Hellenistic Philosophy Introductory

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

Short Fragments and Testimonia from Uncertain Works 85


either investigate or puzzle over, nor even hold an opinion or even refute
[someone], without a basic grasp.


Sextus M 11.21 (255 U) [1-72]


According to the wise Epicurus it is not possible to investigate or
[even] to be puzzled without a basic grasp.


Sextus M 8.258 (259 U) [1-73]


... We see that there are some who have abolished the existence of
'things said' [lekta], not just [philosophers] from other schools, such as
the Epicureans, but even Stoics such as Basilides and his followers, who
thought that no incorporeal [entity] exists.


Sextus M 8.13 (259 U) [1-74]


But the followers of Epicurus and Strato the natural philosopher leave
[in existence] only two [such entities], the signifier and the object, and
so they appear to belong to the second group and to make the true and
the false a matter of the utterance [and not the things said, i.e., lekta].


Sextus M 8.177 (262 U) [1-75]


... For Epicurus and the leaders of his school said that the sign was
sensible, while the Stoics said that it was intelligible.


Physics and Theology


Pseudo-Plutarch Stromates 8 = Dox. Gr.
p. 581 (266 U)


[1-76]

... in the totality [of things] nothing unprecedented happens beyond
[what has happened in] the unlimited time which has already passed.


Aetius 1.3.18 = Dox.Gr. p. 285-6 (267, 275 U) [1-77]


Epicurus, the son of Neocles and an Athenian, philosophized in the
manner of Democritus and said that the principles of existing things are
bodies which can be contemplated by reason, which do not participate
in void and are ungenerated and indestructible, since they can neither
be broken nor be compounded [or: arranged] out of parts, nor be altered
in their qualities. They are contemplated by reason. Anyway, they move
in the void and through the void. And the void itself is infinite, and so

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