Note 44 — Chapter III · * OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES.
Reading edition
The same charge is put by Cicero into the mouth of Lucullus against the Academics: “Similiter vos (Academici) quum perturbare, ut illi” (the Gracchi and others) “rempublicam, sic vos philosophiam, benè jam constitutam velitis.… Tum exortus est, ut in optimâ republicâ Tib. Gracchus, qui otium perturbaret, sic Arcesilas, qui constitutam philosophiam everteret” (Acad. Prior, ii. 5, 14-15).
Even in the liberal and comprehensive history of the Greek philosophy by Zeller (vol. ii. p. 187, ed. 2nd), respecting Eukleides’ and the Megarians; — “Dagegen bot der Streit gegen die geltenden Meinungen dem Scharfsinn, der Rechthaberei, und dem wissenschaftlichen Ehrgeiz, ein unerschöpfliches Feld dar, welches denn auch die Megarischen Philosophen rüstig ausbeuteten.”
If by “die geltenden Meinungen” Zeller means the common sense of the day that is, the opinions and beliefs current among the ἰδιῶται, the working, enjoying, non-theorising public — it is very true that the Megaric philosophers contended against them: but Sokrates and Plato contended against them quite as much: we see this in the Platonic Apology, Gorgias, Republic, Timæus, Parmenidês, &c.
If, on the other hand, by “die geltenden Meinungen” Zeller means any philosophical or logical theories generally or universally admitted by thinking men as valid, the answer is that there were none such in the fourth and third centuries B.C. Various eminent speculative individuals were labouring to construct such theories, each in his own way, and each with a certain congregation of partisans; but established theory there was none. Nor can any theory (whether accepted or not) be firm or trustworthy, unless it be exposed to the continued thrusts of the negative weapon, searching out its vulnerable points. We know of the Megarics only what they furnished towards that negative testing; without which, however, — as we may learn from Plato and Aristotle themselves, — the true value of the affirmative defences can never be measured.