Against the Academicians Book 2 [19 November 386]

Augustine reports that the group has taken a week off to read the Aeneid (2nd, 3rd, and 4th books). Licentius is distracted by poetry and Augustine has to talk him down (if only my students...). Alypius returns asking for an overview of the Academicians.

Augustine writes (or monologues again) that the Academicians believed that everything was uncertain. To assent to something uncertain is to be in error. The truth comes to the mind by way of signs that can only come from the thing itself and no other. The Academicians use this definition to support the idea that truth can't be found at all. The problem that the Academicians pose for living is if nothing is certain, and you assent to nothing, you will do nothing. To escape this problem the Academicians introduce the term "truthlike" to use as a guide. A great human, then, is one who can withhold assent. Augustine leans heavily on Cicero in the definition. Although, Augustine is being critical, he is telegraphing a little...we know that truth, for Augustine, is not something sensually found. This parallels the Academician position. The senses or the information the senses receive are tricky--this anticipates modern phenomenological skepticism in terms of our limited senses of the light spectrum or even the theological problem of false believers--something Piers Plowman explores in the first Passus) and can't be trusted. The problem is the Academicians use this kind of thinking to withhold decision making (though they do search for the truth--it is just too hidden). Augustine will presumably deviate from their outcomes.

Augustine's mother hustles them off to lunch at this point. (I like these domestic break-ins; it somehow humanizes Augustine's text).

Augustine goes on to distinguish between the Old and New Academicians. The Old Academicians (O.A.) are marked by their belief that they could avoid error as long as they were not hasty to assent. The New Academicians (N.A.) believe in things that are "truthlike" though they make no claim to know the truth itself. So, for Augustine the shades of difference lie in the claim of either not being able to find the truth and withholding as much as possible (O.A.) and those merely following the specter of the truth (N.A.).

Augustine then turns on Licentius. Licentius apologizes for connecting the happy life with the search for the truth. Licentius seems to side with the New Academicians--the view of the Academicians is plausible, thus, truthlike (oh, how Augustine baits his interlocutors).

So, Augustine sets forth this question: if a man unacquainted with your father were to see your brother and assert that he is like your father, won't he seem to you to be crazy or simple-minded? The issue in this question is about perception and plausibility. Licentius retorts that if they had heard by hearsay of this similarity, this would not be an outrageous assertion. Augustine then tries a counterexample in which a boy shows up, the interlocutor says he looks like his father, admits he doesn't know the father--everyone would then think this assertion is absurd. These examples are to illustrate that the Academicians should be laughed at because this is like their version of "truthlike," they make no claim to the truth, only a simulacrum. And, apparently, a simulacrum based, at best, on speculation. Like the diviner, there is a great risk in being wrong (for example, the brother might looks like the father, but, then again, he may not).

Finally, Trygetius returns! He thinks Augustine's example is facetious. The Academicians arrive at being truthlike through reasoning, not speculation. Augustine, of course rebuts, how can anything be like something you do not know?

Alypius returns and Trygetius and Licentius ask him to take over the debate. Augustine has indicated that Alypius makes him nervous (maybe because he is a better debated?) but Augustine relaunches the debate and makes it bigger. Augustine is concerned that the way of the Academicians has prevented him from seeking the truth. Augustine resets the debate: the position of the Academicians is that it is plausible the truth cannot be found, while Augustine thinks it is possible that it can be.

Alypius agrees to continue in this fashion if Augustine agrees that this debate is more than a semantic argument over "plausibility" and "truthlike." Augustine agrees to this and as the sun is setting they agree to continue the next day.