Arcesilaus

« Arcesilaus ( c.316- c.240 BC) Arcesilaus of Pitane came to Athens as a young man, and was seduced by Platonic philosophy.

Around 265 he became head of the Academy.

He turned the school in a sceptical direction, urging thatPlato himself had been of a sceptical bent.

He revived the Socratic practice of dialectical argument, in which hedisplayed remarkable logical skill and honeyed oratorical talent.

His dialectical prowess led him to 'suspendjudgment about everything'; but the main target of his arguments was Stoicism, and in particular Stoicepistemology, which he claimed to reduce to incoherence.

Recognizing that a sceptic must live and act, heintroduced the notion of 'the reasonable' as a criterion of sceptical action.

1 Life and thought Arcesilaus was born in Pitane, in north-west Asia Minor.

As a youth he was a pupil of the mathematician Autolycus, whom he followed toSardis.

He then travelled to Athens where he studied with Theophrastus .

He was destined for a rhetorical career; but his head lay for philosophy.

When he removed to the Academy and heard Polemo and Crantor and Crates, he deemed that they were 'either gods or else remnants of those men of old who were formed from the goldengeneration' ( Philodemus, History of the Academy XV 5-10 ).

The rest of his life he spent in the Academy.

On the death of Crates in c.265 BC he became scholarch, a position he held until his death some twenty-five years later. He was a celebrated figure, known for caustic wit and also for kindness, for oratorical skill and for the rigour of hisargumentation.

He wrote epigrams, he enjoyed dalliance and dinner parties - and he was regarded as one of theleading philosophers of the age.

But he produced no philosophical writings, and what we learn of his views derivesfrom hearsay: perhaps from first-hand hearsay, for we are told that one of his pupils, Pythodorus, took notes of hislectures.

The Stoic Ariston of Chios , his contemporary, parodied a Homeric verse in describing him as 'Plato in front, at the back Pyrrho, Diodorus between them'.

Homer was describing the chimera, and Ariston insinuates thatArcesilaus was a philosophical monster, a three-fold hybrid.

Arcesilaus began his philosophical life as an orthodoxPlatonist (see Plato ; Platonism, Early and Middle ) - we are told that he acquired a copy of Plato's works as a boy, and that 'at first when he stated a thesis he argued in accordance with the tradition from Plato and Speusippus upto Polemo' ( Philodemus, History of the Academy XVIII 7-12 ).

He taught a dogmatic Platonism and then became a sceptic.

Later authors spoke of the foundation of a New Academy.

But by his own lights Arcesilaus was noinnovator - rather, he turned the Academy back to pure Platonism.

Not (as some alleged) because he dissembled,secretly teaching unsceptical doctrine, but because (as he argued) Plato himself had been a sceptic.

'From severalof Plato's books and Socratic dialogues he took the idea that nothing is certain' (Cicero, The Orator III 67).

There are indeed sceptical touches in some of Plato's works - notably in the early dialogues, which generally end inpuzzlement, and in the Theaetetus , which raises and conspicuously fails to answer the question 'What is knowledge?' Yet Arcesilaus could read the Platonic corpus and say that 'in his books nothing is asserted, manyissues are argued on both sides, everything is a matter of investigation, nothing certain is said' ( Cicero, Academics I 46).

Diodorus Cronus was celebrated for 'dialectic': his philosophical interests were absorbed by logical problems and puzzles.

Arcesilaus did not himself engage in logical study - indeed, anecdote has him dismiss dialectic.

He tookafter Diodorus in his practice, inasmuch as he too was renowned for his argumentative ingenuity.

He excelled atarguing 'on both sides of the question': a proposition (no matter what) is put forward, and first you argue for it andthen you argue against it, 'the arguments on each side being equally powerful' (Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel XIV 4.15).

The technique finds antecedents in Aristotle's dialectic.

Arcesilaus also harked back to Socrates (§3) and the Socratic elenchos or method of refutation: a thesis (no matter what) is proposed, and you show by arguments which the proposer must accept that it is untenable.

Each of these two techniques demands logical versatility orsophistical sleight of hand.

The ancient sources often link them, for if you can argue for and against any propositionthen a fortiori you can argue against any thesis, and if you can argue against any thesis whatsoever then you can argue for and against any proposition.

2 Scepticism It is Arcesilaus' affinities with Pyrrho , the archetypal sceptic of the ancient world, which give him his philosophical bite.

'He created a new philosophy of non-philosophizing'(Lactantius, Divine Institutions IV 11), and introduced suspension of judgment and scepticism into the Academy. But even in antiquity, the nature of Arcesilaus' scepticism was a matter of dispute.

According to Numenius (§1) , Arcesilaus 'was a Pyrrhonist in all but the name' (Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel XIV 6.6); and a half dozen texts, independent of one another and drawing on early sources, agree that Arcesilaus 'suspended judgment abouteverything': that is to say, he held no beliefs on any subject, and the end of his philosophizing was the eradicationof all belief and the introduction of universal suspension of judgment.

Arcesilaus' logical techniques open a directroute to Pyrrhonism (see Pyrrhonism ).

If you can produce equally powerful arguments on each side of a proposition, then you will neither believe nor disbelieve that proposition, and if you can produce equally powerful arguments oneach side of every proposition, then you will believe no proposition at all.

And Arcesilaus had a second route toPyrrhonism, for he championed akatal ēpsia or 'inapprehensibility': 'he denied that there is anything which can be known - not even the one thing which Socrates allowed himself, that he knew that he knew nothing' ( Cicero, Academics I 45 ).

Hence if you have any beliefs, they will be mere opinions.

But no one of any sense embraces what he takes to be a mere opinion.

Hence no one of any sense will hold any beliefs.

Arcesilaus was a polemicist.

Heattacked all-comers and exploded any thesis anyone might propose, 'affirming nothing himself but merely refutingother positions' ( Philodemus, History of the Academy XX 1-4 ).

Such a polemical scepticism is the natural child of the Socratic elenchos , and some scholars have urged that Arcesilaus' philosophy was essentially a negative and a destructive thing.

But polemical scepticism easily fades into Pyrrhonism.

For if I refute a thesis which you propound,then I shall not uphold the thesis myself; if I can refute any thesis which is propounded to me, then I shall believeno thesis; and so I shall end up as a Pyrrhonist.

It is sometimes supposed that Arcesilaus always argued ad hominem : if you maintain a certain thesis, then Arcesilaus will show not that the thesis is untenable but that you have no good grounds for maintaining it.

It is consistent with a successful ad hominem argument that there are good grounds for holding the thesis, and that Arcesilaus himself holds it on such grounds.

Yet the ad hominem approach, universally applied, again fades into Pyrrhonism, for if Arcesilaus can argue ad hominem against all- comers, then in effect he can argue against any thesis.

Much of Arcesilaus' philosophical activity was directedagainst the Stoics.

Thus he took the Stoic thesis that two stuffs may completely blend or interpenetrate and,. »