Chapter 5: Against followers of the Academy.
If a man, says Epictetus, objects to what is manifestly clear, it is not easy to find an argument against him, whereby one shall change his mind.
And this is not because of his power, nor because of the weakness of him that is instructing him; but, when a man, worsted in argument, becomes hardened like a stone, how can one reason with him anymore?
When I was in graduate school, I feebly struggled my way through a dissertation on the problem of skepticism in the history of philosophy. This brief chapter from Epictetus was my original inspiration, though I was told that I wouldn’t be able to “sell” myself on the job market if I wrote about the Stoics. I worked from Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Reid instead, though the attitudes of realism and common sense will be much the same, wherever you may find them.
I must always resist the temptation to get lost in the details here, so it helps me to just express the problem in the simplest way I can.
For all of our abstract reflections and profound noodling, there are certain obvious facts of experience that form the very basis of our awareness. Euclid understood this, when he started with definitions, postulates, and axioms that were necessary for thinking about geometry.
There is a great danger in being so enamored of constant “demonstration” that we forget how arguments cannot regress to infinity, and that we need to begin with self-evident first principles.
There is, similarly, a big difference between doubting in order to arrive at the truth, and doubting in order to deny that there is any such thing as the truth to begin with.
So many philosophers, and so many thinkers of any sort, get caught up in needing to prove what doesn’t need to be proven, and therefore in denying what is manifestly given. The problem isn’t merely academic, since it results in the extreme forms of skepticism, subjectivism, and relativism that are so trendy in post-modern life.
“How could you possibly know that? It all depends on your opinion. Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?”
What can one even begin to do with someone who withdraws into this sort of mental prison? Is there anything that can be said to help open a closed mind?
Over the years, the members of Plato’s Academy succumbed to this weakness of crippling uncertainty, and they would raise their heads into the clouds, while forgetting that they still needed to have their feet firmly planted on the ground.
The extreme skeptic may well seem as immovable as a stubborn mule. It’s not that he isn’t able to move, it’s just that he doesn’t want to.
If a man, says Epictetus, objects to what is manifestly clear, it is not easy to find an argument against him, whereby one shall change his mind.
And this is not because of his power, nor because of the weakness of him that is instructing him; but, when a man, worsted in argument, becomes hardened like a stone, how can one reason with him anymore?
When I was in graduate school, I feebly struggled my way through a dissertation on the problem of skepticism in the history of philosophy. This brief chapter from Epictetus was my original inspiration, though I was told that I wouldn’t be able to “sell” myself on the job market if I wrote about the Stoics. I worked from Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Reid instead, though the attitudes of realism and common sense will be much the same, wherever you may find them.
I must always resist the temptation to get lost in the details here, so it helps me to just express the problem in the simplest way I can.
For all of our abstract reflections and profound noodling, there are certain obvious facts of experience that form the very basis of our awareness. Euclid understood this, when he started with definitions, postulates, and axioms that were necessary for thinking about geometry.
There is a great danger in being so enamored of constant “demonstration” that we forget how arguments cannot regress to infinity, and that we need to begin with self-evident first principles.
There is, similarly, a big difference between doubting in order to arrive at the truth, and doubting in order to deny that there is any such thing as the truth to begin with.
So many philosophers, and so many thinkers of any sort, get caught up in needing to prove what doesn’t need to be proven, and therefore in denying what is manifestly given. The problem isn’t merely academic, since it results in the extreme forms of skepticism, subjectivism, and relativism that are so trendy in post-modern life.
“How could you possibly know that? It all depends on your opinion. Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?”
What can one even begin to do with someone who withdraws into this sort of mental prison? Is there anything that can be said to help open a closed mind?
Over the years, the members of Plato’s Academy succumbed to this weakness of crippling uncertainty, and they would raise their heads into the clouds, while forgetting that they still needed to have their feet firmly planted on the ground.
The extreme skeptic may well seem as immovable as a stubborn mule. It’s not that he isn’t able to move, it’s just that he doesn’t want to.
Written in 12/2016
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