Arcesilaus and the Academy’s Skeptical Turn

Bibliographic Data

ID23607831
AuthorsJames Allen (0000-0002-3084-7785, University of Toronto, corresponding author), James M Allen (0009-0000-6781-2802, University of Toronto, corresponding author)
Year2025
Pages533-555
Publication date2025-04-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueOxford Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695170.013.23
OpenAlexW4409664874
ISBN9780190695170
LanguageEN
References cited15

This chapter discusses the philosophical activity of Arcesilaus of Pitane, Plato’s fifth successor as head of the Academy, who was responsible for the change in the school’s direction that led our ancient authorities to distinguish a New Academy of Arcesilaus and his successors. Until its dissolution in the first century BCE, the New Academy was skeptical, devoting the bulk of its energy to challenging the possibility of knowledge. Arcesilaus defended two views we have come to associate with skepticism: (1) inapprehensibility (akatalêpsia), roughly speaking that knowledge is impossible, and (2) a consequent obligation to global suspension of judgment (epochê). This chapter argues that these views are best regarded not as doctrines to which Arcesilaus himself was committed, but rather as positions he defended dialectically, intended to present a challenge to the Academy’s Stoic opponents from whose philosophy Arcesilaus drew much of the material on which his arguments were based. Nonetheless, Arcesilaus’s own noncommittal stance did not prevent these views from being adopted by later Academics who were indeed committed skeptics.

Epistemology · Physics · Skepticism · Turn (biochemistry) · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Philosophy

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