Dr Greg Bahnsen - Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: Roman Period Part 2 (Part 14)

See if I can go back to my point. For Zeno, the form doesn't exist either in a Platonic realm beyond time and space, nor does the form exist in the particulars. There is no form. The universal, or the form of hoarseness or duckness or humanity, is nothing but a mental construct. Where Aristotle believed they were embedded in particulars, Zeno believed that forms are nothing more but a result of the mind's activity. For him, only matter was real. And he seemed to be willing to let the absurd consequence of that position be affirmed. If only matter is real, if you say that good and bad are real properties, then goodness and badness must be corporeal in some sense. And Zeno said, that's right. Whatever. It's pretty hard to take it beyond that. It just looks like a guy willing to swallow the reductive out absurdum and move ahead. But after all, to say goodness and badness or corporeal does seem to refute the sensibility of this philosophy. Well, matter is all that is real. But for Zeno, matter is a particular kind of body. It's fire. And this fire, which matter is composed of was also called God by Zeno. Now, where have we heard this before? Already told you, there's nothing new under the sun. Where did Zeno get the idea that the material world was made up of a fire that can be called God? Heraclitus. Very good. And so Stoicism is a development of at least one major aspect of Heraclitus philosophy. In the details of his physical theory, his view of nature and the world. Zeno tended to follow Aristotle, so he gets the foundation of his view from Heraclitus. And then for the details of what the world is like, he was willing to let Aristotle's authority guide him. Obviously, Stoicism doesn't make any grand contribution to our view of metaphysics or epistemology. In this theory of reality that we have from Zeno and his theory of knowledge, there's nothing new at all. The unique contribution that Stoicism makes, or the developments that are most important in Stoic philosophy are ethical developments. According to Zeno, every creature's purpose defines its highest good. That is, every creature has a nature. Even as Aristotle had taught, there was a particular nature for man, a particular nature for ducks. And every creature's good or ethical direction then comes by pursuing its true nature. Knowledge is valuable to man, according to Zeno, only when it is useful to us, when knowledge helps us discover our true nature so that we can fit into the universe the flow of Reality, then knowledge is good. Zena looked upon the universe as a deterministic system, but he didn't believe that it was a blind system. He believed, contrary to the atomist who saw it as just bits of matter falling through space. Zeno believed that there was an intelligence or a logos that permeated the physical universe, so that there was something akin to divine providence in his outlook. The universe behaves in accordance with a logos or a law, a reason. And it's a reason that we can understand with the human mind. The universe displays orderliness because of the logos that permeates it. And our minds can know this logos can know this order, Because there is a law or a principle permeating the universe. Zeno felt it possible to criticize human institutions that did not live up to their proper nature. Remember, everything has a nature. So does a political order. And when a political order doesn't live up to its proper nature, is not in accord with reason, then it could be criticized. The thing that fascinates me, we're teaching this course in the midst of a political campaign, and you hear a lot of political theorizing and so forth. Many people talk this way today, too. Reason is the standard that any political order must be held up to. It's not the Bible or divine revelation or what have you, but what would be a reasonable political option. Zeno said that you can criticize the actual activities and decisions of a state based on the higher law of reason. Reason is what is natural, what permeates the natural world in which we can know with our minds. Now, since political codes and actions can be evaluated in terms of this universal law of reason that kind of runs through the universe, it seemed to follow to Zeno, or for Zeno, that all men were subject to this law, and thus all men were brothers. And so he promoted the idea of a universal fellowship of men or a universal city, which can be designated a cosmopolis, right? As in cosmopolitan, a cosmopolis or cosmopolis, a world city. And why do you think that would be particularly beneficial while the Roman Empire is growing? Well, the Roman Empire is the external manifestation then, of what Zeno the philosopher was teaching. We need a world state where all men are universally accepted as citizens. Beyond the notion of a natural law, a reason or logos that flows through the. Through all of, not creation, all of nature, that can be known by man's mind. The Stoics are also remembered for the primacy they give to duty in their notion of ethics. Duty for them has nothing to do with one's personal advantage or consequences. Duty is duty is duty totally apart from whether it brings pleasurable consequences for you or advantages for you. Happiness for a Stoic was peace of mind. And peace of mind comes from accepting the universe as it is and being indifferent to the course of events. The Stoics were indifferent then to emotions. The only thing that really counted in ethics was one's intentions, the intent to do your duty for duty's sake. In being indifferent to consequences and indifferent to emotions stressing duty, the Stoic lifestyle comes to be one of extreme asceticism. Denial of the body, moral discipline understood as abstinence, and denial of those things to give bodily pleasure. So Zeno develops the idea of the apathetic lifestyle not with the negative connotations of apathy that we might think of today, but the lifestyle of passive indifference to external events. Do your duty for duty sake. Be in tune with reason, which is the same as nature, and that is a higher law for all men. When the Romans adopt Stoicism as their philosophy, there is one major difference that I think you should be aware of. Instead of there being the single duty of accepting your lot in life, being indifferent to outward circumstances, Roman Stoicism maintained that there was a plurality of duties, not just the one duty of apathy, but rather a variety of duties, A variety of obligations that would make you a good citizen. Now, good citizens should be ascetic, they should be frugal, and they should be altruistic. They shouldn't be focused on their own pleasures and personal advantage, but nevertheless, it is the duty not simply to accept in a passive way the outward circumstances of life, but it's your duty to try to change things in a way that would be socially responsible. See, the advantage to the empire, of course, of this philosophy, is it teaches universal obligation and you should be willing to suffer. And the important thing is that you do what's in the best interest of the state. Now, Stoicism was thus modified somewhat by the Romans, and a good example of that would be the eclectic philosopher Cicero. You may wonder why we're discussing an eclectic philosopher under the Stoic rubric. And I want to remind you that when we were talking about the seven attitudinal philosophies of Greek culture, these tend to shade into each other. There's a connection between Cynicism and Stoicism. When we look back, we can organize them for convenience into their major characteristics. And Cicero's major characteristic is that of eclecticism. Taking a little from all sorts of philosophies, Philosophies but it nevertheless is true that Cicero developed Stoic thinking as an eclectic. Cicero was born in 106 BC, lived the life of a lawyer, became popular, was elected in 63 BC to the consulship in Rome. But he was not a particularly good or effective politician and he came to power in the last days of the Republic. A succession of bloody civil wars would be seen in his life. And in the midst of the social degeneration of his day, Cicero took a stand for, kind of like the old order, the traditional values of the Roman republic. And he was not favorable to the developing one man rule that was taking place in Rome. In fact, in 43 B.C. he died. You remember how Cicero died. He was killed on the order of Mark Anthony, who was one of the men trying to be that one man ruler of Rome. Toward the end of his life, Cicero turned to philosophy to find comfort in the midst of the social problems of his day and the political turmoil. And I've already indicated to you that he as a philosopher drew on many, many sources. Like others that we've already studied in our course, Cicero believed that the good life is the life that's lived in accordance with nature. Cicero did not like the stringency of Stoic philosophy. Philosophy, when it said that everything that falls short of complete virtue is bad and all things which are bad are equally bad, he thought that was a very impractical outlook. But Stoic said, anything that falls short of the mark of doing your duty for duty's sake and achieving an apathetic state of mind is equally bad. Cicero didn't find that very practical or helpful. He thought there were degrees of virtue that could be realized. He wanted to take the Stoic conception of virtue and obligation and make it more practical. He didn't want to lose its noble character doing duty or its altruistic ideal as it had come to be developed and romantic Roman circles. But he wanted all those to be tied in with the realities of day to day life. He drew a distinction between what is natural and what is conventional. There are some things which are in tune with nature and some things which just come about by the customs of men. The customs of men. Their conventions were thus subject to evaluation according to a higher law. Cicero believed that men should obey the higher law against the cultural conventions of their day. Not because a God would require of you or the gods would punish you if you didn't, but because it was the most reasonable thing to do. Reason was the sanction for obeying the higher law. He promoted the idea that all men were citizens of one state and were all subject as equal citizens to the universal law of reason. So is he Stoicism, originating with Zeno, modified by the Romans. Cicero is a good example of that. And then perhaps the most interesting Stoic for us would be Epictetus. Epictetus was influenced by Christianity. I believe he was born in the middle of the 1st century AD in Phrygia, Asia Minor, where there was a thriving Christian community. And it would appear from his writings that he had contact with the Christians and they influenced his thinking. At one time he was a slave in Rome during the reign of Nero, but somehow acquired his freedom and began teaching in Rome until he was expelled in the year 98 AD under Domitian, the emperor Domitian expelled all the philosophers from Rome, and Epictetus had acquired a reputation by that time of being a philosopher. And so he had to leave. And he died later at Nicopolis, having gathered a circle of students about him. Epictetus apparently didn't write anything. It was his disciples, his students, who eventually wrote down what they had heard and sent these around as the discourses of their master. The heart of Epictetus philosophy of life was that men would live better if they only grasped the fact that there's a divine providence that rules the world. If you would lead a happy life, then you should realize that everything that takes place takes place according to divine providence. Moreover, Epictetus taught that the gods had made man akin to themselves. Indeed that, as he put it, a portion of God was in each man. And because men have this higher nature, with divinity being within them, men have a duty to live up to their character, to live up to their divine nature within. Why should we live our lives with passive acceptance of whatever God gives us? We should accept whatever life brings us. Moreover, if men would lead happy lives, they should realize that they exist in community, that they are members of a larger society and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the the good of the larger society. At one point, Epictetus himself summarized his philosophy. He said in two words, bear and forbear. Bear and forbear. If everyone would live according to those two words, they would have a life that was tranquil and serene, and peace of mind would come to us, because we would bear with the outward circumstances of life and forbear with our fellow men. And so Zeno originates Stoicism, Cicero and the Romans modify it. We see the Christian influence on Stoicism in Epictetus. And the last thing I want to say about Stoicism is its political or I want to observe its political usefulness as it is developed in the writings of Marcus Aurelius. In the years for Marcus Aurelius are 121 AD to 180 AD. So our outline is not completely chronological. We're jumping ahead into the Christian era, obviously. But just so we can keep our minds focused on this as a school of thought, let me finish by talking about the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor, but not by biological right. He had won the favor of Hadrian. Hadrian had no son of his own, had adopted a son, and apparently, after adopting his son, took a liking to Marcus Aurelius, who was a member of a prominent Roman family, and so arranged for his adopted son to adopt Marcus Aurelius. And therefore there would be a succession, not his own biological succession of sons, but a succession of people that he favored as adopted sons. Marcus came to the throne in 161, and he may have spent a great deal more of his time philosophizing and writing if he'd had his way. But the conditions in the empire at the time required him to be away from Rome, dealing with invading barbarians and revolts around the Roman Empire. What we know of his philosophy comes from. From his Meditations, a private diary that he kept and which apparently was never intended for the instruction of others. And as a diary, of course, it's full of random notes and you can debate what the relationship is between one and the other. Is there a change of thought from one year to another? But overall, philosophers see in this set of meditations a Stoic approach to life. Nature again is seen as a cosmos, but now a cosmos where the emphasis is upon the flux, the heracliation, constant changing nature of things. According to Marcus, though, everything is changing. It's changing in a regular and an orderly way. And if the universe changes in a regular and orderly fashion, then it must be an intelligent being. The universe must have a logos or reason about it. And I want to give you one quotation from him that exemplifies this. He said that the universe is one living being possessed of a sin single soul. It does all things by a single impulse. And all existing things are joint causes of all things that come into existence. How intertwined in the fabric is the thread and how closely woven the web. A man is part of this fabric of the living universe with a one single soul. And for that reason, man shares in divinity. It's a natural divinity, an eminent divinity, not a transcendent divinity like Christians think. Of in Jehovah, the Creator. Man shares in the divinity of the universe. He also shares in the reason or the Logos of the universe. At one point, Marcus Aurelius described man as a morsel of the divine. All of this puts a rather pantheistic face on Stoicism. Not all the Stoics would have been. All of them were in essence pantheists because they believed that all of nature was unified, man being part of nature, nature, reason runs through the universe, so forth. But the emphasis is not as explicit in the others. In fact, in Epictetus, as we were just seeing, you have a more Christian feeling in Stoicism, a more view of divine providence rather than a pantheistic understanding. Marcus Aurelius insisted that man has a rational nature because he's part of the fabric of God and fabric of the universe. He also has a civic nature. Our eyes light up and say, oh, I wonder why a Roman emperor would be interested in man's civic nature. The emphasis is upon duty. Every man has a duty to submit to the state. That is the rational thing to do, in line with the reason that flows through the universe and which is part of your own nature. To get in touch with yourself and be reasonable means to submit to the Roman Empire. He wrote, and I quote him again, as long as I remember that I am a part of such a whole, that is a world community, I shall be well pleased with all that happens. We talk about being opportunistic here. You take Stoic philosophy and turn it into the greatest instrument of lording it over your subjects imaginable. This true reason, true virtue, is tied in with accepting your duty and accepting that you're part of a world community. So if you want to be happy, then you should accept that you're part of the whole. Don't assert your independence, don't assert your freedom, don't try to be creative or different, but fit into the law and order of the Roman Empire. I was commenting during our break that the Stoics all allowed for suicide. Marcus Aurelius also allowed for suicide. But interestingly, where the others would have said, you can commit suicide at any time to show your passive indifference to affairs, Marcus felt he didn't have any right to commit suicide until you had already played out all your civic duties. And then if there was no more value to your life, then you could commit suicide. It's kind of like as long as the state has drained everything out of you, then it's all right for you to take your life. You are basically a creature of the state, if you would be happy. Okay, I think that's enough. On the Stoic developments after Aristotle. Do you have any questions about Stoicism? And particularly do you understand why Stoicism was attuned to the growth of the Roman Empire? Can you see then how that as a philosophy corresponded nicely to the needs of the empire? Okay, we move to F on the outline. A review of Epicureanism. You already know the basic concepts of the Epicureans, but putting this in chronological order, Epicurus flourishes shortly after the death of Aristotle. And of course he begins a school of thought in Athens of his own. The Epicureans met in the garden. You have the Stoics at the porch, the Platonists at the academy, the Aristotelians at the Lyceum, and now the Epicureans in the garden. Epicurus was born 341 BC on the island of Samos. As a young man, again around the time of Aristotle's death, he visited Athens. Who was that remind you of? Zeno. The Stoic went to Athens about the time of Aristotle's death. He became a teacher, apparently a very popular teacher. So much so that many of his students adored him as a God. Teachers find out that's very helpful to have your students compliant. And they take you to lunch more often than you looked upon as a God, I guess. Anyway, he taught in several cities and then eventually settled in Athens. If you're going to be anybody in the world of Greek philosophy, you've got to teach in Athens, obviously. So 306 BC, he sets up his own school in the garden. We think of Epicureanism, as the word is used in 20th century American lingo, as a life of debauchery and excess partying. Eat, drink and be merry. Epicurus taught that we should live for pleasure, but he certainly did not believe in the philosophy of eat, drink and be merry. He felt that when we seek pleasure, if we are rational about our pleasures, we will live simply. We will eat plain food, bread and cheese, and not drink to exceed a little bit of wine, and will seek not sensual sexual pleasure, but rather conversation with friends. So he was a very subdued hedonist. He died in the year 270 BC, and he distinguished between various kinds of desires that men have. He said we should seek pleasure, but we should understand there's a difference between natural desire and unnatural desire. There's a difference between necessity and what we. Well, first there's a difference between what we need and what we desire. Then, among those things that we desire, there's a difference between the things which are natural and unnatural. Some of the unnecessary desires that we have are vain. Others are not vain. So he does have a complicated system of pleasure and desire. He draws many distinctions. How would you criticize this philosophy? He begins by saying man's nature is material, he should seek pleasure. But now we have to start backpedaling and drawing distinctions. You don't seek all pleasures. You seek those which are the better pleasures. And in particular, there's a difference between what you need and what you desire. There are necessary, excuse me, natural desires, unnatural desires. And they're among the unnatural, vain and proper unnatural desires. Is that something that we would learn from an empirical study of human desire and psychology? Could you found that ethical system on a study, a scientific study of man? Now it looks in terms of the promotion of epicureanism. It looks like a scientific approach. We're going to study man as he is. He seeks pleasure. That is then his proper nature. That's right. But it doesn't turn out to be scientific as we understand it in the empirical sense. But rather Epicurus takes his view of what's necessary, what's pleasurable, what's desirable, what's natural, what's unnatural. And then he reads that back into his scheme of seeking desire. Obviously, what is desirable, what is needed, what is natural, what's unnatural is going to vary from person to person. Would Aristotle accept the remark that I just made that what is natural, what is unnatural? Virtue varies from person to person. Let's review for the sake of contrast here. Would Aristotle accept the idea that our pleasures are really relative? That what's natural to man is different from man to man? Man seeks the same end, no matter who he is. But then how does Aristotle interpret the end that you see according to the golden mean, remember? And so in your circumstance, seeking a courageous, seeking to do the courageous thing will not be the same thing as what is courageous for a man in another circumstance. So the variation comes from circumstance rather than from man's nature. So Aristotle would say man has the same nature. Every man has the same nature. But Epicurus can't fall back on that view, can he? What's Aristotle's view of nature? You have dynamic form working in the material world that guides everything toward a particular end or result. But Epicurus is an atomist, remember, he follows Democritus. And here you have a blind mechanical order where bits of matter are falling through an infinite space. So you can't now resort to an Aristotelian view of man to say that everyone has to have the same schema of pleasures which are natural and unnatural and so forth. For Epicurus, the best thing for man is repose. And repose was understood as freedom from worry. Not simply a relaxing lifestyle where you don't have to be a slave and break your back every day, but whether you're a slave or not, Epicurus said, we should all seek to be at rest inside. We shouldn't have to worry about things and, and the quiet pleasures are the best pleasures. Now, what is it that's most disquieting to man? A fear of death. Why should men fear death? They obviously don't understand the nature of the world. Epicurus said everything is bits of matter falling through space. If man is nothing but a material creature, then what? What is death? It's the cessation of consciousness. Man does not exist beyond death. And since man doesn't exist beyond death, there's nothing to worry about in dying. And so Epicurus made it his lifetime goal to rid men of the fear of death and the fear of divine intervention in their lives. He said, these are groundless superstitions. The gods don't intervene, they can't change the course of the atoms falling through space. And when you die, since there's nothing more to you but matter, there's nothing to be a fear of, be afraid of. So materialism now suits a particular ethical view of value and a personal lifestyle. Earlier, when we talked under our commentary on the five major schools, what did I tell you leads men to adopt their theory of reality and how they know what they know, what they value individually and how they live their lives. Epicurus wants repose. He wants peace of mind, doesn't want to be afraid of God and afraid of dying. And so it's only natural that he adopts a metaphysic that will suggest, well, there's nothing more to you but bits of matter falling through space, so you need not worry. This element of Epicurus is especially dramatic in the writing of the Roman Epicurean Lucretius. Lucretius wrote a well known book on the nature of things. He was born about 94 B.C. and died in 55 B.C. so we're now moving very close to the Christian era and the birth of Christ. Lucretius publishes this book in Rome. He wanted to get rid of those things that haunt men, he said, the troubles that haunt men. And he was convinced that fear of death, just like Epic Lucaris had said, was the worst thing that debilitates men and keeps them from peace of mind. And so Lucretius repeatedly attacked religion. This puts the Christian apologist in a rather awkward situation, because when you read Lucretius and his attack upon religion, we are inclined to agree with much of what he says, because you have to understand that the religion he's attacking is not the personal monotheism of the Old Testament, though he would have rejected that as well. And so obviously, we're not on the same wavelength with him. But see, he made fun of the Greek gods, and he ridiculed men who were fearful of the intervention of the gods. You know, and there's no regularity, no predictability to them. And he said much of the problems in our Greek culture have arisen from what people considered pious motives, pleasing the gods or the gods doing things. He says evil deeds are prompted by religion. Now, is that true or is that false? Evil deeds are prompted by religion, aren't they? But then the problem with Lucretius is that he wanted to level all religions. All religions are basically the same. And so if there's a problem with religion giving the fear of death and prompting evil deeds, it's a problem for all religions. Is there a logical fallacy contained in that? Any of you who had the logic course, somebody's going to make my day and tell me what that's called. Fallacy of what? Hasty generalization. So he sees the problem in some religions, particularly Greek religions, and he generalizes that religion is the greatest enemy of man. Well, we have people like Lucretius today, don't we? It will tell you there are all these horrible things that are spawned by religion. And the sad thing is, they're often right. But you can't generalize and say that all religions are the same and therefore all religions are to be condemned. Because, you know, how many times have I been evangelizing somebody and they'll tell me what Muslim fundamentalists do? But of course, I've got a Christian answer. I've got a way of preventing that from happening, given a Christian view of life and society and so forth. This is what religion does to men. Well, Lucretius was of the same fallacious mindset. He wanted to rid men of religion and bring happiness to their lives. Finally, then, let's look at skepticism. It's a school of thought that developed after the death of Aristotle. Now we have a real problem in understanding. Well, not so much in understanding, but in getting down in detail and precision what the skeptics believed. The reason for that is somewhat humorous, but it develops from the nature of the position itself. What's the Skeptics say no one knows anything for sure. There may not be an object of reality at all out there, but if there is, no one can know anything for for sure about it. And even if you could know something about it, you couldn't communicate it to anybody. Everything is relative. Now, if you really believed that philosophy, would you spend your time writing books? No, I just think it stands to reason, doesn't it, that if you don't think there's any value in communication and teaching because there is no absolute truth, you're just not going to waste time writing books. Why do skeptics today write books? I know they won't like this answer and I'm psychologizing them, but I would maintain the reason most skeptics today write is because they have an animus against something absolutistic like Christianity. And so they'll write their books against theism, you know, to show that we, we can't know anything. Of course, they know very certainly and absolutely that we can't know anything. They're absolute about there being no absolutes. And so the only reason a skeptic writes is, I think, because he has an axe to grind. He doesn't like these religious fanatics like Christians or others, you know, promoting an absolutistic viewpoint. Well, in the ancient world, the skeptics realize that we was no reason to write anything. No one knew anything anyway. And so we really have to rely on information from a man named Sextus Empiricus. Don't name your children this way. S E X T U S Sextus Empiricus. E M P I R I C U S like empirical word I gave you in your vocabulary. Sextus Empiricus. He lived about 200 A.D. give that as his time of flourishing for your next timeline. And he records what the skeptics said for us. And the problem is, the first of the skeptics that he speaks of is Pyro. We've already referred to him earlier. Flourished about 275 B.C. about 275 B.C. p y r r h o pyro. What's the problem? 275 BC being recorded at 200 AD what's the gap? Almost 500 years. Now here's the interesting thing. You go through graduate school in philosophy and you have to study the history of philosophy. People don't have a whole lot of doubt that we can tell you what Piero believed based on what was written 475 years later by Sextus Empiricus. And these same people will Tell us. You can't trust the New Testament because who knows what kinds of scribal traditions got worked in there over all the years between what Jesus and Paul really said and our documents for them. You know what the gap is for the New Testament between the date of writing and the manuscripts that we have for it. In one case, maybe 50 to 75 years at the outside. 150. Everyone's down on the New Testament. You know, you can't rely on this. Who knows what Jesus really said or what Paul really wrote? And yet we accept, you know, the writings of Plato and aristotle, which are 1200 years, by the way, between our first manuscript evidence and when they originally wrote. And in the case of Sexton Empiricus, you have almost 500 years. The hypocrisy and the double standard is outrageous. It was not the view of Pyro, if we can believe Sextus. It was not the belief of Pyro that truth cannot be apprehended. It was rather his view that men must always be searching for the truth. It is out there. It can be, in a living degree, apprehended, but no one has a full, certain grasp on it. He denied that whatever we sense of objects in the world will lead us validly to draw inferences about their true nature. We only know the appearances of things. What Pyro wished for men to do is suspend their judgment. Since you don't have all the information, since you can't draw inferences from your sensations, then you ought to have the caution and the humility to just say, no one can know for sure. I'll just suspend my judgment on this. How did he argue for that? Well, one. For every affirmation that men can make, you can find another man who denies it. Is that a very convincing argument for you? People disagree, so you shouldn't come down one side or the other. Can you imagine a math teacher doing that? So you're teaching junior high math and your students bring back their papers and you have disagreements on the papers. Would you, as the math teacher, then draw the conclusion? I guess there's no truth to mathematics. Everything's relative. No one can know for sure. Now, this is a horrible argument, logically speaking. But he had two other ones that are a little more interesting. The next argument came from the need to find a criterion or an absolute standard. He said, if we're going to distinguish between truth and error, we need a standard for distinguishing between truth and error. But the problem is men have different standards for distinguishing between truth and error. So now you need a standard for distinguishing between their standards, but they also differ over the standard to use in choosing the standard to use for distinguishing truth from error. And so now we're going to have an infinite regress, aren't we? Of different criteria. Back, back, back, back. And he said that would never end, or if it did end, it would end arbitrarily. Some person is saying, that's it for me, that's the final standard. And since we don't have a final standard except for an arbitrary final standard, then none of us can distinguish truth from error with any exactitude. The third argument that I want, I want you to remember from Pyro the Skeptic is that everything that we perceive, we perceive through the use of sense organs, which are, well, they function differently in different circumstances and they differ from person to person and from specie to specie. It is true the different species have different sense organs. We know from empirical tests in the modern world that some animals don't distinguish colors in the same way that we do. Their sensing device, or at least the interpretation that their brain gives to the sensations, is not the same. We also know that a sick person, I mean, if you have a particular kind of sickness, you'll see colors differently than a person who is. Well, you know that you see things from your perspective. There's a physical perspectivalism in the way we see things. This tape case, if I hold it like this, seems to be rectangular to you. If I hold it like this, no longer seems rectangular. Are certainly not the same kind of rectangle. If I hold it like this, if it were thinner, it might look like a line rather than a tape case. And so we have different perspectives on things and people see things differently. So he said, obviously everything is relative. We cannot know the objective state of the world based on our sense organs. And the only thing we know, we know on the basis of sensation. Therefore we can't know anything for sure. Real quickly, I'm going to mention one other skeptic in your book. You'll find further names. The reason I want to mention Carneades is because he was one of the leading teachers in Plato's academy. C A R N E A D E S Carneades. Carneades was born in Cyrene, And Sometime prior to 156 BC he became the head of Plato's academy in Athens. He died in the year 129 BC. Why is this a fitting conclusion to the Roman period? Just recognizing that Carneades was a skeptic he dies 130 some years before Christ, but he dies. As the head of Plato's academy, you want to go back in your notes and remind me what Plato stood for? Rationality. Right. The objective, unchanging reality of the forms and ideas is known to human reason with certainty. I don't imagine Plato would be very happy to know that the head of human his school, you know, let me see, Plato died. What do we say? No, no, no, no, no, no. 323 was Aristotle's death. Plato is 347. Okay, so by 123, how long did Plato last in his own school? Anybody do the math for us? About 220 years. So at the end of the Roman period, even the academy is skeptical. Now that probably explains something that has fascinated many New Testament scholars. When we look at Acts 17, we read the account of Paul coming to Athens and there he encounters the philosophers of his day. You know already that the main schools of philosophy in Athens at this period are the Academy, the Lyceum, the garden and the porch, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Aristotelians and the Platonists. Why no mention of the Platonists? Why no Academicians mentioned? Why no peripatetics mentioned? You have to understand that by the days of the New Testament, skepticism had infected the followers of Plato and Aristotle as well. And the leading philosophies were philosophies of life, not philosophies of metaphysics and epistemology. The ethical philosophies, the lifestyle philosophies of the Stoics and Epicureans are what was dominating Greek culture and dominating Athens. When Paul comes there, do you have any questions about the Roman period? This has been a long time in coming, but we finally have set up the advent of Christ in the history of human thought. And I hope you can appreciate then why Christianity could revolutionize the world. Because it brought answers not only only to how men know what they know and the nature of reality, but how they should live their lives.