a position on whether anything is good or bad, because doing so is basically impossible, and that just leads to disquiet. So he's going to give up the entire search for truth and just accept that it's all a matter of opinion that cannot be resolved, and that leads to quietude.
Further on, Sextus gives the example of an artist who was frustrated at his inability to portray accurately the foam in a horse's mouth, who ends up, in frustration, throwing his painting materials at the artwork, and simply by accident, what results looks better as a representation of the foam than anything he had done intentionally. And this is the analogy that Sextus embraces for the happy accident that arises from the decision not to care whether anything is true or false: that you end up with quietude by abandoning your search for truth.
And this has exactly the result that you might predict, because over in Chapter 31, where Sextus addresses the Cyrenaics, Sextus says this:
"Some assert that the Cyrenaic doctrine is identical with Scepticism since it too affirms that only mental states are apprehended. But it differs from Scepticism inasmuch as it says that the End is pleasure and the smooth motion of the flesh, whereas we [the Skeptics] say it is 'quietude,' which is the opposite of their End; for whether pleasure be present or not present the man who positively affirms pleasure to be the End undergoes perturbations, as I have argued in my chapter 'Of the End.'"
So this is about as clear as it could possibly be, that the end of skepticism is quietude, a version of ataraxia in which you dismiss any concern about the truth or falsity, or the goodness or badness, of anything, and simply put it out of your mind to the extent that you can. And of course, what does it mean to pursue truth or falsity, or find out the goodness or badness of something, but to take a position on those things? That is something that comes under the category of dogmatism, which is where Sextus places Epicurus.
So Epicurus is concerned about finding answers to questions. He's not suspending judgment on everything he possibly can. Epicurus is focused on finding answers to the most important questions of life, answers that will allow us to live successfully in the best way possible.
We have a thread on this aspect of Sextus Empiricus on the forum, and one person has posted a link to the Ray Davies song "Quiet Life," which is a good way of examining the issues that are involved in this question. We have another link to an article from the Journal of Ancient Philosophy entitled "Can an Ancient Greek Skeptic Be Eudaimon, or Happy? And What Difference Does the Answer Make to Us?" Let me briefly read the abstract there to give a flavor for the significance of this question. Here's the abstract of that article:
"This paper explores how far the Greek skeptics in fact accept, and how far they should accept, the central Greek ethical notion of eudaimonia, usually translated 'happiness,' and what, if anything, the answers may tell us today.
"The first section shows that skeptics of both the Academic and Pyrrhonist traditions frequently employ the notion of eudaimonia, apparently without discomfort.
"The second section draws attention to a contrast within the relevant works of Sextus Empiricus, one of them being willing to speak of the skeptic's eudaimonia, and the other entirely avoiding this, and considers some possible reasons why, at some point in his life, Sextus might have found the notion problematic. The answers suggested are, first, that the term eudaimonia, at least as normally used by non-skeptical philosophers, presupposes that it is possible to rank human lives objectively in terms of their levels of well-being; and second, that the term standardly carries with it a commitment to a certain kind of long-term structure in one's life. There is at least a serious question whether either of these is consistent with the skeptical suspension of judgment.
"The third section examines how far a skeptic could aspire to happiness, where this is not assumed to be the equivalent of eudaimonia, and touches on several modern philosophers who have focused on happiness or, more generally, on well-being.
"The conclusions are that the notions of happiness and eudaimonia are closer in their presuppositions than one might have expected, that a skeptic would be well advised to avoid either one, and that this constitutes a sobering lesson for anyone today who regards values as in some sense subjective, but who aims to construct a satisfactory conception of happiness."
Now, I'd recommend that entire article be read by anyone interested in this subject. But as I pull the important point out of this abstract, I think this is consistent with the direction we've been going in our podcast here: skeptics, by fundamental commitment, are not going to be able to say that there is anything such as eudaimonia or happiness which they can clearly identify and set forth as their goal. The true skeptic suspends judgment on everything, including eudaimonia, including happiness, and that is exactly what Epicurus does not do.
The Letter to Menoeceus is not a construction of words that start with "it's possible that" or "some people say that." Epicurus is clearly stating what he believes happiness and pleasure are, and how they interact with each other, and he's taking a firm position on these things. He's not suspending judgment.
So that's what's going on in the background here. That's why it's so important for us to go through Academic Questions, because skepticism is a major position that many people hold. Cicero himself gave in to it despite his Stoic leanings, and he ends up arguing against the Stoics.
The song "Quiet Life," posted in our thread, does a very good job of representing a very common position in today's world. Let me quote a couple of its lyrics. This is by Ray Davies, originally of the Kinks. Quote:
"Something's happening, but I'm just going to turn a blind eye. If I see no evil, ask no questions, and I hear no lies...
"Can't communicate with minds that are small. With some people, it's like talking to the wall. And a fellow who walks away lives to battle another day. And I've really got no appetite for a fight, not tonight.
"All I want is a quiet life, anything for a quiet life. No ambition to rock the boat when I can just stay afloat. Be content with a quiet life. All I want is a quiet life, anything for a quiet life.
"Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil at all. Confidentially, between these walls, I'm on top of it all. I'd rather have them think I'm deaf, dumb, and blind than aggravation every time I speak my mind. Keep it a quiet life, anything for a quiet life.
"I could easily blow my top, start a row, but why start now? Give your daddy a quiet life, give your mother a quiet life, anything for a quiet life."
I really appreciate the posting of that, because I think these lyrics do a very good job of dramatizing exactly what is at stake. And I would submit that this is not Epicurus's position. Epicurus lived his life confronting questions, looking for answers, and talking about what he thought the answers were. The idea that Epicurus would walk away, that he had no appetite for a fight, that he didn't want to rock the boat, is contrary to everything we know about the life of Epicurus, which was dedicated to searching for the truth, setting up a school, recruiting friends to help him in the endeavor, and doing what he could to take positions that he thought were correct in the face of positions that he thought were wrong.
So I think this gives us a lot of food for thought about where the skeptics are really going, what quietude ends up really meaning in terms of practical reality, and why it is so important not to set up quietude or tranquility or that version of ataraxia as the ultimate goal of life.
Epicurus talks about ataraxia in the context of pleasure. It is clearly pleasure that is the goal for Epicurus. Ataraxia is a pleasure, but it is certainly not the only pleasure, nor is it the highest pleasure in the sense of putting it ahead of everything else. Because when pleasure requires that we undergo pain, which includes having disputes with other people who disagree in the search for truth and who wish to try to suppress you in your search for truth, you're not simply going to walk away, and certainly not take the position that by walking away you live to battle another day, when you're never battling in the first place.
Certainly some battles you will walk away from at certain times, as Lucian talks about in Alexander the Oracle-Monger, with the Epicurean who was about to get himself stoned for making accusations against Alexander. But if you take it as a matter of philosophy that you are never going to fight about anything, then it makes no sense to say that you're walking away so you can live to fight another day, when you're committed to never fighting. Epicurus was committed to fighting for the truth as he understood it.
So I don't want to go too much further today without Joshua and Kalosyni present to help make sure we cover everything that's important, and therefore we'll bring today's episode to a very quick conclusion. We'll come back next week and pick up with Section 19 in Book Two of Academic Questions. And we will continue to not just discuss, but take positions on, these important questions that are vital to the best life.
So with that, as always, we invite everyone to drop by the EpicureanFriends forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We'll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.