Philosophical Absurdities in the History of Philosophy Cicero’s Nihil tam absurde, Varro’s tam infandum, and Their Argumentative Uses

Abstract

The article traces the reception history of Cicero’s celebrated dictum ‘nothing can be said so absurdly that it has not been said by some philosopher’ (nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum, De divinatione II.119), alongside its Varronian counterpart preserved in the Eumenides fragment, which compares philosophical doctrines to the fevered dreams of the sick. The study follows these intertwined topoi from their original contexts in Academic scepticism and Menippean satire through two millennia of transmission and transformation. The analysis reveals how successive intellectual cultures repurposed these ancient quips to serve radically divergent ends: from delegitimating philosophy in favour of Christian revelation to justifying a methodological break with the scholastic tradition; from defending common sense against speculative metaphysics to policing the boundaries between knowledge and intellectual overreach. The article builds on Günter Gawlick’s foundational studies and extends the scope of analysis by incorporating a substantially wider range of authors, traditions, and disciplinary contexts, many of which have received little or no sustained attention in previous scholarship. It concludes by arguing that any philosophy adequate to contemporary challenges should acknowledge its intellectual debts rather than succumb to the perennial temptation to pronounce all predecessors absurd.

History: Absurdity (History), Cicero, Nachleben, Philosophical Microhistory, Scepticism