Against the Academics

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.19 · 1.20–2.13 · 2.14–3.4 · 3.5–3.21 · 3.22–3.36 · 3.37–3.45

1. 1.1Augustine tells his patron Romanianus that the misfortunes which rescued him from the dangers of wealth may be the work of a hidden providence, and invites him to philosophy.
2. 1.2Augustine argues that had Romanianus remained prosperous and popular no one could have persuaded him that he was not truly happy, whereas his adversities have taught him the fragility of earthly goods.
3. 1.3Augustine urges Romanianus to awaken, telling how a chest ailment drove him from rhetoric to philosophy, which freed him from the superstition into which he had led his friend.
4. 1.4Augustine introduces the dialogue held at the country estate between Licentius (Romanianus's son) and Trygetius, recorded by a stenographer after the young men had been drawn to philosophy by Cicero's Hortensius.
5. 1.5Augustine poses the question whether one can be happy without finding the truth; Alypius takes the role of judge, Licentius holds that seeking suffices, and the happy life is defined as living by reason.
6. 1.6Licentius appeals to the ancients who lived happily by seeking the truth, and Augustine, now joint judge, invites both young men to defend their positions.
7. 1.7Licentius cites Carneades and Cicero, who held that nothing can be perceived and the wise man only searches diligently for truth, to argue that the search alone can make one happy.
8. 1.8Augustine allows the disputants to revisit rash concessions; Alypius departs, and Trygetius withdraws his admission that Cicero was wise, or at least that Cicero was right on this point.
9. 1.9Licentius argues that only God, or the soul freed from the body, knows the truth, and that man's end and happiness consist in seeking it perfectly according to reason.
10. 1.10Trygetius argues that whoever seeks without finding errs, defining error as always seeking and never finding, and the discussion is adjourned to the next day.
11. 1.11Licentius defines error as approving the false as true, argues that one who approves nothing cannot err, and refutes Trygetius's definition with the example of a traveler to Alexandria who dies on the road.
12. 1.12Licentius presses the traveler example to show that one who seeks the truth perfectly throughout life does not err and is happy.
13. 1.13Trygetius defines wisdom as the right way of life, and Licentius refutes the definition with the example of a traveler who avoids a road beset by robbers.
14. 1.14Trygetius redefines wisdom as the right way leading to truth, and Licentius turns this against him, arguing that whoever diligently seeks the truth is on that way and so is wise and happy.
15. 1.15Trygetius protests against endless demands for definitions and appeals to the judge, and Augustine adjourns the discussion at nightfall.
16. 1.16Augustine, asked to defend wisdom, offers the ancient definition of wisdom as the knowledge of things human and divine.
17. 1.17Licentius objects that by this definition the dissolute Carthaginian soothsayer Albicerius, who gave astonishingly accurate answers, would have to be called wise.
18. 1.18Licentius adds further examples of Albicerius's divination and argues that, on the proposed definition, he possessed knowledge of things human and divine and so was wise.
19. 1.19Trygetius replies that knowledge must be certain and unshaken, whereas Albicerius and all diviners often answer falsely.
20. 1.20Trygetius argues that true knowledge of human things is knowledge of the virtues, which Albicerius lacked, and that his feats may be explained by demons of the air, who excel in sense but not in reason.
21. 1.21Trygetius recalls Flaccianus's scorn for such divination, which he ascribed to a contemptible spirit, and his advice to prefer the liberal disciplines that raise the mind above the demons.
22. 1.22Trygetius argues that Albicerius did not know the truly divine things, and Licentius replies that divination implies some knowledge of divine things, so the definition includes too much.
23. 1.23Licentius defines wisdom as both the knowledge, which belongs to God, and the diligent search, which belongs to man, of the things pertaining to the happy life, and argues that the seeker is wise and happy now and blessed hereafter.
24. 1.24Augustine reviews the course of the debate, praising both young men and noting that the Academics' stronghold lies in their definition of error.
25. 1.25Augustine closes the first book, concluding that whether happiness lies in finding or in seeking the truth, the truth must be pursued above all, and announces that he will attack the Academics.
26. 2.1Augustine, addressing Romanianus again, explains why the Academics' arguments seem invincible and prays for him to the power and wisdom of God, the Son of God.
27. 2.2Augustine praises Romanianus's hidden greatness of mind, recalling how he once overcame a fierce passion in a single day, and trusts God that his hopes for him will not be vain.
28. 2.3Augustine urges Romanianus to take up philosophy and gratefully recounts his patron's generosity throughout his studies and career.
29. 2.4Augustine credits Romanianus, as the minister of a higher providence, with his present philosophical leisure, recalling his offer to share his patrimony.
30. 2.5Augustine tells how certain books of the Platonists set him on fire for philosophy and how he then turned back to the religion of his childhood and read the apostle Paul through.
31. 2.6Augustine describes the beauty of philosophy that opened to him, so great that even Romanianus's pleasure-loving opponent at law would have abandoned everything for it, since he too has a seed of true beauty.
32. 2.7Augustine compares philocalia, the love of beauty, to philosophy, the love of wisdom, as sisters, one of them caged by lust, and expresses hope for Romanianus's pleasure-loving opponent.
33. 2.8Augustine urges Romanianus to philosophy, warning against despair of finding the truth and against the belief that one has already found it, by which he means a relapse into superstition.
34. 2.9Augustine warns Romanianus and Lucilianus neither to think they know what they have not learned with mathematical certainty nor to despair of knowing the truth, citing Christ's promise "Seek and you will find."
35. 2.10After a week's break the friends resume, Alypius hears the first book read, and Licentius asks Augustine to set out the Academics' opinion before lunch.
36. 2.11Augustine sets out the Academics' position that nothing can be known, built on Zeno's Stoic definition of what can be perceived, and their conclusion that the wise man assents to nothing.
37. 2.12Augustine explains how the Academics answered the charge of inactivity by appealing to the probable or truthlike as a guide to action.
38. 2.13Alypius asks for an account of the difference between the New and the Old Academy, Augustine asks him to give it, and Monica calls them to lunch.
39. 2.14Alypius explains that the New Academy of Arcesilas arose against the Stoic Zeno, not against the Old Academy, whose suspicion of rash assent it developed into the refusal to assent to anything.
40. 2.15Alypius adds that Antiochus, Philo's pupil, set the two Academies against each other, defending against the New Academy the view that the wise man can perceive the truth.
41. 2.16Augustine leads Licentius to admit that the Academics' view seems probable or truthlike, and asks whether one who called a son like a father he had never seen would not be foolish.
42. 2.17Licentius pleads his lack of learning and wishes to be defeated so that he may see Augustine and Alypius debate each other.
43. 2.18Augustine's mention of Romanianus joining them moves Licentius to tears and prayer, and the discussion resumes with banter between the young men.
44. 2.19Augustine illustrates with a comic scene the absurdity of calling something like the truth without knowing the truth itself, and concludes that the Academics deserve the same ridicule.
45. 2.20Trygetius distinguishes the Academics' reasoned probability from belief in report, Augustine replies that the absurdity remains, and Trygetius hands the defense over to Alypius.
46. 2.21Alypius, after some hesitation over his role as judge, agrees to step down and take up the Academics' side.
47. 2.22Augustine explains that he attacks the Academics not for the sake of disputing but because the soul's life and return to God are at stake, and that the debate is recorded for memory and for the young men's training.
48. 2.23Augustine admits that he holds no certain view yet and has been hindered by the Academics, differing from them only in finding it probable that the truth can be found.
49. 2.24Alypius warns against a dispute about words, and Augustine replies that the Academics chose their terms deliberately, perhaps to hide their real opinion from the unworthy, and that he will argue against those who think them enemies of truth.
50. 2.25On the next day, after household business, the friends resume, and Augustine asks the young men what Alypius meant by forbidding a dispute about words.
51. 2.26Augustine explains the Academic sense of the probable as what invites action without assent, and asks whether Cicero would really have chosen unsuitable names.
52. 2.27Licentius, crossing to Augustine's side, argues that he can call things truthlike because he knows some truths, whereas Carneades, who claims to know nothing true, cannot.
53. 2.28Alypius replies that Licentius's quick change of side only proves how far men are from finding the truth, and repeats that the name given to the Academics' probable is not in question.
54. 2.29Augustine asks Alypius to say whether the Academics secretly held a definite view of the truth or really believed what their arguments state.
55. 2.30Alypius declares that he believes the truth cannot be found, and the question for the next debate is fixed: whether it is probable by the Academics' arguments that nothing can be perceived and no assent given.
56. 3.1Opening the third book in the baths, Augustine reaffirms that seeking the truth is the supreme task and wishes philosophy to take precedence over poetry in Licentius's mind.
57. 3.2Augustine says that the wise man needs nothing but that fortune is needed to become wise, and Alypius questions how much power is given to fortune.
58. 3.3Augustine compares fortune to the ship needed to cross the sea to the harbor of wisdom, which the wise man can then despise; Alypius objects that one blind and deaf would despise both wisdom and life.
59. 3.4Alypius argues that he seeks wisdom because he lives, so fortune's power over life gives him no cause to fear her in his pursuit of wisdom.
60. 3.5Augustine argues that the wise man differs from the philosopher by possessing the discipline of wisdom, which implies knowledge of the truth, and seizes on Alypius's admission that it seems to the wise man that he knows wisdom.
61. 3.6Alypius distinguishes seeming to know from knowing and wisdom as inquiry from truth, Augustine insists that his admission concedes that the wise man knows something, and they break for lunch.
62. 3.7Augustine finds Licentius absorbed in composing verses without eating or drinking, and urges him to return to philosophy.
63. 3.8Augustine resumes by asking Alypius whether the Academic wise man knows wisdom, and Alypius asks him first to distinguish seeming to know from knowing.
64. 3.9Augustine presses Alypius for a direct answer, and Alypius concedes that a wise man such as reason describes would seem to him to know wisdom.
65. 3.10Augustine argues that either the wise man knows wisdom, which refutes the Academics, or the question becomes whether anyone can be wise, which is a question no longer about the Academics.
66. 3.11Alypius replies that the Academics can still suspend assent even about their own claim that nothing is perceived, compares them to the elusive Proteus, and says that only a divinity can show the truth.
67. 3.12Augustine claims that the Academics are reduced to disputing only about assent, and that both sides agree that one should assent to the truth if it is found.
68. 3.13Augustine welcomes Alypius's statement that only a divinity can show the truth, interprets Proteus as an image of truth, and rejoices in their agreement in religion, citing Cicero's definition of friendship.
69. 3.14Augustine announces that he will answer the Academics' arguments and then explain why they hid their opinion, and Alypius asks him to do so in a continuous speech.
70. 3.15Augustine begins a continuous speech with Cicero's witty argument that the Academic, ranked second by every other school, must be first.
71. 3.16Augustine retells Cicero's comic scene in which Stoics and Epicureans each rank the doubting Academic second, and says he will not dispute this glory.
72. 3.17Augustine turns Cicero's jest against the Academics: one who doubts can also claim second place, but one who denies that the wise man knows even wisdom is defeated either in glory or in argument.
73. 3.18Augustine turns to the serious question and asks why Zeno's definition of what can be perceived should have led the Academics to deny all knowledge.
74. 3.19Augustine argues that it would be less absurd to say that no one can be wise than that the wise man is ignorant of wisdom, a view that lures students only to disappoint them.
75. 3.20Augustine contrasts an honest teacher, who says wisdom is with God and attainable after this life, with the Academic who promises wisdom without knowledge of it.
76. 3.21Augustine argues that Zeno's definition is either true, and so known, or false, in which case something can be perceived after all; either way something is known.
77. 3.22Augustine imagines Carneades retreating to the claim that only philosophical questions are unknowable, and replies that Zeno's definition, fixed at the entrance of philosophy, defeats him, comparing him to Cacus overcome by Hercules.
78. 3.23Augustine replies to the argument from the philosophers' disagreements that even in physics he knows true disjunctions, such as that there is either one world or more than one.
79. 3.24Augustine argues that the Academics never deny that things appear, and that he calls 'the world' whatever appears to him, so that to dispute this is a quarrel about a name.
80. 3.25Augustine argues that disjunctions and mathematical truths such as three times three is nine hold whether one is awake, asleep, or mad, and that the senses are not to blame for dreams and madness.
81. 3.26Augustine argues that the senses report truly how things appear, that one knows how things appear to oneself, and that in any case some philosophers place knowledge in the intellect rather than the senses.
82. 3.27Augustine argues that sense illusions do not touch ethics, where he knows at least the disjunction that the highest good lies in nothing, the mind, the body, or both.
83. 3.28Augustine dismisses the objections from dreams and madness, concluding that either madness destroys wisdom or wisdom remains in the intellect.
84. 3.29Augustine lists the truths he has learned from dialectic, including logical forms and rules for dealing with verbal disputes and fallacies.
85. 3.30Augustine answers Alypius's claim that the Academic wins even in defeat, arguing that once it is probable that the wise man knows wisdom, there is no reason for him to withhold assent from it.
86. 3.31Augustine imagines a quarrel between the wise man and wisdom to show the absurdity of a wise man who withholds assent from wisdom, which he finds in himself, and quotes Cicero's Hortensius.
87. 3.32Augustine concludes that the wise man knows and assents to wisdom, so he neither knows nothing nor assents to nothing.
88. 3.33Augustine raises the old objection that one who approves nothing cannot act, notes that the Academics answer it with the probable, and turns to a homely example.
89. 3.34Augustine tells the story of two travelers, one credulous who reaches his goal by trusting a shepherd, and one cautious who follows a probable but false direction and gets lost, to show that the Academics' probable does not keep one from error.
90. 3.35Augustine argues that the Academic doctrine would excuse a young man who commits adultery because it seemed probable to him, making error and even sin impossible to blame.
91. 3.36Augustine argues that the Academic doctrine would excuse every crime and that the Academics surely saw this, though even Cicero could not refute one who says 'I know that it seems so to me.'
92. 3.37Augustine begins his account of the Academics' hidden purpose with Plato's doctrine of two worlds, the intelligible world of truth and the sensible world that is only truthlike.
93. 3.38Augustine conjectures that Arcesilas, faced with Zeno's materialism, hid the Platonic doctrine like buried gold and set himself to unteach false opinions, which gave rise to the New Academy.
94. 3.39Augustine continues that Stoic materialism persisted through Chrysippus until Carneades, abandoning Arcesilas's indiscriminate attack, directed his arguments specifically against the Stoics.
95. 3.40Augustine interprets Carneades's 'truthlike' as a hidden sign that he knew the truth of which worldly actions are images, and notes that Carneades is called founder of the Third Academy.
96. 3.41Augustine traces the Academy through Philo, Antiochus, and Cicero to Plotinus, in whom Plato's thought shone out again.
97. 3.42Augustine holds that one true philosophy, harmonizing Plato and Aristotle and concerned with the intelligible world, has emerged, but that souls could return to it only because God lowered the authority of the divine intellect to a human body.
98. 3.43Augustine admits that his account is only probable, states his resolve at thirty-three to seek wisdom, and declares that he will never depart from the authority of Christ while seeking understanding among the Platonists.
99. 3.44Alypius gladly admits defeat, praises Augustine's speech, and invites the young men to learn with him under Augustine's guidance.
100. 3.45Augustine playfully tells the young men to read Cicero's Academica and make Alypius defend Augustine's arguments against it, and the dialogue ends.