Chapter V Persons, objects and knowledge. Earlier in the introduction, I have advocated a minimalist view on whose basis the Cyrenaics are Socratics because the founder of the school was an associate of Socrates. I have also warned that at a later stage I would give a more committed meaning for the adjective of ‘Socratic’ when attached to the Cyrenaics. I do so now in so far as I claim that the interest in epistemology the Cyrenaics clearly had is a clear evidence of their Socratic legacy. Socrates’ philosophy (whatever interpretation one may offer of it) rests on the assumption that the ethical inquiries that are so typical of Socrates’ dialogical activity coincide with an epistemological search for moral knowledge. In Socrates there is an isomorphic coincidence between epistemology and ethics. 1. The Cyrenaics as Socratics once again. In a fully Socratic spirit, the Cyrenaics conceived of epistemology and ethics as parts of philosophy that are the two undividable faces of the same coin. Both Cyrenaic ethics and epistemology are centred on the crucial notion of affection (‘pathos’), which serves as the epistemological factor for human knowledge and, at the same time, as the ethical key-element of human behaviour. In the philosophy of Socrates, it is arbitrary to postulate a predominance of the ethical above the epistemological, in so far as the former presupposes and rests upon the latter. In the same way, for the Cyrenaics it is unnatural to assume that the epistemological derives from the ethical.1 In the world of Socrates, the true answer to the ti esti question (‘what is X?’, where X can be ‘virtue’, ‘courage’, ‘friendship’, ‘knowledge’, and so on) is the basis of moral knowledge and the guide of practical conduct. Likewise, the notion of affection in Cyrenaic thinking provides the same insight into knowledge and ethics the true answer to the ti esti question guarantees in Socrates’ philosophy. That the views of the Cyrenaics on knowledge and ethics are best seen as part of their Socratic legacy and that the Socratic origin of Cyrenaic doctrines applies 1 On the problem, see Tsouna (1998), chapter I. 1 independently to the ethics and epistemology of the school is clear enough from a remark of Sextus. Before reporting in details what the Cyrenaics held on knowledge and pleasure at M VII 191-200, Sextus observes: But now that the Academics’ story has been told, from Plato onward, it is perhaps not beside the point to review the position of the Cyrenaics. For the school of these philosophers seem to have emerged from the discourse of Socrates, from which also the Platonist tradition arose (M VII 190). Sextus’ account on Cyrenaic thought is precisely divided into two parts. The first deals with the question of the criterion of truth (M VII 191-198) and is centred on the fundamental view that only our affections are knowable to us. The second part (M VII 199-200) is about the end. In the latter part, Sextus observes: “What these philosophers (sc. the Cyrenaics) say about the criteria correspond to what they say about ends. For affections do extend to ends too” (M VII 199). It is evident that here Sextus does not see any derivation of the epistemological from the ethical in Cyrenaic thinking. Quite the contrary, he seems to believe that the epistemological and ethical doctrines of the Cyrenaics stem—like Plato’s—from the philosophy of Socrates. And this is so without any predominance of ethics over epistemology. It is therefore arbitrary to maintain that Cyrenaic epistemology is modelled upon Cyrenaic ethics, as much as it is misleading to affirm that Socratic epistemology depends upon Socratic ethics. Both Cyrenaic epistemology and ethics are contextually based on the crucial notion of pathos, ‘affection’. To this notion we now revert. 2. Pathos. A pathos has for the Cyrenaics both a physical part and a mental counterpart. Sextus says: Cyrenaic doctrine differs from Scepticism in so much as it says that the end is pleasure and the smooth motion of the flesh (PH I 215). Pleasure, the key ethical affection for the Cyrenaics, is a smooth motion of the flesh. Diogenes himself insists on the point when he says: “they (sc. the Cyrenaics) said 2 there are two kinds of affection, pleasure and pain, the former a smooth, the latter a rough motion” (II 86). Whenever we are affected pleasurably or painfully, we experience a physical alteration in our body (smooth and rough, respectively). Is this alteration enough for us to really feel pleasure and pain? Does the physical alteration need a mental counterpart that could grant the individual undergoing the alteration with the mental awareness that she is really feeling that very pain or pleasure? The Cyrenaics hold that the physical alteration needs a mental equivalent. This is witnessed by some passages. The first is Diogenes Laertius II 85, where Aristippus the Elder is ascribed the view that the end is pleasure. The passage goes like this: “he (sc. Aristippus) proclaimed as the end the smooth motion resulting in perception”. For the Cyrenaics affections (in this case the affection of pleasure) are smooth motions that result in sensations, namely in the awareness that we are actually feeling that very affection.2 The same point is illustrated by a remark of Clement of Alexandria: “they (sc. the Cyrenaics) say that pleasure in itself is a smooth and gentle motion, with some perception” (Stromata II 20 106, 3=SSR IV A 175). A passage that is crucial too for this aspect is that of Aristocles/Eusebius: He (sc. Aristippus the Younger) clearly defined pleasure as the end, inserting into his doctrine the concept of pleasure related to motion. For he said, there are three conditions (katastasesis) of our temperament: one, in which we are in pain, is like a storm at sea; another, in which we experience pleasure and which can be compared to a gentle wave, for pleasure is a gentle movement, similar to a fair wind; and the third is an intermediate condition, in which we experience neither pain nor pleasure, which is like a calm. He said we have perception of these affections alone (toutôn de kai ephasken tôn pathôn monôn hêmas tên aisthêsin echein). (F5 Chiesara=SSR IV A 173 and B5). On the basis of the last sentence of Aristocles’ passage, Cyrenaic epistemology seems to endorse the view that we are aware of the content of our affections, initially felt through an alteration of the body. A point Aristocles’ passage raises is that about the relations between what we may term as ‘affective feelings’ (such as pleasure and pain) and ‘representational feelings’ (such as perceptions of white, hot, and so on). Does Aristocles’ passage tell us that, since only affective feelings are closely tied up 2 This point is the same one pressed by Socrates when at the beginning of the Philebus he criticizes the legitimacy of Phileban pleasures, namely the view that an individual can feel pleasure without the awareness of feeling it. 3 with movements, the third intermediate state—not being a movement and hence being potentially different from the other two states—is not a proper affection? Do we need to read Aristocles’ last sentence that “we have perception of these affections alone” as simply referred to the proper affections generated by movements, namely to pleasure and pain? In the latter case, Aristocles’ passage would prefigure some doctrinal commitments that are typical of the later sects of the Cyrenaic school, especially the Annicerians, and would exclude the possibility that there are representational feelings.3 Since we have perceptions of feelings of pleasure and pain alone, which are generated by movements; since we conceive of intermediate states as absence of any affections, we have to conclude that representational feelings in Cyrenaic epistemology need to be explained as particular case of affective feelings. Think, for example, of someone who loves ice cream and who is now tasting a vanilla ice-cream: the affection she is feeling at the moment is a case of pleasure but it is also an affection of white. The affective feeling (pleasure) is also, on this occasion, a representational feeling (the sensation of white). The latter explanation is favoured by Brunschwig and one that makes Cyrenaic epistemology fully dependant on Cyrenaic ethics, in so far as it makes the pathos to which the Cyrenaics always refer be primarily an ethical concept that, only in a derivative sense, has an epistemological meaning.4 This explanation is obviously philosophically problematic, since all the cases of epistemological affections need explaining as cases of ethical affections. But this is hardly true: we all experience many cases of epistemological affections that are not cases of ethical affections. I see my desk as green, but I do not feel any sensation of pleasure or pain in connection with my perception of green. It helps little to postulate that the Cyrenaics may have been interested only in those ethical affections that have also an epistemological counterpart because this would restrict their epistemology into an extremely narrow field of inquiry, thus reducing a highly original theory of knowledge into a rather 3 On the basis of Diogenes’ account, Anniceris and his disciples argue that pleasure and pain are always related to motions and that, since the mere absence of pain is not featured by motion, that absence is not part of the moral end. They also stressed that those who are without any pain are like those who are asleep or dead (D.L. II 89). 4 Brunschwig (1999), 255-256. 4 unimpressive epistemology.5 But, and this is the essential point, Brunschwig’s interpretation is discharged by another source on Cyrenaic epistemology, that is Sextus M 199-200. The passage in question goes like this: (199) What these philosophers (sc. the Cyrenaics) hold about the criteria (sc. of truth) seems to correspond to what they say about ends. For affections (pathê) do extend to ends too. Some of the affections are pleasant, others are painful and others are intermediate (ta de metaxu). The painful ones are, they say, bad and their end is pain, whereas the pleasant ones are good, whose unmistakable end is pleasure. The intermediates are neither good nor bad, whose end is neither good nor bad, which is an affection in between pleasure and pain (200). Sextus makes clear that what Aristocles calls intermediate states are affections in their own rights. The dubious expression of Aristocles (“He said we have perception of these affections only”) is likely to be intended as referred to all the three states earlier mentioned in Aristocles’ text.6 On the basis of Sextus, intermediate states are affections in themselves, which are neither pleasurable nor painful but they are most likely to be mere representational feelings. The overall picture of Cyrenaic thinking about pathê is thus one in which there are affections that are purely ethical (carrying pleasure or pain). On the other hand, there are intermediate affections that are neutral from an ethical standpoint (as Sextus observes, these affections are neither pleasant nor painful) but that may be thought of as being exclusively epistemological, that is, affections providing us with some kind of knowledge. On the basis of the conceptual analogy between affective and representational affections, in the absence of any textual element in Aristocles and Sextus that may prevent us from assuming so, one may well postulate that in Cyrenaic philosophy intermediate states too are somehow related to motion. The alteration our bodies undergo when we are affected epistemologically may be understood as the result of a perceptual movement intervening between the world and us. When we see an object as white (or when we are whitened, to use the Cyrenaic jargon), our sense organs are altered in such a way that we see whiteness. There is a brief passage of Plutarch that speaks of movement with reference to a representational affection. In comparing the 5 On the point, see Tsouna (1998), 14-15. 6 Diogenes too speaks of intermediate states at II 90: “they (sc. the Cyrenaics) called intermediate states (mesas te katastaseis) the absence of pleasure and pain”. 5 Cyrenaics with the Epicureans, in his attempt to defend the former from Colotes’ criticism, Plutarch asks rhetorically whether “they (sc. the Cyrenaics) do not say that the external object is sweet, but that an affection or a movement of this kind related to taste has occurred (pathos de ti kai kinêma peri autên gegonenai toiuton)” (Against Colotes 1121b). A representational feeling (of sweet) is here openly described as a movement related to taste. Pathos is therefore one central concept of Cyrenaic philosophy, both in ethics and epistemology. The Cyrenaics thought that every pathos begins with a physical alteration in our body and ends with our mental awareness of that alteration. A last feature of affections (as the Cyrenaics conceived of them) is their occurring at one given—and definite—time. The fundamental passage for this feature of Cyrenaic pathê is Athenaeus (Deipnosophists XII 544a-b=SSR IV A 174), which goes thus: Having approved of the affection of pleasure, he claimed that pleasure is the end of life, and that happiness is based on it. He added that pleasure occupies one temporal unit (monochronos), since he believed, as profligates do, that the memory of past enjoyments nor the expectation of future one be important for him. Judging the good in light of the present alone, he considered that what he enjoyed in the past and will enjoy in the future be not important for him, the former because it exists no more, the latter because it does not yet exist and is not manifest. An usual translation for the adjective ‘monochronos’ is ‘short-lived’, ‘momentary’. Following Tsouna (who translates it as ‘uni-temporal’),7 I suggest to translate ‘monochronos’ as ‘occupying one temporal unit’. The crucial idea Athenaeus reports in his passage is that every affection has its own temporal unit, which is defined by the time the affection lasts before evanescing forever. What is really meant when Aristippus speaks of affections that occupy one temporal unit is not that these affections last for a short time. It is truly possible that I will be having a feeling of pleasure all morning if I am reading a novel I like. The point is rather that these affections have specific and time-limited lives, that is, they exactly last the time in which they are actually felt by us. Before that time and after it, these affections do not have any life in us. In the Cyrenaic world, we are thus confronted with perishing affections that do not survive (the limits of) the present, however long this may be. 7 See Tsouna (1998), 15-17. 6 The Cyrenaics centred their ethics on the affection of pleasure and restricted the scope and space of that affection to the present, for they believed that what one had already enjoyed and what one will enjoy are not present to him, and hence are nothing. Diogenes reports the same point of Athenaeus, when he says: “Nor do they (sc. the Cyrenaics) admit that pleasure is derived from the memory or expectation of the good (…), for they assert that the movement affecting the mind dies away with time” (D.L. II 89-90). Affections are confined into the present because of their nature: the movements from which Cyrenaic affections originate inevitably perish over time. The idea that affections are confined to the present is traditionally given crucial importance as far as Cyrenaic ethics is concerned, for it may tell us something about the possible relationship the Cyrenaics envisaged between pleasure and happiness. If our affections of pleasure last only when they are actually felt by us, what will the relationship between pleasure and happiness be? Is happiness to be conceived as the sum of past, present and future enjoyments? If affections are time-limited, this will concern not only the ethics of the Cyrenaics but also their epistemology, in so far as representational affections too are related to motions and movements. The time-limitedness I attach to Cyrenaic affections is something that concerns even things and persons of the Cyrenaic world. The Cyrenaics, I claim, question the existence over time of both objects and subjects, thus conceiving of the former as not-unitary items and the latter, in a Humean fashion, as bundles of affections with no inner unity. Time-limitedness is therefore a central factor of Cyrenaic philosophy as a whole. Now that we have a general overview of the features of Cyrenaic affections, we can move on into the details of Cyrenaic epistemology. We will do so by using—as an excellent starting point for the whole discussion—the critique Aristocles of Messene advances to Cyrenaic philosophy. 3. Aristocles’ criticism Because of its relevance, I quote Aristocles’ text almost fully, although I will do so by alternating his words with my own comments. I begin with the initial paragraph of Aristocles’ text: Next would be those who say that affections alone are apprehensible. This view was adopted by some of the philosophers from Cyrene. As if oppressed by a kind of torpor, they 7 maintained that they knew nothing at all, unless someone standing beside them struck and pricked them. They said that, when burnt or cut, they knew that they were affected by something (kaiomenoi gar elegon ê temnomenoi gnôrizein hoti paschoien). But whether the thing which is burning them is fire, or that which cut them is iron, they could not tell (poteron de to kaion eiê pur ê to temnon sidêros, ouk echein eipein) (Eusebius, PE 14. 19. 1). What is peculiar in Aristocles’ passage is that, while expounding Cyrenaic views, he actually refers to the example of the fire the Anonymous himself uses when he compares Cyrenaic epistemology with Protagoras’ relativism.8 Since things are not intrinsically defined, the Anonymous says, “the Cyrenaics say that affections alone are apprehensible, while external things are not. That I am being burnt—they say—I apprehend; that the fire is such as to burn is obscure. If it were such, all things will be burnt by it” (col. LXV, 26-32). The point of the Anonymous is that for the Cyrenaics only affections are apprehensible (epistemological position) because we cannot know how external things really are. This is so because external things have no intrinsic feature on their own, namely things are indeterminate (metaphysical position). The example of the fire collapses the two positions (the epistemological and the metaphysical) into the same picture. I know that I am being burnt, so I undeniably know the affection of hot I am now feeling. What I do not know, however, is whether the thing that causes my feeling is such to burn, that is, I do not know whether what causes my feeling of hot is hot in itself. In light of the awareness that the agent does not possess any intrinsic feature on its own, I do not know whether the fire is intrinsically hot, because “if it were such, all things will be burnt by it”. The same combination of epistemological and ontological views is to be found in Aristocles’ text. After having stated that for the Cyrenaics what can be effectively known is how things affect us, Aristocles says that the Cyrenaics are perfectly aware to be affected in certain ways (epistemological position), but “whether what burnt them was fire (…) they could not tell” (metaphysical position). The Anonymous says that for the Cyrenaics we cannot know whether an object like the fire does in itself possess the feature of hotness. In Aristocles’ passage what the Cyrenaics appear to be 8 See Anonymous col. XLV, 32-35. Although the example of fire is rather common, there is no doubt—given the clear allusion in Aristocles to arguments employed and developed by Plato himself in the Theaetetus—that Aristocles is actually referring to the Anonymous, (who could well have been almost a contemporary of Aristocles). On the point, see Chiesara (2001), 138. 8 saying is not that one cannot know whether the fire does in itself possess a secondary quality (the hotness). For Aristocles the Cyrenaics hold the view that, while knowing to be feeling hot when they are burnt, they cannot say that what burns them is actually a fire. Differently from the Anonymous, who placed the reason of Cyrenaic subjectivism into the impossibility to know whether a thing in the world possesses an intrinsic feature (that is, a secondary quality, such as the hotness), Aristocles seems to be placing the reason of that subjectivism into the impossibility of knowing the real identity of things, as unitary items. This brings us back to indeterminacy. According to Aristocles’ testimony for the Cyrenaics we are incorrigibly aware of our affections, because we are unable to know the real identity of the thing that appears to cause in us the affections we feel at present. We do not know whether the affection of hot we are now feeling is really caused by a fire or by something else. This hints at the (indeterminist) view that objects as such may indeed be not existent. The Cyrenaics do away with objects as unitary and temporally stable items because they cannot even know what objects—if any—are in the world. In short, what I suggest is that in his passage Aristocles expresses the same point about the non-existence of objects as unitary items Colotes is reported to have formulated, when he suggests to the Cyrenaics to employ such expressions as ‘to be walled, manned’, and so on.9 Moreover, what Aristocles observes in the prosecution of his argument confirms the reference to indeterminacy I have just proposed. He says, as if he is actually continuing the initial part of his argument: Three things must necessarily exist at the same time: the affection itself, what causes it, and what undergoes it. The person who apprehends an affection must necessarily perceive also what undergoes it. It cannot be the case that, if someone is for example warm, one will know that one is being warmed without knowing whether it is himself or a neighbour, now or last year, in Athens or Egypt, someone alive or dead, a man or a stone. One will therefore know too what one is affected by, for people know one another and the roads, cities, the food they 9 That is the reason why I believe Döring misses the point when he condemns Aristocles and Colotes’ testimonies as careless (Döring 1988, 22 ff). The image of the torpor by which in Aristocles’ opinion the Cyrenaics are oppressed is not only reminiscent of Colotes’ image of the siege. Both images suggest a sense of detachment from the world that for Colotes and Aristocles is intrinsic to Cyrenaic philosophy. 9 eat. Likewise, craftsmen know their tools, doctors and sailors infer by means of signs what will happen, and dogs discover the tracks of wild animals (Eusebius, PE, 14. 19. 3-4).10 The core of Aristocles’ criticism in this passage is that in sensing an affection the individual has to be aware that she is sensing an affection and, hence, she has to be provided with a clear understanding of her own identity (if she is a human being or a stone, alive or dead, in Athens or in Egypt, and so on). At the same time, the individual undergoing an affection has to be aware of what causes it. She has to be fully aware of the identity of the objects she happens to be confronted with. She has to be able to recognize other people, roads, cities, and so on. According to Aristocles, the double awareness (of one’s own identity and of the causes of affections) is impossible for the Cyrenaics. They cannot tell either if what causes the affection of hot in them is a fire or if they are human beings. In elaborating such a critique of Cyrenaic views, I take Aristocles to be identifying a Cyrenaic position that ultimately rests upon the view that things in the world are indeterminate. Aristocles’ text is thus important, insofar as it places Cyrenaic epistemology on a par with Cyrenaic metaphysics and, in particular with the view that objects and persons have no peculiar identity. Now, what does it mean to hold that only affections are knowable in the context of a metaphysical view that conceives of objects and persons not as unitary items but as simply aggregates? And, one may further wonder, aggregates of what? The overall picture of objects and persons in the Cyrenaic world is one in which there is a real, mind-independent substratum that is not made up of discrete things, either objects or persons. Both objects and persons are best interpreted as bundles of some episodic and temporary features. Since they are not equipped with a stable ontological essence, objects and persons are best thought of as being under perennial change and as moving from one episode of their fragmented life to the subsequent one with no 10 Later Aristocles adds: “What discussion can there be with such men? It will be surprising if they do not know whether they are on earth or in the sky. And it will be even more astonishing if they do not know—while claiming to be philosophers—whether four are more than three and how many one and two make. For they cannot even say how many fingers they have on their hands, nor whether each of them is one or many”. (PE 14. 19. 6). The argument about the coexistence of the three factors of perceptual process we are now assessing is to be found also in Aristotle, Metaphysics Gamma 1010b33-39. 1 0 possible interruption. The only conceptual alternative to a metaphysics of objects is, in fact, a metaphysics of processes. We do not have any direct and strong textual evidence that the kind of indeterminist metaphysics the Cyrenaics endorse is committed to a metaphysics of processes. The kind of indeterminacy I see at the roots of Cyrenaic philosophy will seem to make sense only if it is placed within a metaphysics of processes, exactly like the one Plato illustrates at length in the Theaetetus (in connection with the subtler thinkers’ theory of perception). There are two textual hints pointing us towards the idea that the Cyrenaics endorsed a metaphysics of processes in connection with indeterminacy. The first hint is the adjective ‘monochronos’, as referred to the kind of affections they Cyrenaics are interested in. I have earlier suggested translating ‘monochronos’ as ‘occupying one temporal unit’. This translation aims to convey the idea that each pathos lasts only for the time in which it is actually felt. This means that affections have a limited life and can be legitimately taken to be arousing from an encounter between the subject feeling the affection and something else causing the affection. When one of the two poles of the relationship breaks away, the affection perishes. Hence, we can conceive of affections as the concrete results of a process of interaction between a subject and an object. In addition, we have observed that for the Cyrenaics an affection is itself a movement. But each movement is inevitably a process from the state of quietness to its opposite. So the metaphysics of indeterminacy as contemplated by the Cyrenaics could be well accommodated—at least in principle—with a metaphysics of processes. 4) Selves and objects. Still, what sense can we make of a world where objects and persons have no identity? My immediate answer is that, although the philosophical views attributed to the Cyrenaics we have been discussing so far look to be pretty strange, they are quite respectable philosophical views. Let us think of persons. In the Cyrenaic picture I am drawing, persons do not have any deep metaphysical essence. So, how are we to explain our being the same person over time? How will we are to explain personal identity, if in the Cyrenaic world there is no identity of persons at all? David Hume for instance has put forward a conception of persons and personal identity that is very close, if not identical, with the one the Cyrenaics may have held. 1 1 Hume has described such a conception in the following way: For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity (…). I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an unconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other sense and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, with several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is composed (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, section VI, pp. 252-253 Selby-Bigge Edition) Hume’s words constitute an impeccable exposition of the view about persons and personal identity I claim can be ascribed to the Cyrenaics. Persons are best seen as bundles or collections of their own changing perceptions/affections. In this picture, there is no self that may function as a substratum surviving changes and modifications over time and that, because of this, represents our true and full ‘I’. One may here raise the objection that there are no ancient source on the Cyrenaics openly dealing with the question of persons and personal identity. Nonetheless, it is also true that the Cyrenaics appear to have endorsed indeterminacy. And indeterminacy concerns all things in the world, both objects and persons, who in the context of that metaphysical view are seen as not-unitary and temporary items. In addition, there is also an indirect evidence that may support the claim about 1 2 persons I am proposing in connection with the Cyrenaics. The problem of persons and personal identity is not a problem foreign to Greek philosophy. It was instead a rather old problem that was well in the air at the time of the Cyrenaics. The evidence of Plato’s Theaetetus confirms this: in that dialogue persons are seen exactly as bundles of perceptions (in particular at Tht. 157b8-c3) and as not equipped with a further identity persisting over time (in particular at Tht. 159a6-160a6, where the problem of the two Socrateses is discussed). That Plato, a contemporary of Aristippus, was well aware of the problem of persons and personal identity is evident also from a famous passage of the Symposium, where the identity of persons is truly regarded as an apparent fact.11 But the problem of persons and their identity is older than Plato. There is evidence that Epicharmus, a Pythagorean thinker of the fifth century BC, formulated an argument, called the Growing Argument (Auxanomenos Logos), purported to show that every change in a subject implies the existence of a new subject. To show the full implication of his argument, Epicharmus is reported to have written a comedy, where the borrower refuses to give the money back to his lender, on the ground that she is not anymore the same person who originally borrowed the money.12 One may now wonder what sense we could make of Cyrenaic epistemology if we maintained that the Cyrenaics conceived of persons as mere bundles of affections, with no further inner identity? We have so far many times seen that the fundamental tenet of Cyrenaic epistemology is that only affections are apprehensible. The affections the Cyrenaics speak of are always and necessarily referred to the subject feeling the affections. I have often quoted the Cyrenaic neologism: ‘I am being whitened’, where the ‘I’ in such an expression refers to the subject undergoing the affection of white. What sense will we make of this ‘I’ and of the epistemological infallibility connected to it in the context of Cyrenaic epistemology if there is no proper ‘I’? What sense will we make of Cyrenaic subjectivism if there is no proper 11 See Symp. 207d5-208e-4. 12 Epicharmus’ argument, which some say he took from Pythagoras, can be found in D.L. III 11; in the Anonymous col. LXXI 1-39 (commenting Tht. 152e4-5) and in Plutarch, De sera Num. 559a. A more technical version of Epicharmus’ argument can be found in Plutarch’ On Commons conceptions 1083a-1084a. 1 3 subject in the Cyrenaic world?13 To answer this objection, we need perhaps to revise our deepest conceptions about persons and their identity in light of the clarifications on the concept of ‘person’ Derek Parfit has developed in his groundbreaking Reasons and Persons (Oxford 1984). By rehearsing Hume’s approach to the question of persons as bundles of perceptions, Parfit suggests that personal identity is not an all-or-nothing view. As far as the identity of persons is concerned, we are not confined to the two alternatives we are usually faced with: either that the self is a deep further fact that persists over time among inevitable changes and modifications or that the self is so fragmented in isolated episodes to be effectively non-existent. Parfit suggests a view that is in and between the other two, hence rejecting the alternative ‘all or nothing’. The view Parfit advocates is that personal identity is not what really matters. What really matters is a sort of psychological connectedness linking the various selves we experience to be in our life. That connectedness is radically different from a constituting and persisting self, which as such goes beyond any temporal modification and ontological change.14 The psychological connectedness Parfit refers to may be compared to a sort of loose self. This loose self is different both from the kind of self intended as a deep further fact and from an annihilated ‘I’ (that is, the view that the temporary and fragmented episodes of our psychological life are radically independent one from the 13 For the claim that the Cyrenaics raised serious doubts about personal identity, see Irwin (1991), 66-70; (2007), 45. Contra, see Tsouna (1998), 132. 14 For Parfit’s views on persons and their identity, see part III of Reasons and Persons (pp. 199-350). See in particular p. 263 and p. 281: “The truth is very different from what we are inclined to believe. Even if are not aware of this, most of us are Non-Reductionists (viz. refusing the all-or-nothing view about personal identity). If we considered my imagined cases, we would be strongly inclined to believe that our continued existence is a deep further fact, distinct from physical and psychological continuity, and a fact that must be all-ornothing. This is not true. Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating and consoling. When I believed that my existence was such a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others”. 1 4 other, so that we are really doomed to experience no connection at all between them). The loose self is what allows us to speak of a self even in those cases—such as the ones Parfit himself scrutinizes, Hume’s bundles of perceptions, the supposedly Cyrenaic collections of affections—we have recently reviewed. The philosophical view about persons and their identity I ascribe to the Cyrenaics is that of a loose self, which can be regarded as the referent of the expression ‘I’ in the Cyrenaic neologism: ‘I am being whitened’. At the same time, Cyrenaic subjectivism is not put under threat by the concept of loose self I recommend, for although fragmented in the Cyrenaic world there is still a self and, hence, a subject. On the basis of the metaphysics of indeterminacy I have ascribed to the Cyrenaics, there are no proper objects as such in the world. I have also argued that the Cyrenaics seem to have endorsed a metaphysical view on whose basis there is a real substratum, mind-independent, and made up of an undifferentiated lump of matter. Such substratum is not constituted by objects as single, unitary items, since what we conventionally term as ‘objects’ are no more than collections of secondary qualities. Since a metaphysics of indeterminacy cannot be a metaphysics of objects, we may reinterpret it as a metaphysics of processes, where the bundle of perceptions constituting the perceiving subject and the collection of secondary qualities constituting the perceived object are best seen as the result of temporary processes that casually put in touch the former with the latter. Is the idea that in our everyday life we are not confronted with a world of discrete objects—as the common sense usually tells us—so shocking? Is this idea more shocking than the one telling us that we are is just a loosely interrelated bundle of psychological interconnected selves? I am not quite sure which of the two views appears to be more disturbing for us, but Parfit could be right when he says that we may find these views as ultimately consoling. There is here no space to deal fully with a metaphysics of indeterminacy and with the view that the world is made up of an undifferentiated lump of matter, where processes take place and where the products of such processes are interactions between a subject (more appropriately a bundle of mental states) and an object (more appropriately a collection of secondary qualities). But for now it may be noted that the common-sense metaphysical view that the world around us is populated by objects is generally regarded to be so firm because it is supposed to be grounded on science. But even this more comfortable belief needs to be revised. Scientific research has made clear that objects are not what they appear to be at a first sight. We see a 1 5 table and believe that the object we are seeing is really a table. We cannot be deceived about the fact that what we are actually seeing is a table. Yet, on a scientific level, what we believe to be a table is, more essentially, a compound of molecules, equipped with a certain balance of forces. On a scientific outlook, what we see as a table is thus not—strictly speaking—a table, but something else. Our way to apprehend objects is more primitive than the ones adopted by science and cannot rest on science, at least not on the kind of science—today predominant—that is mostly governed by quantum mechanics and physics. One of the most enduring theoretical effects of quantum physics is that reality, in its ultimate version, is indeterminate. Heisenberg elaborated a principle, called “Uncertainty principle” or “Principle of Indeterminacy”, which goes thus: “In the field of reality whose connexions are formulated by the quantumtheory, natural laws do not lead to a complete determination of what happens in space and time; what happens (…) depends instead on the game of fortune”.15 Heisenberg observes that the ultimate constituent of reality, namely the elementary particle, is indeterminate. We cannot identify the ontological nature and the behaviour of the elementary particle by using the usual space/time dichotomy, since there are two clear elements of indeterminacy in the picture: the duality wave/particle and its non-locality (in more scientific terms, its entanglement). On the basis of Heisenberg’s view, because of the substantial indeterminacy of the behaviour of elementary particles, classical physics is unable to explain most of the phenomena of reality. Heisenberg’s views about indeterminacy have been given wide circulation in philosophy by Kuhn and Feyerabend. Especially the latter one, in Against Method (London 1975) has argued for a view of reality as indeterminate and variably determined by incommensurable conceptual schemes, belonging to different cultural outlooks and perspectives.16 One of Feyerabend’s heirs, John Duprè, has recently defended with success a non-reductive, indeterministic metaphysics.17 What I suggest is that both the view that we are not more than bundles of loosely interconnected psychological states and the related view that the world is made up of an undifferentiated lump of matter where what we term as objects are best seen as 15 “Über quantenmechanische Kinematik und Mechanik”, Mathematische Annalen 1926. 16 See Feyerabend (1975), especially chapter 17. 17 See Duprè (1993). 1 6 collections of secondary qualities are views of which we can make sense, however radically shocking they may appear at first sight. In addition, they can even be views that are true views. We only resist them because they are in radical contrast with some of our deepest assumptions. To appreciate the novelty of such radical views, we need to revise profoundly our beliefs about what we are and about how the world is. 5) Cyrenaic knowledge. For the Cyrenaics only our affections are knowable to us.18 How can this expression be interpreted in the picture about persons and objects I have been drawing so far? In the Cyrenaic world the loose subject is confronted with a substratum of undifferentiated matter. When the loose subject comes in touch with the substratum, what she is able to know is how she is affected by that substratum. Since the loose subject does not happen to be confronted with a substratum that is made up of objects, that subject can be affected only by registering secondary qualities. The Cyrenaic neologism, such as ‘I am being whitened’, does now make full sense. The ‘I’ of the expression refers to the loose subject undergoing the particular affection of white, at the time where the process of interaction with the undifferentiated substratum occurs. Accordingly, ‘to be whitened’ refers to the quality of the affection, which is, on this occasion, an affection of white. In Cyrenaic neologisms no reference at all is made to what we usually term as the ‘object’ causing the affection, because—strictly speaking—there is no unitary item in the world out there. When the ‘I’ of the Cyrenaic neologism gets in touch with the undifferentiated substratum, an interaction between that ‘I’ and the substratum appearing white occurs. In this interaction, the perceiving subject (the ‘I’ of the Cyrenaic neologism) becomes provided with an affection of white, which is private to her and which constitutes for the Cyrenaics the 18 Because of the use of the verb ‘katalambanô’ in the standard statement that “mona ta pathê katalepta”, Tsouna claims that the formulation of the standard Cyrenaic tenet that only affections are knowable was properly made in Hellenistic time, when the verb ‘katalambanô’ was very much used by the Stoics in their elaboration of the idea of katalêptikê phantasia (Tsouna 1998, 32-33). Döring, however (Döring 1988, 29), has pointed out that there is an occurrence of ‘katalambanô’ in this technical sense in Plato’s Phaedrus 250d1. This does not strictly rule out the possibility that the Cyrenaics may have originally used the term in the formulation of their epistemology. 1 7 exclusive basis for knowledge. A point that is worth highlighting in this connection is the privacy of one’s affections and their absolute incorrigibility. The point is clearly marked by Sextus: “it is possible, they say (sc. the Cyrenaics) to assert infallibly and truly and firmly and incorrigibly that we are being whitened or sweetened” (M VII 191). In the context of Cyrenaic epistemology, the perceiving subject is the fulcrum from which knowledge irradiates. The subject is the epistemological authority from which knowledge arises, in so far as the subject is the only element epistemologically allowed to report how she is affected in the very moment when the perceptual process takes place. No one else is allowed to do so on her behalf. Differently from all other Greek philosophers, the Cyrenaics placed the locus of knowledge within the boundaries of the subject, however fragmented this could be. Consequently, while not rejecting the existence of the external world in an idealist sense, they made the truth dependant upon the internal mental states of the perceiving subject, thus dissolving the view—at the roots of Greek epistemology—that truth is always and exclusively a truth of external objects. Although signalling differences between them, ancient sources often pair Cyrenaic epistemology with Protagoras’ relativism and Pyrrho’s scepticism (and also with Epicurean epistemology). Eusebius says: “Pyrrho and his followers maintain that human beings can know nothing, Aristippus and his followers that only our affections are knowable, whereas the pupils of Metrodorus and Protagoras hold that we must trust to the perceptions of the body alone” (PE 14. 2. 4=SSR IV A 216). Cicero adds: “One criterion is that of Protagoras, who holds that what appears true to someone is really true for that person; another is that of the Cyrenaics, who believe that there is no criterion whatsoever beyond inmost affections, another is that of Epicurus, who places the criterion of truth into the senses and in the primary notion of things and in pleasure” (Ac. Pr. II 46, 142= SSR IV A 209). There are surely differences between the Cyrenaics, Protagoras and Pyrrho, as far as their epistemologies are concerned. Nonetheless, such differences are less important than their affinities.19 Protagoras claimed that all appearances are true for those who have them. If I feel the wind as hot and you as cold, it will be the case that the wind is hot for me and cold for you. In Protagoras’ relativism, the main concern is 19 Against this, see Tsouna (1998), chapter 10. 1 8 on the relativity of perception. Each perception is true relatively to a perceiver. In Cyrenaic epistemology there is no explicit reference to relativity. Yet, the Cyrenaics are not so distant from Protagoras; for them, each affection is the source of individual knowledge. To reuse Protagoras’ example, in the presence of a blowing wind, one of us could say, in Cyrenaic jargon, to be warmed and another to be colded. One is, once again, incorrigibly correct in one’s own affections. And, although relativity is nowhere mentioned in connection with Cyrenaic epistemology, the best way to account philosophically for the view that all affections are true (Cyrenaic subjectivism) is to interpret that view as ultimately reducible to relativism. In Metaphysics Gamma, sections 5-6, Aristotle shows in fact that one could legitimately hold the view that all appearances are true if one were prepared to maintain that all appearances are relative.20 While retaining the same dichotomy between appearances and the world, Pyrrho reversed the epistemological optimism of the Cyrenaics and of Protagoras when he suggested that appearances could not tell us anything true. The distance between Pyrrho's view on knowledge and the Cyrenaics' appears therefore to be greater than that between the latter and Protagoras. 6) Beyond affections. One may wonder whether Cyrenaic epistemology is exhausted by affections. When Aristocles says that for the Cyrenaics we can have perceptions of affections, does he mean that perception is merely the individual’s mental assent to (her awareness of) the affection initially felt through a modification of the body? Does ‘perception’ in Cyrenaic philosophy mean exclusively the individual’s mental awareness of the correspondent bodily affection? There are two sources making clear that for the Cyrenaics a perception is (also) something different from the mere awareness of a bodily alteration. One is Plutarch, Against Colotes 1120f, when he amends Colotes’ account by telling us what the Cyrenaics had really said. In commenting on Cyrenaic epistemology, Plutarch remarks: When opinion stays close to the affection it therefore preserves its infallibility (hothen emmenousa tois pathesin ê doxa diatêrei to anamart êton, ekbainousa). On the contrary, 20 See Aristotle, Metaph. 6.1011a17-24; see also Politis (2004), @@. 1 9 when it oversteps them and mixes up with judgements and statements about external objects, it often disturbs itself and makes a fight against other people, who receive from the same objects contrary affections and different sense-impressions. (1120f). While affection is always infallible for the Cyrenaics (since each affection has its evidence, intrinsic to it and irreversible), opinion is all right when it stays close to affection. On the other hand, when opinion oversteps affections by trying to tell how things really are, opinion goes wrong. The main point Plutarch raises is the sceptical distinction between appearance and reality, a distinction that may suit the Cyrenaics too, when they distinguish between the apprehensibility of affections and the unapprehensibility of things. But what is important for us in Plutarch’ account is that, while commenting on Cyrenaic epistemology he draws a clear distinction between affections (and their cognitive infallibility) and opinions (and their related fallibility). The second passage is Diogenes Laertius II 93: “They (sc. the Cyrenaics) say that one may feel a pain greater than another and that perceptions do not fully speak the truth (tas aisthêseis mê pantote alêtheuein)”. As in Plutarch’s passage, Diogenes too may be suggesting a distinction between the epistemological power of affection and the possible epistemological failure of perception. This interpretation seems to be confirmed by the sentence immediately preceding the one about perceptions not always speaking the truth, where Diogenes points out that the Cyrenaics affirmed that a pain could be greater than another. Since Diogenes has insisted at II 87 that for the Cyrenaics “pleasure does not differ from pleasure nor is one pleasure more pleasant than another”, I interpret his remark that a pain could be greater than another to be suggesting that the Cyrenaics believed it possible to reflect upon pleasures. This, in turn, will be the case if there is something more than affections in Cyrenaic epistemology. It may be noted that Diogenes’ remark about a pain being greater than another could mean that either the same individual is able to say that a pain she is now feeling is greater that another she has already felt; or that an individual can say that the pleasure she is feeling is greater than the one another individual is feeling or has felt. In both cases, an extra-affective capacity should be admitted of. Likewise, when the Cyrenaics claimed that happiness is the sum of all pleasures, past, present and futures (D.L. II 87), they must have claimed that there is a way to assess the quality of pleasures enjoyed over different periods of time. I see no conceptual way to do so by relying on ‘pure’ affections. 2 0 Beyond the textual evidence on which we have so far focused, there are other elements on whose basis one may conjecture that the Cyrenaics could have admitted of extra-affective (more judgmental) capacities. Like all other philosophers do, the Cyrenaics argued for philosophical views. When they say that pleasure is the end or that affections only are knowable, these are two statements that are neither affections in themselves nor are easily derivable from affections. So, how are the Cyrenaics able to explain the legitimacy of these two statements by relying on a theory of knowledge that is exclusively centred on the infallibility of one’s affections? Secondly, the Cyrenaics invented neologisms of the kind ‘I am being X-ed’, to express the infallibility of one’s affections. They maintained that an affection could be formulated and communicated through a linguistic expression. But, as Aristocles points out,21 ‘I am being X-ed’ is not an affection, but it is a statement. The Cyrenaics are attributed an original theory of language, on which we will be concentrating soon, which argues for the view that language is the only thing that is common to human beings in the Cyrenaic world. If language is meaningful and if affections can be translated into meaningful statements, how are the Cyrenaics to account for these two phainomena in the context of an epistemology that appears to be admitting of affections only? In short, my point is whether—given the absolute prevalence of affections in Cyrenaic epistemology—there is room in that epistemology for judgemental activities that are extra-affective. My suggestion is that, although I am more than ready to insist that the peculiarity of Cyrenaic epistemology lies in their theory of affections, the Cyrenaics may have allowed for a more judgemental activity that could explain those aspects of their epistemology that do not appear reducible to affections. 7) Internal touch. One possible way to assess the claim that the Cyrenaics could have admitted of extraaffective activities in their epistemology is to understand Cicero’s doctrine of internal touch. Cicero has twice spoken of an internal touch with reference to the Cyrenaics. The first passage goes like this: “What about the Cyrenaics, by no means contemptible philosophers? They deny that anything can be perceived from the 21 Eusebius, PE 14.19. 2. 2 1 outside, while they do say to perceive only those things they experience by means of an internal touch, like pain and pleasure; they cannot know whose sound or colour something is, but to sense only to be affected in a certain way (Ac. Prior. II 24.76=SSR IV A 209). In another passage, Cicero says: “What about touch, of that touch philosophers call interior, of either pleasure or pain, in which the Cyrenaics believe that only there is the criterion of truth (iudicium), because it is perceived by means of the senses?” (Ac. Pr. II 7, 20=SSR IV A 209). Both of Cicero’s passages insist on the fact that the Cyrenaics placed the boundaries of truth within the individual by denying that anything can be perceived from the outside and by suggesting that the criterion of truth lies in the internal touch. What is internal touch? And how does it work? When we have been faced with the theory of affections of the Cyrenaics, I have suggested that affection (pathos) has a double meaning in Cyrenaic philosophy. First, it refers to the bodily alteration we feel through the modification of our sense organs. When I am whitened, my eyes are altered so to have an affection of white. After the bodily alteration through the sense organs, there is the mental awareness of that alteration. In this picture the sense organ (the touch for instance) is what, through the appropriate alteration of our body, provides the essential information for us to be aware that we have a certain affection of soft or hard. Correspondingly, an internal touch could be the proper judgemental organ that, differently from the other physical sense organs, is not outside us but to use Cicero’s image wholly inside us. Once we are provided with the cognitive infallibility our affections grant us with, we may elaborate on those affections, on the conceptual relations among them by means of the internal touch. The kind of judgemental activity I believe can be carried out by internal touch is such as to be in perfect harmony with the Cyrenaic theory of affections, in so far as the judgements we can formulate by means of the internal touch are best interpreted as subjective appearances. In place of an organizing mind that is able to supervene on perceptions and to deal with judgements detached from the senses,22 the Cyrenaics spoke of a touch as the internal sense aimed to provide subjective judgements on affections. This seems to suggest that there is a strict parallelism between outer and inner senses. Whereas the former ones provide us with those bodily alterations ultimately resulting in the mental awareness of them (both elements, viz. the alteration 22 See above, section 6, chapter 3. 2 2 and the awareness, conjoining to form infallible affections), the latter register the mental modifications caused by affections, so that we can create a second-order, higher level of mental activity enabling us to form subjective, yet refutable and fallible, judgements. For such judgements the Cyrenaics may have well employed the term ‘perceptions’. This term and the related verb ‘to perceive’ are used by Cicero himself and can also be found in those sources on the Cyrenaics, such as Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, where a distinction between affections and perceptions are drawn. A possible analogy between the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans may be here appropriate. In their canon, the Epicureans set out sensations, pre-conceptions (and feeling) as criteria of truth. For them, sensations are understood as the reception of impressions from the environment and are said to be all true. There are thus close affinities between the Epicurean view that all sensations are true and the Cyrenaic doctrine that affections alone are apprehended and infallible. Once it has often repeated itself, for the Epicureans a sensation gives rise to pre-conceptions, which are extra-perceptual concepts. Those basic concepts are further elaborated by the mind through analogy and similarity into more complex ideas. Now, one may imagine that the extra-affective activities the Cyrenaics appear to have admitted of in their epistemology could operate in a way similar to Epicurean pre-conceptions. Once the Cyrenaic individual has individuated some affections that keep recurring, she may fix them into more stable concepts. These perceptions are best interpreted as subjective and fallible appearances that may ideally constitute a web of judgemental items in addition to affections.23 8) Aristippus the Younger. If there is a Cyrenaic philosopher who could be seen as responsible for the introduction of extra-affective activities into the core of Cyrenaic epistemology, that could be Aristippus the Younger. He lived at a time when the Epicureans and the Cyrenaics discussed their rival hedonistic theories. It would be no surprise that their competing epistemologies could be interpreted as reflecting shared inclinations and as influencing each other. Obviously, when one speaks of the role of Aristippus the Younger in the proper elaboration of Cyrenaic philosophy, the terrain becomes 23 On Cyrenaics and Epicureans on knowledge, see Tsouna (1998), chapter 9. 2 3 muddy. I do not oppose to the usual exegetical scheme on whose basis Aristippus the Elder had no proper role in the elaboration of Cyrenaic doctrines (whereas his grandson is philosophically responsible for the formulation of those doctrines) the contrary view that Aristippus the Elder is the sole responsible for the elaboration of Cyrenaic doctrines (whereas his grandson played a very limited role in that formulation). We had better go on by relying on the few certainties we have on the question. I have earlier argued that mainly on the basis of Diogenes’ account one may ascribe to Aristippus the Elder the initial formulation of the main ethical and epistemological tenets of the Cyrenaic school. On the other hand, Aristippus the Younger is surely given a certain doctrinal importance in the context of the Cyrenaic school by Aristocles. In addition, Aristippus the Younger lived at a time when, on my interpretation, the Cyrenaic school had already elaborated its doctrines and was already recognized as a proper school. In addition, he also lived at a time where Cyrenaic philosophy (already identified as a proper body of philosophical views) was surely either under the attacks of schools that elaborated rival views (such as Epicurus’) or under the solicitation of philosophers, such as Pyrrho, who put forward philosophical views cognate to those of the Cyrenaics. What I mean is that Aristippus the Younger could have well been in the philosophical need to revise the doctrinal coherence of the body of doctrines that, on my understanding, his grandfather initially formulated. All these elements force me to believe that Aristippus the Younger is likely to have systematized into a coherent, or more systematic whole, the body of doctrines his grandfather elaborated, in response to the philosophical challenges, friendly or unfriendly, Pyrrho and the Epicureans posed to the Cyrenaics. If I have to indicate at least one conceptual element that I believe can be correctly attributed to Aristippus the Younger I will indicate the famous Cyrenaic neologisms of the kind ‘I am being X-ed’, of which there is no traces in the sources on the thought of Aristippus the Elder. The invention of a neologism is well in accordance with the conceptual systematization of a whole philosophical system. Once the philosopher dealing with the systematization has done the job, she may well suggest a new language able to capture the philosophical innovations of the body of doctrines she has newly organized. In the case of Cyrenaic philosophy, a new language was actually needed to show the full import of a philosophy that cannot be labelled as barely innovative for 2 4 Greek philosophy. 10251. 2 5