I’m trying to imagine what Epicurus’s lost book on Rhetoric was like. Diogenes Laertius says that in Rhetoric, Epicurus said that clarity was the only thing the literary arts demanded.
If that’s all there is to it, Rhetoric must have been a wonderfully short book.
Diogenes offers a clue about how Epicurus achieved clarity. The word Diogenes used to describe Epicurus’s language is usually translated “ordinary” or “plain.” In ancient Athens, there were two types of assemblies. The ordinary assembly was for everyday business. The called or summoned assembly was for something special.
As with assemblies, so with language. Epicurus preferred everyday language to the language that is summoned for special occasions.
I think his point is a good guide. But Wittgenstein spent a lifetime trying to untie the knots in ordinary language. I wish it were true that all philosophical problems could be eliminated by the analysis of language, but I am a skeptic.
• Source: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers; translated by R.D. Hicks; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, Vol. II, p. 542.
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