Arcesilaus (ca. 316-ca. 241 BC) was a
GreekGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
philosopher and founder of the Second or Middle
AcademyThe Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Athens. It persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC...
—the
skepticalIn classical philosophy, skepticism is the teachings and the traits of the 'Skeptikoi', a school of philosophers of whom it was said that they 'asserted nothing but only opined.' In this sense, philosophical skepticism, or Pyrrhonism, is the philosophical position that one should suspend...
phase of the Academy. Arcesilaus succeeded
CratesCrates of Athens was the son of Antigenes of the Thriasian deme, the pupil and eromenos of Polemo, and his successor as scholarch of the Platonic Academy, perhaps about 270 BC...
as the sixth head (
scholarchA scholarch is the head of a school. The term was especially used for the heads of schools of philosophy in ancient Athens, such as the Platonic Academy, whose first scholarch was Plato himself...
) of the Academy c. 264 BC. He did not preserve his thoughts in writing, so his opinions can only be gleaned second-hand from what is preserved by later writers. He was the first Academic to adopt a position of
philosophical skepticismPhilosophical skepticism is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. Many skeptics critically examine the meaning systems of their times, and this examination often results in a position of ambiguity or doubt...
, that is, he doubted the ability of the senses to discover
truthTruth can have a variety of meanings, from the state of being the case, being in accord with a particular fact or reality, being in accord with the body of real things, events, actuality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard. In archaic usage it could be fidelity, constancy or sincerity in...
about the world, although he may have continued to believe in the existence of truth itself. This brought in the skeptical phase of the Academy. His chief opponents were the Stoics and their belief that reality could be comprehended with certainty.
Life
Arcesilaus was born in
PitanePitane was an ancient Greek town of Aeolis, in Asia Minor. In ancient times it was a port city and a member of the Delian League. About 334 BC, Alexander the Great tried to take over the city, but was repulsed by Memnon and 5,000 Greek mercenaries provided by Darius III of Persia. Autolycus of...
in
AeolisAeolis or Aeolia was an area that comprised the west and northwestern region of Asia Minor, mostly along the coast, and also several offshore islands , where the Aeolian Greek city-states were located...
. His early education was provided by
AutolycusAutolycus of Pitane was a Greek astronomer, mathematician, and geographer.- Life and work :Autolycus was born in Pitane, a town of Aeolis within Western Anatolia. Of his personal life nothing is known, although he was a contemporary of Aristotle and his works seem to have been completed in Athens...
the
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with particular problems related to logic, space, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts...
, with whom he migrated to
SardisSardis, also Sardes , modern Sart in the Manisa province of Turkey, was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, one of the important cities of the Persian Empire, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times...
. Afterwards, he studied
rhetoricRhetoric is one of the arts of using language as a means to persuade. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public...
in
AthensAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
; but adopted philosophy and became a disciple first of
TheophrastusTheophrastus , a Greek native of Eressos in Lesbos, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. His interests were wide-ranging, extending from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics. His two surviving botanical works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, were an...
and afterwards of
CrantorCrantor was a Greek philosopher of the Old Academy, probably born around the middle of the 4th century BC, at Soli in Cilicia.-Life:Crantor moved to Athens in order to study philosophy, where he became a pupil of Xenocrates and a friend of Polemo, and one of the most distinguished supporters of...
. He subsequently became intimate with
PolemoPolemon of Athens was an eminent Platonist philosopher and Plato's third successor as scholarch or head of the Academy from 314/313 to 270/269 BC...
and
CratesCrates of Athens was the son of Antigenes of the Thriasian deme, the pupil and eromenos of Polemo, and his successor as scholarch of the Platonic Academy, perhaps about 270 BC...
, and eventually became head of the school (σχολάρχης).
Diogenes LaërtiusDiogenes Laërtius , was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is known about his life. He must have lived after...
says that, like his successor Lacydes, he died of excessive drinking, but the testimony of others (e.g.
CleanthesCleanthes of Assos, lived c. 330- c. 230 BC, was a Greek Stoic philosopher and the successor to Zeno as the second head of the Stoic school in Athens. Originally a boxer, he came to Athens where he took up philosophy, listening to Zeno's lectures. He supported himself by working as water-carrier...
) and his own precepts discredit the story, and he is known to have been much respected by the Athenians.
Philosophy
Arcesilaus committed nothing to writing, his opinions were imperfectly known to his contemporaries, and can now only be gathered from the confused statements of his opponents. This makes his philosophy difficult to evaluate and partly inconsistent. This led scholars to see his skepticism in several ways. Some see his philosophy as completely negative or destructive of all philosophical views. Others regard him as taking the position that nothing can be known on the basis of his philosophical arguments. Others claimed he held no positive views on any philosophical topic, including the possibility of knowledge.
On the one hand, he is said to have restored the doctrines of
PlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world...
in an incorrupted form; while, on the other hand, according to
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...
, he summed up his opinions in the formula, "that he knew nothing, not even his own ignorance." There are two ways of reconciling the difficulty: either we may suppose him to have thrown out such aphorisms as an exercise for his pupils, as Sextus Empiricus, who calls him a Sceptic, would have us believe; or he may have really doubted the esoteric meaning of Plato, and have supposed himself to have been stripping his works of the figments of the Dogmatists, while he was in fact taking from them all certain principles.
The Stoics were the chief opponents of Arcesilaus; he attacked their doctrine of a convincing conception (
katalêptikê phantasia) as understood to be a mean between science and opinion - a mean which he asserted could not exist, and was merely the interpolation of a name. It involved a contradiction in terms, as the very idea of
phantasia implied the possibility of false as well as true conceptions of the same object.
It is a question of some importance as to how the
skepticismPhilosophical skepticism is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. Many skeptics critically examine the meaning systems of their times, and this examination often results in a position of ambiguity or doubt...
of the Middle and New Academy was distinguished from that of
PyrrhonismPyrrhonism, or Pyrrhonian skepticism, was a school of skepticism founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BC and recorded by Sextus Empiricus in the late 2nd century or early 3rd century AD. It was named after Pyrrho, a philosopher who lived from c. 360 to c. 270 BC, although the relationship...
. Admitting the formula of Arcesilaus, "that he knew nothing, not even his own ignorance," to be an exposition of his real sentiments, it was impossible in one sense that skepticism could proceed further: but the Academic skeptics do not seem to have doubted the existence of
truthTruth can have a variety of meanings, from the state of being the case, being in accord with a particular fact or reality, being in accord with the body of real things, events, actuality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard. In archaic usage it could be fidelity, constancy or sincerity in...
in itself, only our capacities for obtaining it. It differed also from the principles of the pure skeptic in the practical tendency of its doctrines: while the object of the one was the attainment of perfect equanimity, the other seems rather to have retired from the barren field of speculation to practical life, and to have acknowledged some vestiges of a moral law within, at best but a probable guide, the possession of which, however, formed the real distinction between the sage and the fool. Slight as the difference may appear between the speculative statements of the two schools, a comparison of the lives of their founders and their respective successors leads to the conclusion, that a practical moderation was the characteristic of the Academic skeptics.