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On Academic Scepticism (Hackett Classics) PDF

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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.

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