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The Hellenistic Schools

Epicurus made it the health of the soul, and open to every age. “Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more” (Letter to Menoeceus, Diogenes Laertius 10.122, tr. Hicks), where “seek wisdom” renders the verb philosophein. The study of nature serves that end and no other: “knowledge of celestial phenomena … has no other end in view than peace of mind and firm conviction” (Letter to Pythocles, 10.85), and “If we had never been molested by alarms at celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by the misgiving that death somehow affects us, nor by neglect of the proper limits of pains and desires, we should have had no need to study natural science” (Principal Doctrines 11). The first doctrines state the cure: the blessed being has no trouble, “Death is nothing to us”, the limit of pleasure is the removal of pain, and pain does not last (1–4). It must be real: “We must not pretend to study philosophy, but study it in reality: for it is not the appearance of health that we need, but real health” (Vatican Sayings 54, tr. Bailey). A saying Usener gave to Epicurus, which Porphyry quotes without a name: “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man” (tr. Bailey).

The Stoics made it an art. “The Stoics affirm that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine; that philosophy is the exercise of that art which is expedient to this knowledge; that virtue is the sole and sovereign art which is thus expedient; and this distributes itself into three general parts,—natural, moral, and logical” (Placita, proem, in Goodwin’s revised translation). How the art was taught they disputed: Zeno and Chrysippus began with logic, went on to physics and ended with ethics, while Panaetius and Posidonius began with physics (Diogenes Laertius 7.40–41, tr. Hicks).

The Cynics answered with their lives and in a sentence. Asked what he had gained from philosophy, Antisthenes said, “The ability to hold converse with myself” (Diogenes Laertius 6.6, tr. Hicks). Diogenes the Cynic said, “This at least, if nothing else – to be prepared for every fortune”, and asked where he came from, “I am a citizen of the world” (6.63). Crates, asked the same: “A quart of lupins and to care for no one” (6.86). “Hence it has been said that Cynicism is a short cut to virtue; and after the same pattern did Zeno of Citium live his life” (6.104).

The sceptics sorted philosophy by how its search ends. “The natural result of any investigation is that the investigators either discover the object of search or deny that it is discoverable … or persist in their search.” So with philosophy: “Those who believe they have discovered it are the ‘Dogmatists’ … Aristotle, for example, and Epicurus and the Stoics … Cleitomachus and Carneades and other Academics treat it as inapprehensible: the Sceptics keep on searching. Hence it seems reasonable to hold that the main types of philosophy are three—the Dogmatic, the Academic, and the Sceptic” (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.1–4, tr. Bury). Their names said what they did: “Zetetic” from inquiry, “Ephectic” from suspending judgement, “Aporetic” from being at a loss, and “Pyrrhonean” after Pyrrho (1.7). They began, like the others, from a hope: “The originating cause of Scepticism is, we say, the hope of attaining quietude. Men of talent, who were perturbed by the contradictions in things … were led on to inquire what is true in things and what false” (1.12). The end came unlooked for: suspending judgement, the sceptics found that “quietude, as if by chance, followed upon their suspense, even as a shadow follows its substance” (1.25–30), quietude being Bury’s word for ataraxia. Sextus writes as a reporter: “we simply record each fact, like a chronicler, as it appears to us at the moment” (1.4). Pyrrho himself “has not himself left anything in writing”; his pupil Timon, as a hostile later author reports him, said that “the man who means to be happy must look to these three things: first, what are the natural qualities of things; secondly, in what way we should be disposed towards them; and lastly, what advantage there will be to those who are so disposed”, the result being “first speechlessness, and then imperturbability” (Aristocles, in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 14.18, tr. Gifford).