Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Origins and Development
- 1 Antecedents in early Greek philosophy
- 2 Pyrrho and early Pyrrhonism
- 3 Arcesilaus and Carneades
- 4 The sceptical Academy: decline and afterlife
- 5 Aenesidemus and the rebirth of Pyrrhonism
- 6 Sextus Empiricus
- Part II Topics and Problems
- Part III Beyond Antiquity
- Bibliography
- Index
- Index Locorum
5 - Aenesidemus and the rebirth of Pyrrhonism
from Part I - Origins and Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Origins and Development
- 1 Antecedents in early Greek philosophy
- 2 Pyrrho and early Pyrrhonism
- 3 Arcesilaus and Carneades
- 4 The sceptical Academy: decline and afterlife
- 5 Aenesidemus and the rebirth of Pyrrhonism
- 6 Sextus Empiricus
- Part II Topics and Problems
- Part III Beyond Antiquity
- Bibliography
- Index
- Index Locorum
Summary
PRELIMINARIES
Some time early in the first century, Philo and Antiochus, the two leading philosophers of the Athenian Academy, had a serious philosophical falling out. Philo advocated an externalist epistemology, holding that it was reasonable to suppose that things could be known, even though they could not, individually, be known to be known; Antiochus responded that the only way one could know that one knew anything was by knowing of some particular thing that one knew it; and thus (according to Cicero: Acad. 2.44, 111) strayed perilously close to Stoic dogmatism. Neither option appealed to their colleague Aenesidemus:
The Academics, particularly those of today, sometimes adopt Stoic doctrines, and are, in truth, really Stoics quarrelling with Stoics. And they are dogmatic about many things; for they introduce virtue and vice, and posit good and bad, truth and falsity, persuasive and unpersuasive, existent and non-existent; and they firmly distinguish many other things as well; and, he [sc. Aenesidemus[ says, it is only in regard to the cataleptic impression that they differ from them [sc. the Stoics[.
(1: Photius, Bibl. 170a14-22 = 71C(9) LS)Our knowledge of Aenesidemus is sadly restricted. For his views, we are indebted principally to a précis of his Pyrrhonian Discourses from Photius of Byzantium’s library catalogue (from which 1 above is excerpted). As for direct references, Sextus refers to him by name some fifteen times (but some of these are problematic: see below, section IV), Diogenes a few times more; and that’s about it.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism , pp. 105 - 119Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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