22–23
STOA
No, no! Let me cross-question him a little.
EPICURUS
Put your questions: I will answer them.
STOA
Do you consider pain bad?
STOA
And pleasure good?
5
STOA
Well, do you know the meaning of “material” and “immaterial,” of ‘approved” and “disapproved”?Stoic technical terms: see vol. ii, p. 488. Stoa intends to prove that pleasure and pain are alike “immaterial,” and neither “approved” nor “disapproved,” because they neither help nor hinder the effort to attain Virtue.
HERMES
Stoa, the jurors say they can’t understand these dissyllabic questions, so be silent; they are voting.
STOA
I should have won if I had put him a question in the form of the “third indemonstrable.”The five “indemonstrables” of Chrysippus, so called because they are self-evident and require no proof, were all hypothetical or disjunctive syllogisms; examples are: (1) “if it is day, it is light; it is light, —> it is day”; (2) “if it is day, it is light; it is dark, —> it is not day”; (3) “Plato is not both dead and alive; he is dead, —> he is not alive”; (4) “it is either day or night; it is day, —> it is not night”; (5) “it is either day or night; it is not night, —> it is day.” Cf. Diog. Laert. Vit, Phil. 7, 1, 49; Sext. Emp. adv. Math. 7.
10
HERMES
Pleasure, unanimously.
JUSTICE
Good luck to you! Hermes, call another case.
HERMES
Virtue v. High-living, im re Aristippus. Let Aristippus appear in person.
