The Athenian Academy began with that Socratic insight that in order to see the Final End, we must purify our lives through a philosophical form of life. This produced some of the greatest intellectual achievements of humanity. Yet the Athenian Academy ended skeptically with dogged disputes in which men eschewed truth to partake of “probabilities.”
About these late Academic Skeptics, St. Augustine asked: Why do they live a life of disputation at all? Why enter into endless dogged disputes if the end result is mere probabilities rather than truth and wisdom leading to happiness? He concluded that the Skeptics were actually so prideful about never falling into error that they end up betraying truth, and did not become wise.
