  The philosopher is a physician of the soul, and Philodemus insists that it is not impossible to escape the diseases of the soul, if we can avoid ‘false’ or ‘empty’ belief about the type and magnitude of evils (6.8 ff.). Where the preserved portion of the treatise picks up (1.6 ff.), Philodemus is arguing against Timasagoras, apparently an Epicurean who disagreed with Philodemus and Zeno on various ethical questions. Timasagoras apparently argued that anger was always and entirely bad, and that it forced itself on its victims as a kind of necessity which one was powerless to fight or to treat in others. He seems to have insisted that only rational argument could be used, in an effort to alter false opinions before anger strikes, discounting the usefulness of speeches harshly denouncing anger: the evils of anger are so evident to all that it is ‘nonsensical’ to think that criticizing it does any good (1.9–27). Further, Timasagoras thought that those in the throes of anger are incapable of reasoning on the basis of observed facts about their passions (anepilogistous 7.8–9).