The school of doubt: skepticism, history and politics in Cicero's Academica

396 Pages·2019·2.033 MB·English

by  Cappello, Orazio

The School of Doubt
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Brill Studies in Skepticism
Editors
Diego Machuca (CONICET)
Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh)
Advisory Board
John Greco (Saint Louis University)
John Christian Laursen (University of California, Riverside)
Casey Perin (University of California, Irvine)
Dominik Perler (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Claudine Tiercelin (Collège de France)
volume 1
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bss
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The School of Doubt
Skepticism, History and Politics in Cicero’s Academica
By
Orazio Cappello
leiden | boston
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018048923
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issn 2215-177x
isbn 978-90-04-38986-1 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-38987-8 (e-book)
Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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For Z.
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Contents
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction  1
Part 1
Skepticism and Its Contexts. The Academica in Cicero’s
Correspondence
1 The Shadows of Apography  13
1.1 Introduction  13
1.2 Stories from the Writer’s Desk: Documenting Cicero’s Writing of
the Academica  16
1.3 Revision, Distribution and Reception: Cicero and His
Academica  27
2 Counter-Figuring Indifference: Varro and the Politics of
Composition  36
2.1 Epistolary Thresholds: The Letter in Its Context  36
2.2 The Letter as Reluctant Agit-Prop: The Correspondence between
Cicero and Varro  42
2.3 The Dedication Letter: ad Familiares 9.8  56
3 Effecting Cicero: Fiction, Criticism and Subjectivity  61
3.1 The Epistolary Cicero: Dialogue, Friendship and the Subject of the
Letters  61
3.2 On the Horizon: The Shrine to Tullia and Caesar’s Return  74
3.3 Conclusion  80
Part 2
The Pedigree of Doubt: Ciceronian Essays in the Historiography
of Philosophy
4 Historical Philosophy: Cicero and the Academica in Their
Historiographical Contexts  85
4.1 Program Notes  85
4.2 Situating the Academica: The Corpus  89
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viii Contents
4.3 Situating the Academica: The Tradition  94
4.4 Setting the Scene: Re-reading the Index  101
5 Philosophy’s Parallel Itineraries  115
5.1 Where Philosophy Begins: Epistemology and Historiography in the
Academica  115
5.2 The Art of the Beginning: The Epistemological Foundation of
Life  119
5.3 The Beginning of the Story/The Story of the Beginning  129
6 Progress and Other Stories: Historical Models in Cicero’s
Philosophy  131
6.1 Revision, Imitation and Development in the Academica: The
Alternative Paths of Philosophical History  131
6.2 Embedded Narratives, Narrative Inconsistencies and the
Inclusivity of Cicero’s History  142
6.3 Organizing the Field: The Disagreement of Philosophers and the
Carneadea Divisio  151
6.4 Structure and Meaning: Hegel, Gueroult and Cicero  159
6.5 Interpretation, Position and Segmentation: Arcesilaus and
Carneades in the Lucullus  167
7 The Practice and Tradition of Philosophia: Debate, Critique and
Community in the Academica  177
7.1 The Academy as Theatre  177
7.2 Critical Philosophy, or Philosophy at the Limit  188
7.3 Community: Reason, Canon and Philosophy  199
7.4 Conclusion  216
Part 3
Skeptical Strategies: Dialectic, Assimilation, Rhetoric
8 Re-Configuring Conflict: Looking for Philo and Antiochus  221
8.1 Who Speaks in the Academica  221
8.2 Framing the Dialogue: The Rhetoric of Philosophy  225
8.3 Antiochus versus Philo: Fictionalizing the Drift  228
8.4 Philo and Antiochus: Profiles in Conversation  239
8.5 Parallel Trajectories and the Myth of Crisis  256
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Contents ix
9 Dialectic and Self-Definition: The Sense of Arguing in Cicero’s
Academica  261
9.1 Debate and the Philosophical Tradition  261
9.2 The Academy and the Stoa  272
10 Dialectical Trajectories of Ciceronian Skepticism  297
10.1 Academic Skepticism in Cicero’s Academica  297
10.2 Into Subjectivity: Doubt and/as Experience  312
10.3 Conclusion  324
Conclusion  326
Bibliography  341
Index of Ancient Authors  372
Index of Names and Subjects  377
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