Strands of Thinking

Sophism, Stoicism, Skepticism, Epicureanism, Cynicism

Sophist comes from the Greek word sophos which means wise.

It is also called the “Expert approach”. They (sophists) excelled in rhetoric, bidder for high stake
in debates from cosmogony to democracy in the polis or city states.

cosmogony - the branch of science that deals with the origin of the universe, especially the solar
system.

They are also called itinerant teachers as they pedantic (as they walk) while they were teaching.

itinerant - traveling schoolteachers

pedantic - someone who annoys others by correcting small errors, caring too much about minor
details, or emphasizing their own expertise especially in some narrow or boring subject matter.

Derogatory term, they are called teachers for fee like our modern lawyer or highest bidder
official.

In terms of learning, they are logical as they use the dialectics on debates.
They are Interested in the logos or ideas or study of rhetoric for persuasive (emotive)
arguments.

dialetics - a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a
subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned argumentation.

Protagoras is typified as proponent who claimed that “Man is the measure of knowledge of all
things”. (Of course man’s knowledge is fallible or incomplete. Inadequate as Augustine
portrayed of a boy naively trying to empty an ocean into in a pond (mind)).

This thought pattern can caused subjectivism (solipsism as extreme) in thinking, a cultural
relativism that narrowed down their interest according to their needs and views of life.
subjectivism - our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead
of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth.

This is also the precursor for empiricism towards pragmatism that what is important is based
upon one’s need or practical purpose or relativism like persuasion is more important than the
truth of the argument or objective analysis (even if they are wrong, if given a good fee or
payment for their debating prowess they can forcibly straighten the crooked arguments with a
“convincing” erroneous or fallacy argument).

empericism - all concepts originate in experience, that all concepts are about or applicable to
things that can be experienced, or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are
justifiable or knowable only through experience.

pragmatism - those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that
the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and
that unpractical ideas are to be rejected.

relativism - that there's no absolute truth, only the truths that a particular individual or culture
happen to believe.

Their dialectical reasoning can serve the purpose in persuasive argumentation even if they are
wrong in their beliefs of such fields like Reason, Nature and God. Morality then can also
become subjective and they assert that there are no moral facts that apply equally to everyone.

Dialectical reasoning - arriving at truth through a process of comparing and contrasting various
solutions

Stoic comes from the word stoa which is the portico where the school discussion started.

Stoicism - teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming

They are called the “Tough guy approach”.

Their thought pattern is set on no fear of pain or even death. No pain, No gain. One should
accept that some events are beyond your control.

A determinist belief exist to fate (Typhoon Yolanda and its devastation) like a fixed Reason on
the Natural Law. It can also have the extreme decision of killing the two sons from a treacherous
marriage as what Medea did to end lineage of her traitor husband who had abandoned his wife
Medea and sons for a mistress.
determinism -in a situation in which a person makes a certain decision or performs a certain
action, it is impossible that he or she could have made any other decision or performed any
other action

The philosophical system is like an orchard - logic is the protective wall around it, physics is the
soil and the trees and ethics was the fruit.

What matters most is virtue upon a well ordered Divine Universe. Like the analogy of a dog tied
to a wagon, man must obey with wisdom to follow the wagon or one can choke if being dragged.

Dura lex, sed Lex (The Law is hard, but it is the Law).

They believed in Honor to defend the Republic to death as the Romans put the Senate the
symbol of the Republic as opposed to the Imperial ambitions of the Emperor and Military
Generals.

One’s attitude based upon Virtue can withstand the limitations or beyond one’s control of
wealth, power and social standing. One need not worry of a traffic if one is prepared (had
anticipated) for it.

The suspension of judgment or ataraxia is a way for deliberation and finding stability or kind of
peace in a grinding situation. Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired but
by controlling the desire – Epictetus. The soldier never shed a tear even after amputation. He
just shrugged off the pain by saying, “I told you so my self control give me more strength than
your assurance of healing.”

One can find peace in a difficult world as the book Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (Great
Roman Emperor depicted in the modern movie, the Gladiator).

For a Stoic, happiness is compatible with the absence of pleasure.

Skeptic came from three schools in Greece and Rome. Famous names as Pyrrho, Agrippa and
Sextus Empiricus. Skeptic is good in term of deliberation as in probing by questions the
problem at hand.
Skepticism - the attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in various areas. Skeptics have
challenged the adequacy or reliability of these claims by asking what principles they are based
upon or what they actually establish.

The so-called “Who knows trying approach but we cannot know anything because Reason, it
was thought, leaves us with equally compelling arguments all round.” Thus, they become the
Doubter par excellence to trounce all reasonings.

Whether it is an academic questioning like, “what are things like by nature? how should we be
disposed towards thing? We have no opinion about them? What is the result of this attitude?”
For Pyrrho, the main preoccupation is, it is freedom from anxiety, by asserting the suspension of
judgment (ataraxia).

Their thought pattern relied on the impossibility of justification. Knowledge is impossible

Their reasonings were challenged by the positive assertions of the Stoics and the Epicureans.

The Skeptics can become obstructionists in the long run in discussion, in problem solving and
achieving practical actions as they keep on insisting for the process of probing to continue.
They can become arrogant and will act as perfectionists in the name of probing more for the
right answers.

Obstructionism - is the practice of deliberately delaying or preventing a process or change,

The methodical doubt or Dubito, ergo sum of Descartes in the name of the Evil demon or the
Evil Genius was meant to doubt the certainty of my knowledge, dreams, ideas and senses into
to verify if one is indeed awake and in hold of one’s faculties. One is not in a placebo, in a Matrix
like scenario (Hilary Putnam’s Brain in a Vat or BIV).

The end goal was to achieve Certainty and Perfect knowledge based upon one’s existence, “the
Cogito, ergo sum or I am thinking, therefore I exist.” That I cannot doubt that I exist because I
cannot doubt my own thinking which my existing self is thinking.” A bit of a reductio ad
absurdum (infinite regress) but Self in Certainty is foundation was meant to reach the
Foundationalist basis of knowledge for the Self as the basis of knowledge to reach the apex
Supreme Being (God) in the pyramidal foundational knowledge of a metaphysical sense.
Epicurean is the “Feel Good approach.” Or Happiness driven approach. The term originates
from Epicurus and his followers takes the sting out of death.

Tranquility is viewed in a different way from the Skeptics that for the Epicurean the aim of
philosophy is lead people into ataraxia, or tranquility

greatest good is to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquillity, freedom from
fear ("ataraxia") and absence from bodily pain ("aponia").

Being dead is nothing since when a person dies, there will not be anymore “s/he or us” it is non-
existent.

Besides, death is being unborn. There is nothing to fear if one return to a state to what is
effectively the same state.

The Atomists who thought of the atoms as uncuttable or indivisible (not anymore in the Higgs
boson theory in CERN Switzerland’s subatomic particles research), invisible and constantly in
motion (free moving) in old concepts introduced by the two Leucippus (the Miletian) and
Democritus, that atoms which symbolized the free spirit of the Epicurean.

As the universe evolved from these components of atoms, the nature of appearance, change
and multiplicity are connected. Collision, combination of atoms and changes are all fatalistically
destined.

Pleasure is the ultimate good. Pleasure is best secured through psychologically and bodily
equilibrium.

“Go to the Himalayas to meditate. Do jogging in the mountain trails. Eat lavish parties with a
great range of epicurean gastronomy or cuisine. Believe in the horoscope and indulge long
hours in sauna and parlors. Enjoy life while you are alive and there is time” can be their mantras
and lifestyles.

Epicureans are determinists as the world exists for them. Creation is not with evil as gods have
no part of evil as evil exists. How can evil exists if creation is perfectly created by a perfect,
omnipotent god? Since evil, imperfection exists, then the gods are simply not interested in
human affairs, according to Epicurus.

Fatalism is also in their nerves. This is a Mechanistic explanatory theory of the Atoms.
Philosophy for them must promote tranquility. Soul is material. Immateriality is non-existence.
Sentience is extinguished. No fear to non-existence or death.

Pleasure is good but must not follow all pleasures. Seek merely the absence of pain. Morality is
not a concern but only humanist and egalitarian Thought.
Cynic or the “Me against the world”, “The one who knows the price of Everything and the values
of Nothing (Oscar Wilde). The personified Cynic is called Diogenes of Sinope as the man who
lived in a tub or a big barrel and acted as the true Citizen of the World (or the polis, the
citystates).

The word cynic comes from the Greek word krinikos of dog, the depiction of a dog connotes
filthiness but actually it is a rejection of social conventions. (Plato’s account of Diogenes the dog
as told by Diogenes of Laertius of someone gate crashing a party and like a dog destroying the
carpets and appetite of the assembly by attacking conventions).

Diogenes of Sinope had a penchant of words and rejected tradition, dictates of culture and rules
of civilized life as artificial and encumbrances. This is the Opposite to freedom and genuine
happiness.

Virtue is a matter of False values against True values. The rest are nonsense and rubbish.
There is no distinction between naked or not naked, yours or mine in private and public
property, but contempt on distinction between who is Greek or Foreigner.

Diogenes throw away the presence of mighty World Conqueror Alexander the Great who asked
him what he wanted to build, a School or a Good life. Diogenes shoved him away by
annoyingly saying that the light of the sun is obstructed and Alexander the Great for asting that
shadow on him.

This radical asceticism or total detachment from ordinary life is like a weird person carrying a
lamp on a broad daylight in the marketplace looking for a person who is still honest and who
has the best virtues in the whole society to serve the people.

A rarity in virtue ethical demand in history which only the early Christians is known to fit of and
were especially identified in the Bible. Christians were known for haranguing crowds in Rome
in talk of virtues and after life away from worldly values. Christians were like early socialists who
shared all their properties and ate in agape like a community of families.

[Researched from the Books: Archetypes of Wisdom, An Introduction to Philosophy,