Sedley Zeno Phantasia

fi fi katalhptikh;" fantasiva"

DAVID SEDLEY

fi fantasakatalhptikhv ( ) - fi-fi fi fi.

:

() ajpo; uJpavrconto~

() kat aujto; to; uJpavrcon ejnapomemagmevnh kai;ejnapesfragismevnh

() oJpoiva oujk a]n gevnoito ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~

fantash/Ja (), fi fi

.

fi fi "apovvv", fi , fi , fi

, fi ,

fi. fi, ()

fantasiva" , () fi . fi

.

Zenos definition ofphantasia kataleptike

DAVID SEDLEY

Zenos epistemology was probably his most radicalphilosophical innovation. His critic Antiochus, who interpretedmost of Zenos philosophy as derivative from the work of the earlyAcademy, allowed that his theory of katalepsis represented a cleanbreak from the anti-empiricist stance of the Platonists (Cic. Ac. I 40-2). It has been very plausibly argued by others1 that even in this caseZenos meditation on a Platonic text, the Theaetetus, did in fact playa significant part in the development of his theory. But he may wellhave valued the Theaetetus less as a statement of Platos views thanas a guide to Socrates epistemology, to which, if so, he wasadvocating a return.

It is amply attested that the commonly quoted three-partdefinition of phantasia kataleptike is Zenos own. An infallible orcognitive impression is one which is

(a) ajpo; uJpavrconto~ - from what is;

(b) kat aujto; to; uJpavrcon ejnapomemagmevnh kai;ejnapesfragismevnh - moulded and stamped in accordance withthat very thing which is;

(c) oJpoiva oujk a]n gevnoito ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~ - of a kind whichcould not arise from what is not.

I hope it is not too much of a simplification to say that thefollowing type of interpretation currently holds sway. Zenos theoryis not just empiricist, but actually identifies its fundamental criterionof truth, the cognitive impression, with a kind of sense-perception.

1 Ioppolo (1990); Long (this volume).

Moreover, the theory of sense-perception in question is a causalone. Our direct sense-impressions, or rather a privileged subset ofthem, gain their infallible hold on the world because they are directlycaused by (ajpov - from) the external things whose impressions theyare.

There is, it is true, pretty good ancient evidence that by the timeof Chrysippus Zenos epistemology was being interpreted andpromoted along just these lines. In particular, Aetius2 attributes toChrysippus an account of phantasia as a perceptual experiencewhich reveals both itself and that which has caused it (pepoihkov~ orkinou`n). And this causal relation between the object and theimpression is associated with the same preposition, ajpov, as featuresin Zenos definition. Thus a fantastovn or impressor is the externalobject which causes the impression, while a fantastikovn orimagining is an empty attraction (diavkeno~ eJlkusmov~) which arisesin the soul from no impressor (ajp oujdeno;~ fantastou` ginovmenon).While it is not explicit, most readers are likely to assume that ajpov isfunctioning as a causal preposition.

However, reasonable as this interpretation may seem, it hasgone largely unnoticed that it confronts us with an enormousexegetical problem in interpreting Zenos definition ofphantasia kataleptike. Let us take it that the uJpa'rcon mentionedin that definition is indeed the external object or state-of-affairs, sothat, by the first clause, the cognitive impression must be caused by

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2 Aetius IV 12.1-5: Cruvsippo~ diafevrein ajllhvlwn fhsi; tevttara taut`a.fantasiva me;n ou\n ejstiv pavqo~ ejn t yuc gignovmenon, ejndeiknuvmenonauJtov te kai; to; pepoihkov~: oi|on ejpeida;n di o[yew~ qewroum`en to; leukovn,e[sti pavqo~ to; ejggegenhmevnon dia; th`~ oJravsew~ ejn t yuc. kai; 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 aujtperiecovmena, kai; hJ fantasiva deivknusin eJauth;n kai; to; pepoihko;~ aujthvn.fantasto;n de; to; poioun` 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;ndev ejsti diavkeno~ eJlkusmov~, pavqo~ ejn t yuc ajp oujdeno;~ fantastou`ginovmenon kaqavper ejpi; tou` skiamacou`nto~ kai; kenoi`~ ejpifevronto~ ta;~cei`ra~: t ga;r fantasiva uJpovkeitaiv ti fantastovn, t de; fantastikoujdevn. favntasma dev ejstin ejf o} eJlkovmeqa kata; to;n fantastiko;n diavkenoneJlkusmovn: tau`ta de; givnetai ejpi; tw`n melagcolwvntwn kai; memhnovtwn.

something external, and by the second it must, as we might put it,graphically portray that external thing. So far so good. But why didZeno go on to stipulate, reportedly under pressure from hisAcademic critic Arcesilaus (Cic. Ac. II 77-8), his third clause, that itmust also3 be an impression of a kind which could not arise fromwhat is not? This, according to the same line of interpretation,would have to mean of a kind which could not be caused by a non-existent object (or state-of-affairs).

But that cannot be what Zeno meant, for two reasons. First,Stoicism holds both that only bodies exist, and that only bodies canbe causes. It follows trivially that nothing whatsoever can be causedby something non-existent. Hence, far from the cognitiveimpression being distinguished by its inability to be thus caused,nothing can be caused by something non-existent. Taken at facevalue, Zenos third clause adds nothing that was not obvious allalong. One might respond by insisting that the clause means that theimpression cannot fail to have an externally existing cause. But thenwe might expect Zeno to have written oJpoiva oujk a]n gevnoito mh; ajpo;;uJpavrconto~, of a kind which could not arise without coming fromsomething which exists externally. To have put the same idea withhis actual formulation, of a kind which could not arise ajpo; mh;uJpavrconto~, would be decidedly odd. Could any Greek haveunderstood ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~ to mean from what is not somethingexternal? Let us assume for the moment that they could. Thesolution would still leave untouched the other major difficulty, whichis as follows.

The first clause, on the reading I have been criticising, should beexpected merely to establish the correct causal relation between theexternal object and the impression, and it should be left for thesecond clause to establish the complete veridicality of theimpression (as well as its clarity). In principle I could have an

Zenos definition of phantasia kataleptike 137

3 By also I mean no more than that this, like the other two clauses, is true ofthe phantasia kataleptike. I do not thereby mean to favour the strong readingdistinguished and criticised by Striker (1997), 266-72. I agree with her that Zenoprobably in fact intended a weak reading: that is, he presented his third clauseas merely making explicit something that was already in his view implicit in thefirst two clauses. But nothing in the present paper turns on this question.

impression which is caused by something external, but which is false(in that it misrepresents one or more of that things features), and afortiori not kataleptic. The Stoics were only too familiar with suchexamples. Orestes in his madness saw Electra, i.e. had an impressioncaused by her, but thought she was a Fury, i.e. had an impressionwhich did not accurately portray her as she was (SE M VII 170,249). Likewise, all the familiarly cited optical illusions, such as thestraight oar seen in water as bent, satisfy the first clause but not thesecond. They are from what is, in the causal sense, but fail to bemoulded and stamped in accordance with that very thing which is.Many of our sources for Stoic epistemology analyse such cases injust this way. In our fullest account, preserved by Sextus Empiricusat M VII 248-52, the second clause of the definition is put at theservice of such an interpretation,4 even to the extent of separating itinto two halves: the impression must be (a) in accordance with itsobject, and (b) in addition moulded and stamped. Here the first halfof the second clause is unambiguously singled out as capturing theimpressions veridicality. But the problem is as follows. If it iscorrect to locate the impressions veridicality within the secondclause of the definition, why did Zeno add in his third clause that theimpression in question is of a kind which could not arise from whatis not? This means that the cognitive impression is of such a kindthat it not only satisfies both the first and the second clause, but,further, could not have failed to satisfy the first clause. But how

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4 S.E. M VII 249-51: deuvteron de; to; kai; ajpo; uJpavrconto~ ei\nai kai; kataujto; to; uJpavrcon: e[niai ga;r pavlin ajpo; uJpavrconto~ mevn eijsin, oujk aujto; de;to; uJpavrcon ijndavllontai, wJ~ ejpi; tou` memhnovto~ Orevstou mikr provteronejdeivknumen. ei|lke me;n ga;r fantasivan ajpo; uJpavrconto~, th`~ Hlevktra~, oujkat aujto; de; to; uJpavrcon: mivan ga;r tw`n Erinuvvwn uJpelavmbanen aujth;nei\nai, kaqo; kai; prosiou`san kai; thmelei`n aujto;n spoudavzousanajpwqei`tai levgwn mevqe~: miv ou\sa tw`n ejmw`n Erinuvwn jjjjj jjjjj. kai; oJ JHraklh~àjpo; uJpavrconto~ me;n ejkinei`to twn` Qhbwn`, ouj kat aujto; de; to; uJpavrcon: kai;ga;r kat aujto; to; uJpavrcon dei` givnesqai th;n katalhptikh;n fantasivan. oujmh;n ajlla; kai; ejnapomemagmevnhn kai; ejnapesfragismevnhn tugcavnein, i{napavnta tecnikw`~ ta; ijdiwvmata tw`n fantastw`n ajnamavtthtai. (wJ~ ga;r oiJglufei`~ pa`si toi`~ mevresi sumbavllousi twn` teloumevnwn, kai; o}n trovpon aiJdia; tw`n daktulivwn sfragi`de~ ajei; pavnta~ ejp ajkribe;~ tou;~ carakth`ra~ejnapomavttontai t khr, ou{tw kai; oiJ katavlhyin poiouvmenoi twnùJpokeimevnwn pasìn ojfeivlousin aujtwn` toi`~ ijdiwvmasin ejpibavllein. Cf. alsoD.L. VII 46.

would that help? Even an impression which is such that it could notfail to be caused by something external - i.e. could not fail to satisfythe first clause - may be one which either does, or at least could,misrepresent that external object or state-of-affairs, i.e. fail to satisfythe second clause. For example, on this interpretation Zenos thirdclause would be perfectly well satisfied by a waking impressionwhose quality, unlike that of a dream, guarantees that I am definitelyseeing some external object, but where I misidentify that thing, oridentify it correctly but conjecturally. Such an impression, beingfallible or even false, can hardly be kataleptic on any possibleunderstanding of what the Stoics meant by this term.

This difficulty is problematic enough on any interpretation of thetheory, but for Chrysippus it is quite beyond the pale. He, accordingto Aetius (loc. cit., n. 2), distinguishes a phantasia from aphantastikon or imagining, defining the phantasia as having anexternal cause while the phantastikon has none. Hence from hispoint of view Zenos third clause, instead of providing the hallmarkof a cognitive phantasia, can do no more than guarantee that thephantasia really is a phantasia.

Chrysippus was not stupid, and given his explicitly causal readingof the theory he must have had some credible way of explainingZenos third clause. (I say explaining, because it was Chrysippuspractice not to contradict Zeno but to deal with any difficulties inZenos philosophy by reinterpreting his ipsissima verba; thisincluded, in the present context, his reinterpretation of what Zenomust have meant by calling phantasia a printing (tuvpwsi") in thesoul, S.E. M VII 228-31.) At least two later attempts to deal withthe problem of interpreting Zenos third clause are extant, andeither or both might in principle be Chrysippean in origin.

One comes from a recently published papyrus fragment5 whichnames the Stoic Antipater of Tarsus, head of the school a generationafter Chrysippus; it contains a classification of false phantasiai whichmay well reflect Antipaters own work. The author classifies some


5 PBerol. Inv. 16545, published by M. Szymanski, Journal of JuristicPapyrology 20 (1990), 139-41. See now Backhouse (2000).

impressions as ajpov tino~, from something, others as oujk ajpov tino~,not from something, and appears to mean by the latter thosehallucinatory impressions associated with dreams and insanity, oneswith no external impressor at all. It seems a good bet that thisexpression is his attempt to make sense of Zenos category ajpo; mh;uJpavrconto~: not caused by a non-existent thing, but not caused bysomething (i.e. by some existent thing). That the interpretationcarried some weight in the school is suggested by D.L. VII 46, whereit seems to lie behind a small but significant rewording of thecanonical formulation: a phantasia which fails to be katalepticbecause it is hallucinatory is there described, not as ajpo; mh;uJpavrconto", but as mh; ajpo; uJpavrconto".

Such a rewriting of Zenos terminology would, if accepted, atbest deal with my first listed difficulty - the objection that theincapacity to be caused by something non-existent is not exclusiveto cognitive impressions but equally applicable to everything. Itwould, however, leave untouched my second difficulty, namely thateven an impression of a kind which could not fail to have an externalcause might still, in Stoic terms, be non-kataleptic.

This difficulty and the need to circumvent it are presumably whatlie behind an alternative exegesis of Zenos third clause, which ispreserved in Ciceros Academica. Ciceros speaker Lucullussometimes shows his awareness that the third clause should in effectspecify the following: a cognitive impression is such that, not only isit true, but neither it nor any impression exactly like it could be afalse one (e.g. Ac. II 18, 34, 42, 57; cf. SE M VII 152). And it isperhaps in order to show how the third clause could amount to thisthat Lucullus paraphrases it as follows at Ac. II 18: ... if it [acognitive impression] was such as Zeno defined it, ... an impressionstamped and moulded from what it was from, of a kind which couldnot be from what it was not from (impressum effictumque ex eounde esset, quale esse non posset ex eo unde non esset).6 ThusZenos third clause, of a kind which could not arise ajpo; mh;

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6 It is important to note that this is in part an interpretation, not a straighttranslation. Cicero had at his disposal a perfectly good translation of ajpo; mh;uJpavrconto~ as ab eo quod non est (Ac. II 77).

uJpavrconto~, is being read as if it meant of a kind which could nothave been from anything other than the specific existing thing that itis in fact from. This way of reading the clause has, in Ciceros wake,won widespread support among modern interpreters of Stoicism.

This interpretation of the cognitive impression can be summedup as follows. If you have an impression that the thing before you isX (where X may be either a type or a token), that impression is acognitive one if and only if (i) the impression is being caused by X,(ii) the impression accurately and graphically portrays X as X, and(iii) neither this impression nor any impression exactly like it couldhave been caused by Y, Z, or any other object apart from X.Naturally enough, the normal propositional content for such animpression would typically be of the form This is X - since it is theactual recognition of X as X which one allegedly cannot be wrongabout - rather than some more complex proposition concerning X.

This is likely enough to represent Chrysippus explication ofZenos definition, and I see nothing philosophically incoherentabout it. Note, for example, that it succeeds in shifting veridicalityback into the first clause, where it belongs if the third clause is tomake adequate sense. And it points towards the characteristic use ofthe theory as we meet it in Stoic-Academic debate, in which thesuccessful identification of one or more individuals is indeed thestandard type of example invoked - distinguishing betweenindividual eggs, snakes or twins, Admetus failure to recognise hisown wife Alcestis, and so on.7 But at the same time, I cannot believe


7 See esp. SE M VII 401-10 and Cic. Ac. II 83-90, where the arguments of theCarneadean Academy against (presumably Chrysippean) Stoicism turn oneither (a) dreams and hallunications, or (b) misidentifications of individuals,with no obvious cases of (c) misdescriptions. No doubt ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~ isbeing assumed to amount to caused by no external object in (a), and tocaused by what is not that external object in (b). Cf. Rist (1969), 136-8.Striker, (1997) mainly uses the Ciceronian identificatory formulation such ascould not arise from what is not that existing thing (pp. 265-70), but also suchthat it could not arise from what is not so (p. 260). The words which I haveemphasised - whether taken to mean (a) from what is not as described, orsimply (b) from what is not the case - would clearly extend katalepticimpressions beyond identificatory cases, but would bring us back to one orother of my original difficulties. (a) would not very naturally be expressed by

that it captures what Zeno himself intended by his third clause. If hehad meant of a kind that could not be caused by any object (or state-of-affairs) other than the one in fact causing it, he could easily havesaid so, but his actual choice of words, of a kind which could notcome ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~, is not at all a plausible way of saying it.8

There is, I believe, a better alternative, to which I now turn.

It has as far as I know gone unnoticed that in Hellenisticepistemology there is another, non-causal sense of ajpov. WhenOrestes misperceived Electra as a Fury, his impression is in ourStoic sources described as being from Electra (SE M VII 170). Buton other occasions it is treated as an outright hallucination, not amisperception of Electra, and in that case it is described as from theFuries (ib. VIII 67). This latter use of ajpov is clearly not causal, sincethere were no Furies to do the causing. Rather it is what I would liketo call a representational use of the preposition ajpov. Theimpression was one which represented the Furies. It is on this non-causal use of ajpov to mean representing that I wish to focusattention.

Here is a further Stoic example (SE M VII 244-5):

Impressions which are true and false are like the one whichbefell Orestes, in his madness, from (ajpov) Electra. In so far asit befell him as from something existing (wJ~ ajpo; uJpavrcontov~tino~) it was true, since Electra did exist, but in so far as itbefell him as from a Fury (wJ" ajpo; Erivnuo"), it was false, sinceshe was not a Fury. Another example is if someone dreaming,from Dion who is alive (ajpo; Divwno~ zw`nto~) dreams a falseand empty attraction [yeudh` kai; diavkenon eJlkusmovn - theStoic technical expression for a delusion] as from onestanding beside him.

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ajpo; mh; uJpavrconto~; and on (b), what would it mean for any impression to becaused 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 itsorigin in what is not? The answer seems to be that the impression does not as awhole have its origin in what is; part of it ... is made up by the mind and is notdue to the object... [I] t is characteristic of perceptual impressions that all theirrepresentational features are due to the object. This still, in my view, suggeststhat Zeno would have done better to write mh; ajpo; uJpavrconto~.

The contrast between the two cases discussed is instructive. Thefirst, that of Orestes, follows the version of the story where he sawElectra as a Fury. Hence its use of ajpov is causal, as we can see bymeans of the following paraphrase. The impression was caused byElectra. In so far as it seemed to be caused by something existing (wJ~ajpo; uJpavrcontov~ tino~), it was a true impression. But in so far as itseemed to be caused by a Fury (wJ~ ajpo; Erivnuo~), it was false. In thisseries of locutions, ajpov functions as a causal term, and therepresentational content of the impression is supplied instead by theconjunction wJ~.

Now contrast the second case. Dion - whom, we may surmise, Ibelieved to be dead - is in fact alive. I dream, however, not merelythat he is alive, but also that he is standing beside me. Is my dreamimpression true or false? It is both, according to the Stoicclassification, since it implies both the true proposition that Dion isalive and the false one that he is standing beside me. The impressionthat Dion is alive is expressed as from Dion who is alive. This timethe from cannot possibly be causal, since the Stoic dream-theorydiffers from the Epicurean one precisely in classing dreams amongempty delusions, which, like the hallucinations of the insane, aredevoid of any external causation by their putative objects.9 Thus interms of its causal origins the dream impression of Dion is directlycomparable to the version of the Orestes story, which I consideredslightly earlier, where Orestes impression of the Furies was anoutright hallucination (as distinct from the version where he sawElectra as a Fury). Here too, then, as in the case of Orestesdelusion, the preposition from in from Dion who is alive meansnot that the impression is caused by the living Dion, but that itrepresents the living Dion, or perhaps rather, more explicitly, that itrepresents the living Dion as living.

The impression from Dion who is alive is further described asbeing as from one standing beside the dreamer. The apparentsymmetry with the preceding part of the passage may mislead.


9 For the technical significance of yeudh` kai; diavkenon eJlkusmovn as ahallucinatory 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.

There, as we saw, ajpov indicated the causal origin of the impression,and wJ~ ajpov added the representational content, some of it true, someof it false. In the Dion case, however, ajpov already in itself introducesthe true representational content otherwise the true content wouldfail to be mentioned at all - and the wJ~ ajpov locution adds the further,false representational content.

This discrepancy is awkward, and must probably remain so onany interpretation of the passage. But I think we can at least see howit has come about. If the dream impression had merely beendescribed as ajpo; Divwno~, that would have allowed the possibility thatthis representational content was false - Dion might have been apurely imaginary figure, like the Furies of Orestes hallucination.But the expression chosen, ajpo; Divwno~ zw`nto~, somehow serves toinform us that the informational content of the impression is true,thus leaving the further wJ~ ajpov locution to add merely the false asif content of the impression. And if we ask how the words ajpo;Divwno~ zw`nto~ convey the truth of the impression, the answer mustsurely be that they have been formulated as a specific application ofthe generic concept ajpo; uJpavrconto~. That is, an impression ajpo;Divwno" zw`nto~ is one specific member of that class of impressionswhich are ajpo; uJpavrconto".

The representational usage of ajpov, though rare, occurs too oftento be dismissed as mere carelessness. What we have to appreciate, itseems, is that in Hellenistic Greek an impression from somethingfunctions much as an impression of something does in (as far as Iknow) most modern European languages. If we say that Orestes hadan impression of Electra (namely as a Fury), this is a causal of, butif we describe a complete hallucination by saying that he had animpression of a Fury, that is a representational of. Greek ajpovseems to function with the same flexibility, sometimes varying evenfrom one sentence to the next. The rule appears to be as follows. IfI perceive X as Y, my impression will normally be described asfrom X, in a fundamentally causal sense. If, on the other hand, I getan impression of Y, where no attention is being paid to the directcause of the impression but merely to its phenomenology, then it isperfectly acceptable to call this an impression from Y. Thus if Ihear a bell ringing, it would be normal to call my impression onefrom a bell. But if I simply hear a ringing sound, my auditory

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impression is properly described as from something ringing,regardless of whether the actual cause is a bell, a medical condition,or a state of dreaming.

Here is a further example of representational ajpov, this time anon-Stoic one. The Cyrenaics, as reported by Sextus, defend theprivacy of our sensations by making a distinction between ourhaving common names for sensibles and our having common pathe.From the fact that you and I both use the name white it need notfollow that my sensory experience, that prompts me to use the word,is the same as the one which prompts you to use the word. Thus weread (M VII 196-7):

For everybody in common calls something white andsweet, but they do not have something white or sweet incommon. For each person grasps his own experience, butwhether this experience arises in him and in his neighbourfrom (what is) white (ajpo; leukou)`, neither he himself can tell,since he does not register his neighbours experience, nor canthe neighbour tell, since he does not register that personsexperience. And since no common experience occurs in us,it is rash to say that what appears thus to me appears thus tomy neighbour too. For perhaps I am so constituted as to bewhitened by the object affecting me from outside, whilesomeone else has his sensory equipment so structured as tobe in a different condition.

If we were to insist on the causal interpretation of ajpov, the wordswhich I have emphasised would mean that I cannot tell whether theexternal object causing the experience to which I apply the wordwhite, and also causing the experience to which my neighbourapplies the word white, is itself white. But that question is entirelybeside the point in this paragraph, having already been fully dealtwith earlier (ib. 191-5), with a different vocabulary for theexperiences causal relation to the external object (uJpov plusgenitive, and to; ejmpoihtikovn / poihtiko;n tou` pavqou~, but not ajpov).10

In the present context, the point made is that, despite the fact that


10 In the sequel (198), on the other hand, the causal ajpov does put in anappearance. Once again this illustrates the ease with which Greek movesbetween the two uses of this preposition.

you and I both agree verbally that (e.g.) snow is white, we have nocriterion for establishing that when we look at snow we are bothexperiencing the same thing, whiteness - or, in the characteristicCyrenaic parlance which emerges in the last sentence, that we areboth being whitened by it. It is the unverifiable situation of ourboth experiencing it as white that is conveyed by the ajpov locution.A shared experience from what is white means a shared experiencewhich 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 thirdcentury BC, a time when Zeno was forging the Stoic theory ofcognition and when Cyrenaic epistemology was enjoying its finalphase before the schools disappearance. For surely this is the senseof ajpov which we need to recognise in Zenos definition of phantasiakataleptike.

Let us return to the three clauses of that definition. A cognitiveimpression is, first, ajpo; uJpavrconto~. That is, on the proposedreinterpretation, it represents what uJpavrcei. What does this mean?As has often been noted, the verb uJpavrcein is not used in our Stoicsources as a mere synonym for ei\nai, the being or existencewhich bodies alone possess. Even incorporeal predicates are said touJpavrcein, merely because they are actually instantiated insomething, and the present is said to uJpavrcein, not because it is abody, but because unlike the past and the future it is actual (SVF II509). Thus uJpavrcein conveys the kind of actuality which can belongnot just to bodies which currently exist, but also to currently actualpredications and states-of-affairs. If a cognitive impressionrepresents what is actual, this may in different cases mean that itconveys an object which actually exists (e.g. Dion), or a completestate of affairs which actually obtains in the world, consisting of oneor more objects actualisation of specified predicates (e.g. thecomplex 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

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11 For a close examination of this passage (incorporating my current suggestionas to how ajpov is to be interpreted), see now Tsouna (1998), ch. 7.

richer meaning than on the causal reading. An impression whichsatisfies this description is not necessarily one caused by an externalobject or state-of-affairs (although usually it will be thus caused), butone which represents how it is, and thus already counts as true.12 Wehave already encountered an example of such an impression. Animpression from Dion who is alive, although not even caused byDion, represents a uJpavrcon, namely the fact that Dion actually isalive.

Why, if so, did Zenos first clause not simply specify that thecognitive impression must be true? Because truth is, according toStoicism, primarily a property of propositions, one which is at bestno more than derivatively or loosely applicable to the impressionswhich convey those propositions (cf. SE M VIII 10). Strictlyspeaking, what an impression has, or aspires to, in its own rightshould not be truth, but correspondence to reality. There isevidence (S.E. M VII 154) that Arcesilaus in his debates with Zenoespecially insisted on this restriction of truth to propositions, andZenos cautious phrasing may to some extent reflect that adversarialcontext.

I shall nevertheless for convenience, if a little loosely, continueto use the term veridicality to describe this correspondence to theway things are.

If, as I am arguing, the first clause already establishes thecognitive impressions veridicality, its representation of the waythings are, what is added by the second clause, which should now betranslated moulded and stamped in accordance with that very thingwhich is actual? We should no longer expect to locate in this clausethe impressions veridicality. Rather, it limits itself to describing thegraphic qualities with which the cognitive impressionsrepresentation of how things are is carried out. It does not justconvey in barest outline how things are, but vividly portrays the


12 Frede (1983/1987) rightly takes the first clause already to specify truth; myreinterpretation of ajpov may, I hope, help to show how it can, and also whysome 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) inthe second clause.

thing or situation in panoramic detail. Zeno is trying to capture therichness and absolute clarity which distinguish a totally reliableimpression from an indistinct and therefore unreliable one.

So far I have simply assumed the representational sense of ajpov,in order to display its results in the reinterpretation of Zenos firsttwo clauses. But it is its application to the third clause which, I think,confirms that it has every chance of being the meaning that Zenointended. We have seen already the severe difficulties that the causalsense of ajpov generates in the interpretation of the third clause. Bycontrast, the representational sense is readily and unproblematicallyintelligible there. The clause of a kind which could not arise ajpo; mh;uJpavrconto~ will, on this account, mean simply of a kind whichcould not represent what is not actual. If the first clause alreadystipulates that the impression should be veridical, the third adds thatit should be the kind of impression that could not fail to be veridical.

There is excellent evidence that this is exactly how Zeno wasunderstood in his own day. His contemporary critic Arcesilausreported the phantasia kataleptike to be one which was not onlytrue but also of a kind which could not turn out false (toiauvth oi{aoujk a]n gevnoito yeudhv~, SE M VII 152). Or, to express thisinfallibility requirement more accurately (in accordance withArcesilaus own insistence that truth and falsity should belong topropositions, not to phantasiai): if I have a cognitive impression thatDion is walking, the stipulation in the third clause is that it must bean impression such that its representational content, namely thatDion is walking, could not fail to correspond to an actual state-of-affairs in which Dion is walking.

There remains an obvious difficulty for this interpretation. IfZeno intended his ajpov to mean representing, why did he not find aless misleading locution to express the idea? I confess that I canthink of no credible antecedent for his representational usage of theterm, and that even his own followers in the school tended tomistake it for a causal usage. I can offer no more than a guess.

Cicero (Ac. II 76-8) seems to believe that Zenos definitionoriginally consisted of just the first two clauses, and that thethird was added only when he came under pressure fromArcesilaus. Arcesilaus did not become head of the Academy until

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a few years before Zenos own death (somewhere in the years 268-4; Zeno died in 262/1). There is no need to doubt that the debate inquestion could have preceded Arcesilaus headship, perhaps bymany years, but their respective ages, with Zeno the senior by some18 years, still make it plausible that Zenos original two-clauseformulation was in circulation for some time before he encounteredArcesilaus and was forced to refine it by adding the third clause.

It may then well be the case that in his original formulation hedid intend the ajpov in a primarily causal sense, much as it was indeedto be understood by later Stoics, who could no doubt call on theevidence of his own writings. If Zeno was drawing his ideas partlyfrom the Theaetetus, it is very likely both that he, like PlatosSocrates, focused on perceptual cases of cognition, and that he tookthe wax-impression model which he was borrowing as an obviouslycausal 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 waschallenged by Arcesilaus and decided to add the third clause, Zenohad shifted to a primarily representational sense of ajpov, and that itwas this sense which in consequence he assumed in his formulationof 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 beingassumed to cause it not in just any way (e.g. in the way that theperson pushing the doorbell is the cause of my hearing it ring), butspecifically by transmitting its own perceptible properties to thephantasia. Viewed in this light, Zenos new move was to not tointroduce these representational properties, but rather to emphasisethem at the expense of the causal ones.14


13 Actually the Theaetetus model does include purely conceptual imprints in thewax (191d5), but neither Socrates in the dialogue nor Platos interpreters (cf.already Alcinous, Didaskalikos 154.40-155.13 Whittaker-Louis) seem to makemuch of them.14 I exclude the alternative of letting the revised use of ajpov retain both thecausal and the representational senses. If that were so, the third clause wouldmean of a kind which could not (a) be caused by and (b) represent a non-actualthing or state of affairs, and that would leave untouched the original difficulty:

Just what might have impelled him to such a shift would thenbecome an urgent question. An attractive possibility is that, havingoriginally conceived the cognitive impression as directly andexclusively perceptual (cf. Cic. Ac. I 40-1), he came in time to see anindispensable role for non-perceptual cognitive impressions.

Gods existence and providence - doctrines to which Zenodevoted many of his own arguments - are explicitly said in DiogenesLaertius report of Stoic epistemology (VII 52) to be objects of non-sensory katalepsis. We must not jump too hastily to the assumptionthat the cognitions in question are the outcome of non-perceptualphantasiai kataleptikai. They might, it has been suggested, beconsidered by the Stoics to be adequately grounded by earlierperceptual cognitive impressions of the worlds functioning, and toacquire their status as cognitions in that way.15 However, Zenosrecorded arguments on this theme16 can hardly be said to invite suchan analysis, and it is hard to believe that he considered theirconclusions cognitive without assigning the same status to suchsalient premises as The rational is superior to the irrational, andNothing lacking sensation can have a sentient part17 - premiseswhich are not easily reducible to, or even derivable from, direct dataof 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 themselvesstandardly identified with the theorems constituting the art. Zenocan hardly have meant to insist on the exclusively perceptualcontent of the theorems. Once again there is the possible reply thathe nevertheless saw them as fully grounded by past perceptualphantasiai kataleptikai. But we have no reason for attributing to himso impoverished a conception of techne, especially when we bear in

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thanks to the inclusion of (a), the clause would be satisfied by any phantasiawhatsoever.15 See especially Striker (1974). Contra, see Brennan (1996) 324-5.16 For Zenos theological and other syllogisms, see esp. Schofield (1983) and K.Ierodiakonou (this volume).17 SE M IX 104; Cic. ND II 22.

mind that at least some virtues are technai, and that their theoremsmust be or include moral principles.18 Zeno is well known to haveargued syllogistically for moral principles, and clearly did not thinkthat they were founded exclusively in sense-perception.

Finally, what about the cognition of fundamental laws ofthought? Consider such cognitions - ones fundamental to Stoicism -as that every event has a cause, and that every magnitude is infinitelydivisible. Cognitions like these could hardly be thought either to becaused by the facts which they record, or for that matter to beadequately derived from a past series of directly sensory phantasiaikataleptikai.

Later Stoics, at any rate from the time of Chrysippus, would nodoubt have sought to present these and similar intuitions as thecontent of common conceptions (often treated as equivalent toprolepseis), which came to function as an independent criterion oftruth alongside phantasia kataleptike; but the identification of theseas criteria of truth is associated explicitly with Chrysippus in oursources,19 and I know of no evidence that would justify our tracingthat theory back to Zenos generation. When the sources attribute acriterion of truth to Zeno and his generation, they speak exclusivelyof katalepsis.20

There is, then, reason to think that Zeno assumed katalepsis toinclude a variety of fundamentally non-sensory cognitions. Does itfollow that there are also, corresponding to these, non-sensoryphantasiai kataleptikai? It probably does. Although we have noformal record of the Stoic definition of katalepsis, Arcesilausreported 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, whileconceptions (which must include prolepseis) have a different, apparentlyderivative, status.21 Striker (1974) is probably wise to treat with caution the other passages wherethis equivalence is attributed to the Stoics. However, if I am right, analternative to her way of accounting for those passages may lie in Zenos ownwritings.

at the very least provides strong evidence as to how a contemporarycritic understood Zeno himself to be using the term. And if he isright, it is hard to see how the phantasia kataleptike to which a non-sensory katalepsis is an assent can itself be anything other than anon-sensory one. It is, indeed, well-established Stoic usage to speakof a class of non-sensory phantasiai, and of phantasiai which are ofincorporeals despite the fact that they cannot be caused by thoseincorporeals.22 There is no reason to doubt that these could includekataleptic phantasiai.

If this reconstruction is right, Zeno must have come to acceptthat philosophical understanding relies at least in part on non-sensory phantasiai kataleptikai. Assuming further that by this timeat least the first two clauses of his famous definition of phantasiakataleptike were already established, perhaps even the subject ofinter-school debate, he had good reason to present that definition asone not intended to be interpreted in a narrowly causal orperceptual sense: the ajpov relation is one expressing accuraterepresentation of reality, without necessarily in every case alsoimplying causal derivation from that reality.

My suggestion, then, is that it was in the course of his theorysevolution beyond the crude model offered by the Theaetetus thatZeno found himself treating the ajpov relation less as a causalderivation than as a representational one. In so far as he wasconscious of this semantic shift, he may be imagined as justifying itby reflecting that the ajpov element present in his second clause,ejnapomemagmevnhn kai; ajnapesfragismevnhn, already served toconvey this aspect of the impression: it is so moulded and stampedin the mental wax as to represent its object accurately. Be that as itmay, a result of this new realisation was that the first clause, ratherthan the second, came in Zeno's own usage to be the chief one forconveying the cognitive impressions basic representational

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22 See D.L. VII 51 on non-sensory phantasiai. They explicitly include those ofincorporeals, and S.E. M VIII 409 attests a Stoic attempt to show that thesecould involve non-causal representation. Chrysippus narrower, causaldefinition of phantasia (Aetius loc. cit. n. 2 above) should perhaps be regardedas adding a specific sense of phantasia to this generic one.

accuracy - its veridicality. When, consequently, the debate withArcesilaus finally came to a head, it was natural that Zenos newlyspecified infallibility clause should borrow its materials from thisfirst clause.

If this suggestion is right, Zenos successors, reading his writingsas a single corpus rather than diachronically, must have failed torecognise his drift away from a causal account of cognition.Consequently, they were impelled to emphasise those cognitiveimpressions whose derivation did indeed lie in the direct causalaction of the object upon the perceiving subject. That, at all events,is what the Stoic theory of phantasia kataleptike eventually became.But we should not be too confident that the theorys thoroughgoingempiricism fully captures Zenos own mature intentions.23

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Backhouse, T. Antipater of Tarsus on false phantasiai (P Berol inv.16545), in Studi e testi per il Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini10, Papiri filosofici, Miscellanea di Studi III (Florence 2000) 7-31.

Brennan, T. Reasonable impressions in Stoicism, Phronesis 41(1996), 318-34.


23 The basic thesis of this paper, concerning the meaning of Zenos threeclauses, is one which I have already sketched briefly in my (1998), p. 152. Indeveloping it further, I have benefited from the comments of ThamerBackhouse, Gisela Striker and Michael Frede, and from discussion withparticipants at the September 1998 Larnaca conference Zeno and his Legacy(especially Malcolm Schofield), at a Florence seminar in December 1998, and atthe Sminaire Lon Robin, Paris, in February 1999. It should not be assumedthat they all endorse my conclusions.

Frede, M. Stoics and Skeptics on clear and distinct impressions, inM.F. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (1983) 65-93; repr. in M.Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis 1987), 151-76:

Ierodiakonou, K. 'Zeno's Arguments.' (this volume).

Ioppolo, A.M. Presentation and assent: a physical and cognitiveproblem in early Stoicism, CQ 40 (1990), 433-49.

Long, A.A. 'Zeno's epistemology and Plato's Theaetetus' (thisvolume).

Rist, J.M. Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge 1969).

Schofield, M. The syllogisms of Zeno of Citium, Phronesis 28 (1983),31-58.

Sedley, D. Article Stoicism in E. Craig (ed.), The RoutledgeEncyclopedia of Philosophy (London 1998), vol. 9, 141-61.

Striker, G. Appendix to Krithvrion th`~ ajlhqeiva~ (original Germanversion Gttingen 1974; repr. in English in her Essays on HellenisticEpistemology and Ethics, 22-76).

Striker, G. Academics fighting Academics in B. Inwood, J. Mansfeld(eds), Assent and Argument: Studies in Ciceros Academic Books(Leiden 1997) 257-76.

Tsouna, V. The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School (Cambridge1998).

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