The Academy

greek_vasePhilosophical institution founded by Plato, which advocated
skepticism in succeeding generations.

The Academy (Academia) was originally a public garden or grove in the
suburbs of Athens, about six stadia from the city, named from Academus
or Hecademus, who left it to the citizens for gymnastics (Paus. i.
29). It was surrounded with a wall by Hipparchus, adorned with
statues, temples, and sepulchres of illustrious men; planted with
olive and plane trees, and watered by the Cephisus. The olive-trees,
according to Athenian fables, were reared from layers taken from the
sacred olive in the Erechtheum, and afforded the oil given as a prize
to victors at the Panathenean festival. The Academy suffered severely
during the siege of Athens by Sylla, many trees being cut down to
supply timber for machines of war.Few retreats could be more favorable
to philosophy and the Muses. Within this enclosure Plato possessed, as
part of his patrimony, a small garden, in which he opened a school for
the reception of those inclined to attend his instructions. Hence
arose the Academic sect, and hence the term Academy has descended to
our times. The nameAcademia is frequently used in philosophical
writings, especially in Cicero, as indicative of the Academic sect.

Sextus Empiricus enumerates five divisions of the followers of Plato.
He makes Plato founder of the first Academy, Aresilaus of the second,
Carneades of the third, Philo and Charmides of the fourth, Antiochus
of the fifth. Cicero recognizes only two Academies, the Old and the
New, and makes the latter commence as above with Arcesilaus. In
enumerating those of the old Academy, he begins, not with Plato, but
Democritus, and gives them in the following order: Democritus,
Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Parmenides, Xenophanes, Socrates, Plato,
Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crates, and Crantor. In the New, or
Younger, he mentions Arcesilaus, Lacydes, Evander, Hegesinus,
Carneades, Clitomachus, and Philo (Acad. Quaest. iv. 5). If we follow
the distinction laid down by Diogenes, and alluded to above, the Old
Academy will consist of those followers of Plato who taught the
doctrine of their master without mixture or corruption; the Middle
will embrace those who, by certain innovations in the manner of
philosophizing, in some measure receded from the Platonic system
without entirely deserting it; while the New will begin with those who
relinquished the more questionable tenets of Arcesilaus, and restored,
in come measure, the declining reputation of the Platonic school.

Views of the New Academy. The New Academy begins with Carnades (i.e.
the Third Academy for Diogenes) and was largely skeptical in its
teachings. They denied the possibility of aiming at absolute truth or
at any certain criterion of truth. Carneades argued that if there were
any such criterion it must exist in reason or sensation or conception;
but as reason depends on conception and this in turn on sensation, and
as we have no means of deciding whether our sensations really
correspond to the objects that produce them, the basis of all
knowledge is always uncertain. Hence, all that we can attain to is a
high degree of probability, which we must accept as the nearest
possible approximation to the truth. The New Academy teaching
represents the spirit of an age when religion was decaying, and
philosophy itself, losing its earnest and serious spirit, was becoming
merely a vehicle for rhetoric and dialectical ingenuity. Cicero's
speculative philosophy was in the main in accord with the teachings of
Carneades, looking rather to the probable (illud probabile) than to
certain truth (see his Academica).