Arcesilaus
From Philosopedia
Arcesilaus (c. 315—241 B.C.E.)
Arcesilaus and Carneades, teachers in Plato’s Academy, started with the Delphic oracle’s telling Socrates that he was the wisest of the Athenians. He realized he was, because he alone was aware that he knew nothing. If nothing can be known by our senses or our reason, there is no way to distinguish true or real perceptions from illusory ones, Arcesilaus taught. No certain criterion was known. Therefore, one has to suspend judgment on all that knowledge claims about any reality beyond our immediate experience. What we possess is reasonable or probable information that may, or may not, actually be true.
This idea—that probabilities are sufficient to guide us through life—gave birth to the academic skepticism that later would be discussed by Cicero and Diogenes Laertius. St. Augustine attempted to refute such an idea. However, Bertrand Russell in History of Philosophy lauds Arcesilaus for his advocacy of skepticism though still professing to follow Plato. Arcesilaus “maintained no thesis,” Russell explains,
- . . . but would refute any thesis set up by a pupil. Sometimes he would himself advance two contradictory propositions on successive occasions, showing how to argue convincingly in favour of either. A pupil sufficiently vigorous to rebel might have learnt dexterity and the avoidance of fallacies; in fact, none seem to have learnt anything except cleverness and indifference to truth. So great was the influence of Arcesilaus that the Academy remained skeptical for about two hundred years.
