Pursuits of Wisdom by Cooper John M

Author:Cooper, John M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2012-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

The Epicurean and Skeptic Ways of Life

5.1. Introduction

Despite their many individual differences, for all the philosophers we have discussed in previous chapters—Socrates, Aristotle, and the Stoics—a devotion to reason lies at the center of the best way of life. The same is true, of course for Plato and, as we will see in the next chapter, for the tradition of Platonism, based on Plato’s works, that came to dominate philosophy in late ancient times. For these philosophers, the best life is not merely the one that philosophical reason explains and justifies to us. Reason also guides people as they go about leading that life, in that they act as they do for reasons, drawn from philosophical thought, that they are prepared (up to some point) to explain and defend, so that the reasons that they act upon derive from their own reasoned understanding—they are not taken over “on faith,” or by just following a pattern laid down by some guru. But, in addition, all these philosophers hold that human reason is a preeminently valuable power, and especially worthy of our adherence, indeed our devotion, because of its divine origins and/or its affiliations to the divine. It is because of this high status assigned to reason that all these philosophers—they constitute the “main line” of the ancient philosophical tradition—agree, in their different ways, that engagement in philosophical argumentation and investigation is an essential component of the best life (or, for the Stoics, an incidental, but necessary, and especially good, one, exhibiting to the highest degree the value of order in complexity). This connection to the divine is part of the reason why, in their different ways, for all these philosophers, philosophy does not just authoritatively specify some way of life as best for us, but the very practice of philosophical study and inquiry is included within the best way of life.

Neither Epicurus (and his many followers) nor the ancient skeptics, both Academic and Pyrrhonian, accept this conception of human reason, as having divine affiliations that give it some unique power and value. They do not accept, with these mainline philosophers, that human reason has powers of insight and judgment sufficient of themselves to go behind appearances and reach a divinely ordained truth about reality, so as to decide authoritatively about human good and bad, and to discover the true scheme of values for a human life. I reserve further discussion of the skeptics’ attitude to reason and its value to later in this chapter.1 As for Epicurus, he adopts a conception of reason as a purely naturally arising power of humans (and, with limitations and gradations, of some other animals, as well) that is firmly grounded in, and strictly limited by, our powers of sensation and feeling.2 It has no authority whatsoever except what derives from these sources. Ultimate “truth” is found only in sensation and in naturally unavoidable feelings of attraction or aversion.3 Where questions of good and bad and how to act are concerned, reason and philosophy are

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