L’empirismo di Teofrasto e la meteorologia epicurea

This paper mainly focuses on a passage of Theophrastus’ work On First Principles – generally known as Metaphysics – (8b 10-17), in which the Peripatetic philosopher deals with the relationship between sense-perception (aisthesis) and the faculty of thought (dianoia/nous). Thanks to the close analysis of this text one can argue that according to Theophrastus sense-perception is the irrefutable starting point of the process of knowledge, but, since aisthesis could produce aporia, it cannot be identified with the scientific and firm knowledge (episteme/sophia). This is the most remarkable difference with Epicurus, who maintains that all sensations are always true. Some scholars argue that the Epicurean method of multiple explanations (pleonachos tropos) of celestial phenomena (meteora) basically depends on the ‘same’ method employed by Theophrastus in his naturalistic enquiries. The main goal of this article is to show that these methods are very different especially because Theophrastus and Epicurus disagree about the role and the domain of sense-perception, which lies at the basis of both these epistemological procedures.