Acatalectic

ACATALESSIA. - From the Greek ἀκαταληψία (privative a and καταλαμβάνει, percipio, comprehendo), it is the impossibility of apprehending the truth. In noun form the term appears for the first time in Cicero (Att. 13, 19, 3), then in Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Lacrzio (cf. prooem. 16); but the corresponding adjective ἀκατάληστος is older and goes back to the Stoics, who used it in conjunction with φαντασία (representation) to distinguish that which does not correspond to reality, or is even of a non-existent object, from that which comes from a real object and corresponds to it, called precisely καταληστική or κατάληψις (Cic., Acad., II, 145: «Zeno... nomen... quod ante non fuerat, e imposuit»). Outside this technical usage, ἀκατάληστος meant “not knowable in its reality.” That all things were such was taught simultaneously by Pyrrho of Elis (early third century B.C.), founder of the Skeptical School, and by Arcesilaus (315–241), who gave the Middle Academy the skeptical orientation that it retained until Philo of Larissa, Cicero’s teacher. A direct consequence of acatalepsy was suspension of judgment (ἐσυχή), and, in the practical sphere, the pursuit of ataraxia, or absence of disturbance, also called apathy. The term was taken up by Bacon in the sense of skeptical doubt, which he opposed with methodical doubt: cf. Nov. Org., I, 126: « nos vero non acatalepsiam sed eucatalepsiam meditamur ».