Filo de Larissa

Philo of Larissa (c.159–c.83 bc)

Philo, head of the Academy from 110 to 88 bc, likened philosophy to medicine. No doubt he was a conscientious therapist himself; but we know little enough about his methods and practices. For most of his life he seems to have been a happy sceptic, and an unremarkable one. But towards the end of his career he introduced – or was deemed to have introduced – startling innovations into the Academy: in particular, by rejecting or modifying the reigning definition of knowledge he was able to separate himself from the scepticism of his school and to rewrite its history.

 

1 Life and thought

Philo came from Larissa in Thessaly. As a boy he was taught philosophy by a certain Callicles, a friend of Carneades; so that by the time he moved to Athens – perhaps in 134 bc – he was already acquainted with Academic philosophy (see Academy). For some years he continued his studies with Clitomachus, whom he eventually succeeded as scholarch in 110 bc. He remained in office for two decades. Then, in 88 bc, during the turmoil of the Mithridatic War, he left Athens and travelled to Rome. He resumed his teaching, impressing Cicero and Cicero’s friends. Some five years later he died.

Our evidence for Philo’s thought is meagre. The most substantial text develops a parallel between philosophy and medicine. Doctors must first persuade their patients to accept their own treatment and to reject the advice of rival practitioners; then they must eliminate the causes of disease and implant the causes of health; next they must examine the nature of health, which is the goal of their art; fourth, they must produce comprehensive prescriptions for diet and regimen; and finally – for life is brief and patients are busy – they must prepare a summary brochure on ’healthcare for all’.

So it is also with philosophers. First, a protreptic discourse commending virtue and refuting its detractors; then the elimination of false opinions, which infect the organs of the soul, and the introduction of true opinions; third, an account of the ultimate aim of philosophizing, namely ‘happiness’ (see Eudaimonia); then practical prescriptions, comprising an ethics and a political philosophy; and finally handbooks for the hurried.

The conception of philosophy as mental therapy was neither unique to Philo nor original to him, but his is the most expansive version of the thing which any ancient text presents. We know little about the particular forms which his therapy took: one notice indicates that he did not altogether abjure the soft pleasures of the Epicureans; another informs us that he taught rhetoric (but perhaps separately from philosophy); otherwise the chief points of interest lie in epistemology.

 

2 Epistemology

For most of his career Philo of Larissa appeared as an unexceptional philosopher. He continued the Academic technique of arguing ‘on both sides’ (see Carneades §1); and he professed some form of scepticism. In short, ‘he enhanced the teachings of Clitomachus’ (Numenius, in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel XIV 9.1) without adding anything new to them. And then, near the end of his life, he produced work which scandalized his old colleagues, who could hardly believe that it came from his pen.

The innovation is depicted by Cicero as sudden and shocking, and dated to Philo’s Roman period. Other texts hint at a gradual realization rather than a flash of enlightenment – and to some extent Philo seems to have been anticipated by Carneades’ pupil Metrodorus. However that may be, the scandalous innovation appears to have had two aspects, one of them philosophical, the other historical.

Philo urged that

as far as the Stoic criterion, i.e. apprehensive appearance (phantasia katalēptikē), is concerned, things are inapprehensible; but as far as the nature of the things themselves is concerned, they are apprehensible.

(Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism I 235)

If things are apprehensible in themselves but not according to the Stoic criterion, then presumably the Stoic criterion is false: it must constitute, or be based upon, a mistaken conception of what knowledge is. And Cicero reports that Philo ‘weakens and destroys’ the Stoic account of apprehension. In particular, he denied the crucial element in the Stoic account, namely the claim that an apprehensive appearance must be such that it could not have come from any source other than the source it in fact came from (Academics II 18) (see Stoicism §12).

We are not told why Philo rejected this claim: no philosophical arguments on the matter have survived. But we do know one result of his having done so: scepticism could now be avoided – for the Academic arguments for scepticism had fastened upon the very clause which Philo decided to reject (see Arcesilaus §2; Carneades §4).

Looking out of my window I receive an appearance of a magpie on the lawn. I thereby know that there is a magpie on the lawn provided that the appearance is an apprehensive appearance. According to the standard definition, the appearance will only be apprehensive if it could not have been caused by anything other than a magpie on the lawn. But surely it could have been caused by any number of other things – by a jay on the lawn or by an ingenious hologram. And something like this seems to hold not only of my magpie but of all appearances: hence scepticism. But once we reject the requirement that an apprehensive appearance could not have been otherwise caused, the sceptical argument collapses. Knowledge does not require that the magpie appearance could not have been caused by a jay – but only that it was not caused by a jay. Since the appearance was in fact appropriately caused, it is apprehensive; and I thereby know that there is a magpie on the lawn.

Such, or so it seems, was the philosophical aspect of Philo’s innovation. It would be silly to shower praise on him, for we do not know why he rejected the standard account of knowledge, or what he offered in its place, or how he replied to the objections which his innovation excited. But his innovation was admirable: the requirement that apprehensive appearances could not have been otherwise caused is implausibly strong.

Philo was now able to look afresh at the history of the ‘sceptical’ Academy. Arcesilaus and Carneades, he saw, had not really been attacking knowledge or arguing for scepticism; rather, they had been attacking a false conception of what knowledge was. Perhaps they themselves supposed that they were attacking the very citadel of knowledge; but in point of fact they were tilting at an antiquated windmill. Hence the ‘sceptical’ Academy had never been sceptical: its heroes had never cast any doubt on the possibility of knowledge.

No need, therefore, to speak of an Old and a New Academy. The dogmatism of Plato’s original school had presupposed the sane, Philonian, account of knowledge – an account which the Peripatetics had inherited; and the ‘New’ Academics had implicitly countenanced Platonic dogmatism. Hence Philo ‘denied that there were two Academies’ (Cicero, Academics I 13).

Philo’s innovations were roughly greeted. Some Academicians maintained that his abandonment of the standard definition of knowledge was folly – and self-destructive folly to boot, inasmuch as he would now be dragged back to the very scepticism which he had hoped to escape (see Antiochus §2). Others accused Philo of misunderstanding the achievement of the New Academy and of betraying his heritage. The controversy was heated; but we learn no details. Nor does Philo seem to have had much effect. After him, it is true, sceptical Platonists were hard to find, but there is no reason to believe that this was due to the arguments of Philo.