The school of doubt : skepticism, history and politics in Cicero's Academica / by Orazio Cappello.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cappello, Orazio, author.

Series:

Brill Studies in Skepticism 1.

Brill studies in skepticism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Skepticism.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Academica.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (396 pages).

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019.

Summary:

The School of Doubt conducts a close philological and philosophical reading of Cicero’s Academica , a fragmentary work on sense-perception and Academic history written in the wake of Caesar’s victory in the civil wars (45 BCE). Focusing in turn on the author’s letters discussing the process of composition, the historiographical treatment of the Platonic tradition and the critical exploration of philosophical doubt, this volume presents Cicero as an original and sophisticated historian of philosophy and a radical figure in Western skeptical thought. Widely misconstrued as a technical treatise and a mere chronicle of the Greek debates on which it draws, the Academica here emerges as a key work in the evolution of Ciceronian philosophy and of ancient skepticism – and one that responds directly to the disintegration of Republican Rome.

Contents:

Front Matter

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Skepticism and Its Contexts. The Academica in Cicero’s Correspondence

The Shadows of Apography

Counter-Figuring Indifference: Varro and the Politics of Composition

Effecting Cicero: Fiction, Criticism and Subjectivity

The Pedigree of Doubt: Ciceronian Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy

Historical Philosophy: Cicero and the Academica in Their Historiographical Contexts

Philosophy’s Parallel Itineraries

Progress and Other Stories: Historical Models in Cicero’s Philosophy

The Practice and Tradition of Philosophia: Debate, Critique and Community in the Academica

Skeptical Strategies: Dialectic, Assimilation, Rhetoric

Re-Configuring Conflict: Looking for Philo and Antiochus

Dialectic and Self-Definition: The Sense of Arguing in Cicero’s Academica

Dialectical Trajectories of Ciceronian Skepticism

Conclusion

Back Matter

Bibliography.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

90-04-38987-3

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004389878 DOI