New Academy

Historical Background and Emergence

The New Academy refers to the later phase in the history of Plato’s Academy, following the so‑called Middle Academy. Ancient doxographical tradition, reflected in writers such as Cicero and Sextus Empiricus, divides the Academy into a series of chronological and doctrinal stages: the Old Academy (roughly from Plato to the early Hellenistic period), the Middle Academy (associated above all with Arcesilaus and Carneades), and the New Academy, usually linked with Philo of Larissa (c. 159–84 BCE) and, in a more controversial way, Antiochus of Ascalon (c. 130–68 BCE).

The New Academy emerged in a context of intense Hellenistic philosophical competition, particularly among the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics. The Middle Academy had embraced a radical form of epistemological skepticism, especially under Carneades, who argued that secure knowledge might be impossible and that one should rely instead on degrees of plausibility. By the time of Philo of Larissa, this radical stance began to shift toward a more moderate position.

Philo, who taught in Athens and later in Rome, is often identified as the founder or main representative of the New Academy. Under his guidance, the Academy maintained a skeptical orientation but softened some of its more extreme conclusions. Philo’s Academy also intersected with Roman intellectual life, influencing figures such as Cicero, whose dialogues are a major source for our knowledge of this period.

The historical status of the New Academy as a distinct “school” is debated. Some ancient sources treat it as a clear phase after the Middle Academy; others blur the distinctions between Middle and New. Modern scholarship frequently uses the label “New Academy” as a convenient shorthand for the period of moderated Academic skepticism and for the transitional movement toward a more dogmatic Platonism represented, in a different way, by Antiochus of Ascalon.

Philosophical Orientation and Doctrines

The New Academy’s philosophical character is best understood against the backdrop of earlier Academic skepticism. The Middle Academy, especially under Carneades, argued that:

• Certainty is unattainable for human beings.
• Nonetheless, we can operate using probable impressions (pithanai phantasiai), graded by their persuasiveness and coherence.
• Skepticism thereby provides a practical criterion for action without claiming infallible knowledge.

The New Academy continued to use skepticism as a critical method but tended to reframe its scope and implications.

1. Moderated Skepticism and Fallibilism

Philo of Larissa appears to defend a form of fallibilist epistemology. On some reconstructions, he holds that:

• Human beings can attain reasonable, but not infallible, knowledge.
• Skeptical arguments show the limits and vulnerability of our claims, not the absolute impossibility of knowledge.
• The wise person should accept beliefs that withstand critical scrutiny while acknowledging their possible revision.

This position attempts to preserve the Socratic spirit of inquiry and the critical tools of Academic skepticism, while avoiding what some saw as the paralyzing implications of radical doubt. Knowledge remains provisional and revisable, but this is compatible with the practical and theoretical aims of philosophy.

Ancient opponents sometimes accused Philo of betraying Academic skepticism by reintroducing a kind of covert dogmatism. From their perspective, any positive claim to knowledge was incompatible with the Academy’s skeptical heritage. Supporters, however, could argue that Philo simply clarified that skepticism had always been primarily a methodological stance—a way of testing claims—rather than a dogma that “nothing can be known.”

2. Engagement with Rival Schools

The New Academy was notable for its intense engagement with Stoicism. Carneades had already criticized Stoic epistemology and ethics; Philo continued this engagement but with less adversarial rigor and more interest in systematic comparison.

Under Antiochus of Ascalon, sometimes counted as the last scholarch of the New Academy or as the founder of a revived “Old Academy,” this engagement took the form of partial doctrinal convergence. Antiochus argued that genuine Platonism, Aristotle’s philosophy, and many Stoic doctrines were fundamentally compatible. He proposed a syncretic system in which:

• The ethical ideal resembled Stoic virtue, yet was grounded in a more broadly Platonizing account of the good.
• The criterion of truth drew on Stoic notions of cognitive impressions but was embedded in a framework that claimed continuity with Plato’s original Academy.

From a strict skeptical standpoint, Antiochus appears as a dogmatist who abandoned Academic skepticism in favor of a more positive, eclectically constructed Platonism. For this reason, many ancient and modern interpreters mark Antiochus’s work as signaling either the end of the New Academy or its final transformation.

3. Ethical Outlook

Ethically, the New Academy largely maintained a Socratic-Platonic emphasis on the examined life, rational self-mastery, and the centrality of virtue. However, its skeptical or fallibilist epistemology had important consequences:

• Ethical life is guided not by absolute certainty, but by the most reasonable and critically examined beliefs available.
• The wise person cultivates intellectual humility, recognizing that even their deepest ethical commitments may be revisable.
• Practical deliberation relies on probable judgments, aligning to some extent with Hellenistic ideas about living “according to nature” or “according to reason,” yet without claiming infallible access to either.

Some interpreters see this as anticipating later forms of pragmatism or fallibilist ethics, in which the adequacy of a belief is judged by its resilience under criticism and by its role in guiding coherent, virtuous action.

Influence, Legacy, and Scholarly Debates

The New Academy’s most direct influence is visible in Cicero, whose philosophical works both report and shape our understanding of Academic thought. Works such as Academica and On the Nature of the Gods present an Academic methodology of setting out competing positions and suspending final commitment while endorsing the probable. Through Cicero, Academic skepticism—especially in its moderated, New Academic form—enters the Roman intellectual world and later Latin Christian and scholastic discussions.

In the long term, the New Academy contributed to several broader developments:

• It kept alive a tradition of critical inquiry within Platonism, even as later Platonists moved toward more systematic metaphysics.
• It provided a model for conceiving of philosophy as comparative and dialogical, weighing rival doctrines rather than simply defending one system.
• Its emphasis on probability, fallibilism, and methodological skepticism has been seen as a distant ancestor of early modern and contemporary debates about the limits of human knowledge.

Modern scholarship, however, remains divided on several key issues:

1. Periodization and Labels
   Some historians argue that the sharp distinctions between Old, Middle, and New Academy are more retrospective constructs than lived realities. On this view, the “New Academy” is a label imposed by later authors to organize a gradual and internally complex evolution of Academic thought.

2. The Exact Nature of Philo’s Position
   Since Philo’s works do not survive and must be reconstructed largely from Cicero and other sources, there is disagreement over whether he was primarily a skeptic with fallibilist leanings or essentially a moderate dogmatist who preserved skepticism only as a rhetorical posture.

3. Antiochus’s Place in the Academy
   Scholars differ over whether Antiochus should be counted as a New Academic, a revivalist of the Old Academy, or essentially an eclectic Stoic-Platonist operating outside the genuine Academic skeptical tradition. Ancient testimony itself is conflicted, reflecting competing claims of continuity and rupture.

Despite these disputes, the concept of the New Academy remains a useful tool for describing a transitional episode in the history of Platonism: a period in which Academic philosophers experimented with ways of reconciling Socratic skepticism, Hellenistic epistemology, and a renewed interest in systematic doctrine. In this sense, the New Academy stands as a bridge between the radical skepticism of the Middle Academy and the more fully developed forms of later Platonism that would dominate late antiquity.