The Academics
from Translations and commentary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Methodology
Cicero, Academica 1.43–6
(1) Then Varro said: ‘It is now up to you, as one who deviates from the philosophy of the ancients and approves the innovations of Arcesilaus, to explain what the schism was and why it took place, so that we can see whether your desertion is adequately justified.’ (2) I [Cicero] then said: ‘It was with Zeno, so we have heard, that Arcesilaus began his entire struggle, not out of obstinacy or desire for victory – in my opinion at least – but because of the obscurity of the things which had brought Socrates to an admission of ignorance; and before him already, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and almost all the ancients, who said that nothing could be grasped or cognized or known, saying that the senses are restricted, the mind weak, the course of life short, and that (to quote Democritus) truth has been submerged in an abyss, with everything in the grip of opinions and conventions, nothing left for truth and everything in turn wrapped in darkness. (3) So Arcesilaus was in the practice of denying that anything could be known, not even the one thing Socrates had left for himself – the knowledge that he knew nothing: such was the extent of the obscurity in which everything lurked, on his assessment, and there was nothing which could be discerned or understood.
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- Information
- The Hellenistic Philosophers , pp. 438 - 467Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987