On Academic Scepticism

226 Pages·2006·0.8 MB·English

by  Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero
O A
N CADEMIC
S
CEPTICISM

Cicero
O A
N CADEMIC
S
CEPTICISM
Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by
Charles Brittain
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 2006 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
06 07 08 09 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
For further information, please address:
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 44937
Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937
www.hackettpublishing.com
Cover design by Listenberger Design Associates
Interior design by Elizabeth Wilson
Composition by Agnew’s, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
[Academica. English]
On academic scepticism / Marcus Tullius Cicero ; translated, with intro-
duction and notes, by Charles Brittain.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87220-775-7 (cloth)—ISBN 0-87220-774-9 (paper)
1. Knowledge, Theory of—Early works to 1800. 2. Scepticism—Early
works to 1800. I. Brittain, Charles. II. Title.
PA6308.A2B75 2006
186'.2—dc22
2005019197
ISBN-13:978-0-87220-775-2 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-774-5 (paper)
eISBN: 978-1-60384-007-1 (e-book)
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction viii
Select Topical Bibliography xlvi
Analytical Table of Contents liv
On Academic Scepticism 1
Lucullus(AcademicaBook 2) 3
Academici Libri Book 1 (Varro) 87
Fragments from the Academici Libri 108
Textual Appendix 113
Glossary of Names 116
Select English–Latin–Greek Glossary 138
Index 143
v

Preface
I started work on this translation in the autumn of 1996 while teach-
ing a seminar on Academic scepticism. It seemed plausible then that
a new translation aimed at philosophical readers might help to make
this fascinating subject more accessible—and I assumed that after five
years’ work on it in connexion with my dissertation, and with Reid’s
excellent commentary to help me, the text would present few diffi-
culties. Nearly ten years later, and after three sets of radical revisions
to my translation, I hope I wasn’t mistaken on both counts. The Aca-
demicais a difficult work; but it is a vital text for students of ancient
scepticism and interpreters of Cicero.
It is hard to acknowledge all the debts I have piled up in the in-
terval. I am very grateful to my friends Gail Fine, Scott MacDonald,
John Palmer, Hayden Pelliccia, Karin Schlapbach, Danuta Shanzer, and
Cristiana Sogno for their direct and indirect help with my work on Ci-
cero. I am glad to recognize the enduring generosity of my colleagues
at Cornell, and of the university for awarding me a year’s leave. I owe
a similar debt to the members of the B caucus in Classics at Cambridge,
and to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which furnished me with
the peace and beautiful surroundings required to finish this book dur-
ing a visiting fellowship in 2004–5. I also owe a great deal to the re-
markable patience and support of Brian Rak, my editor at Hackett. My
greatest debt, however, is to Harriet, Sophie, and Helena Brittain, for
their delightful company and nearly inexhaustible sympathy.
The final version of the translation is the product of a revision
based on the detailed criticism provided by a number of scholars and
friends: by David Mankin and Tobias Reinhardt on the text, Terry Ir-
win on the notes, and Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, Tad Brennan, John
Cooper, Michael Frede, Brad Inwood, David Sedley, Gisela Striker,
and Robert Wagoner on the translation. It is a great pleasure to ac-
knowledge how much I owe to their exacting standards and wonder-
ful generosity.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Heda Segvic: inquisitor
ardentissimus veritatis.
Cambridge, 19 May 2005
vii
Introduction
Cicero’s work on Academic scepticism has been unduly neglected in
modern times. One reason for this is that it is only in the last two or
three decades that historians of philosophy have begun to recover the
significance of this tradition of scepticism, both as a sophisticated
philosophical position in its own right and as the intellectual parent
of the better-known Pyrrhonist sceptical tradition.
Asecond reason is the complexity of the work itself. In part, this
is due to Cicero’s purpose, which was to explain and defend his own
philosophical position to the general Roman audience he was trying
to create. He took this to require not just an adversarial context—a di-
alogue with an Academic sceptic responding to dogmatic criticism—
but also the presentation of the rather complicated and controversial
evolution of the sceptical Academy. As a result, the work contains sev-
eral layers of debate. The most prominent layer is the Stoic-Academic
arguments of the third and second centuries BCE, but these are over-
laid by the dispute between Antiochus and the Academics in Cicero’s
youth (90s–80s BCE), and filtered through a set of near-contemporary
Roman interlocutors (62/1 and 45 BCE). And within each layer there
are several distinct strata—the first, for instance, includes at least two
distinct Academic responses to three sets of Stoic criticism.
A further difficulty facing a modern reader is one that Cicero
could not have anticipated: we no longer have his work in its entirety.
What we now have are fragments from two quite distinct editions—
a first, two-book edition, consisting of the lost Catulusand the extant
Lucullus(the latter abbreviated as ‘Ac.2’), and a revised second, four-
book edition, the Academic Books,of which we have only about half of
Book 1 (‘Ac.1’).1And since the fragmentary Book 1 doesn’t fit together
very easily with the extant Lucullus (see below), the modern reader
starts in the middle of a debate whose terms are lost.
The complexity of the work, however, is philosophically re-
warding, once the various layers of debate are untangled so that the
1. Elsewhere the Lucullusis sometimes referred to as the ‘Academica Priora’—i.e., the
‘early edition of the Academica’—and the Academic Booksas the ‘Academica posteriora’
—i.e., the ‘later edition’. In this translation, I use ‘the Academica’ to refer to the two
editions or their surviving parts as a whole, and the abbreviations ‘Ac.2’ for the
Lucullusand ‘Ac.1’ for Book 1 of the Academic Books.Alist of abbreviations is given
on pages xliv–xlv.
viii
Introduction ix
interlocutors’ arguments can be seen in their appropriate historical
contexts.
I: The Historical Context
Cicero
Cicero’s work on Academic scepticism forms part of a sequence of
philosophical dialogues written in 46–44 BCE, the last few years of his
life. By this time he was one of the most prominent political figures in
Roman society, as well as its most celebrated forensic orator, and an
influential writer on rhetorical and political theory.2 He had started
out with the disadvantage of coming from a provincial—though aris-
tocratic—family from Arpinum, about one hundred miles southeast
of Rome; but by 63 BCE his oratorical skills had won him enough pop-
ularity and influence to secure the consulship (the chief political office
in Rome, won by election and held for one year). His consulship was
marked by the controversial suppression of the ‘Catilinarian conspir-
acy’ (see Ac.2.62–63).3When Pompey and Caesar gained control over
the political process, this was used to force Cicero into exile in 58 BCE.
He returned a year later but was unable to play the leading political
role he desired in the tumultuous years leading up to the civil wars.
After Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, Cicero tried to marshal
republican opposition to Antony but failed, and was eventually mur-
dered in the proscriptions of 43 BCE.
His personal motives for turning to philosophical writing are ex-
plained in Ac.1.11 (cf. Ac.2.6): the political situation—under the dic-
tatorship of Julius Caesar, which meant that there was little role for
public speaking either in the law-courts or in the senate—had driven
2. For further information about Cicero’s life, see C. Habicht, Cicero the Politician(Bal-
timore 1990); on his speeches and rhetorical writings, see J. Powell and J. Paterson,
‘Introduction’ in their Cicero the Advocate(Oxford 2004), pp. 1–57, and the essays in J.
May (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric(Leiden 2002); on his philo-
sophical writings, see J. Powell, ‘Introduction: Cicero’s Philosophical Works and
Their Background’, in J. Powell (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher(Oxford 1995), pp. 1–35.
3. The Catilinarian conspiracy was an attempt to overthrow the government by
force, led by Catiline, a disaffected and heavily indebted aristocrat. Cicero believed
that he had saved the republic; but many thought that the threat was exaggerated
and criticized Cicero’s role in persuading the senate to execute the conspirators he
had exposed in Rome. His political opponents characterized this as the extrajudi-
cial murder of Roman citizens; see Habicht 1990, pp. 31–48.