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The Question of "Eclecticism": Studies in Later Greek Philosophy

University of California Press

There is a period in the history of Greek philosophy, covering roughly the first century B.C. and the first two centuries A.D. , that has long been a source of embarrassment to intellectual historians. The immediately preceding period, now commonly called Hellenistic philosophy, had seen the emergence of three new movements, Stoic, Epicurean, and Skeptic, the last of which actually came to characterize Plato's successors in the Academy. The third century A.D. is marked by the development of that highly original interpretation of Plato that we call Neoplatonism and also by the flowering of the great tradition of commentary on Aristotle, ushered in by Alexander of Aphrodisias.

Between these two well-defined periods we find a series of thinkers whose contribution to philosophy has been disparagingly labeled eclectic . They include such well-known amateurs as the Romans Cicero and Seneca, but also such professional Greek philosophers as the Stoics Panaetius and Posidonius, the Platonists Antiochus, Plutarch, and Albinus, and doctors and scientists such as Galen and Ptolemy. In this period, it has seemed, it was no longer possible to be a "pure-blooded" follower of any of the traditional schools. This supposed merging of philosophical identifies has been accounted for by another well-publicized

opinion about this period: its decline of intellectual vigor and its loss of creativity. These negative features were often attributed to the heavy hand of Rome and its demands for an undifferentiated pabulum, consisting of a compromise between the doctrines of the warring schools and emphasizing moral edification rather than the cut and thrust of argument. This process might seem to be exemplified by the proconsul L. Gellius Poplicola, who in Athens in 69 B.C. "called together the philosophers of the time, and urgently advised them to come at length to some settlement of their controversies" (Cicero De legibus 1.53). One of the principal villains of the piece, in this scenario, is Cicero, whose hastily composed accounts of the Hellenistic movements may seem to deal a deathblow to any further innovations in those philosophies.

Such a view of intellectual history was given credence by the immense authority of Eduard Zeller, whose still indispensable account of the whole of Greek philosophy was heavily influenced by the Hegelian tendency to view intellectual history in terms of alternations between periods of high and low creativity. We would not wish to assert that there is no validity whatever in this view of history. Arguably, adventurous speculation did decline during this period. There can also be observed a growth of faith in authority, a seeking for "ancient" sources (leading to the proliferation of pseudepigrapha), and the domination of the concept of "the Classical." On the other hand, the work of philosophy should be seen as continuing, if in different modes. The dissemination and assimilation of established ideas and methodologies were a stimulus to critical reflection and innovation. If this period lacks an individual philosopher comparable to Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, or Zeno, that is not a reason for hastily adjudging it to be second-rate, dull, and largely derivative from the past in its perspectives.

The purpose of the present collection of essays is to offer a series of studies that will provide the basis for a deeper understanding of the real intellectual character of that age. Such a

collection, arising as it does from a set of colloquium papers, cannot aspire to be comprehensive. However, we do think that the movements and individuals constituting the key factors in this period are represented, even if not necessarily in proportion to their importance. If the Epicureans do not find much place here, that is no accident. They remain curiously peripheral, for reasons related to the introverted nature of their movement and the hostility it inspired in the schools directly influenced by Plato. Nevertheless, they do make their appearance in various connections, as the index will testify.

The dominant theme of this book is a critical reexamination of the traditional (since Zeller) characterization of this period, its "eclecticism." The dispiriting connotations of this term are nicely expressed in this quotation from the article on Eclecticism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th edition):

Eclecticism always tends to spring up after a period of vigorous constructive speculation, especially in the later stages of a controversy between thinkers of pre-eminent ability. Their respective followers, and more especially cultured laymen, lacking the capacity for original work, seeking for a solution in some kind of compromise, take refuge in a combination of those elements in the opposing systems which seem to afford a sound practical theory.

Actually, in reference to our period, where this definition is most at home, to characterize the Hellenistic age as "a period of vigorous constructive speculation" would have been a considerably higher estimate than was common at the time the article was written; it is only in the last generation or so that the study of Hellenistic philosophy has come into its own, and its exciting features have ceased to be overshadowed by the towering figures of Plato and Aristotle. As for controversy, that by no means comes to an end in our period, which witnesses the emergence of, among other things, a renewed Skepticism, under the aegis of Aenesidemus and his Neo-Pyrrhonism, whose vigorous scrutiny of the whole history of philosophy is charted in the pages

of Sextus Empiricus. As for compromise, it is true that some of the thinkers in our period were impatient of the terminological niceties and fine conceptual distinctions that had characterized inter-school debates in the Hellenistic period. Toward the end of that epoch, Antiochus of Ascalon had combined Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic concepts in his ethics, while discarding the Stoic insistence on the absolute irrelevance of all bodily and external goods for happiness. We find Seneca and Plutarch equally unwilling to go along with the more bizarre features of Stoicism. Galen too, and Ptolemy, as Chapter 7 indicates, were more interested in the validity of empiricism in general terms than in very precise justification of its detail. Sometimes such attitudes do involve a fuzziness of thought. More often, however, they point to a deliberate interest in establishing a theory or a concept on the basis of the general consensus of a very long-standing and tested intellectual tradition.

Eclecticism , then, in its pejorative sense, seems a less than useful term to capture the particular quality of intellectual life in this period. Our studies should provide a number of suggestions for replacing it with more informative and less complacent terminology. The reader who has followed us so far will have seen how diverse are the thinkers it has been fashionable to call eclectic. To place the term and the concept in their historical perspective is the purpose of Pierluigi Donini's chapter, which begins the book. There was a use for the Greek verb eklegein to signify selecting the best from a group of things. But in philosophical parlance neither the word itself nor the concept...