Torre de Babel Ediciones

Buscar

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY – Later Academics

GREEK PHILOSOPHY – II. RATIONALISM

§ 23 – Later Academics

Two Eclectic Academicians require to be noticed here: Philo of Larissa in Thessaly, who succeeded Clitomachus and was at one time teacher of Cicero, and Antiochus of Ascalon, a pupil of Philo, and at one time head of the Academy. These men flourished in the beginning of the first century B.C. They repudiated the Middle and New Academics, and regarded themselves as true Academicians.

Philo of Larissa

Philo would accept neither the Sceptical, nor its opposite, the Stoical, theory of cognition. He advocated a doctrine of probability, or, rather, of a kind of conviction more firm than that resting on probability and yet not reaching perfect certainty; what might, perhaps, in current phrases of to-day be termed «moral certainty,» «practical conviction,» «intuition». His test of truth in ideas was, in other words, the self-evidence that belongs, or is supposed to belong, particularly to ideas of the moral consciousness.

Antiochus of Ascalon

Antiochus, going a step further, denied that the moral consciousness could be satisfied with mere probability; and, accordingly, attempted to refute the Sceptical theory of cognition. He thought that the senses are, when in a healthy condition, trustworthy, that, though suspension of judgment might be necessary in certain individual cases, it is not always required, and that the Sceptical theory was self-contradictory in its conviction of the impossibility of conviction, and in distinguishing between truth and error, and at the same time practically denying the distinction. In physics he agreed essentially with the Stoics. In ethics he held to a modified Stoicism and was in close sympathy with the Old Academy, placing me goods and virtues of the body along with those of the soul, among the perfect goods and virtues. He is, however, chargeable with what, in view of this, is an inconsistency, viz., the drawing a broad line of distinction between the wise and unwise. He was at one time teacher of Cicero, and of Varro, the great Roman scholar.