Episode 358 - EATAQ40 - The Hypocrisy And Darkness of Academic Skepticism

Cassius:

Welcome to Episode 358 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.

We're back this week with Joshua to continue in Book Two of Cicero's Academic Questions, and we will finish Lucullus's presentation of the Stoic defense of knowledge. In Section 19, which we'll read in just a moment, we'll find the transition where Lucullus's argument comes to its final conclusion, and then Cicero will respond to Lucullus and advocate the skeptical challenges to the possibility of knowledge. We've spent a lot of time over the last several weeks going through Sections 17 and 18 in relatively close detail, so in this episode we'll go straight into 19, and I'll ask Joshua to read that for us. So Joshua, good to have you back this week. Whenever you're ready, just go ahead.

Joshua:

Because I was absent last week, it's been two weeks now since we finished Section 18 in the text. At the end of Section 18, Lucullus continued his critique of Academic skepticism on the main question of whether anything can be conceived. Of course, the Academic skeptic's answer is that nothing can be conceived. And he raised the interesting question: is authority no hindrance to entertaining the opinion that nothing can be conceived? When you've got powerful minds like Arcesilaus and Carneades, with great richness of ideas and power of eloquence, is that not a hindrance in the study of philosophy, and in the study of this central question? Who would ever, he says, have embraced so openly and undisguisedly such perverse and false principles, that nothing can be conceived, if it had not been for people like Arcesilaus and Carneades and the weight of their authority? So it won't do for you Academic skeptics to pretend to be aloof from all of this, because your reputation as thinkers, as philosophers, and in the case of Cicero as statesmen, is a weight on the scale that you are not accounting for in convincing people.

So that's the end of Section 18. In Section 19 we have a transition: the end of Lucullus's argument, a brief discussion among the others in the room, and finally a handoff to Cicero in Section 20, where we'll take up his response to the critique that Lucullus has been making of Academic skepticism. So this is Section 19:

"These are nearly the arguments which Antiochus used to urge at Alexandria, and many years afterwards, with much more positiveness too, in Syria, when he was there with me, a little before he died. But, as my case is now established, I will not hesitate to warn you, as you are my dearest friend, (he was addressing me,) and one a good deal younger than myself."

"Me" there is Cicero. And this is still Lucullus speaking:

"Will you, then, after having extolled philosophy with such panegyrics, and provoked our friend Hortensius, who disagrees with us, now follow that philosophy which confounds what is true with what is false, deprives us of all judgment, strips us of the power of approval, and robs us of all our senses? Even the Cimmerians, to whom some god, or nature, or the foulness of the country that they inhabited, had denied the light of the sun, had still some fires which they were permitted to avail themselves of as if they were light. But those men whom you approve of, after having enveloped us in such darkness, have not left us a single spark to enable us to look around by. And if we follow them, we become bound with such chains that we cannot move. For when assent is taken away, they take away at the same time all motion of our minds, and all our power of action; which not only cannot be done rightly, but which cannot possibly be done at all.

"Beware, also, lest you become the only person who is not allowed to uphold that opinion. Will you, when you have explained the most secret matters and brought them to light, and said on your oath that you have discovered them..."

This is the Catiline conspiracy, Cicero's most famous case: he declared before the Roman people, on his oath, that he had discovered the plot.

"...(which, indeed, I could swear to also, since I learned them from you,) — will you, I say, assert that there is nothing which can be known, comprehended, or perceived? Beware, I entreat you, lest the authority of those most beautiful actions be diminished by your own conduct."

Or in other words, beware lest the majesty of what you have achieved in the past, in the courts of law and in the political arena, be diminished by the philosophy you now adopt, which says that nothing can be known. If nothing can be known, the Catiline conspiracy cannot be uncovered. We think that's what he's saying here. I'll pause there. There is another paragraph. Cassius, do you have anything to add at this point?

Cassius:

Yes, Joshua, I agree with where you're going here. I have the Rackham in front of me, and he says it this way:

"For by doing away with assent they have done away with all movement of the mind and also all physical activity, which is not only a mistake but an absolute impossibility. Be careful too that you are not the one person for whom it is most illegitimate to uphold this theory of yours. What, when it was you who exposed and brought to light a deeply hidden plot, and said on oath that you knew about it, which I might have said too, having learned about it from you, will you assert that there is no fact whatever that can be learned and comprehended and perceived? Pray take care again and again that you may not yourself cause the authority of that most glorious achievement to be diminished."

And Rackham has footnotes in which he specifically refers to the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC, and says that Cicero had used that expression in the Senate, and it became a common phrase with which he was often taunted. So this does seem clearly to be a reference, as you say, to one of the most important episodes of Cicero's life, his proudest moment, so to speak, when he had saved the Republic. This is really a great argument by Lucullus: to throw in Cicero's face his own actions, his own statements, his own claim to fame, and point out how inconsistent they are with the philosophy of skepticism. It is a remarkable argument that he's making.

Joshua:

And this is where Lucullus comes to the end, because in the last paragraph of Section 19 he stops talking:

"And having said this he stopped. But Hortensius, admiring all he said very greatly, (so much, indeed, that all the time that Lucullus was speaking he kept lifting up his hands; and it was no wonder, for I do not believe that an argument had ever been conducted against the Academy with more acuteness,)..."

That's in parentheses, and it's Cicero speaking: "I," Cicero, "do not believe that an argument had ever been conducted against the Academy with more acuteness."

"...began to exhort me, either jestingly or seriously, (for that was a point that I was not quite sure about,) to abandon my opinions. Then, said Catulus, if the discourse of Lucullus has had such influence over you, — and it has been a wonderful exhibition of memory, accuracy, and ingenuity, — I have nothing to say; nor do I think it my duty to try and deter you from changing opinion if you choose. But I should not think it well for you to be influenced merely by his authority. For he was all but warning you, said he, jestingly, to take care that no worthless tribune of the people, of whom you know what a number there will always be, seize upon you, and ask of you in the public assembly how you are consistent with yourself, when at one time you assert that nothing certain can be discovered, and at another time affirm that you yourself have discovered something. I entreat you, do not let him terrify you."

This is now Catulus speaking: do not let Lucullus terrify you with this threat.

"But I would rather have you disagree with him on the merits of the case itself."

This is a deft piece of work by Cicero.

"But if you give in to him, I shall not be greatly surprised; for I recollect that Antiochus himself, after he had entertained such opinions for many years, abandoned them as soon as he thought it desirable. When Catulus had said this, they all began to fix their eyes on me."

On Cicero, of course. This is very interesting, Cassius. Cicero, who is compiling all of this material, allows Lucullus to make this remarkable objection to Academic skepticism: the cornerstone moment of your entire career, Cicero, was built on the ability to ferret out hidden knowledge, and now you're saying that knowledge is impossible, that it's impossible to conceive anything. He allows that, and then he brings in Catulus to say: don't respond to that argument. Don't fall for it. Because if you do, you in turn will be influenced merely by authority, exactly the thing Lucullus had warned about at the very end of Section 18, which we talked about two weeks ago. There's a symmetry here: the two most recent arguments that Lucullus has made in his discourse have now been turned against him. And Catulus is paving a way for Cicero to navigate his response without having to engage with the most damning criticisms.

Cassius:

Yes, Joshua. I came into the episode today thinking this was going to be a rather unremarkable section that didn't deserve a lot of attention. But when you read it closely, and realize the analogy that's being made and understand the background, it jumps out at you as an incredibly persuasive argument, and it must have been powerful. And for Cicero himself to commit it to paper says something very remarkable as well. He is pointing to the defining episode of Cicero's entire life, his claim to fame for saving the Republic. Is Cicero now going to turn around and apologize to Catiline and the conspirators, the people he had put to death for trying to overthrow the Republic? How can he be consistent and say that knowledge is impossible, and yet get up in front of the Roman Senate and say that these conspirators were trying to destroy the Republic, and take such strong action as a result?

Again, you have to take the time to read through this material, follow the footnotes and think about what is being said. But examples like this seem to me very powerful. When you're arguing with somebody about something very important, you don't want to stay in the clouds all the time and play logic games. You want to call on specific real-life examples any time you can. If you wanted to be cynical, I guess you could say that this is Cicero making sure that his actions in saving the Republic are remembered even when somebody wants to question him. But still, it powerfully points out the inconsistency in the skeptical position, which Cicero is nevertheless going to take in the many paragraphs to come. This example here at the end now jumps out at me as something very memorable and very powerful.

Joshua:

Cassius, it is incredibly powerful, and it also echoes a charge that Cicero himself makes in Book Two of On Ends, when he is responding to the Epicurean spokesman Torquatus. In Book Two, after talking about Torquatus's ancestor who took the necklet from the enemy, he says:

"Why, Torquatus, what a state of things does this seem, that you with your name, abilities and distinctions, cannot venture to confess before a public meeting your actions, your thoughts, your aims, your objects, or what that thing is from love of which you desire to carry your undertakings to completion, in fine what it is that you judge to be the best thing in life? What would you be willing to take, on condition that when once you have entered on your office and risen before the assembly (you know you must announce what rules you intend to follow in your administration of the law, and perhaps too, if you think it good to do so, you will say something about your own ancestry and yourself, after the custom of our forefathers) — well then, what would you take to declare that during your term of office you will do everything with a view to pleasure, and that you have never done anything during life except with a view to pleasure? You say, do you suppose me to be such a madman as to speak before ignorant men in that fashion? But make the same statements in court, or, if you are afraid of the crowd, make them in the senate. You will never do it. Why not, unless it be that such speech is disgraceful? Do you suppose then that I and Triarius are fit persons to listen to your disgraceful talk?"

That is a very similar argument to the one Lucullus has made. Cicero made essentially the same argument in Book Two of On Ends: you Epicureans are not willing to go before the Senate or the assembly. You're not willing to stand in the forum and proclaim what you really think, that you do everything in life with a view to your own satisfaction, your own pleasure. So there is an interesting parallel. In both cases it's a question that demands an answer, and I'm very curious to see how Cicero answers it, or whether he's just going to dodge it.

Cassius:

Yes, that will be interesting to see, Joshua. In the meantime, let me pursue your analogy, because I think it's an excellent one. The point is, as you say, which of these two sides will really be able to stand up in front of the Senate, or in front of the people, or in front of the army in camp, and make its case? Which side are we more comfortable arguing ourselves? There's no doubt in my mind: I am far more comfortable arguing that Epicurus was right. If you simply think of pleasure as all that is desirable in life, then whether you're a senator or a soldier or just a member of the public ready to vote, you think about the things that are desirable to you, mentally and bodily, and you put them in the category of pleasure. That is why you are running for office or fighting a battle or doing anything in life: you know what you value, and you're going to pursue it. That is Epicurean philosophy.

Are you going to get up in front of the Senate or the camp or the people and say, "Well, I don't know, and nobody else does either. Let's talk for hours on end, setting one argument against the other, and we'll all see that nobody really knows. So let's just go home and do nothing. Let's never take a position, because it's impossible to know"? It's very defensible for an Epicurean to get up and explain to the people what pleasure means. But how is Cicero, or some dedicated skeptic, going to get up in front of the Senate and say, "I think you should sentence these conspirators to death because they want to kill you, but I'm not really sure of that. So maybe we ought to talk about it a lot longer, and just talk and talk and talk, and maybe we'll come to some conclusion that we can all live with, though we won't really know for sure. So let's just go home for the night and let them do whatever they're going to do, and we'll hope that they don't murder us in our beds or launch their revolution tonight, because we can't be sure"? There's no way you can logically make Cicero's argument that nothing can be known and still be a public figure like Cicero, saying that certain actions need to be taken because of the facts you have uncovered.

It takes some effort to step out of the ordinary definition of a word like pleasure as immediate sensory stimulation, but you can explain to people that pleasure has a true meaning far beyond what narrow-minded people think. If you're going to be consistent, though, you can't take Cicero's position that nobody knows anything and then go on and say, "We're going to do X, Y and Z anyway, even though we don't know it's the right course." So again, Joshua, I think contrasting this with the discussion with Torquatus is exactly on point. Torquatus, no less than Cicero, took strong action in military and public affairs, and understood that he could justify his actions by his philosophy. Cicero simply cannot do that. We'll see as we go further how Cicero tries to justify it, and I think what we're going to find is that he retreats to the probability argument again.

But Cicero is on the slippery slope of skepticism that ends in Pyrrhonian, Sextus Empiricus-style skepticism. Cicero is going to try to rescue it and say that he can still make certain decisions, and still save the Republic and so forth. But the logical conclusion of skepticism is Sextus Empiricus's position: nobody knows, and unless I am absolutely compelled to do something, I am not going to say that I know what the right course is. I'm not even going to say that happiness, or eudaimonia, is a logical goal, because taking the position that happiness or any other concrete idea is correct is incompatible with skepticism. That's a point I touched on last week in the part I read from Sextus Empiricus, and we'll come back to it. This is not just an abstract argument with no practical implications. It directly affects the most important decisions in life.

Joshua:

This entire section is bookended by references to Antiochus. In the first sentence Lucullus is summarizing his entire presentation: "These are nearly the arguments which Antiochus used to urge at Alexandria," and in Syria when Lucullus traveled with him. And then Catulus, at the very end of Section 19, says to Cicero, "I entreat you, do not let him terrify you," that is, do not let Lucullus terrify you with the threat of standing in front of the people and saying that you don't know anything. "But I would rather have you disagree with him on the merits of the case itself. But if you give in to him, I shall not be greatly surprised; for I recollect that Antiochus himself, after he had entertained such opinions for many years, abandoned them as soon as he thought it desirable."

I think we've spent a little time in past episodes on Antiochus, but who is this guy, and why do they keep referring to him? You looked into him last week, specifically the question of how he changed his mind during his life. We should probably address exactly what that change was. What did he start out as? Where did he end up? And what is his relationship to this central question of whether knowledge is possible? If we can just get that into place, that will satisfy my curiosity for the moment.

The Wikipedia page is for Antiochus of Ascalon, and it says that after the decline of the New Academy in the first century BC, his school was the sole inheritor of the Platonic tradition in Athens, and it began the period of philosophy known as Middle Platonism. Despite the emphasis on the Platonic tradition, his ideas were often more Stoic than Platonist. He originally studied under Philo of Larissa, as you mentioned, and Wikipedia says this was for a significant portion of his career. However, the two philosophers later became estranged as a result of a disagreement about skepticism. While at Athens, Antiochus studied Stoicism under the scholarch Mnesarchus. Antiochus tended to abandon the core theses of skepticism, which seemed untenable to him. In doing so, he came into conflict with the prevailing current in the Academy, which at the time was already moderate and willing to compromise, but was still committed to the tradition of Carneades. Or, as Lucullus would say, still committed to honoring the authority of Carneades. This question of authority is more important than I first noticed, as we'll see going forward.

Cassius:

So it looks like the important point is that Antiochus started out in the Academy in its skeptical period, loyal to Carneades and the skeptical position, but that as time went by, apparently sometime around 88 BC, Antiochus abandoned the skeptical position and attempted a sort of merger of certain aspects of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, rejecting skepticism and embracing a criterion of truth. So Joshua, is this a good time for us to go back and look at the Cimmerian example that's mentioned at the beginning of this passage?

Joshua:

This is part of the charge that Lucullus makes against Cicero and against Academic skepticism: "Will you, then, after having extolled philosophy with such panegyrics, and provoked our friend Hortensius, who disagrees with us, now follow that philosophy which confounds what is true with what is false, deprives us of all judgment, strips us of the power of approval, and robs us of all our senses? Even the Cimmerians, to whom some god, or nature, or the foulness of the country that they inhabited, had denied the light of the sun, had still some fires which they were permitted to avail themselves of as if they were light. But those men whom you approve of, after having enveloped us in such darkness, have not left us a single spark to enable us to look around by. And if we follow them, we become bound with such chains that we cannot move."

Now, in the allegory of the cave in Plato's Republic, you are without sunlight, without any easy way to tell what's true from what's false, and you are bound by chains and cannot move. You're just looking at the flickering shadows on the wall of the cave, cast by figurines, but you can't see the figurines, and you can't see the fire that is casting the shadows. I guess what Lucullus is saying here is that with Academic skepticism we are like the people in the cave, except that there doesn't appear to be any way out. You haven't given us a single spark to see by. In this analogy it's possible that we couldn't even see the shadows flickering on the wall. It's just darkness.

And he refers to the Cimmerians, not to be confused with the Sumerians, a much better known people of the ancient world. The Cimmerians were a real historical people, Iron Age mounted nomads who lived on the Pontic–Caspian steppe and in Anatolia, in modern Turkey, in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. But what's really important for the reference here is that the Romans had a mythologized understanding of the Cimmerians, and it developed through a series of stages. In Roman poets like Ovid we have an image of the Cimmerians as a people living in a sunless land of perpetual darkness and silence, beyond the North Wind.

This parallels in some ways the Greek myth of the Hyperboreans. The Hyperboreans lived beyond the source of Boreas, the personification of the North Wind, except that the Hyperboreans lived in an idyllic land with a temperate climate in spite of its latitude. Because the North Wind didn't blow there, it was a temperate and pleasant place to live, kind of like El Dorado or Shangri-La: a legendary place of peace and plenty where everything's just nice. The Roman version of the Cimmerian myth places their land near the home or palace of the god of sleep, Somnus, a dark and shady place full of mist and cloud, where the sun never shines. It's perpetual darkness and silence. In a place like this the Cimmerians are said to live in tunnels underground, making a living by mining and so on.

And for some reason, he says, whether some god or nature or the foulness of the country that they inhabited, these people were denied the light of the sun. But even so, they still had fire by which they were permitted to see. "But those men whom you approve of" — this is Lucullus — "after having enveloped us in such darkness, have not left us a single spark to enable us to look around by. And if we follow them, we become bound with such chains that we cannot move."

Cassius:

Joshua, that's probably a good place to begin to bring this episode to a conclusion. The Cimmerians give us a concrete example of the importance of having some kind of light by which to determine what the truth is, so that you can take any kind of action at all. You brought up Plato's cave earlier in the episode as well, and this type of analogy is going to continue to be important. Next week, and for many weeks after that, Cicero is going to be presenting the skeptical argument. He and we will need to return to these examples of Plato's cave and the darkness of the Cimmerians, and keep in mind how we evaluate the test of truth. Is there really anything we can trust that will illuminate for us the truths we need to understand? As Lucretius says at the end of Book One of his poem, we need that torch to light our way as we move step by step through life. If there is no reliable standard of truth, then we're going to be lost. We're not going to have any reliable way to determine what direction to go in.

Joshua:

And it's at that point, Cassius, that Cicero comes in, in Section 20, summoning up all his power and drawing on all his strength for his defense of the view that nothing can be conceived, and his defense of the view that life is still possible in a world dominated by skepticism. To Cicero's credit, I do like his first line here. He says, "Then I, being no less agitated than I usually am when pleading important causes, began to speak something after this fashion." He is in a villa with a couple of friends, Lucullus, Hortensius and Catulus, and they're talking about philosophy. But he is treating this as if he were in court, pleading the case of someone whose life is on the line, perhaps the case of a friend. This is the level of intensity he describes himself as bringing to a question of philosophy. And that intensity, Cassius, can serve as an example of the kind of effort and energy that we should all bring to philosophy, even if we disagree with everything Cicero stands for.

Cassius:

That's exactly right, Joshua, and that's where we'll finish today. We will continue to stand in the role that Cicero denied to the ancient Epicureans. He did not place an Epicurean in this conversation, but we will stand in those shoes and bring to you, as we go forward, what we think is the best understanding of Epicurus's position. Let's close today at that point. As always, we invite everyone to drop by the EpicureanFriends forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our episodes. Thanks for your time today. We'll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.