Eclecticism (Roman)
80 BCE – 100 c.
Take what is true from each school and leave the rest, on the view that no single system has the whole of it.
- Active
- 80 BCE – 100
- Where
- Rome
- Status
- extinct
- Tradition
- Roman
The claim
Sectarian loyalty is an obstacle to truth. Judge each doctrine on its merits, from wherever it comes, and be prepared to hold a combination no school teaches.
What it held
Eclecticism is the Roman contribution to philosophy and it is usually described as a failure of nerve. That is unfair to what it actually did. Rome imported four Greek systems at once, each internally consistent and mutually incompatible, and had to decide what to do with them. Choosing not to enlist is a defensible response.
Cicero is the central figure and the reason so much ancient philosophy survives at all. He was trained in the sceptical Academy, which licensed exactly this: if nothing is certain, then arguing each side and adopting the more persuasive is the right method rather than a compromise. His practice was to set out the Stoic, Epicurean and Academic positions in turn and let the reader weigh them.
He also had to invent the vocabulary. Latin had no words for the Greek technical terms, so qualitas, essentia, moralis and a great many others are his coinages or his choices — which means European philosophy has been thinking in Cicero's translations ever since.
How it argued
Presenting rival positions fully and in their own strongest form, then indicating which is more persuasive without claiming certainty.
What it was arguing against
Dogmatic allegiance to any single school, and the assumption that a philosophy must be adopted whole.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether it is a position at all or merely an absence of one. Ancient critics said the latter; Cicero's defenders point out that the sceptical Academy gave it a principled basis.
Common misconceptions
That eclecticism means shallow. Cicero's philosophical works were composed in about two years of forced political retirement and are careful expositions, not summaries. And he does not conceal his leanings — On Duties is substantially Stoic.
How it began
Antiochus of Ascalon argued that the schools substantially agreed, which made combining them respectable. Roman practicality and the absence of a native philosophical tradition did the rest.
What became of it
Absorbed into Middle Platonism, which made the synthesis a doctrine rather than a method.
Lasting influence
Enormous and indirect. Cicero was the most read Latin author in medieval Europe, and Augustine credits the lost Hortensius with turning him to philosophy in the first place. The Renaissance humanists learned their Latin from him.
Why it still matters
The question it raises — whether a philosophy has to be adopted as a system or can be taken in parts — is live wherever people work across traditions.
Put another way
A translator who must find Latin for four Greek systems and discovers he is now making decisions.
Where to start
Tusculan Disputations, Book I. It is Cicero arguing himself out of the fear of death, in public, shortly after his daughter died.
The surprising bit
Almost every ancient philosophical position we can describe at all is known partly through Cicero, including several schools whose own writings are entirely lost.
In their own words
There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
We are more free than those who follow one master.
Connections
- Answers
- Academic Skepticism
- Influenced
- Middle Platonism
The verdict
Rome's least original philosophical achievement and the reason we know about most of the others.