Most ancient philosophers accept that dreams have prophetic powers enabling humans to relate somehow to a world beyond their own. The only philosophers known to make a clean and explicit break with that tradition are the Epicureans, beginning with Epicurus himself and reaching his last eminent follower, Diogenes of Oinoanda. They openly reject the idea that dreams mediate between the divine and the human realms, or between the world of the living and the world of the dead. They demystify the (...) phenomenon of dreaming by explaining sleeping and dreaming in terms of their materialistic physical theory. Importantly, they examine dreams and their content from different perspectives and explore their relevance to our lives. The general aim of this paper is to offer a synthetic account of the Epicurean view about dreaming and dreams, advance certain new hypotheses that seem worthy of consideration, and show how Epicurus and his followers integrate dream theory into their philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 3 Seiten: 271-307.

Sextus Empiricus ascribes to Epicurus a curious account of truth and falsehood, according to which these characteristics belong to things in the world about which one speaks, not to what one says about them. I propose an interpretation that takes this account seriously and explains the connection between truth and existence that the Epicureans also seem to recognise. I then examine a second Epicurean account of truth and falsehood and show how it is related to the first.

The focus of this paper is the analysis of the epistemological and practical role played bypathe/affections in Epicurus’ philosophy. Epicurus firstly considered the affections not as emotional/passional conditions, but as firm criteria of truth and more specifically as the third criterion of the canonic (i.e. the epistemological part of his philosophical system). In this article the critical reactions (in particular by the Peripatetic side: Aristocles of Messene) against the Epicurean position about the function of the affections will be investigated too. (...) Finally, two parts of this paper are devoted to the Cyrenaic tripartition ofpathe(in all likelihood, a subject criticized by Epicurus) and to the probable doctrinal relationship between Epicurus’patheand Aristotle’sNicomachean EthicsBook 2. (shrink)