An academy (Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of higher learning, research, or
honorary membership. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of
Athena, the goddess of wisdom, north of Athens.
The original Academy
Before the Akademia was a school, and even before Cimon enclosed its precincts with a
wall (Plutarch Life of Cimon xiii:7), it contained a sacred grove of olive trees
dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, outside the city
walls of ancient Athens (Thucydides ii:34). The archaic name
for the site was Hekademia, which by classical times evolved into Akademia and was explained, at least as early as
the beginning of the 6th century BC, by linking it to an Athenian hero, a legendary "Akademos".
The site of the Academy was sacred to Athena and other immortals; it had sheltered her
religious cult since the Bronze Age, a cult that was perhaps also associated with the
hero-gods the Dioscuri (Castor and
Polydeukes), for the hero Akademos associated with the site was credited with revealing to the Divine Twins where
Theseus had hidden Helen. Out of respect for its long tradition
and the association with the Dioskouri, the Spartans would not ravage these original "groves of
Academe" when they invaded Attica (Plutarch, Life of Theseus xxxii), a piety not shared by the Roman Sulla, who axed the sacred olive trees of Athene in 86 BC to build
siege engines.
Among the religious observations that took place at the Akademeia was a torchlit night race from altars within the city to
Promtheus' altar in the Akademeia. Funeral games also took place in the area as well as a Dionysiac procession from Athens to the
Hekademeia and then back to the polis (Paus. i 29.2, 30.2; Plut. Vit. Sol. i 7). The road to Akademeia was lined with the
gravestones of Athenians.
Plato's immediate successors as "scholarch" of the Academy were Speusippus
(347-339 BC), Xenocrates
(339-314 BC), Polemon (314-269 BC), Crates (ca. 269-266 BC), and
Arcesilaus (ca. 266-240 BC). Later scholarchs include
Lacydes of Cyrene, Carneades, Clitomachus, and Philo of Larissa ("the last
undisputed head of the Academy"[1]).[2] Other notable members of the Academy include Aristotle, Heraclides Ponticus, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Philip of Opus, Crantor, and Antiochus of Ascalon.
The Platonic Academy may be compared to Aristotle's own creation, the Lyceum.
The revived Neoplatonic Academy of Late Antiquity
See detailed article End of Hellenic Religion
After a lapse during the early Roman occupation, the Academy was refounded (Cameron 1965) as a new institution of some
outstanding Platonists of late antiquity who called themselves "successors" (diadochoi,
but of Plato) and presented themselves as an uninterrupted tradition reaching back to Plato. However, there cannot have actually
been any geographical, institutional, economic or personal continuity
with the original Academy in the new organizational entity (Bechtle).
The last "Greek" philosophers of the revived Academy in the 6th century were drawn from various parts of the Hellenistic cultural world and suggest the broad syncretism
of the common culture (see koine): Five of the seven Academy philosophers mentioned
by Agathias were Syriac in their cultural origin: Hermias and Diogenes (both from
Phoenicia), Isidorus of Gaza, Damascius of Syria, Iamblichus of Coele-Syria and perhaps even Simplicius of Cilicia (Thiele).
The emperor Justinian closed the school in AD
529, a date that is often cited as the end of Antiquity. According to the sole witness, the historian Agathias,
its remaining members looked for protection under the rule of Sassanid king
Khosrau I in his capital at Ctesiphon, carrying with them
precious scrolls of literature and philosophy, and to a lesser degree of science. After a peace treaty between the Persian and
the Byzantine empire in 532 guaranteed their personal security (an early document in the history of freedom of religion), some members found sanctuary in the pagan
stronghold of Harran, near Edessa. One of the last
leading figures of this group was Simplicius, a pupil of Damascius, the last head of the Athenian school. The students of the
Academy-in-exile, an authentic and important Neoplatonic school surviving at least until the 10th century, contributed to the
Islamic preservation of Greek science and medicine, when Islamic forces took the area in
the 7th century (Thiele). One of the earliest academies established in the east was the 7th
century Academy of Gundishapur in Sassanid Persia.
Raphael painted a famous fresco depicting "The School of Athens" in the 16th century.
The site of the Academy was rediscovered in the 20th century; considerable excavation
has been accomplished and visiting the site is free. It is located in modern Akadimia
Platonos. The Church of St. Triton on Kolokynthou Street, Athens, occupies the southern corner of the Academy, confirmed
in 1966 by the discovery of a boundary stone dated to 500 BC.
Modern use of the term academy
Due to the tradition of intellectual brilliance associated with this institution, many groups have chosen to use the word
"Academy" in their name.
During the Florentine Renaissance, Cosimo de'
Medici took a personal interest in the new Platonic Academy that he determined to re-establish in 1439, centered on the
marvellous promise shown by Marsilio Ficino, scarcely more than a lad. Cosimo had been
inspired by the arrival at the otherwise ineffective Council of Florence of
Gemistos Plethon, who seemed like a Plato reborn to the Florentine intellectuals. In
1462 Cosimo gave Ficino a villa at Careggi for the Academy's use, situated where
Cosimo could descry it from his own villa. The Renaissance drew potent intellectual and spiritual strength from the academy at
Careggi. During the course of the following century many Italian cities established an Academy, of which the oldest survivor is
the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome, which became a national academy for a reunited
Italy. Other national academies include the Académie Française; the Royal Academy of the United Kingdom; the International Academy of Science; the United States Military Academy at West
Point, New York; the United States Naval
Academy; United States Air Force Academy; and the
Australian Defence Force Academy. In emulation of the military
academies, police in the United States are trained in police academies. The
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents the
annual Academy awards.
A fundamental feature of academic discipline in those academies that were training-schools for artists was regular practice in
making accurate drawings from antiquities, or from casts of antiquities, on the one hand, and on the other, in deriving
inspiration from the other fount, the human form. Students assembled in sessions drawing the draped and undraped human form, and
such drawings, which survive in the tens of thousands from the 17th through the 19th century, are termed
académies.
In the early 19th century "academy" took the connotations that "gymnasium" was
acquiring in German-speaking lands, of school that was less advanced than a college (for which it might prepare students) but
considerably more than elementary. An early example are the two academies founded at Andover and Phillips Exeter Academy. Amherst Academy
expanded with time to form Amherst College.
Mozart organized public subscription performances of his music in Vienna in
the 1780s and 1790s, he called the concerts "academies." This usage in musical terms survives in
the concert orchestra Academy of St Martin in the Fields and in the
Brixton Academy, a concert hall in Brixton, South London.
Academies proliferated in the 20th century until even a three-week series of lectures and discussions would be termed an
"academy." In addition, the generic term "the academy" is sometimes used to refer to all of academia, which is sometimes considered a global successor to the Academy of Athens.
Academies overseeing universities
In some countries, notably France, academic councils called Academies are responsible for supervising all aspects of
University education in a given region. Universities are answerable to their Academy, and the Academies are answerable to the
Ministry of Education. (However private Universities are independent of the state and therefore independent of the Academies).
The French Academy regions are similar to, but not identical to, the standard French administrative regions.
This is not an exclusive use of the word "Academy" in France, note especially Académie
Française.
Honorary academies
See the Académie Française and its many emulators among national honorary
academies of strictly limited membership.
Research academies
In Imperial Russia and Soviet Union the term
"academy", or Academy of Sciences was reserved to denote a state research
establishment, see Russian Academy of Sciences. The latter one still exists
in Russia, although other types of academies (study and honorary) appeared as well.
United Kingdom school type
As a British school type, privately funded Academies first became popular in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
At this time the offer of a place at an English public school and university generally required conformity to the
Church of England; the Academies or Dissenting Academies provided an
alternative for those with different religious views, called nonconformists.
University College London (UCL) was founded in the early nineteenth century
as the first publicly funded English university to admit anyone regardless of religious adherence; and the Test and Corporation
Acts that had imposed a wide range of restrictions on citizens who were not in conformity to the Church of England, were also
abolished at about that date.
Recently Academies have been reintroduced. Today they are a type of secondary
school - they no longer teach up to university degree level - and unlike their predecessors are only partly privately sponsored
and independent, being partly paid for and controlled by the state. They have been introduced in the early years of the 21st
century and though mainly state funded have a significant measure of administrative autonomy. Some of the early ones were briefly
known as "City Academies". In February 2007, the National Audit Office published a report about the performance of the first
academies (www.nao.org.uk/publications/nao_reports/06-07/0607254.pdf).
In Scotland, the designation "Academy" usually refers to a state secondary school, with over
a quarter of these schools using that title as the equivalent of the term "High School" used elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
Notes
- ^ Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996), s.v. "Philon of
Larissa."
- ^ See the table in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.
53-54.
References
- Alan Cameron, "The last days of the Academy at Athens," in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society vol 195
(n.s. 15), 1969, pp 7-29.
- Gerald Bechtle, Bryn Mawr
Classical Review of Rainer Thiel, Simplikios und das Ende der neuplatonischen Schule in Athen. Stuttgart, 1999 (in
English).
- John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, Göttingen 1978.
- Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New
Haven: Yale University Press)
External links
Plato's Academy
Modern institutions
See also
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