mail: Bill Thayer	Italiano	Help	Up	Home
previous: Chapter 25 This webpage reproduces a chapter of A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, S. J. as reprinted by Image Books — Doubleday New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Auckland 1993 The text, and illustrations except as noted, are in the public domain. next: Chapter 27

Part III: Plato

 p263  Chapter XXVI
The Old Academy

The Platonic philosophy continued to exercise a profound influence throughout Antiquity; we must, however, distinguish various phases in the development of the Platonic School. The old Academy, which consisted of disciples and associates Plato himself, held more or less to the dogmatic content of the Master's philosophy, though it is noticeable that it was the "Pythagorean" elements in the thought of Plato that received particular attention. In the Middle and New Academies an anti-dogmatic sceptical tendency is at first predominant, though it later gives way before a return to dogmatism of an eclectic type. This eclecticism is very apparent in Middle Platonism, which is succeeded at the close of the period of ancient philosophy by Neo‑Platonism, an attempt at a complete synthesis of the original content of Plato with those elements which had been introduced at various times, a synthesis in which those traits are stressed which are most in harmony with the general spirit of the time.

The Old Academy includes together with men like Philippus of Opus, Heraclides Ponticus, Eudoxus of Cnidus, the following successors to Plato in the headship of the School at Athens: Speusippus (348/7‑339/8), Xenocrates (339/8‑315/4), Polemon (315/4‑270/69) and Crates (270/69‑265/4).

Speusippus, Plato's nephew and immediate successor as Scholarch, modified the Platonic dualism by abandoning the Ideas as distinct from τὰ μαθηματικά and making Reality to consist in mathematical numbers.​1 The Platonic Number-Ideas were thus dismissed, but the essential χωρισμός remained. By his admission of scientific perception (ἐπιστημονικὴ αἴσθησις) Speusippus is sometimes said to have given up the Platonic dualism of knowledge and perception,​2 but it must be remembered that Plato had himself gone some way towards admitting this, inasmuch as he allowed that λόγος and αἴσθησις co‑operate in the apprehension of the atomic idea.

It is difficult to tell exactly what the members of the Old  p264 Academy taught, since (unless Philippus of Opus wrote the Epinomis) no whole work of theirs has come down to us, and we have only the remarks of Aristotle and the testimony of other ancient writers to rely on. But apparently Speusippus held that substances proceed from the One and the absolute Many, and he placed the Good or τελεία ἔξις at the end of the process of becoming and not at the beginning, arguing from the development of plants and animals. Among the animate beings that proceed from the One is the invisible Reason or God,​3 which he probably also identified with the World-Soul. (Possibly this might afford an argument in favour of a "Neo‑Platonic" interpretation of Plato.) As for human souls, these are immortal in their entirety. We may note that Speusippus interpreted the account of "creation" in the Timaeus as a mere form of exposition and not as meant to be an account of an actual creation in time: the world has no beginning in time. The traditional gods he interpreted as physical forces, and thus brought upon himself a charge of atheism.​4

Xenocrates of Chalcedon, who succeeded Speusippus as Scholarch, identified the Ideas with mathematical numbers, and derived them from the One and the Indeterminate Duality (the former being Νοῦς or Zeus, the father of the gods, the latter being the feminine principle, the mother of the gods).​5 The World-Soul, produced by the addition of the Self and the Other to number, is a self-moved number. Distinguishing three worlds — the sublunar, the heavenly, and the super-celestial — Xenocrates filled all three worlds with "demons," both good and bad. This doctrine of evil demons enabled him to explain the popular myths, in which evil actions are ascribed to "gods," and the existence of immoral cults, by saying that the evil actions were the acts of evil demons, and that the immoral cults were directed to these demons and not to the gods.​6 In company with his predecessor, Xenocrates held that even the irrational parts of the soul (which was not created in time) survive after death, and, together with his successor, Polemon, he deprecated the consumption of flesh-meat on the ground that this might lead to the dominion of the irrational over the rational. Like Speusippus and Crantor (and in opposition to Aristotle), Xenocrates understood the priority of the simple over the composite in the Timaeus to be a logical and  p265 not a temporal priority.​7 (The Περὶ ἀτόμων γραμμῶν, attributed to Aristotle, was directed against Xenocrates' hypothesis of tiny invisible lines, which he employed as an aid in the deduction of dimensions from numbers.)

Heraclides Ponticus adopted from the Pythagorean Ecphantus the theory that the world is composed of particles which he called ἄναρμοι ὄγκοι, probably meaning that they are separated from one another by space. From these material particles the world was composed through the operation of God. The soul is therefore corporeal (consisting of aether, an element added to the others by Xenocrates). While asserting the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis, Heraclides also held that Mercury and Venus revolve around the sun, and he seems to have suggested that the earth may do likewise.

One of the most celebrated mathematicians and astronomers of Antiquity is Eudoxus (c. 497‑355 B.C.). Philosophically speaking, he is noteworthy for having held (a) that the Ideas are"mixed" with things,​8 and (b) that pleasure is the highest good.​9

The first commentary on Plato's Timaeus was written by Crantor (c. 330‑270), in which he interpreted the account of "creation" as a timeless and not as a temporal event. It is depicted as taking place in time simply for the purpose of logical schematism. In this interpretation Crantor was in accord, as we have seen, with both Speusippus and Xenocrates. In his Περὶ πένθους, Crantor upheld the doctrine of the moderating of the passions (Metriopathy) in opposition to the Stoic ideal of Apathy.​10

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Frag. 42, a‑g.

❦

2 So Praechter, p343.

❦

3 Frag. 38‑9.

❦

4 Cic., De Nat. D., 1.13.32.

❦

5 Frag. 34 ff.

❦

6 Frag. 24 ff.

❦

7 Frag. 54.

❦

8 Metaph. A 9, 991a8‑19.

❦

9 Eth. Nic., 1101b27 ff; 1172b9 ff.

❦

10 Cic., Acad., 2.44.135; Tusc., 3.6.12.

◂ previous						next ▸
Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
UP TO:		A History of Philosophy	LacusCurtius	Home
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.