TalosPrinciple2b

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On the Universe

A fragment from Straton's On the Universe:

AMYNTAS: You have made quite the catalogue of horrors, Straton: children dying in their mothers' arms, cities perishing by the plague, and even animals living without peace or happiness.

NICOMACHUS: Why must we listen to this? You know I have just eaten a heavy dinner.

STRATON: Because these things, which are ugly, must be confronted for us to reach the truth. You spoke of justice earlier, Amyntas, but are these things just?

AMYNTAS: They are not.

STRATON: Then you must admit the universe itself is not just. If the gods exist (34), then they do not bend the world to their will. Rather, the universe proceeds as a machine, following its rules. Justice and virtue are human inventions.

AMYNTAS: Are you saying justice and virtue are therefore illusory and should be abandoned?

STRATON: The opposite, my friend. It is mankind alone that can impose these values upon this machine.

Footnotes

34. It remains unclear whether Straton believed in the gods or used them solely as metaphors. His work On the Deities is no longer extant. Tantalizingly, Diogenes Laertius mentions that it caused a fistfight in the Lyceum.

Comments

Athena: I thought what made us human was that we searched for meaning, but perhaps a better way of thinking about it is that we create meaning.

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