James Allen

Apart from the section of book VII that Diogenes Laertius dedicates to Stoic logic, Sextus Empiricus’ treatment of the true, Adversus Mathematicos VIII 1–140, is the most extensive and important repository of testimonies about the Stoics’ theory of the lekton or sayable that has come down to us. Unlike Diogenes Laertius’, Sextus’ treatment is highly polemical. Fragments of Stoic theory are embedded in a context adapted to the needs of Pyrrhonian scepticism. To serve these purposes, Sextus imposes a framework on the views that he tackles which classifies them in terms of the questions he takes to be in dispute. The object of this essay is to assess Sextus’ performance as an expositor and critic of the Stoic theory. It argues that Sextus’ account was assembled out of originally separate and sometimes disparate pieces, and it detects a number of mis-matches between Sextus’ framework and his arguments, on the one hand, and the material to which they are applied, on the other. It concludes by recommending that readers approach Sextus’ evidence with caution.

A dispute in the form of rival interpretations of Carneades arose in the New Academy about whether the wise person is permitted to form opinions. One party rejected opinion; the other defended it. Because the terms enjoy a certain currency, the positions are here labelled ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ respectively. This essay tackles the question whether and how they differed. It argues that the disagreement was less about human epistemic capacities than about the standards and aspirations against which they should be measured and that Cicero, our principal source, was a consistent adherent of the ‘radical’ party.

Developments in the Academy from the time of Arcesilaus to that of Carneades and his successors tend to be classified under two heads: scepticism and probabilism. Carneades was principally responsible for the Academy's view of the latter subject, and our sources credit him with an elaborate discussion of it. The evidence furnished by those sources is, however, frequently confusing and sometimes self-contradictory. My aim in this paper is to extract a coherent account of Carneades' theory of probability from the testimony with a further end in view, namely to understand better the uses to which that theory was put by the Academy in its debate with the Stoa. Though it is not its principal object, the investigation should also help make clear how the Academy's scepticism and its probabilism were related to each other as parts of a single consistent practice of philosophy.