institution
the Old Academy
also: Academia vetus, veterem Academiam, Academiae veteris, the Old Academy
The dogmatic Platonist tradition running from Plato through Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates, and Crantor, holding a settled body of doctrine. Cicero presents it (with the Peripatetics) as one school under two names, the position he himself professed before turning to the New Academy.
Reading notes
- Academica §7 the Old Academy
The dogmatic Platonist tradition running from Plato through Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates, and Crantor. Cicero presents it and the Peripatetics as a single philosophy under two names, the position Varro defends in this dialogue.
- On the Ends of Good and Evil §4.3 those old pupils of Plato
Cicero's roster of the Old Academy: Speusippus and Xenocrates (Plato's nephew and successor heads), then Polemo and Theophrastus, whom he treats as a continuous school with the early Peripatetics. His thesis is that Stoic ethics merely renamed their doctrine.
- On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.7 from this New Academy to that old one
Antiochus distinguished the dogmatic 'Old Academy' of Plato's immediate successors from the sceptical 'New Academy' of Arcesilas and Carneades. Piso urges the young Lucius back to the constructive, dogmatic tradition.