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ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 16

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ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 16: SKEPTIC ACADEMY

  • from Hellenistic to imperial age (skepticism & platonism)

  • early platonic academy: systematizing Plato

  • Archesilaus: changes this

  • interpreting Platonism as a form of skepticism

Archesilaus:

  • dialectic, claims Socrates’ heritage
  • sees Socrates as too dogmatic, we cannot even claim we don’t know anything
  • his dialectic method is never aimed at uncovering truth, he always argues for the non-X of his interlocutors’ X
  • for him any account of reality is weak and refutable
  • less laymen, more interdisciplinary discussions (with Zeno, with Epicurians)

Carneades:

  • Stoic, kind of Epicurian, important for Stoic development
  • using Stoic methods for Skeptic ends

Epistemology:

  • kataleptic impressions (Stoic) are the criteria
  • impressions bring in existances of objects
  • if two impressions are indistinguishable, we cannot know anything
  • Academics take this to claim you can never know the truth, all impressions may be false
  • false impressions impress themselves just like true ones do, so they’re indistinguishable
  • but there are still true ones
  • their skepticism is ontological, rather than interpretational (like for the Stoics)
  • it is precisely Plato’s stable, eternal knowledge that is impossible to achieve
  • AKATALEPSIA: no true, stable, certain kataleptic impressions

Academic Sage:

  • the stoics posit a stage who can assent to only true impressions (no opinions on false ones)
  • but due to akatalepsia the sage should suspsend their judgement about everything
  • this is EPOCHE, the skeptic suspention of belief about everything
  • Skeptics think we only have knowledge of the fact that there are impressions
  • therefore, we only know of the filter between us and the world

It’s unknown to what extent the Skeptics believed any of this

  • it could just as well be a dialectic, Stoic arguments against the Stoics

Stoics’ Reply:

  • APRAXIA: if the Skeptics believed what they did, they shouldn’t live
  • epoche does not allow you to interact with the world
  • Archesilaus: we simply need impulse to act, we can approve of the reasonable, without juding it to be true
  • Carneades: we can approve of what is persuasive, without juding it truthful
  • Stoics: I can only act through assensions
  • Skeptics: not so, suspicions are sometimes enough

Philo of Larissa:

  • sages can have opinions
  • so assent possible, but through opinion

Plato?:

  • Skepticism was Platonic dark age, betrying his doctrines
  • dialouges also reveal the boundaries of knowledge, Socrates’ shifting search for a fallable truth amidst many interlocutors
  • also Plato’s anti-empiricism

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