Abstract
AbstractIn this chapter, I turn my attention to how, according to Cicero, the New Academy evaluated the Hellenistic schools’ metaphysical claims, following Carneades’s method. Specifically, I explore the metaphysical discussions on the nature of the gods and the immortality of the soul, portrayed by Cicero in De Natura Deorum (DND) and the Tusculan Disputations (TD). I also compare the Academic treatment of these issues with the Pyrrhonian approach, accounted by Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Pyr.) and Adversus Mathematicos (M IX). My aim is twofold: On the one hand, to show how Cicero followed the Carneadean criterion of “the persuasive” (to pithanon) to examine metaphysical claims and determine the ones that should be adopted for practical purposes, and, on the other, to discuss how Sextus’s skeptical treatment of these matters was compatible with his claim that the Pyrrhonists could have a pious life.
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