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5 - The criticism of Aristocles of Messene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Voula Tsouna
Voula Tsouna
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Summary

The restricted scope of the Cyrenaic criterion constitutes the target of the Peripatetic philosopher Aristocles of Messene, whose criticism of the Cyrenaic theory is reported by Eusebius.

At the outset, Aristocles sketches out the theory which he intends to attack in the following terms.

Next are those who claim that only the pathē are apprehensible; this was maintained by some philosophers from Cyrene. These philosophers maintained that they know absolutely nothing, just as if a very deep sleep weighs down on them, unless somebody standing beside them struck them or pricked them. For they said that, when they are being burnt or cut they know that they are undergoing something. But whether the thing which is burning them is fire or that which is cutting them is iron they cannot tell.

(Eusebius xiv.19.1 [T5])

Aristocles' objections are not targeted against the affirmation that the pathē are apprehensible, but against the restrictive claim that only they can be apprehended. His goal is to show that the Cyrenaic position is inconsistent by arguing that we know many things in addition to our pathē, or that our awareness of pathē entails (or presupposes) that we know things about external objects.

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The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School , pp. 62 - 72
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

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