Dialectical Trajectories of Ciceronian Skepticism

Chapter 10 Dialectical Trajectories of Ciceronian Skepticism

10.1 Academic Skepticism in Cicero’s Academica

One of the objectives of the last chapter was to highlight the extent to which Cicero tracked the Stoic polemic and stayed the anti-Stoic course set by his skeptical predecessors. Canonical interpretations of Ciceronian philosophy, commonly based on a reading of the corpus as a whole, underestimate this continuity, preferring to focus on Cicero’s relationship to Philo or Antiochus (or both). In those readings that situate Cicero within the development of Aca- demic history, he is portrayed as coming ashore on the dogmatizing drift of late Hellenistic skepticism. Furthermore, Cicero’s dependence on and borrowing from Stoicism is studied with great care, but often in relation to his philosophy of natural rights (principally expressed in the fragments of the Republic and Laws), his treatment of the social question of duties and obligations, unasham- edly copied from Panaetius (On Duties) or his exploration of emotions, pain and death (Tusculan Disputations). To admit even the shadow of a dialectical structure to that relationship is to allow for the possibility that Cicero’s position is altogether too profoundly skeptical for a man of Cicero’s social and institutional standing, an author who avowedly (re)turns to philosophy again and again as a substitute to political life. Across the landscape of Ciceronian studies, that substitution implies equivalence, as theoretical discourse is inter- preted as socio-political performance. There is undoubtedly a case to be made for reading the philosophy expressed in other treatises and their prefaces in this doctrinaire key, on the basis that they serve positive political and pedagog- ical ends, as well as on their own account as works of propositive philosophy. Building on the critique of Harald Thorsrud’s work on the Academica and the analysis of Cicero’s treatment of the relationship between the Academy and Stoa, over this chapter I argue that Cicero’s epistemology in the Academica is anything but weak or mitigated. Cicero’s philosophy as articulated in the Academica is both an original and radical expression of Academic skepticism, formulated in such a way as to respond to historical challenges posed by that tradition, namely how to write and practice skepticism.377 For many scholars

377 See Brittain (2016) for a similar approach to Ciceronian skepticism applied to On Ends. Charles Brittain’s article appeared as I was well into the revision stage of the present monograph, and after the ideas underpinning it had been successfully defended before

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Cicero’s philosophy is ‘dogmatic’. This well-established approach is derived in particular from the philosophica’s perceived emphasis on the practical dimen- sion of its application. We see this inflection often enough in the Lucullus, where Cicero’s thinking is what we might call in contemporary terms ‘situated’—that is, profoundly connected to action in the real world. Accordingly, we find Cicero orienting his reflections to navigate the challenges of skepticism, keen to find a compromise with perception, and exploring a principled or struc- tured approach to lived life in passages like Luc. 109-110 and 146, over which a positive Carneadean skepticism seems to cast its shadow. In what follows, I contend that when we place these passages in their broader context and read the Academica as a philosophical dialogue on its own terms, the originality of Cicero’s position lies in his idiosyncratic dialectical Carneades—the articula- tion and exploration in written form of a doubt that is uncompromising, cor- rosive and all-encompassing.378 Several important studies of skepticism in Antiquity begin with a salutary reminder that the language of ‘skepticism’ and ‘dogmatism’ is anachronistic when used in reference to the Hellenistic Academy and the work of Cicero (Introduction n. 2). Among the more cautious—with respect to this issue— students of ancient philosophy, Gisela Striker, Charlotte Stough, Jan Opsomer and Carlos Lévy all note that the term σκεπτικός and the verb σκέπτεσθαι (to consider, study or reflect carefully) were not established technical labels for Arcesilaus, Carneades and their followers. Although a fragment of Timon of Phlius indicates that the verb may have been adopted as early as the Hellenistic period in connection with Pyrrho and Arcesilaus, we find it first in Aulus Gell- ius’ second-century CE Attic Nights describing the philosophy of the Academy and Pyrrhonism.379 With Sextus Empiricus σκεπτικός is widely used to define

a doctoral committee. I was unable to address the study’s methodology and conclusions in the detail that they warrant, but I am nonetheless indebted to it because it breaks the mold of canonical interpretations of Cicero’s epistemology and it does so by bringing to bear close analysis of the dialogue’s structure on the philosophy. 378 My approach in this section is particularly indebted to students of the dialogue form, beginning with Ruch (1958a), Bonazzi (2003), Gildenhard (passim), Goldhill (2008) and Hösle (2012). An important source for comparative reflection was provided by Platonic ‘third way’ studies, for which see Gonzal (1995) and Press (2000). 379 On Pyrrho’s pupil Timon and fragment 55 of his poetry, see Stough (1969: 3) and Lévy (1993: 141). Gellius’ short paragraph addresses the difference between the New Academy and Pyrrhonism, sharing with his readers that “this has been a longstanding and much discussed issue among Greek authors, namely what is the nature and extent of the difference between Academics and Pyrrhonians. Both groups are known as skeptics, ephectics and aporetics, since they both assent to nothing and think that nothing can be apprehended” (vetus autem quaestio et a multis scriptoribus Graecis tractata, an quid et quantum Pyrrhonios