Eclectic School of Ancient Greek Philosophy Texts

The term eclectic comes from the Greek ἐκλέγειν, "to pick out" or "to choose". As a named philosophical approach it emerged in the late second and early third century CE, primarily in Alexandria, and the biographer Diogenes Laertius attributes the founding of an "eclectic school" to Potamo of Alexandria, who selected tenets from all the existing sects. The development came amid sharpening conflict between the philosophical schools and the rise of Christianity.

Eclecticism is the practice of choosing and combining doctrines from different schools without adopting any single system in full. The eclectic philosopher holds to what seems true or well-founded by individual reason and experience, and often leaves the contradictions between the borrowed doctrines unresolved. The method differs from syncretism, which actively reconciles different systems into a new whole. Eclecticism frequently followed periods of scepticism: faced with the suspension of judgement, an eclectic could build a broad framework from the principles of schools such as Platonism, Stoicism, and Aristotelianism, enough to live by.

Potamo of Alexandria, of the early 3rd century CE, is the formal founder of the named school. Earlier figures practised the method without the name: Antiochus of Ascalon (c. 130–68 BCE) brought an eclectic approach to the Platonic Academy, blending Stoic and Aristotelian elements into Platonism, and Cicero (106–43 BCE) exemplified the method in his philosophical writings. Among the Roman Stoics, Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE), Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE), and Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) incorporated Platonic and other doctrines into their thought. In the modern era Victor Cousin (1792–1867) made eclecticism the banner of his 19th-century French school, which cast it as a historical synthesis of sense-based philosophy and idealism.

From the 2nd century BCE to the 3rd century CE many Greco-Roman philosophers worked with eclectic methods, though the label was at times applied as a slur to unoriginal combinations. Under the Roman Empire the approach suited Roman practical interests, often joining dominant Stoic ethics to elements from other schools. The later Neoplatonic school of Alexandria is sometimes, though inexactly, called eclectic. The method left traces in nineteenth-century France and in Brazil.