I’m with Cicero and Cato as they talk all things good and evil in his De Finibus 3.40. Cicero congratulates Cato for the excellence of his choice of words and language to express philosophical concepts of the Stoics in Latin. He then has a dig at the Epicureans:
scio enim esse quosdam, qui quavis lingua philosophari possint; nullis enim partitionibus, nullis definitionibus utuntur ipsique dicunt ea se modo probare, quibus natura tacita adsentiatur. itaque in rebus minime obscuris non multus est apud eos disserendi labor.
There are some philosophers [the Epicureans], I know, who could express their ideas in any language; for they ignore Division and Definition [i.e. philosophical logic] altogether, and themselves profess that they only seek to commend doctrines to which nature assents without argument. Hence their ideas being so far from recondite, they spend small pains on logical exposition.
(Text and translation from Rackham’s 1931 Loeb.)
I have two questions on the language, and would appreciate all and any help!
First, I think I am taking the subjunctive possint slightly differently to Rackham. It’s in indirect speech, so a relative qui clause will normally take a subjunctive for the direct indicative. But it makes more sense to me if it is here actually expressing a distancing of Cicero from the view he is expressing. So it would be: “There are some philosophers, I know, who [suppose they] can express their ideas in any language…”
I’m backing this up with Gildersleeve and Lodge 628: “The subjunctive is used in relative clauses which form a part of the utterance or the view of another than the narrator, or of the narrator himself when indirectly quoted…”
Am I right about this, or barking up the wrong tree?
Second, I don’t quite understand Cicero’s point in the last sentence, and my problem is with what in rebus minime obscuris is referring to. Is he saying that the Epicureans don’t use logic because they only talk about what is plain and obvious?