Shuttle in Assent

Katalepsis (Greek: κατάληψις, “grasping”) is a term in Stoic philosophy for a concept something like equivalent to modern comprehension. To the Stoic philosophers, katalepsis was an important premise concerning one’s permit of mind as it relates to greedy fundamental philosophical concepts, which was followed by the assent, or duty to the resolved thus understood.

According to the Stoics, the mind is permanently being bombarded as soon as impressions (phantasiai). Some of these impressions are authenticated and some false. Impressions are genuine when they are essentially affirmed, false if they are wrongly affirmed. Cicero relates that Zeno would illustrate katalepsis as follows:

Katalepsis was the main tapering off of contention amid the Stoics and the two schools of philosophical non-belief during the Hellenistic period: the Pyrrhonists and the Academic Skeptics of Plato’s Academy. These Skeptics, who chose the Stoics as their natural philosophical opposites, eschewed much of what the Stoics believed something like the human mind and one’s methods of bargain greater meanings. To the Skeptics, all perceptions were acataleptic, i.e. bore no promise to the objects perceived, or, if they did bear any conformity, it could never be known.