Against the Academicians/The Teacher [antikvár]

IntroductionAugustine's early works Against the Academicians (386) and The Teacher (389) belong together. In the former, which is directed at Cicero's Academica, he defends the possibility of knowledge against the skeptical arguments of the New Academy;1 in the lat-ter, directed at Plato's Meno, he offers his theory of illumination to explain how knowledge is acquired. As a pair, they present Augustine's alternative to the pose of ironical detachment fash-ionable among late Roman intellectuals.In late antiquity, philosophy was more a way of life than an academie discipline. Philosophers were organized into schools (secta), each with a venerable tradition and its own worldview one that included specific arguments and points of view as well as positions on such major questions of general interest as the number of stars in the heavens and the nature of God. Some philosophical schools also held esoterie doctrines that were revealed in secret to a novice af ter he had served the requisite apprenticeship. Philosophers often lived together in communities, adhered to the dictates of a common mie based on their doctrines, and wore distinctive cloth-ing (the philosopher's mantle) to indicate the school of philosophy to which they belonged. It was not uncommon for people to "with-draw from the world" to pursue philosophy especially if they had experienced a conversion of some sort. Thus philosophical schools were to all intents and purposes like religious orders.In Augustine's view, (Christian) religion and (Platonist) philosophy were engaged in the same enterprise, namely the quest for knowledge: "Just as the Hebrews were prepared for Christianity by the law and the prophets, so too the Gentiles were prepared by Plato and Aristotle. And just as Christianity is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, so too it is the fulfillment of Greek philosophy."2 The difference between them is that Christian doctrine suc-1.Augustine identifies the 'New Academy' as the successors of Plato, who endorsed skepticism: see Against the Academicians 2.5.13-2.6.15.2.Spade [1985] Chapter 7.