The Seba library treats Prolepsis in 5 passages, across 3 authors (including Cicero, Marcus Tullius, A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, Jung, Carl Gustav).
quam appellat TrfjoXrj^piv Epicurus, id est anteceptam animo rei quandam informationem, sine qua nec intellegi quicquam nec quaeri nec disputari possit.
Cicero defines prolepsis as Epicurus’s term for a pre-apprehended mental impression without which nothing can be understood, sought, or debated — the foundational anticipatory cognition grounding all inquiry.
, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), -45thesis
things require new names, just as Epicurus himself gave prolepsis its name, a name which no one had previously applied to it) is such that we think the gods blessed and immortal.
Long and Sedley establish that Epicurus coined the term prolepsis to designate the naturally engraved anticipatory cognition by which the mind grasps the gods as eternally blessed — a terminological innovation with no prior precedent.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
they supposed that beings with such strength could not easily be overcome by any force. And hence they supposed them to be supremely blessed, because none of them seemed oppressed by fear of death.
This passage contextualizes the cognitive background from which proleptic notions of divine blessedness and immortality arose — the phenomenological encounter with overwhelming, deathless-seeming powers that seeded the natural impression later systematized as prolepsis.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
the primitive view of mana is a forerunner of our concept of psychic energy and the very essence of Levy-Bruhl’s participatio mystique.
Jung’s account of mana as a forerunner-concept functions structurally as a depth-psychological analogue to prolepsis: both designate pre-theoretical, universally distributed anticipatory impressions that precede and condition formal conceptual elaboration.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside
the outward situation releases a psychic process in which certain contents gather together and prepare for action.
Jung’s description of constellation — the automatic, involuntary gathering of psychic contents in preparation for response — resonates with the proleptic structure of pre-formed anticipatory readiness built into the mind prior to explicit experience.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside