Carneades
We can never be certain that an impression is true, but we can test how convincing it is – and that is enough to live and act by.
Placement
Head of the Academy from Cyrene who wrote nothing: no impression guarantees its own truth, but the merely “persuasive” can guide action; he argued every side of a question, and in Rome in 155 BCE he is said to have spoken for justice one day and against it the next.
Key ideas
- The persuasive (pithanon) as a guide
- Arguing on both sides
- Critique of Stoic theology, divination and fate
- Division of ethical ends (Carneadea divisio)
Influence
Influenced by 1
Arcesilaus
influenced by
Carneades took up Arcesilaus’ arguments against the Stoic criterion of truth and sharpened them against Chrysippus’ refined version; he too argued on both sides of a question. Cicero, Academica II; Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians I.159–189; SEP “Carneades”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Arcesilaus › c. 316–241 BCE
Influenced 1
Cicero
influenced
Cicero drew on Carneades, via Clitomachus, in Academica and On the Nature of the Gods, and used his division of views on the highest good (De finibus V). Cicero, Academica II; De natura deorum III; De finibus V.16–23; SEP “Carneades”
Evidence: AI draft
Cicero › 106–43 BCE
Criticism
Criticized by 2
Sextus Empiricus
criticised by
Sextus set Pyrrhonism apart from Carneades’ New Academy, whose claim that nothing can be known and trust in the ‘persuasive’ he judged dogmatic. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.220–235
Evidence: AI draft
Sextus Empiricus › c. 160–210
Augustine
criticised by
Augustine answered the probabilism of Carneades: whoever has never grasped the truth cannot know what merely resembles it (Contra Academicos, 386). Augustine, Contra Academicos II.7.16–12.27; Cicero, Academica II.98–104
Evidence: AI draft
Augustine › 354–430
Criticizes 2
Epicurus
criticised
Carneades objected that Epicurus needed no atomic swerve to save free will, since a voluntary movement of the mind needs no external cause. Cicero, De fato 23, 31–32
Evidence: AI draft
Epicurus › 341–270 BCE
Chrysippus
criticised
Carneades attacked Chrysippus’ ‘kataleptic’ impression, arguing that any true impression could have an indistinguishable false twin; he said that he himself would be nothing without Chrysippus. Cicero, Academica II.40–42, 83–90; Diogenes Laertius 4.62; SEP “Carneades”
Evidence: AI draft
Chrysippus › c. 279–206 BCE
Position
Carneades sharpened Arcesilaus’ arguments against the Stoic theory of knowledge, which Chrysippus had meanwhile defended and refined; he is credited with the remark that without Chrysippus he himself would not have existed. No impression carries a mark of truth that a false impression could not also carry. Carneades nevertheless described how one can act and inquire without certainty. According to Sextus Empiricus, impressions can be more or less persuasive (pithanon): persuasive in themselves; persuasive and not contradicted by any other impression; and persuasive, uncontradicted and thoroughly tested. The more important the matter, the more testing it requires. Whether Carneades endorsed this view or only put it forward for the sake of argument was already disputed among his pupils; Clitomachus said he had never discovered what Carneades really thought. In ethics he drew up a scheme of all possible views of the highest good, the Carneadea divisio, which Cicero used to sort the schools (De finibus V 16–23). Against the Stoics he argued that their gods could not exist as described, that divination has no basis, and that the principle that every statement is true or false does not imply that everything is fated; against the Epicureans, that freedom does not need a swerve of the atoms. Much of Cicero’s Academica, On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination draws on Carneades through Clitomachus. Sextus Empiricus set Pyrrhonism apart from the New Academy, and Augustine’s Against the Academics (386) was written against Carneades and Arcesilaus.
Life & context
Carneades was born around 214/213 BCE in Cyrene in North Africa. In Athens he studied in the Academy and, according to Diogenes Laertius, learned dialectic from the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon. By the middle of the second century BCE he was head of the Academy. In 155 BCE Athens sent him to Rome, together with Diogenes of Babylon and the Peripatetic Critolaus, to plead for the reduction of a fine imposed over the town of Oropus. His lectures drew crowds of young Romans, and Cato the Elder is said to have urged the Senate to send the philosophers home quickly. A story that goes back to Cicero’s Republic, preserved by Lactantius, has him praising justice one day and arguing against it the next; how far it is reliable is disputed. Carneades wrote nothing. His pupil Clitomachus, a Carthaginian, recorded his arguments in many books, all lost. He gave up the headship in old age and died around 129/128 BCE, at 85.
Main works
- No writings (Carneades taught only orally; the books of his pupil Clitomachus are lost)
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