ABSTRACT
Antiochus's secession and the death of Philo mark the end of the sceptical Academy as a functioning school of philosophy. Academic Scepticism gave place to revived Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism; and the early imperial period saw the beginnings of the syncretizing dogmatism characteristic of Middle Platonism. This chapter discusses a papyrus fragment of an anonymous Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus. In the first century AD Plutarch, a major source for Hellenistic philosophy, styled himself an Academic, as did Favorinus of Aries a generation or so later; and his rough contemporary Epictetus attacks Academic Scepticism with every indication that his targets are real. Thus Academic scepticism is logically self-refuting, for quasi-transcendental reasons of a type similar to those deployed by Aristotle in support of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in Metaph. Sceptic's search for isostheneia requires him to satisfy criteria which the argument itself shows to be inapprehensible – hence the position self-refutes.
