The Nouvelle Academy indicates the revival of the Académie of Plato undertook from 273 before JC under the direction of Arcésilas de Pitane and its successors.

Context

It is difficult to determine the number of the periods of the history of the Academy. The old ones distinguished sometimes five academies (cf Sextus Empiricus, Esquisses pyrrhoniennes. I, 220):

• that of Plato

• that of Arcésilas
• that of Carnéade and Clitomaque de Carthage
• that of Philon and Charmide
• that of Antiochus d' Ascalon

Cicéron ( Academica , I, XII, 46) distinguishes only two from them: that of Plato and that of Arcésilas, the Old and the News. According to him, the Old Academy did not add anything to teaching Plato, and was restricted to expose its philosophy according to a division in three parts indicated by the Master.

At the time when the new academy is constituted, the epicureanism and the Stoïcisme are already well installed and are essential like dominant philosophies in the world Hellénistique.

Specificity of the new academy

The revival of the Academy is a kind of revolution: the completed character of Platonic work is called into question, and the Vérité must again be required. This spirit of research would be close to Plato of the dialogs aporetic if it were actually much further declaring only one would never find truth. The New Academy, under the impulse of Arcésilas, is also a return to dialectical the socratic and the conscience of the ignorance which allows critical freedom. For this last reason, the New Academy could be regarded as a continuation legitimates the old one.

Some texts (cf Cicéron) refer to a teaching esoteric of the New Academy. Initiation with the dogmas of the Master would have been reserved for an elite of disciples. Always according to Cicéron, teaching was done according to the reason, i.e. the professors avoided letting appear their thoughts so that their disciples do not follow the authority ( C potius quam auctoritate ducantur rations).

The skepticism of the new academy

It shows tendencies skeptics and is distinguished often with difficulty from the pyrrhonnism:

It is an old question extremely discussed among the Greek writers that to know if there is a difference between the New Academy and the pyrrhonism

Aulu-Cold, Nights Attics , XI, 5

For the pyrrhoniens like Tiller of Phlionte or Sextus Empiricus, the new academy cannot be regarded as skeptic owing to the fact that she affirms dogmatically that any thing is unknowable (where the pyrrhoniens affirm that we cannot be determined on the connaissability of the things).

Another distinction between the pyrrhoniens and the néo-academicians comes owing to the fact that the latter are in a permanent way under discussion with the Stoïcisme. They criticize it. The stoical ones integrate these criticisms and answer it. The néo-academicians integrate these answers and formulate new criticisms, etc With the wire of time, the theses of the new academy approach those of the stoical ones more and more, where the pyrrhoniens try to maintain the most distance possible with the dogmatic ones.

Philosophers of the New Academy

• Arcésilas de Pitane (- 316 to -241)

• Pythodore
• Aridices of Rhodos
• Dorothée
• Panarétos
• Démophanes
• Ecdémos or Edélos
• Call
• Lacydes, successor of Arcésilas in 240 (works: Philosophized and Peri phuseos )
• Aristippe de Cyrène
• Paulus
• Téléclès and Evandre, phocéens, successors of Lacydes
• Hégésinus (or Hégésilaus), successor of Evandre, Master of Carnéade
• Carnéade (- 215 to -129)
• Mélanthius of Rhodos
• Eschine of Naples
• Mentor
• Hagnon of Rhodos
• Zénon of Rhodos
• Zénodore and Agasiclès de Tyr
• Bataces and Corydallus d' Amise
• Biton de Soles
• Asclépiade d' Apamée
• Olympiodore of Gaza
• Hipparchus de Soles
• Sosicrate of Alexandria
• Stratippe
• Calliclès de Larisse
• Apollonius
• Carnéade, wire of Polémarchus?
• Cratès de Tarse?
• Clitomaque de Carthage (- 187 to -110), the most probable successor of Carnéade
• Charmadas
• Héliodore
• Phanostrate
• Métrodore de Scepsis
• Eschine
• Métrodore de Stratonice
• Philon of Larissa (v. -148/150 to -85/77) disciple of Clitomaque
• Antiochus d' Ascalon (death in -69)
• Other academicians:
• Paséas
• Thrasys
• two Eubulus
• Agamestor or Agapestor
• Damon
• Leonteus
• Monschion
• Evandre of Athens
• Boéthus (disciple of Aristippe de Cyrène)