Carneades

for Carneades, the enjoyment of the first natural things, was the uttermost.

Carneades too will be rejected, and no theory of the highest good will be approved which either shares in pleasure or in freedom from pain, or is devoid of the honourable.

The same things may be said against that Carneadean highest good, which he brought forward not so much to prove it as to set it against the Stoics, with whom he waged war.

in it is written a disputation of Carneades, which he says he set down in a notebook.

Wherefore Carneades, as I see our Antiochus write, used to reprehend Chrysippus for praising that song of Euripides:

For both the necessity of bearing the human condition forbids us, as it were, to fight with a god, and admonishes us that we are men — which thought greatly lightens grief;

Wherefore whether you propose a probable appearance, or a probable one and one not impeded, as Carneades wished, or some other thing which you may follow, you will have to return to that impression about which we are speaking.

His method, at first not much approved (though he flourished both in keenness of intellect and in a certain admirable charm of speech), was next maintained by Lacydes alone, and afterwards perfected by Carneades, who is fourth from Arcesilas;

But when Antipater demanded this same thing, saying that for him who affirmed that nothing could be perceived it was consistent nevertheless to say that this one thing could be perceived, that other things could not, Carneades resisted more acutely.

Against them Carneades argued at such length as to rouse men of any energy to a desire for discovering the truth.

This method in philosophy, of arguing against all positions and pronouncing openly upon none, set going by Socrates, taken up again by Arcesilas and confirmed by Carneades, has flourished down to our own day;

But that point, which either of you will perhaps seize on to censure — Cotta, because Carneades gladly inveighed against the Stoics;

But Carneades, ignorant of no part of philosophy, and, as I learned from those who had heard him and especially from the Epicurean Zeno, who, though he dissented from him very greatly, yet admired him beyond all others, was of an incredible faculty and … " But why does Mnesarchus fret, why does Antipater fight it out with Carneades in so many volumes?

‘Carneades went down to the Academy’—and yet it is not without causes;

More acutely did Carneades, who taught that the Epicureans could defend their cause without this fictitious swerve.

Carneades did not approve of this whole kind of reasoning, and thought that this argument was concluded too inconsiderately.

that you may answer Carneades, who is wont often to make sport of the best causes by the trickery of his wit.

" "And yet you must beware," said Laelius, "that, if you say those things which are wont to be said against justice, you may seem even to think so—you who are yourself, as it were, the one example of ancient probity and good faith, and whose habit of arguing on the contrary sides is not unknown, since you think the truth is thus most easily found.

Then Carneades succeeds Hegesinus, and those after him.

We may dispute with Socrates, doubt with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, conquer human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics.