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katalhptikh;" fantasiva"
DAVID SEDLEY
DAVID SEDLEY
1
Ioppolo (1990); Long (this volume).
136 David Sedley
2
Aetius IV 12.1-5: Cruvs ippo~ diafevrein ajllhvlwn fhsi; tevttara tau`ta.
fantasiva me;n ou\n ejstiv pavqo~ ejn tª yucª gignovmenon, ejndeiknuvmenon
auJtov te kai; to; pepoihkov~: oi|on ejpeida;n di∆ o[yew~ qewrou`men to; leukovn,
e[sti pavqo~ to; ejggegenhmevnon dia; th`~ oJravsew~ ejn tª yucª. kai; <kata;>
tou`to to; pavqo~ eijpei`n e[comen o{ti uJpovkeitai leuko;n kinou`n hJma~: oJmoivw~
kai; dia; th`~ aJfh`~ kai; th`~ ojsfrhvsew~. ei[rhtai de; hJ fantasiva ajpo; tou`
fwtov~: kaqavper ga;r to; fw`~ auJto; deivknusi kai; ta; a[lla ta; ejn aujt“
periecovmena, kai; hJ fantasiva deivknusin eJauth;n kai; to; pepoihko;~ aujthvn.
fantasto;n de; to; poiou`n th;n fantasivan: oi|on to; leuko;n kai; to; yucro;n kai;
pa`n o{ti a]n duvnhtai kinei`n th;n yuchvn, tou`t∆ e[sti fantastovn. fantastiko;n
dev ejsti diavkeno~ eJlkusmov~, pavqo~ ejn tª yucª ajp∆ oujdeno;~ fantastou`
ginovmenon kaqavper ejpi; tou` skiamacou`nto~ kai; kenoi`~ ejpifevronto~ ta;~
cei`ra~: tª ga;r fantasiva uJpovkeitaiv ti fantastovn, t“ de; fantastik“
oujdevn. favntasma dev ejstin ejf∆ o} eJlkovmeqa kata; to;n fantastiko;n diavkenon
eJlkusmovn: tau`ta de; givnetai ejpi; tw`n melagcolwvntwn kai; memhnovtwn.
Zeno’s definition of phantasia kataleptike 137
3
By ‘also’ I mean no more than that this, like the other two clauses, is true of
the phantasia kataleptike. I do not thereby mean to favour the ‘strong’ reading
distinguished and criticised by Striker (1997), 266-72. I agree with her that Zeno
probably in fact intended a ‘weak’ reading: that is, he presented his third clause
as merely making explicit something that was already in his view implicit in the
first two clauses. But nothing in the present paper turns on this question.
138 David Sedley
4
S.E. M VII 249-51: deuvteron de; to; kai; ajpo; uJpavrconto~ ei\nai kai; kat∆
aujto; to; uJpavrcon: e[niai ga;r pavlin ajpo; uJpavrconto~ mevn eijs in, oujk aujto; de;
to; uJpavrcon ijndavllontai, wJ~ ejpi; tou` memhnovto~ ∆Orevstou mikr“ provteron
ejdeivknumen. ei|lke me;n ga;r fantasivan ajpo; uJpavrconto~, th`~ ∆Hlevktra~, ouj
kat∆ aujto; de; to; uJpavrcon: mivan ga;r tw`n ∆Erinuvw
v n uJpelavmbanen aujth;n
ei\nai, kaqo; kai; prosiou`san kai; thmelei`n aujto;n spoudavzousan
ajpwqei`tai levgwn ÔÔmevqe~: miv∆ ou\sa tw`n ejmw`n ∆Erinuvwn j .j kai; oJ JHraklh`~
ajpo; uJpavrconto~ me;n ejkinei`to tw`n Qhbw`n, ouj kat∆ aujto; de; to; uJpavrcon: kai;
ga;r kat∆ aujto; to; uJpavrcon dei` givnesqai th;n katalhptikh;n fantasivan. ouj
mh;n ajlla; kai; ejnapomemagmevnhn kai; ejnapesfragismevnhn tugcavnein, i{na
pavnta tecnikw`~ ta; ijdiwvmata tw`n fantastw`n ajnamavtthtai. (wJ~ ga;r oiJ
glufei`~ pa`s i toi`~ mevresi sumbavllousi tw`n teloumevnwn, kai; o}n trovpon aiJ
dia; tw`n daktulivwn sfragi`de~ ajei; pavnta~ ejp∆ ajkribe;~ tou;~ carakth`ra~
ejnapomavttontai t“ khr“, ou{tw kai; oiJ katavlhyin poiouvmenoi tw`n
uJpokeimevnwn pa`s in ojfeivlousin aujtw`n toi`~ ijdiwvmasin ejpibavllein. Cf. also
D.L. VII 46.
Zeno’s definition of phantasia kataleptike 139
would that help? Even an impression which is such that it could not
fail to be caused by something external - i.e. could not fail to satisfy
the first clause - may be one which either does, or at least could,
misrepresent that external object or state-of-affairs, i.e. fail to satisfy
the second clause. For example, on this interpretation Zeno’s third
clause would be perfectly well satisfied by a waking impression
whose quality, unlike that of a dream, guarantees that I am definitely
seeing some external object, but where I misidentify that thing, or
identify it correctly but conjecturally. Such an impression, being
fallible or even false, can hardly be kataleptic on any possible
understanding of what the Stoics meant by this term.
This difficulty is problematic enough on any interpretation of the
theory, but for Chrysippus it is quite beyond the pale. He, according
to Aetius (loc. cit., n. 2), distinguishes a phantasia from a
phantastikon or ‘imagining’, defining the phantasia as having an
external cause while the phantastikon has none. Hence from his
point of view Zeno’s third clause, instead of providing the hallmark
of a cognitive phantasia, can do no more than guarantee that the
phantasia really is a phantasia.
Chrysippus was not stupid, and given his explicitly causal reading
of the theory he must have had some credible way of explaining
Zeno’s third clause. (I say ‘explaining’, because it was Chrysippus’
practice not to contradict Zeno but to deal with any difficulties in
Zeno’s philosophy by reinterpreting his ipsissima verba; this
included, in the present context, his reinterpretation of what Zeno
must have meant by calling phantasia a ‘printing’ (tuv p wsi") in the
soul, S.E. M VII 228-31.) At least two later attempts to deal with
the problem of interpreting Zeno’s third clause are extant, and
either or both might in principle be Chrysippean in origin.
One comes from a recently published papyrus fragment5 which
names the Stoic Antipater of Tarsus, head of the school a generation
after Chrysippus; it contains a classification of false phantasiai which
may well reflect Antipater’s own work. The author classifies some
5
ã
PBerol. Inv. 16545, published by M. Szymanski, Journal of Juristic
Papyrology 20 (1990), 139-41. See now Backhouse (2000).
140 David Sedley
6
It is important to note that this is in part an interpretation, not a straight
translation. Cicero had at his disposal a perfectly good translation of ajpo; mh;
uJpavrconto~ as ‘ab eo quod non est’ (Ac. II 77).
Zeno’s definition of phantasia kataleptike 141
7
See esp. SE M VII 401-10 and Cic. Ac. II 83-90, where the arguments of the
Carneadean Academy against (presumably Chrysippean) Stoicism turn on
either (a) dreams and hallunications, or (b) misidentifications of individuals,
with no obvious cases of (c) misdescriptions. No doubt ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~ is
being assumed to amount to ‘caused by no external object’ in (a), and to
‘caused by what is not that external object’ in (b). Cf. Rist (1969), 136-8.
Striker, (1997) mainly uses the Ciceronian identificatory formulation ‘such as
could not arise from what is not that existing thing’ (pp. 265-70), but also ‘such
that it could not arise from what is not so’ (p. 260). The words which I have
emphasised - whether taken to mean (a) ‘from what is not as described’, or
simply (b) ‘from what is not the case’ - would clearly extend kataleptic
impressions beyond identificatory cases, but would bring us back to one or
other of my original difficulties. (a) would not very naturally be expressed by
142 David Sedley
ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~; and on (b), what would it mean for any impression to be
caused ‘by what is not the case’?
8
The best attempt to explain it that I have come across is Frede (1983/1987) p.
165 (in the reprint), ‘In what sense could such an impression be said to have its
origin in what is not? The answer seems to be that the impression does not as a
whole have its origin in what is; part of it ... is made up by the mind and is not
due to the object... [I] t is characteristic of perceptual impressions that all their
representational features are due to the object.’ This still, in my view, suggests
that Zeno would have done better to write mh; ajpo; uJpavrconto~.
Zeno’s definition of phantasia kataleptike 143
9
For the technical significance of yeudh` kai; diavkenon eJlkusmovn as a
hallucinatory impression with no external cause, see Aetius, loc cit. n. 2 above;
cf. Diog. Oen. fr. 10 Smith, S.E. M VII 241, VIII 67.
144 David Sedley
10
In the sequel (198), on the other hand, the causal ajpov does put in an
appearance. Once again this illustrates the ease with which Greek moves
between the two uses of this preposition.
146 David Sedley
you and I both agree verbally that (e.g.) snow is white, we have no
criterion for establishing that when we look at snow we are both
experiencing the same thing, whiteness - or, in the characteristic
Cyrenaic parlance which emerges in the last sentence, that we are
both being ‘whitened’ by it. It is the unverifiable situation of our
both experiencing it as white that is conveyed by the ajpov locution.
A shared experience ‘from what is white’ means a shared experience
which represents the thing as white.11
These non-causal uses of ajpov, to mean roughly ‘representing’,
may well echo a usage which had some currency in the early third
century BC, a time when Zeno was forging the Stoic theory of
cognition and when Cyrenaic epistemology was enjoying its final
phase before the school’s disappearance. For surely this is the sense
of ajpov which we need to recognise in Zeno’s definition of phantasia
kataleptike.
Let us return to the three clauses of that definition. A cognitive
impression is, first, ajpo; uJpavrconto~. That is, on the proposed
reinterpretation, it represents what uJpavrcei. What does this mean?
As has often been noted, the verb uJpavrcein is not used in our Stoic
sources as a mere synonym for ei\nai, the ‘being’ or ‘existence’
which bodies alone possess. Even incorporeal predicates are said to
uJpavrcein, merely because they are actually instantiated in
something, and the present is said to uJpavrcein, not because it is a
body, but because unlike the past and the future it is actual (SVF II
509). Thus uJpavrcein conveys the kind of actuality which can belong
not just to bodies which currently exist, but also to currently actual
predications and states-of-affairs. If a cognitive impression
represents what is actual, this may in different cases mean that it
conveys an object which actually exists (e.g. Dion), or a complete
state of affairs which actually obtains in the world, consisting of one
or more objects’ actualisation of specified predicates (e.g. the
complex fact that Dion is walking and Theon is sitting).
If we add the representational sense of ajpov, and thus take ajpo;
uJpavrconto~ to mean ‘representing what is actual’, it gains a far
11
For a close examination of this passage (incorporating my current suggestion
as to how ajpov is to be interpreted), see now Tsouna (1998), ch. 7.
Zeno’s definition of phantasia kataleptike 147
12
Frede (1983/1987) rightly takes the first clause already to specify truth; my
reinterpretation of ajpov may, I hope, help to show how it can, and also why
some Stoic texts nevertheless located truth either exclusively (S.E. M VII 248-
52, quoted in n. 4 above) or partially (the Berlin papyrus, cited in n. 5 above) in
the second clause.
148 David Sedley
a few years before Zeno’s own death (somewhere in the years 268-
4; Zeno died in 262/1). There is no need to doubt that the debate in
question could have preceded Arcesilaus’ headship, perhaps by
many years, but their respective ages, with Zeno the senior by some
18 years, still make it plausible that Zeno’s original two-clause
formulation was in circulation for some time before he encountered
Arcesilaus and was forced to refine it by adding the third clause.
It may then well be the case that in his original formulation he
did intend the ajpov in a primarily causal sense, much as it was indeed
to be understood by later Stoics, who could no doubt call on the
evidence of his own writings. If Zeno was drawing his ideas partly
from the Theaetetus, it is very likely both that he, like Plato’s
Socrates, focused on perceptual cases of cognition, and that he took
the wax-impression model which he was borrowing as an obviously
causal one, according to which the form of the external object is,
more or less literally, imprinted on the soul.13
If so, we must conclude that, at any rate by the time that he was
challenged by Arcesilaus and decided to add the third clause, Zeno
had shifted to a primarily representational sense of ajpov, and that it
was this sense which in consequence he assumed in his formulation
of the third clause. Of course, even when still functioning causally,
ajpov must have already carried some representational connotations,
since the external object ‘from’ which the phantasia arises was being
assumed to cause it not in just any way (e.g. in the way that the
person pushing the doorbell is the cause of my hearing it ring), but
specifically by transmitting its own perceptible properties to the
phantasia. Viewed in this light, Zeno’s new move was to not to
introduce these representational properties, but rather to emphasise
them at the expense of the causal ones.14
13
Actually the Theaetetus model does include purely conceptual imprints in the
wax (191d5), but neither Socrates in the dialogue nor Plato’s interpreters (cf.
already Alcinous, Didaskalikos 154.40-155.13 Whittaker-Louis) seem to make
much of them.
14
I exclude the alternative of letting the revised use of ajpov retain both the
causal and the representational senses. If that were so, the third clause would
mean ‘of a kind which could not (a) be caused by and (b) represent a non-actual
thing or state of affairs’, and that would leave untouched the original difficulty:
150 David Sedley
Just what might have impelled him to such a shift would then
become an urgent question. An attractive possibility is that, having
originally conceived the cognitive impression as directly and
exclusively perceptual (cf. Cic. Ac. I 40-1), he came in time to see an
indispensable role for non-perceptual cognitive impressions.
God’s existence and providence - doctrines to which Zeno
devoted many of his own arguments - are explicitly said in Diogenes
Laertius’ report of Stoic epistemology (VII 52) to be objects of non-
sensory katalepsis. We must not jump too hastily to the assumption
that the cognitions in question are the outcome of non-perceptual
phantasiai kataleptikai. They might, it has been suggested, be
considered by the Stoics to be adequately grounded by earlier
perceptual cognitive impressions of the world’s functioning, and to
acquire their status as cognitions in that way.15 However, Zeno’s
recorded arguments on this theme16 can hardly be said to invite such
an analysis, and it is hard to believe that he considered their
conclusions ‘cognitive’ without assigning the same status to such
salient premises as ‘The rational is superior to the irrational’, and
‘Nothing lacking sensation can have a sentient part’17 - premises
which are not easily reducible to, or even derivable from, direct data
of sensory experience.
Again, Zeno defined a tevcnh as a ‘system of cognitions
(katalhvyei~) unified by practice for some goal advantageous in life’
(Olymp. In Gorg. 12.1), and these cognitions were themselves
standardly identified with the theorems constituting the art. Zeno
can hardly have meant to insist on the exclusively perceptual
content of the theorems. Once again there is the possible reply that
he nevertheless saw them as fully grounded by past perceptual
phantasiai kataleptikai. But we have no reason for attributing to him
so impoverished a conception of techne, especially when we bear in
thanks to the inclusion of (a), the clause would be satisfied by any phantasia
whatsoever.
15
See especially Striker (1974). Contra, see Brennan (1996) 324-5.
16
For Zeno’s theological and other syllogisms, see esp. Schofield (1983) and K.
Ierodiakonou (this volume).
17
SE M IX 104; Cic. ND II 22.
Zeno’s definition of phantasia kataleptike 151
mind that at least some virtues are technai, and that their ‘theorems’
must be or include moral principles.18 Zeno is well known to have
argued syllogistically for moral principles, and clearly did not think
that they were founded exclusively in sense-perception.
Finally, what about the cognition of fundamental laws of
thought? Consider such cognitions - ones fundamental to Stoicism -
as that every event has a cause, and that every magnitude is infinitely
divisible. Cognitions like these could hardly be thought either to be
caused by the facts which they record, or for that matter to be
adequately derived from a past series of directly sensory phantasiai
kataleptikai.
Later Stoics, at any rate from the time of Chrysippus, would no
doubt have sought to present these and similar intuitions as the
content of ‘common conceptions’ (often treated as equivalent to
prolepseis), which came to function as an independent criterion of
truth alongside phantasia kataleptike; but the identification of these
as criteria of truth is associated explicitly with Chrysippus in our
sources,19 and I know of no evidence that would justify our tracing
that theory back to Zeno’s generation. When the sources attribute a
criterion of truth to Zeno and his generation, they speak exclusively
of katalepsis.20
There is, then, reason to think that Zeno assumed katalepsis to
include a variety of fundamentally non-sensory cognitions. Does it
follow that there are also, corresponding to these, non-sensory
phantasiai kataleptikai? It probably does. Although we have no
formal record of the Stoic definition of katalepsis, Arcesilaus
reported it as ‘assent to a phantasia kataleptike’ (SE M VII 151-3).
Whether or not this ever became a canonical definition,21 Arcesilaus
18
Cf. SVF III 280.
19
D.L. VII 54; Alex Mixt. 216.14-218.6 Bruns = SVF II 473.
20
S.E. M VII 152; Cic. Ac. I 42, where katalepsis is ‘norma scientiae’, while
conceptions (which must include prolepseis) have a different, apparently
derivative, status.
21
Striker (1974) is probably wise to treat with caution the other passages where
this equivalence is attributed to the Stoics. However, if I am right, an
alternative to her way of accounting for those passages may lie in Zeno’s own
writings.
152 David Sedley
22
See D.L. VII 51 on non-sensory phantasiai. They explicitly include those of
incorporeals, and S.E. M VIII 409 attests a Stoic attempt to show that these
could involve non-causal representation. Chrysippus’ narrower, causal
definition of phantasia (Aetius loc. cit. n. 2 above) should perhaps be regarded
as adding a specific sense of phantasia to this generic one.
Zeno’s definition of phantasia kataleptike 153
________________________
BIBLIOGRAPHY
23
The basic thesis of this paper, concerning the meaning of Zeno’s three
clauses, is one which I have already sketched briefly in my (1998), p. 152. In
developing it further, I have benefited from the comments of Thamer
Backhouse, Gisela Striker and Michael Frede, and from discussion with
participants at the September 1998 Larnaca conference ‘Zeno and his Legacy’
(especially Malcolm Schofield), at a Florence seminar in December 1998, and at
the Séminaire Léon Robin, Paris, in February 1999. It should not be assumed
that they all endorse my conclusions.
154 David Sedley