academica of cicero. - 912 Freedom Library

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They are not compelled to defend an opinion whether they will or no, merely because one of
their predecessors has laid it down [82] . So far does Cicero carry this freedom, that in the fifth
book of the Tusculan Disputations, he maintains a view entirely at variance with the whole of the
fourth book of the De Finibus, and when the discrepancy is pointed out, refuses to be bound by
his former statements, on the score that he is an Academic and a freeman [83] . "Modo hoc, modo
illud probabilius videtur [84] ." The Academic sips the best of every school [85] . He roams in the
wide field of philosophy, while the Stoic dares not stir a foot's breadth away from Chrysippus [86] .
The Academic is only anxious that people should combat his opinions; for he makes it his sole
aim, with Socrates, to rid himself and others of the mists of error [87] . This spirit is even found in
Lucullus the Antiochean [88] . While professing, however, this philosophic bohemianism, Cicero
indignantly repels the charge that the Academy, though claiming to seek for the truth, has no
truth to follow [89] . The probable is for it the true.
Another consideration which attracted Cicero to these tenets was their evident adaptability to the
purposes of oratory, and the fact that eloquence was, as he puts it, the child of the Academy [90] .
Orators, politicians, and stylists had ever found their best nourishment in the teaching of the
Academic and Peripatetic masters [91] . The Stoics and Epicureans cared nothing for power of
expression. Again, the Academic tenets were those with which the common sense of the world
could have most sympathy [92] . The Academy also was the school which had the most respectable
pedigree. Compared with its system, all other philosophies were plebeian [93] . The philosopher
who best preserved the Socratic tradition was most estimable, ceteris paribus, and that man was
Carneades [94] .
In looking at the second great problem, that of the ethical standard, we must never forget that it
was considered by nearly all the later philosophers as of overwhelming importance compared
with the first. Philosophy was emphatically defined as the art of conduct (ars vivendi). All
speculative and non-ethical doctrines were merely estimable as supplying a basis on which this
practical art could be reared. This is equally true of the Pyrrhonian scepticism and of the
dogmatism of Zeno and Epicurus. Their logical and physical doctrines were mere outworks or
ramparts within which the ordinary life of the school was carried on. These were useful chiefly in
case of attack by the enemy; in time of peace ethics held the supremacy. In this fact we shall find
a key to unlock many difficulties in Cicero's philosophical writings. I may instance one passage
in the beginning of the Academica Posteriora [95] , which has given much trouble to editors.
Cicero is there charged by Varro with having deserted the Old Academy for the New, and admits
the charge. How is this to be reconciled with his own oft-repeated statements that he never
recanted the doctrines Philo had taught him? Simply thus. Arcesilas, Carneades, and Philo had
been too busy with their polemic against Zeno and his followers, maintained on logical grounds,
to deal much with ethics. On the other hand, in the works which Cicero had written and
published before the Academica, wherever he had touched philosophy, it had been on its ethical
side. The works themselves, moreover, were direct imitations of early Academic and Peripatetic
writers, who, in the rough popular view which regarded ethics mainly or solely, really composed
a single school, denoted by the phrase "Vetus Academia." General readers, therefore, who
considered ethical resemblance as of far greater moment than dialectical difference, would
naturally look upon Cicero as a supporter of their "Vetus Academia," so long as he kept clear of
dialectic; when he brought dialectic to the front, and pronounced boldly for Carneades, they
would naturally regard him as a deserter from the Old Academy to the New. This view is
confirmed by the fact that for many years before Cicero wrote, the Academic dialectic had found
no eminent expositor. So much was this the case, that when Cicero wrote the Academica he was
charged with constituting himself the champion of an exploded and discredited school [96] .
Cicero's ethics, then, stand quite apart from his dialectic. In the sphere of morals he felt the
danger of the principle of doubt. Even in the De Legibus when the dialogue turns on a moral
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