Карнеад

Carneades of Cyrene (214–129 BC) - skeptic, head of the so-called. third, or secondary, Academy. In 155, he, with the Stoic Diogenes and the Peripatetic Critolaus, went as part of an embassy to Rome, where, by the way, with his speeches for and against justice, composed in a sophistic spirit, he was successful among young people, but aroused the indignation of the famous Cato. He developed his skeptical views mainly by polemicizing against the Stoic Chrysippus (so much so that he even said: “If Chrysippus had not existed, then I would not have existed”). Following Arcesilaus, Carneades considered knowledge impossible and the conclusions of any dogmatic philosophy unreliable. To show the impossibility of the criterion of truth and the beliefs based on it, he analyzes the representation and finds that it relates both to the object from which it is derived and to the subject in which it arises. Agreement with the subject gives truth; probability depends on the attitude towards the subject. To judge the first, we have no means either in perception or in thinking. Comparison with an object is impossible, because it is always given to us only in representation. It is also necessary to abandon κατάληψις, even in mathematics. We must be content only with probability, πιθανότης, which has various degrees. The doctrine of probability and its degrees is especially necessary for practical activity, because the latter is impossible if one abstains from any judgment in general. He especially sharply attacked Stoic theology, refuting both its evidence of the existence of God and the very idea of ​​God. But, along with this, he considered faith in the gods to be a useful opinion. Carneades himself, according to the testimony of Diogenes Laertius, did not leave any of his own works, and what was known under his name was written by his student Clitomachus of Carthage. The teaching of Carneades is expounded by Sextus Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius and Cicero (the latter, by the way, calls it “hominem omnium in dicendo acerrimum et copiosissimum”).