From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 221
everything is according to necessity, the citation continues ‘and the same is fate and
justice and providence and the creator’. The reference of ‘the same’ (tēn autēn) is
presumably the feminine noun anangkē; Democritus is therefore said to have
identified necessity with fate, justice, providence and the creator. Apart from the
authority of this testimony, its meaning is problematic. It might be taken (in
opposition to all the other evidence), as ascribing purpose and moral content to
necessity, but could as well be taken as explaining justice and providence away as
nothing more than necessity, i.e. as saying ‘necessity is what (socalled) fate, justice
and cosmic providence really are’. Since in the next section ps.—Plutarch cites
Democritus’ mechanistic account of necessity as impact (I.26.2, DK 68 A 66)
consistency is better preserved by the latter reading.
4 In Epicurus’ own theory, chance and necessity are distinct causes (Letter to
Menseceus 133, Diogenes Laertius Lives X, sections 122–35), so if he is assuming
that the atomists share his view, the position he ascribes to them is (2). But that
assumption is not required by the text, which leaves open the possibility that the
view ascribed is (1).
5 Richard McKim argues [6.39] that Democritus held all appearances to be true in a
robuster sense of ‘true’ than that for which I argue here, namely that ‘they are all
true in the sense that they are true to the eidōla or atomic films which cause them
by streaming off the surfaces of sensible objects and striking our sense organs’ (p.
286). Though McKim does not discusss what it is for appearances to be true to the
eidōla, I take it that he is attributing to Democritus the account of the truth of
appearances which Epicurus is held by some writers to have maintained, namely
that sense impressions faithfully register the physical characteristics of the eidōla
which impinge on the sense organs. (See G.Striker ‘Epicurus on the truth of senseimpressions’,
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 59 (1977): 125–42 and
C.C.W.Taylor ‘All impressions are true’, in M. Schofield, M.Burnyeat and
J.Barnes (eds) Doubt and Dogmatism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980:105–24.)
While I am in total sympathy with McKim’s account of Democritus’ overall
epistemological strategy, I am unwilling to follow him in attribution of the
Epicurean theory to Democritus, since none of our evidence gives any support to
the suggestion that Democritus gave that or any particular account of the truth of
appearances. I agree that he probably held that, for the reason dramatized in the
complaint of the senses, all appearances had to be in some sense or other true if
there was to be any knowledge at all. But against McKim I hold that we have
insufficient evidence to attribute to Democritus any account of the sense in which
appearances are true, beyond the implicit claim that all appearances are
equipollent. It is plausible to suppose that Epicurus’ account was devised in
attempt to make good that deficiency. See also Furley [6.33].
6 I am grateful to Gail Fine, David Furley and Robin Osborne for their comments on
earlier drafts.