Philo of Larissa

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Philo of Larissa (Greek: ????? ? ?????????? Philon ho Larissaios; 154/3�84/3 BC
[1]) was a Greek philosopher. He was a pupil of Clitomachus, whom he succeeded as
head of the Academy. During the Mithridatic wars which would see the destruction of
the Academy, he travelled to Rome where Cicero heard him lecture. None of his
writings survive. He was an Academic sceptic, like Clitomachus and Carneades before
him, but he offered a more moderate view of scepticism than that of his teachers,
permitting provisional beliefs without certainty.

Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Philosophy
3 Notes
4 References
5 Further reading
6 External links
Life[edit]
Philo was born in Larissa in 154/3 BC. He moved to Athens where he became a pupil
of Clitomachus, whom he succeeded as head of the Third or New Academy in 110/109
BC. According to Sextus Empiricus, he was the founder of a "Fourth Academy",[2] but
other writers refuse to admit the separate existence of more than three academies.
He was the teacher of Antiochus of Ascalon who would become his adversary in the
Platonist school.

During the Mithridatic wars Philo left Athens and took up his residence in Rome in
88 BC. In Rome he lectured on rhetoric and philosophy, and collected around him
many eminent pupils, amongst whom Cicero was the most famous and the most
enthusiastic.[3]

Philo was the last undisputed scholar of the Academy in direct succession from
Plato. After his death in 84/3 BC, the Academy seceded into rivalling factions and
eventually disappeared until the Neoplatonist revival.

Philosophy[edit]
None of Philo's works are extant; our knowledge of his views is derived from
Numenius, Sextus Empiricus and Cicero. In general, his philosophy was a reaction
against the Academic skepticism of the Middle and New Academy in favor of the
dogmatism of Plato.

He maintained that by means of conceptive notions (kataleptike phantasia) objects

could not be comprehended (akatalepta), but were comprehensible according to their
nature.[4] How he understood the latter, whether he referred to the evidence and
accordance of the sensations which we receive from things,[5] or whether he had
returned to the Platonic assumption of an immediate spiritual perception, is not
clear. In opposition to his disciple Antiochus, he would not admit a separation of
an Old and a New Academy, but would rather find the doubts of scepticism even in
Socrates and Plato,[6] and not less perhaps in the New Academy the recognition of
truth which burst through its scepticism. At least on the one hand, even though he
would not resist the evidence of the sensations, he wished even here to meet with
antagonists who would endeavour to refute his positions[7] i.e. he felt the need of
subjecting afresh what he had provisionally set down in his own mind as true to the
examination of scepticism; and on the other hand, he did not doubt of arriving at a
sure conviction respecting the ultimate end of life.

Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ Dorandi 1999, p. 48.
Jump up ^ Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyp. i. 220
Jump up ^ Cicero, ad Fam. xiii. 1, Academica, i. 4, Brut. 89, Tusculanae
Quaestiones, ii. 3
Jump up ^ Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyp. i. 235; Cicero, Acad. Quaest. ii. 6
Jump up ^ Aristocles, in Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica xiv. 9.
Jump up ^ Cicero, Acad. Quaest. ii. 4, 5, 23
Jump up ^ Aristocles, l.c.
References[edit]
Dorandi, Tiziano (1999). "Chapter 2: Chronology". In Algra, Keimpe; et al. The
Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
p. 48. ISBN 9780521250283.
Attribution:

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:
Brandis, Christian A. (1870). "Philon (3. the Academic)". In Smith, William.
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 3. p. 313.
Further reading[edit]
Brittain, Charles, Philo of Larissa (Oxford University Press, 2001) ISBN 0-19-
815298-1
External links[edit]
Brittain, Charles. "Philo of Larissa". In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
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WorldCat Identities VIAF: 69321422 GND: 102402949
Categories: 150s BC births80s BC deathsAcademic philosophersAncient Skeptic
philosophersAncient LarissaeansRoman-era MacedoniansRoman-era philosophers in
Athens1st-century BC philosophers2nd-century BC Greek people1st-century BC Greek
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