There is an analogy between Timaeus's act of describing a world in words and the demiurge's task of making a world of matter. This analogy implies a parallel between language as a system of reproducing ideas in words, and the world, which reproduces reality in particular things. Authority lies in the creation of a likeness in words of the eternal Forms. The Forms serve as paradigms both for the physical world created by the demiurge, and for the world in discourse (...) created by Timaeus: his discourse gains its validity not from faithfulness to the way things appear, or the way particular things 'actually happened', but in virtue of its attempt to express in words a likeness of the perfect and eternal reality. There are implications for Plato's philosophy of language, and for the relation between words and things (words do not depict or name things but can be used to construct worlds in a parallel way to the manner in which things construct worlds, both worlds being modelled on one common world of ideas). The match between world and discourse is because of their common pictorial relation (likeness) to an independent model. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss an important but neglected controversy in which the Stoics sought to discredit Epicurus' teaching on justice by showing that the Epicurean wise man, if immune from detection or punishment, will commit injustice whenever he may profit from it. Under the influence of this criticism, tradition has developed a view of Epicurus' position that makes it so weak and vulnerable that it is difficult to see how Epicureans could have defended it over the course of several (...) centuries. There is decisive evidence, however, that Epicurus' critics seriously misrepresented his position, and that the tradition influenced by their polemic stands in need of fundamental revision.1 My purpose here is to prove that the Epicurean wise man will not commit injustice, secretly or openly, because it is in his self–interest to be just; to reconstruct Epicurus' arguments for this teaching; to show how he defends his position against natural right theorists; and to clarify the larger issues at stake in his controversy with the Stoics. I begin by sketching the Stoic criticisms and the Epicurean response. (shrink)