Scholars usually quote a well-known passage from Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods 1.43-44, where the Roman ascribes to Epicurus the achievement of having coined the term πρoληψις (‘preconception').1
The Epicurean neologism ‘preconception' gained an undeniable success in antiquity. The Stoics seem to have appropriated the term early, but at the end of antiquity it appears to have been used by all philosophical schools.
As is evident, such versatility can only be the result of numerous reworkings of the Epicurean neologism. Some inflections are clear, although they are hard to date, such as the conjunction of the term πρoληψις with the adjectives ‘innate' [εμφυτος] and ‘natural' [φυσικη] and their connection with another important expression of the Hellenistic philosophy, the notion of ‘common conceptions' [ κοιναt εννοιαι]. These brief remarks allow us to see that the term ‘preconception' focused on the Hellenistic controversies around the origin and foundation of knowledge, the development of a consensus omnium theory, the gods, justice and universals. The preserved texts of Epicurus contain few considerations about the notion of preconception. Still, two of Epicurus' most extensive Principal Doctrines (PD 37 and 38) deal precisely with the preconception of the just. These two passages discuss the historical dynamics that were engendered by the relationship between the just and the legal in political communities.Like any other political model, the Epicurean one has a compelling normative or regulative character. The two main perspectives on the nature of political organizations in the ancient world are, on the one hand, the ‘naturalistic' account (two of whose most relevant representatives were Aristotle and the Stoics), and, on the other hand, the ‘contractualistic' view.2 Epicurus and the Epicureans supported the latter and rejected the former. As observed by A.
A. Long, some of the principles an Epicurean should adopt (regarding satisfaction of desires, self-sufficiency and freedom) have much in common with Cynic precepts.3 But the contractual Epicurean view regarding society cannot be anarchist at all.In fact, a pact implicitly establishes a pattern of conduct, said pattern being an implicitly or explicitly coercive principle. The normative or regulative function of the Epicurean political model is embodied in the preconception of the just.
Now, if Epicurus and the Epicureans defended a contractual theory (as they did), one could cast doubts on the notion of the ‘just' insofar they hold that the just is the object of a ‘preconception' (πρoληψις; see PD 37, 38). The function of the preconception of justice in a contractual framework, we hold, turns out to be clear within a genealogical account of what justice is. Certainly, such a preconception can only be conceived within the domain of a social or ‘communal' context where there is an already established language. Indeed, (i) if Epicurean justice can only be understood as something related to what is useful or convenient, and (ii) if the establishment of the pact depends on the ‘discretion' of those who establish it, (iii) it seems that the preconception of justice (which, after all, is a kind of concept) does not have the ‘objective character' that we tend to ascribe to concepts in general. But this is not necessarily so: although language does not have the same fixed or unchanging character as mathematics (since any language is a dynamic entity that changes over time), once a language is established in a linguistic community it comes to feature elements of stability that allow people to communicate with each other. Thus, the previous character of a preconception must be related to the previously fixed uses of language (or so we shall argue). Moreover, if the just is a modality of what is useful for a given community, it is not merely conventional.
The fact that a community decides that x is just does not make x useful to fulfil the purpose of not harming or being harmed that Epicureanism attributes to the pacts of justice (PD 31, 32, 33). Usefulness is constrained by the facts (τα πραγματα; PD 37. των περιεστωτων πραγματων ; PD 38). For the same reason, what is just, that is, useful, for one community, may not be useful for another (PD 36, 37). And even what is useful for one community in certain circumstances may not be useful later or in different circumstances (PD 37, 38).This chapter proceeds thus: first (section 1) we provide some general clarifications regarding what Epicurus calls ‘the just of nature' (PD 31 = T1, below). There we also explain the connections between justice and usefulness and set out to clarify our statement that, within the domain of the Epicurean contractual model, justice can be considered a ‘modality of utility' and the prolepsis of the just as a canon that validates the just. In section 2, we refer to Epicurean epistemology and analyse the specific characteristics of the confirmation [επιμαρτυρησις] of the just. Finally, in section 3, we reject interpretations that (i) instantiate the prolepsis of the just in the constitution that rules over the life of a community or (ii) distinguish a hierarchical and historical plurality of preconceptions of the just, and we try to show that the Epicureans embedded the prolepsis of the just in language. To do that, we study the relationship between the origin and development of language and the establishment of the pacts of justice. We argue against Philippsons view that the Epicureans supported the idea of natural law in the supposed parallelism between the origin and development of language and that of justice and laws. If our textual evidence is to be trusted (mainly Epicurus' texts, Lucretius' testimony, Hermarcus, and so on), Philippson's suggestion cannot be accurate and introduces severe confusion. Next, we underline the relevance of an ingredient of experience that is not usually considered when dealing with Epicurean preconception's empirical genesis: language learning.
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