S. L. Mastros
October 2001
Hellenistic Philosophy
A Dialog on the Stoics’ Epistemological Ethics
Athens is alive this morning; the market is bustling with merchants and shoppers, craftsmen and livestock. Men gather at the stoa to speak and to listen. The defeat of Troy hangs in the background, a painted backdrop of martial victory. The master Zeno[1] begins to speak. "It is obvious that the true calling of man is to lead a good life. It is this state of good which makes life worth living. But how can we attain a good life--a life of flourishing happiness, of eudemonia? The secret must be in living according to the flow of one’s nature--living in a state of harmonious reason and virtue. Socrates, blessed be his memory, teaches that the secret to goodness lies in virtue. But what is this virtue? Socrates teaches further; ‘Virtue is knowledge.’ ”
"But, Zeno, all of
us here are possessed of knowledge.
Yet, my life is not all that it could be; I do not live in a state of
eudemonia. What say you on this?"
"Ah, Alexander, this is a very good question, and one that I myself have long pondered on. I have now come to a conclusion on the matter, and it is for this reason that I have gathered you all here today. It must be that Socrates, blessed be his memory, meant that wisdom is the key of virtue. Now, while we are all possessed of knowledge, I do not know that any of us have full and complete knowledge of truth, and only of truth. It is this that is real wisdom. This state of perfect wisdom is the doorway to a good life.
" The wise man lives a life of complete eudemonia, untouchable by the vagaries of misfortune. We are all striving to be this sage of wisdom. But how can we come to be sages? I will today to put forward a program by means of which any man may become wise. The first step in this program is to understand that to be in a state of wisdom, one must have only true conceptions.”
"But, where do
these true conceptions come from? How
do you know them to be true? How do you
discriminate the true from the false?"
"Judging the truth of conceptions is a tricky matter, and to explain I must first delve a little into how conceptions are formed. The simplest of the conceptions are the preconceptions, the immediate beliefs of the sort held by animals and small children. God has made the world in accordance with perfect reason. Therefore things that are in perfect accord with the world must themselves accord with perfect reason. It is the goal of the sage to bring himself into accord with this perfect reason, so as to be like God. As Aristotle wisely said, being like God is a good sort of thing to be. So, since these preconceptions are in consistent agreement with the world, they are the first step toward living in accordance with one’s nature.”
“Are these
“preconceptions” of which you speak the Forms of Plato?”
“No. A preconception is based completely in experience. Moreover, it does not exist before it is called into being by the experience. There is no world of preconceptions where things float about, disembodied, waiting to be instantiated.
“Now, to continue, as the child matures, it begins to be capable of complete cognition. These first conceptions give rise to the special criterion of truth we will use to become wise men. They give rise to the kateleptic phantasiai, the cognitive impressions. Once these cognitive impressions are formed, the gateway to wisdom is open!”
“We begin with all the appearances to which we are exposed. These are the seemings of the world. Obviously, some of these are true and some false. How is it that we can distinguish the true appearances from the false seemings? It is by means of the cognitive impression. A cognitive impression is an appearance that arises from What Is, and moreover, it is perfectly stamped and impressed onto us in complete accordance with What Is. Any such impression must be perfectly true, that is, perfectly in accordance with What Is. Thusly, I take the cognitive impression to be our criterion--our greatest tool for judging truth."
"But, Zeno, could
we not have an impression which, although false, was just like a true
impression? So much so that we could
not tell them apart? Even if true
seemings fulfill both of your parameters, could not a false impression trick us
into thinking that it fit as well?
Certainly we have all wrongly believed that a false impression was
true. What else can this mean except
that we thought it arose from What Is, and that we thought it was a perfect
impression thereof? Just yesterday,
your own student, Sphaerus, took a hearty bite from a wax pomegranate[2],
so sure was he that it was real. This
shows that an impression can arise from What Is, and be in perfect accordance
with What Is, and still be false. For,
the wax pomegranate exists, and Sphaerus’s impression of it was in accordance
with its being. It is simply that the
wax pomegranate was indistinguishable from the true pomegranate."
"You raise a very good point, Alexander, however, there is a third quality to kateleptic seemings. As is bespoken in the name, there is a certain quality about them, which grabs you and allows you to realize it to be true. That is to say, a cognitive impression is such that no false seeming could be exactly like it. No two different things can be exactly alike; else they would not be different. A perfect stamping of something cannot help but betray differences with stampings of similar, but different, things; else it would not be perfect. The wax pomegranate could not have been, in truth, indistinguishable from a real pomegranate; else it would have been a real pomegranate. Thus, we conclude that Sphaerus erred and is ignorant. Although the gates of wisdom are open to all, it is rare indeed to meet the sage who has walked through them into the garden of perfect knowledge. I certainly make no claim to being a wise man, and I do not think Sphaerus does either. However, we can all strive to be wise men.”
“But what if we are
mad, or tricked by the gods? Herakles,
in his madness, mistook his own children for his enemies. So sure was he of the validity of this, that
he killed the children. Does this not
imply that there are false impressions which are so convincing that they are indistinguishable
from your cognitive impressions?”
“I make no claim that just anyone can distinguish between a cognitive impression and a false seeming. Madmen are mad, and thus are not likely to have the skill required for such delicate discrimination. However, we can learn to tell the difference. Given enough experience and technical training we should be able to tell cognitive impressions from imperfect seemings. Thus, we could say that a cognitive impression is a seeming so full and rich with accurate detail that a sufficiently trained person can incorrigibly distinguish it from any other kind of seeming. Once we have learned to distinguish these cognitive impressions from all other impressions of the world, we can begin to wisely choose which impressions to assent to. God has fashioned man in perfect reason, and with a single, penetrating soul. It is within the command of this soul to assent or to withhold judgment on any particular impression. In this way, true wisdom is a perpetual choice to assent only to cognitive impressions, for only they are assuredly true. Through this method, any man may avoid error and become wise.”
“So, do you say that wisdom lies in having or
in assenting to these cognitive impressions?”
“No, neither. It is more complicated than that. You see, any fool may have a cognitive impression, and assent to it. But, his assent is weak and corrigible. He may withdraw his assent at any point, if his mid is swayed. Were it assent to cognitive impressions that made man wise, then the fool could be wise, so to speak, by accident. This is not a good outcome. So, it is important to realize that true knowledge lies not in assent to cognitive impressions, but in an assent that is assured and unchangeable by reason. The wise man cannot be persuaded to give up his assent to a cognitive impression, no matter what may come. Furthermore, wisdom consists in an interconnected system of these assuredly endorsed cognitive impressions, each of which is true and known unshakably to be so. Changeable assent to a cognitive impression is still an act of ignorance. ”
“While
I agree that the cognitive impression, if it existed, would be an excellent
criterion of truth with which to build our wisdom, I still do not believe that
these incorrigible and discernibly true cognitive impressions exist. You seem to be saying that your criterion of
truth is made up of those things that you somehow “know” to be true. But only the very wise man, the true Sage,
is in a state of wisdom. How can any other
man hope to truly know the difference between these cognitive impressions and
false seemings of the world, whether they be due to trickery or madness or
simply ignorance?”
“This is the beauty of the cognitive impression as a criterion. It is so perfect in its stamping of What Is, that it practically grabs hold of one’s hair and drags one toward assent. What is required to become a sage is to learn to recognize this pulling, and to assent to seemings if and only if they manage to take hold of one in this sense, if they are truly kateleptic phantasiai. In this way does man become wise. In becoming wise, the sage comes to have knowledge, and in knowledge is virtue. In being virtuous, the wise man comes into eudemonia, and flourishing happiness is his.
[1] While he is based on Zeno of Citium, my Zeno does not attempt to be an accurate picture of him. Rather, Zeno is an amalgamation of many stoic figures, including later Stoics such as Seneca. Likewise, Alexander is no particular person, but rather serves simply as an academic foil to Zeno.
[2] This is a story I came across in my readings. However, I doubt its veracity based on the fact that one does not normally bite pomegranates. Still, it serves as a good example.