LE PROBLÈME

Les témoignages doxographiques transmis sous le nom d'un mouvement philosophique, et non sous celui d'un auteur particulier, soulèvent souvent de difficiles problèmes d'attribution, d'autant plus délicats à trancher que nous possédons moins de repères indépendants, dans l'histoire de l'école, par rapport auxquels les situer. Le cas des Cyrénaïques est à cet égard exemplaire. Les données sont le plus souvent présentées comme un bien commun; l'information relative aux positions spécifiques d'Aristippe l'Ancien, d'Aristippe le Jeune ou d'Annicéris est beaucoup plus rare, quand elle ne se réduit pas à un seul témoignage. La tâche de la critique est alors de faire la part entre le générique et le particulier, l'originaire et le remaniement, et de reconstruire les phases d'une éventuelle évolution. De ce point de vue, la tendance de l'nterprétation s'est considérablement modifiée depuis E. Zeller, qui, sur la base du résumé de la doctrine éthique génériquement attribuée aux ‘Cyrénaïques’ dans Diogène Laërce, II.86–93, avait fait d'Aristippe l'Ancien le créateur d'un véritable système éthique. Au terme d'un long mouvement de révision, qui débute avec la dissertation d'E. Antoniades (1916), G. Giannantoni n'a laissé à Aristippe l'Ancien que la pratique d'un mode de vie, réservant l'élaboration théorique de positions doctrinales à un stade plus tardif, qu'un témoignage transmis par Eusèbe permet d'associer au nom d'Aristippe le Jeune.

The puzzle that provoked this study lies in the apparent difference between Democritus and Epicurus about the value of sense-perception. Epicurus took over the atomic theory from Democritus; he gave the same account, in essence, of the mechanics of sense-perception. Yet Democritus is said by many sources to have been sceptical about the ability of the senses to reveal truth, whereas Epicurus is said to have declared that ‘all aisthēta are true’.

It happens that we have two lengthy criticisms of the Atomists' theory of qualities from the point of view of the Peripatos and the Academy: I mean the long fragment of Theophrastus' book On the Senses, and Plutarch's essay Against Colotes, with its sequel, On the Impossibility of a Pleasant Epicurean Life. What should give these two an exceptional value as historical documents is that the first was written before the author knew anything about the philosophy of Epicurus, or at least at a time when he could take notice only of Democritus among the Atomists, whereas Plutarch aims to criticize the Epicurean Colotes precisely for his misunderstandings and mistreatments of Democritus, as well as for the inadequacies of his own Epicurean theory. A study of the criticisms of Theophrastus and Plutarch might perhaps give us a better understanding of the differences between Democritus and Epicurus, and the reasons for the differences we find.

Both authors criticize the position of the Atomists from the stand-point of the theory they themselves subscribe to.

Listening to poetry, wrote Plutarch, is like eating fish-heads: absolutely delicious, but it can give you bad dreams (How the young person should listen to poetry 15bc). Believe this, as all the major Stoic thinkers do, and what follows? A lover of fish-heads would prefer, clearly, to discover a way to go on eating them in good health, without suffering the disturbing consequences.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter will in effect be an extended commentary on a single passage, Cicero, de Fato 7–9, which indirectly attributes to Chrysippus a strong thesis of psychophysical causality. I shall hope to show what that thesis amounts to, and how it fits into the teleological structure of the Stoic causal nexus. At the same time, I shall be offering reasons for seeing the Stoic theory in question as largely a development of Platonic psychology.

This last point needs some qualification. Chrysippus himself was openly opposed to at least one feature of Plato's psychology, namely the tripartition of the soul, as expounded in the Republic, Phaedrus and Timaeus. But equally, he was sympathetic to, and almost certainly deeply influenced by, the more ‘Socratic’ psychology to be found elsewhere in Plato's dialogues – the monistic theory presupposed in the Protagoras, developed in the Phaedo, and arguably still observed in the Theaetetus – according to which the soul is in itself a purely intellectual faculty. Given the further fact that Socrates, unlike Plato, was from the start revered as an absolute authority by the Stoics, it is probably most correct to locate the background to Stoic psychology not in Platonic but in Socratic psychology. At the same time, it would be misleading to imply that any ancient reader of Plato operated with an entirely clearcut distinction between historically Socratic texts on the one hand and Platonic texts on the other.

Le but de ce travail est d'esquisser une étude des variations dans la psychologie de la doxa depuis Zénon jusqu'à Philon d'Alexandrie. L'approche que nous avons choisie peut paraître surprenante à double titre: elle est diachronique, alors que les études actuelles ont quelque peu délaissé ce type de démarche; par ailleurs, elle se réfère à un personnage qui, non seulement n'appartient pas à la période hellénistique, mais dont la qualité de philosophe est fortement contestée, et le plus souvent même niée. Il convient donc de préciser ici notre propos et la méthode choisie.

Les études philoniennes ont toujours eu un statut spécial par rapport aux recherches sur l'histoire de la philosophic ancienne. Le ‘philonien’ est quelqu'un qui étudie un corpus où tout est exprimé en fonction de concepts philosophiques, mais auquel on a dénié, pour des raisons parfois contradictoires la qualité de texte philosophique. Or ces dernières années ont vu la remise en question de cette attitude, et une certaine réhabilitation de l'apport de Philon à la philosophic. Il n'est pas question d'entrer ici dans le problème de fond; nous souhaitons montrer à propos d'un problème particulier, celui de l'opinion, comment la réflexion de Philon ne peut se comprendre qu'à la lumière des débats antérieurs, et apporte à ceux-ci une contribution que l'on sera en droit de juger peu satisfaisante, mais dont nous pensons qu'elle a sa place dans une étude d'histoire de la philosophie.

Galen is remembered mainly as a doctor; and it is on his fame as a medical theorist and practitioner that his reputation principally rests. Yet he was no mere physician; he thought of himself as equally a philosopher, and if the tradition has been less kind to his strictly philosophical works than to his medical writings (here as elsewhere interest has to a large extent dictated survival), none the less enough of his philosophical temper shines through his medical oeuvre for us to be able to judge his claims to that title.

For Galen, fortunately (although at times infuriatingly), was not a dry and merely technical writer. On the contrary, his massive corpus abounds with digressions, asides, interludes; irrelevant hares are started, pointless chimerae chased. If Galen insists (as he does to the point of tedium) that his wordiness is the direct result of the idiocy of those whom he has to refute, he himself cannot be acquitted of the charge of prolixity and verbosity; even when hymning the philosophical and literary advantages of brevity, he does so at extravagant length. Galen loved the sound of his own voice.

And it is lucky for us that he did. For it is in those asides and irrelevances that we find a pot-pourri of scattered remarks and fragments of enormous philosophical importance. It is to Galen's exuberant largesse that we owe much of our knowledge of the schools of later Greek philosophy; and that debt has long been acknowledged.

The fifth meeting of the Symposium Hellenisticum took place between 17 and 25 August 1989 at the Château of Syam near Champagnole in the French Jura. Following a by-now well-established tradition, to which the four previously published volumes bear witness, the papers given at the fifth Symposium underwent long and searching discussion; the texts published here have been revised in the light of those and subsequent discussions which took place in one form or another after the end of the conference.

The participants in the Symposium were: Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, Suzanne Bobzien, Jacques Brunschwig, Pierluigi Donini, Eyjolfur Emilsson, Dorothea Frede, Michael Frede, David Furley, James Hankinson, Brad Inwood, Anna-Maria Ioppolo, David Konstan, Jean-Louis Labarrière, André Laks, Carlos Lévy, Geoffrey Lloyd, Anthony Long, Jaap Mansfeld, Mario Mignucci, Phillip Mitsis, Martha Nussbaum, Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Richard Sorabji, Gisela Striker, Voula Tsouna.

The organization of the conference was made possible by generous support from several institutions: le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; le Ministère de l'Education Nationale (Direction des affaires générates, internationales et de la coopération); l'Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne); l'Université de Paris x (Nanterre). We acknowledge with gratitude not only these institutions, but also those who have individually shown their interest in our project and have actively furthered its realization.

Quiconque s'en va séjourner quelque temps du côté des Stoïciens apprend bien vite que, selon eux, les hommes, dans leur quête du bien, se sont tout d'abord, comme les animaux, laissés conduire par leur inclination (hormē) à rechercher le premier approprié (to prōton oikeion), à savoir ce qui est susceptible de préserver la constitution (sustasis) à laquelle ils sont naturellement attachés par un lien tout autant affectif que providentiel. Bien vite également il apprendra qu'à la différence des animaux privés de logos, les hommes, dont ‘la raison est comme un artisan qui s'ajoute à l'inclination’ (Diog. Laer. vii. 86), n'en restèrent pas là, ce qu'expliquent aussi bien la célèbre métaphore de la recommandation que l'acquisition de la notion de bien chez Cicéron (de Fin.iii. 20–3, 33–4).

Or, si l'on s'est souvent intéressé au rôle que pouvaient jouer les animaux, voire les enfants, dans la théorie de l'oikeiōsis – leur fonction est de montrer que le premier approprié n'est pas le plaisir, mais aussi qu'il existe un sentiment naturel d'attachement à sa progéniture – on s'est en général moins intéressé pour elles-mêmes aux fonctions ou facultés cognitives mises en oeuvre par les animaux dans cette recherche de l'approprié.

Ce fut pourtant l'objet d'une belle polémique entre Stoïciens et Académiciens.

Diogenes Laertius reports that Zeno was the first to introduce the word ‘kathēkon’ and to write a treatise on the topic. He also suggests that, in connection with these reflections on kathēkonta, Zeno reversed Hesiod's well-known tag about the value of following good advice relative to that of knowing things for ourselves. According to Zeno,

Although few things are so characteristic of the Stoics as their penchant for dispensing advice, Zeno's remark is initially rather puzzling. Surely, we might object, Hesiod is the one who has it right: merely following another's advice, whether in the form of specific individual instructions or more general rules, should hardly take precedence over knowing things for ourselves.

Zeno, however, apparently defended his own ranking by postulating a critical link between an ability to accept advice and action. A crucial prerequisite for praxis, he explained, is being capable of accepting and following the sound advice of others; by itself, knowing things on one's own holds no special guarantees with respect to one's actions. Yet, this added bit of explanation seems hardly less puzzling, especially given Zeno's overall endorsement of the Socratic claim that knowledge is sufficient for virtuous action.

In Plato's dialogue the Sophist, the main interlocutors, the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus, are trying to determine the nature of the sophist. Given that the phenomenon of the sophistic movement is so many-faceted and somewhat amorphous, it is not surprising that the first attempts in the dialogue to get a grip on the elusive reality underlying this phenomenon turn out to be not particularly successful, since they at best capture some superficial feature of the sophist. These features are recapitulated at 231c8-e7. Then, in 232a1ff a renewed attempt is made to capture the sophist; this attempt seems to go more to the heart of the matter, but runs into difficulties whose resolution occupies the remainder of the dialogue. The suggestion is that the sophist has a remarkable ability to represent things in a way that makes this representation, the sophist's statement about things, appear and seem to be true, though, in fact, it is not. This raises a series of difficulties, first alluded to in 235d2, then again in 236c9ff, and spelled out in considerable detail in 236d9ff.