School · 341 BCE–180 CE
Hellenistic schools
Schools founded or transformed after Alexander's conquests made philosophy a way of life as well as a field of argument, debating the criteria of truth, emotion, pleasure, duty, and politics.
Shared questions
- How can philosophical argument and practice secure a free, tranquil, or virtuous life?
Internal disagreements
- Whether happiness rests on virtue alone, measured pleasure, skeptical inquiry, or withdrawal from assent.
Key texts
- Lives of the Eminent Philosophers — Diogenes Laertius is the single most important source for the Hellenistic schools, and an uneven one.
- On Ends · 45 BCE — Cicero sets the Epicurean, Stoic and Academic accounts of the highest good against one another.