Carneades

We can make our way into every subject; and if only we can summon up sufficient strength of mind to overstep the narrow limit of human weakness, we have a vast extent of time wherein to disport ourselves.

We may argue with Socrates, doubt with Carneades, repose with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, out-Herodot with the Cynics.

Since nature allows us to commune with every age, why do we not abstract ourselves from our own petty fleeting span of time, and give ourselves up with our whole mind to what is vast, what is eternal, what we share with better men than ourselves? Those who gad about in a round of calls, who worry themselves and others, after they have indulged their madness to the full and crossed every patron's threshold daily, leaving no open door unentered; after they have hawked about their interested greetings in houses of the most various character; after all, how few people are they able to see out of so vast a city, divided among so many different ruling passions! How many will be moved by sloth, self-indulgence, or rudeness to deny them admittance! How many, after they have long plagued them, will run past them with feigned hurry! How many will avoid coming out through their entrance-hall with its crowds of clients, and will escape by some concealed back door, as though it were not ruder to deceive their visitor than to deny him admittance! How many, half asleep and stupid with yesterday's debauch, can hardly be brought to return the greeting of the wretched man who has broken his own rest in order to wait on that of another, even after his name has been whispered to them for the thousandth time, save by a most offensive yawn of his half-opened lips! We may truly say that those men are pursuing the true path of duty, who wish every day to consort on the most familiar terms with Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and the rest of those high priests of virtue, with Aristotle and with Theophrastus.

None of these men will be engaged.

Among the old academics were Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemon, Crates, and Crantor.

Arcesilaus instituted the middle academy, and Carneades founded the new.

Chief among the masters of Plato was Socrates.

Plato traveled widely and was initiated by the Egyptians into the profundities of Hermetic philosophy.

all the philosophers who flourished in the old academy with speusippus xenocrates and polemon or those that followed aristotle and theophrastus agreeing with them in doctrine though they might differ in their method of explaining it whether like zeno they preserved the same principles while they changed the terms of exposition or whether like ariston they supported that difficult and arduous sect now generally scattered and confuted which supposed that with the exception of virtue and vice all other things were completely equal and indifferent all these have adopted the principles which i have been explaining but those who indulge their appetites and pamper their passions and who estimate all the objects of their pursuit or avoidance in life by pleasure and pain even if they speak truth for there is no need of raising the question here, we may still desire to be content with talking in their own gardens, and entreat them to retire for a while from all connection with the state, of which they know nothing, and have never wished to know anything.

As to that new academy, of which Arcesilus and Carneades are the leaders, and who attack all sects and parties, we will implore them not to interrupt us in our present discussion for if they enter upon these subjects which to us appear to be settled and arranged with sufficient accuracy and learning they will do great mischief but i would rather pacify them and do not dare to order them off for in questions of this nature we have made expiation without such fumigations as theirs but there is no expiation for the crimes and impieties of men the guilty therefore must pay the penalty and bear the punishment not so much those punishments inflicted by courts of justice which were not always in being do not exist at present in many places and even where established are frequently biased and partial but those of conscience while the furies pursue and torment them not with burning torches as the poets feign but with remorse of conscience and the tortures arising from guilt but were it the fear of punishment and not the nature of the thing itself that ought to restrain mankind from wickedness what i would ask could give villains the least uneasiness abstracting from all fears of this kind and yet none of them was ever so audaciously impudent but when he either denied that the action in question had been committed by him or pretended some cause or other for his just indignation or sought a defence of his deed in some right of nature and if the wicked dare to appeal to this principle with what respect ought not good men to treat them but if either direct punishment or the fear of it be what deters men from a vicious and criminal course of life and not the turpitude of the thing itself then none can be guilty of injustice and the greatest offenders ought rather to be called imprudent than wicked On the other hand, those among us who are determined to the practice of goodness, not by its own intrinsic excellence, but for the sake of some private advantage, are cunning rather than good men.

For what will not that man do in the dark? who fears nothing but a witness and a judge should he meet a solitary individual in a desert place whom he can rob of a large sum of money and altogether unable to defend himself from being robbed how will he behave in such a case our man who is just and honourable from principle and the nature of the thing itself will converse with the stranger assist him and show him the way but he who does nothing for the sake of another and measures everything by the advantage it brings to itself it is obvious i suppose how such a one will act and should he deny that he would kill the man or rob him of his treasure his reason for this cannot be that he apprehends there is any moral turpitude in such actions but only because he is afraid of a discovery that is to say that bad consequences will thence ensue, a sentiment this, at which not only learned men, but even clowns, must blush.

It is, therefore, an absurd extravagance in some philosophers to assert, that all things are necessarily just, which are established by the civil laws, and the institutions of nations.

But as his second book dealt with Aristippus, two seventy-four, eighty-five, his fourth book with Plato or Diogenes the Cynic, six twenty-six, his seventh with Diogenes the Cynic, six eighty, his eighth with Chrysippus, seven one eighty-three, and his eleventh with Timon, nine one ten, one twelve, he would seem to have given the same prominence as Laertius gives to the line of succession from Socrates to the Cynics and Stoics.

It is significant, too, that apart from those of later Stoics, now lost, and the Academics, Carneades, and Cleitomachus, very few of the lives in Diogenes Laertius are later than Sotion.

In two instances, two eighty-five and six eighty, judgments of Sotion on the genuineness of writings of which a catalog is given, perhaps from the library at Alexandria, are cited by our author.

Another biographer who posed as a critic was Satyrus, whom Diogenes cites nine times.

From Socrates to his pupils, the Socratics, and especially to Plato, the founder of the Old Academy.

From Plato through Psupasis and Xenocrates, the succession passes to Polemo, Crantor, and Crates.

Arcesilas, founder of the Middle Academy, Leisides, founder of the New Academy, Carneades, and Cleitomachus.

This line brings us to Cleitomachus.

But that is a monstrous absurdity of yours when you say that you follow what is probable when you are not hindered by anything from doing so.

In the first place, how can you avoid being hindered when what is false does not differ from what is true? Secondly, what judgment can be formed of what is true when what is true is undistinguishable from what is false? From these facts there springs unavoidably epoche, that is to say a suspension of assent, for which Arcesilas is more consistent if at least the opinions which some people entertain of Carneades are correct.

For if nothing can be perceived, as they both agree in thinking, then all assent is taken away.

For what is so childish as to talk of approving of what is not known? But even yesterday we heard that Carneades was in the habit at times of descending to say that a wise man would be guided by opinion, that is to say, would do wrong.

To me indeed it is not so certain that there is anything which can be comprehended, the question which I have now spent too much time in discussing, as that a wise man is never guided by opinion, that is to say, never assents to anything which is either false or unknown.

There remains this other statement of theirs, that for the sake of discovering the truth, one ought to speak against every side and in favor of every side.

What then is the object of all this mystery? Why do you conceal your opinion as something discreditable? In order, says he, that those who hear us may be influenced by reason rather than led by authority.

What if they are influenced by both? Would there be any harm in that? However, they do not conceal one of their theories, namely that there is nothing which can be conceived.

But those who indulge their appetites and pamper their passions, and who estimate all the objects of their pursuit or avoidance in life by pleasure and pain, even if they speak truths, for there is no need of raising the question here, we may still desire to be content with talking in their own gardens, and entreat them to retire for a while from all connection with the state, of which they know nothing, and have never wished to know anything.

As to that new academy, of which Arcesilas and Carneades are the leaders, and who attack all sects and parties, we will implore them not to interrupt us in our present discussion.

For if they enter upon these subjects, which to us appear to be settled and arranged with sufficient accuracy and learning, they will do great mischief.

But I would rather pacify them, and do not dare to order them off.

The academic skeptics invented something else that is very interesting and I think very useful today in which I devote an entire chapter in the book to.

One of the academic skeptics was a guy named Carneades.

He was arguably the most influential of the academic skeptics.

And he introduced this notion of what in Greek is called pitanon, which translates to persuasive.

In most of his other works, he's arguing with other thinkers, he's arguing with other philosophers.

We started Academic Questions with this core dispute between Cicero and Varro, with Varro asking the question of Cicero, why did you abandon the old academy? Why did you abandon Plato? And why do you go along with these new innovators, people like Carneades, when what you should have done, Cicero, was stick with Plato and stick with Socrates? And Cicero's response there was something to the effect that he wanted the most up-to-date system or something.

But this is a core question in academic questions of...

What does Cicero really, what is his position? Because you very rarely get a full explication of Cicero's own philosophy and his own position.