Concept
Katalepsis
Overview
Katalepsis (Greek: κατάληψις, "grasping") is a term in Stoic philosophy for a concept roughly equivalent to modern comprehension. To the Stoic philosophers, katalepsis was an important premise regarding one's state of mind as it relates to grasping fundamental philosophical concepts, which was followed by the assent, or adherence to the truth thus understood.
According to the Stoics, the mind is constantly being bombarded with impressions (phantasiai). Some of these impressions are true and some false. Impressions are true when they are truly affirmed, false if they are wrongly affirmed. Cicero relates that Zeno would illustrate katalepsis as follows:
He would display his hand in front of one with the fingers stretched out and say "A visual appearance is like this"; next he closed his fingers a little and said, "An act of assent is like this"; then he pressed his fingers closely together and made a fist, and said that that was comprehension (and from this illustration he gave to that process the actual name of katalepsis, which it had not had before); but then he used to apply his left hand to his right fist and squeeze it tightly and forcibly, and then say that such was knowledge, which was within the power of nobody save the wise man.
Katalepsis was the main point of contention between the Stoics and the two schools of philosophical skepticism during the Hellenistic period: the Pyrrhonists and the Academic Skeptics of Plato's Academy. These Skeptics, who chose the Stoics as their natural philosophical opposites, eschewed much of what the Stoics believed regarding the human mind and one's methods of understanding greater meanings. To the Skeptics, all perceptions were acataleptic, i.e. bore no conformity to the objects perceived, or, if they did bear any conformity, it could never be known.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It being our determination to discourse of Natural Philosophy, we judge it necessary, in the first place and chiefly, to divide the body of philosophy into its proper members, so that we may know what is that which is called philosophy, and what part of it is physical, or the explanation of natural things. The Stoics affirm that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine; that philosophy is the pursuit of…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
States what Katalepsis is.
His disciple Pythagoras greatly confirmed this opinion, who came into Italy in the reign of Tarquin the Proud: and all that country which is called Great Greece was occupied by his school, and he himself was held in high honour, and had the greatest authority: and the Pythagorean sect was for many ages after in such great credit, that all learning was believed to be confined to that name.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by
States what Katalepsis is.
On this faculty of distinguishing one thing from another depends the evidence and certainty of several, even very general, propositions, which have passed for innate truths;—because men, overlooking the true cause why those propositions find universal assent, impute it wholly to native uniform impressions; whereas it in truth depends upon this clear discerning faculty of the mind, whereby it PERCEIVES two ideas to…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
Close in meaning to Katalepsis; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Katalepsis
Related ideas
- Harvard University Press
- Pyrrhonism
- Stoicism
- Mind
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Philosophical skepticism
- Platonic Academy
- Academic skepticism
- Acatalepsy
- Zeno of Citium
- Hellenistic period
- Cicero
- Phantasiai
Place in the tradition
Part of Academic skepticism.