Shortly after the death of his daughter in February 45 BCE, Cicero gave himself over completely to his project of recasting Greek philosophy in the Latin language. After rapidly completing his

, in part to convince himself of the futility of extreme grief, he composed an exhortation to philosophy, the

. Continuing his project in the

, Cicero sought to explain his lifelong devotion to the methodology that had come to be practiced in Plato’s Academy, and its underlying epistemology (

1.11,

2.4,

2.1,

2.8). The central philosophical issue is whether wisdom is compatible with holding mere opinions. The Stoics argued that since we are capable of achieving an irrefutable, systematic understanding of the world, the sage would never assent to what…

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Citation: Thorsrud, Harald. "Academica". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 June 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35021, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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