Carneades

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 12.23 §2 Carneades and that embassy came to Rome

  The famous embassy of three Athenian philosophers (the Academic Carneades, the Stoic Diogenes, and the Peripatetic Critolaus) sent to Rome in 155 BC over the fine imposed on Athens for sacking Oropus. Cicero, dating his philosophical exempla, wants the consular year fixed from Atticus's chronological handbook.

• Ad Atticum 13.21 §3 Carneades always compares

  Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 BC), the great head of the skeptical New Academy, who likened the suspension of assent to a boxer dropping his guard or a charioteer reining in --- a checking, not a reversal.

• On Fate §33 not even Apollo could speak of future events

  Carneades' argument that even the god can foretell only what nature's causes make necessary; contingent future events have no causes to be known, so prophecy of them is impossible. This separates the truth of a future statement from causal necessity.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §2.35 a third to Carneades

  Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 BC), the brilliant skeptical head of the New Academy who proposed (chiefly to refute the Stoics) that the highest good is the enjoyment of the primary objects of nature. Cicero treats this "Carneadean end" as a debating position, not a doctrine Carneades held.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §2.59 "Suppose," says Carneades

  Carneades' famous thought-experiment of the hidden viper: if a man's silence about a concealed snake would profit you, you act wrongly by not warning him, even though no one could ever prove your guilt. Cicero uses it to argue that justice must spring from nature, not utility.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §3.41 your Carneades

  Carneades of Cyrene (214/3-129/8 BC), head of the sceptical New Academy, called 'yours' because Cicero's own school descends from the Academy. He famously argued that the Stoic-Peripatetic dispute over goods was merely verbal, a thesis Cato here rejects as substantive.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.16 that division of Carneades

  The 'Carneadea divisio', a schematic classification of all possible views on the highest good according to the natural object first sought. Antiochus adopted it, and Piso uses it to map out the field.

• On the Nature of the Gods §1.4 Carneades

  Head of the New Academy in the second century BC and its most formidable skeptic, famous for arguing both sides of every question. His attacks on Stoic theology underlie much of Cotta's case in this book.

• On the Nature of the Gods §2.162 Carneades took such pleasure in inveighing against the Stoics

  Carneades of Cyrene (c. 214-129 BC), head of the New Academy and the great skeptical critic of Stoic theology and divination, whose arguments Cotta deploys in Book 3. Balbus anticipates that both interlocutors will object to his defense of divination.

• Tusculan Disputations §3.54 a discussion of Carneades

  Carneades of Cyrene (214/3-129/8 BC), the formidable head of the sceptical New Academy. His argument that the wise man would not be in distress at his country's capture is the philosopher's medicine for present calamity.

• Tusculan Disputations §4.53 as Carneades used to

  Carneades, the great Academic skeptic and head of the Academy, famous for attacking Stoic positions on both sides. Cicero says that, harry the Stoics as Carneades did, they may still be the only true philosophers.

• Tusculan Disputations §5.11 Carneades

  Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 BC), head of the New (skeptical) Academy, famed for arguing both sides of any question. Cicero adopts his method of withholding assent and seeking only the most probable view.

• Tusculan Disputations §5.120 Carneades, like an honorary arbiter

  Carneades acted as an impartial arbiter between Stoics and Peripatetics, holding that their dispute over goods was merely verbal, since both alike subordinated bodily and external goods to virtue. Cicero closes with this verdict.