Speusippus (; grc-gre, Σπεύσιππος; c. 408 – 339/8 BC) was an

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. Speusippus was

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

's nephew by his sister

Potone Potone (; grc-gre, Πωτώνη, Pōtṓnē; born before 427 BC) daughter of Ariston and Perictione, was Plato's older sister. Her mother was Perictione and she was born in Collytus, just outside Athens. She married Eurymedon of Myrrhinus, with ...

. After Plato's death, c. 348 BC, Speusippus inherited the

Academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosop ...

, near age 60, and remained its head for the next eight years. However, following a stroke, he passed the chair to

Xenocrates Xenocrates (; el, Ξενοκράτης; c. 396/5314/3 BC) of Chalcedon was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and leader (scholarch) of the Platonic Academy from 339/8 to 314/3 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato, which he attempted to d ...

. Although the successor to Plato in the Academy, Speusippus frequently diverged from Plato's teachings. He rejected Plato's

Theory of Forms The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas is a philosophical theory, fuzzy concept, or world-view, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas. According to this theory, ideas in th ...

, and whereas Plato had identified the

Good In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil and is of interest in the study of ethics, morality, ph ...

with the ultimate ''principle'', Speusippus maintained that the Good was merely secondary. He also argued that it is impossible to have satisfactory

knowledge Knowledge can be defined as Descriptive knowledge, awareness of facts or as Procedural knowledge, practical skills, and may also refer to Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called pro ...

of any thing without knowing all the differences by which it is separated from everything else. The standard edition of the surviving fragments and testimonies is Leonardo Tarán's ''Speusippus of Athens: A Critical Study with a Collection of the Related Texts and Commentary'' (1982).

Life

Speusippus was a native of

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

, and the son of Eurymedon and

, a sister of

, he belonged to the deme of

Myrrhinus Myrrhinus or Myrrinous ( grc, Μυρρινοῦς) was a deme of ancient Attica. It lay to the east of Prasiae. Artemis Colaenis was worshipped at Myrrhinus; and in one of the inscriptions recovered at Merenda mention is made of a temple of Arte ...

. The pseudonymous '' Thirteenth Letter of Plato'' claims that Speusippus married his niece (his mother's granddaughter). We hear nothing of his life until the time when he accompanied his uncle Plato on his third journey to Syracuse (Italy), where he displayed considerable ability and prudence, especially in his amicable relations with Dion. His moral worth is recognised even by

Timon Timon is a masculine given name and a surname which may refer to: People * Timon of Athens (person), 5th-century Athenian and legendary misanthrope * Timon of Phlius (c. 320 BCE – c. 235 BCE), a Pyrrhonist philosopher of Ptolemaic Egypt and He ...

, though only that he may heap the more unsparing ridicule on his intellect. The report about his sudden fits of anger, his greed, and his debauchery, are probably derived from a very impure source:

Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of th ...

and Diogenes Laërtius can adduce as authority for them scarcely anything more than the abuse in some spurious letters of

Dionysius the Younger Dionysius the Younger ( el, Διονύσιος ὁ Νεώτερος, 343 BC), or Dionysius II, was a Greek politician who ruled Syracuse, Sicily from 367 BC to 357 BC and again from 346 BC to 344 BC. Biography Dionysius II of Syracuse was the s ...

, who was banished by Dion, with the cooperation of Speusippus. Having been selected by Plato as his successor as the leader (''

scholarch A scholarch ( grc, σχολάρχης, ''scholarchēs'') was the head of a school in ancient Greece. The term is especially remembered for its use to mean the heads of schools of philosophy, such as the Platonic Academy in ancient Athens. Its fir ...

'') of the

, he was at the head of the school for only eight years (348/7–339/8 BC). He died, it appears, of a lingering paralytic illness, presumably a stroke. He was succeeded as the head of the school by

Philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius gives us a list of some of the titles of the many dialogues and commentaries of Speusippus, which is of little help in determining their contents, and the fragments provided by other writers provide us with only a little extra.

Epistemology

Speusippus was interested in bringing together those things which were similar in their philosophical treatment, and in the derivation, and laying down, of the ideas of genera and

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

: for he was interested in what the various sciences had in common, and how they might be connected. Thus he furthered the threefold division of philosophy into Dialectics,

Ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...

, and

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

, for which Plato had laid the foundation, without losing sight of the mutual connection of these three branches of philosophy. Speusippus maintained that no one could arrive at a complete definition who did not know all the differences by which a thing which was to be defined was separated from the rest. Like Plato, Speusippus distinguished between that which is the object of thought, and that which is the object of sensuous

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...

, between the cognition of the reason and sensuous perception. He tried, however, to show how perception can be taken up and transformed into knowledge, by the assumption of a perception, which, by participation in rational truth, raises itself to the rank of knowledge. By this he seems to have understood an immediate (in the first instance aesthetic) mode of conception; since he appealed, in support of this view, to the consideration that artistic skill has its foundation, not in sensuous activity, but in an unerring power of distinguishing between its objects, that is, in a rational perception of them.

Metaphysics

Speusippus rejected Plato's

; whereas Plato distinguished between ideal numbers (i.e. the Platonic Forms of numbers) and mathematical numbers, Speusippus rejected the ideal numbers, and consequently the

idea In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being ...

s. He tried to determine the idea of substance more distinctly by separating its types, the difference between which he considered would result from the difference between the ''principles'' (''archai'') on which they are based. Thus he distinguished substances of

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

, of size, of

soul In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being". Etymology The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...

, while Plato had referred them, as separate entities, to the ideal numbers.

Speusippus made still more kinds of substance, beginning with the One, and assuming principles for each kind of substance, one for numbers, another for spatial magnitudes, and then another for the soul; and by going on in this way he multiplies the kinds of substance.

Nevertheless, Speusippus also must have recognised something common in those different kinds of substances, inasmuch as, firstly, he set out from the absolute One, and regarded it as a formal ''principle'' which they had in common, and, secondly, he appears to have assumed that multitude and multiformity was a common primary element in their composition. But it is only the difficulties which led him to make this and similar deviations from the Platonist doctrine, of which we can get any clear idea, not the way in which he thought he had avoided those difficulties by distinguishing different kinds of ''principles''. The criticism of

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

, directed apparently against Speusippus, shows how little satisfied he was with the modification of the original Platonist doctrine. With this deviation from Plato's doctrine is connected another which takes a wider range. As the ultimate ''principle'', Speusippus would not, with Plato, recognise the ''

'', but, with others (who doubtless were also Platonists), going back to the older ''Theologi'', maintained that the ''principles'' of the universe were to be set down as causes of the good and perfect, but were not the good and perfect itself, which must rather be regarded as the result of generated existence, or development, just as the seeds of plants and animals are not the fully formed plants or animals themselves.

Speusippus upposesthat supreme beauty and goodness are not present in the beginning, because the beginnings both of plants and of animals are causes, but beauty and completeness are in the effects of these.

The ultimate ''principle'' he designated, like Plato, as the absolute One, but it was not to be regarded as an existing entity, since all entities can only be the result of development. When, however, with the

Pythagoreans Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BC, based on and around the teachings and beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras established the first Pythagorean community in the ancient Greek colony of Kroton, ...

, he reckoned the ''One'' in the series of ''good'' things, he probably conceived it only in its opposition to the ''Many'', and wished to indicate that it was from the ''One'' and not from the ''Many'', that the good and perfect is to be derived. Nevertheless, Speusippus seems to have attributed vital activity to the primordial Unity, as inseparably belonging to it, probably in order to explain how it could grow, by a process of self-development, into the good, spirit, etc.; for spirit also he distinguished from the one, as well as from the good; and the good from pleasure and pain. Less worthy of notice is the attempt by Speusippus to find a more suitable expression for the material ''principle'', the indefinite duality of Plato; and his Pythagorizing mode of treating the doctrine of numbers which we can see in the extracts of his treatise on the Pythagorean numbers.

Ethics

Diogenes Laertius' list of Speusippus' works includes titles on justice, friendship, pleasure, and wealth.

Clement of Alexandria Titus Flavius Clemens, also known as Clement of Alexandria ( grc , Κλήμης ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; – ), was a Christian theologian and philosopher who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. Among his pupils were Origen and ...

(fr. 77 Tarán) reports that Speusippus considered

happiness Happiness, in the context of mental or emotional states, is positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Other forms include life satisfaction, well-being, subjective well-being, flourishing and eudaimonia. ...

to be "a state that is complete in those things that are in accordance with nature, a condition desired by all human beings, while the Good aim at freedom from disturbance; and the virtues would be productive of happiness." This testimony suggests that Speusippus' ethics may have been an important background to ethical ideas of the Stoics (the will's conformity with nature) and

Epicurean Epicureanism is a system of philosophy founded around 307 BC based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism. Later its main opponent became Stoicism. Few writings by Ep ...

s (compare "freedom from disturbance," ''aochlēsia'', with the notion of ''

ataraxia ''Ataraxia'' (Greek: ἀταραξία, from ("a-", negation) and ''tarachē'' "disturbance, trouble"; hence, "unperturbedness", generally translated as "imperturbability", " equanimity", or "tranquility") is a Greek term first used in Ancient ...

''). Modern scholars have detected a

polemic Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topic ...

between Speusippus and Eudoxus of Cnidus concerning the good. Eudoxus also accepts that the Good will be that at which all people aim, but identifies this as pleasure, as opposed to Speusippus' exclusive focus on moral goods. Texts of Aristotle and Aulus Gellius suggest that Speusippus insisted that pleasure was not a good, but that the Good was "in between the opposites of pleasure and pain." It is possible that the dispute between Speusippus and Eudoxus influenced Plato's '' Philebus'' (esp. 53c–55a). Speusippus also seems to have developed further Plato's ideas of

justice Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...

and of the citizen, and the fundamental principles of legislation.

List of works

Diogenes Laërtius gives a selection of his works, adding that all his writings represent 43,475 lines of manuscript.Diogenes Laërtius, ''

Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal sourc ...

'', iv. 4, 5. * ''Aristippus of Cyrene''. * ''On Wealth'', one book. * ''On Pleasure'', one book. * ''On Justice.'' * ''On Philosophy.'' * ''On Friendship.'' * ''On the Gods.'' * ''The Philosopher.'' * ''A Reply to Cephalus''. * ''Cephalus''. * ''Clinomachus or Lysias''. * ''The Citizen''. * ''Of the Soul''. * ''A Reply to Gryllus''. * ''Aristippus''. * ''Criticism of the Arts'', one book for each art. * ''Memoirs'', in the form of dialogues. * ''Treatise on System'', in one book. * ''Dialogues on the Resemblances in Science'', in ten books. * ''Divisions and Hypotheses relating to the Resemblances''. * ''On Typical Genera and Species''. * ''A Reply to the Anonymous Work''. * ''Eulogy of

''. * ''Epistles to Dion, Dionysius and Philip''. * ''On Legislation''. * ''The Mathematician''. * ''Mandrobolus''. * ''

Lysias Lysias (; el, Λυσίας; c. 445 – c. 380 BC) was a logographer (speech writer) in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace i ...

''. * ''Definitions''. * ''Arrangements of Commentaries''.

Notes

References

* * Attribution: *

External links

* * {{Authority control 4th-century BC Athenians 4th-century BC philosophers Academic philosophers Ancient Athenian philosophers Classical Greek philosophers 400s BC births 330s BC deaths

Life

Philosophy

Epistemology

Metaphysics

Ethics

List of works

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

Editions

Studies

External links