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VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY – ACATALEPSY

ACATALEPSY (α, privative; and κατάληψιςcomprehensio, incomprehensibility), the doctrine held by the Academics of the Middle Academy, and by the sceptics, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability (Plutarch, II. 1122A, Πρὸς Κολώτην; Diog. Lært., IX. 61, Pyrrho).  Arcesilas, chief of the second Academy, taught that we know nothing with certainty, in opposition to the dogmatism of the Stoics, who taught κατάληψις, or the possibility of seizing the truth. Sceptics and Pyrrhonians were called AcatalepticsἈκαταληψία is synonymous with ἀφασία and ἐποχή (Zelier’s Stoics, Epics, and Skeptics, p. 408). Bacon repudiates ἀκατάληψις. «We do not meditate or propose acatalepsy, but eucatalepsy, for we do not derogate from sense, but help it, and we do not despise the understanding, but direct it» (Nov. Org., I., app. 126).—VACADEMY.
 
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