摘要：Whereas contemporary scholars in the social sciences and humanities often envision themselves as exceptionally, if not uniquely, attentive to the problematics of human knowing and acting, the competing philosophies of totalizing skepticism, sensate materialism, divine worldviews, and pragmatist realism have a much more enduring presence in Western social thought. Plato (c420-348BCE) introduces a broad array of philosophic standpoints (theological, idealist, skepticist, materialist, and pragmatist) in his texts and Aristotle (c384-322BCE) addresses human knowing and acting in more distinctively secular, pluralist terms. Still, more scholarly considerations of human knowing and acting would be comparatively neglected by Cicero's time and even more so after his era. Although much overlooked by those in the human sciences, Cicero's Academica re-engages a number of highly consequential issues pertaining to the matter of human knowing and acting. Likewise, whereas Christian theologians often were hostile to heathen (relativist, materialist, pragmatist) philosophic viewpoints, important residues of these approaches would remain part of the Western intellectual tradition though Augustine's (c354-430 BCE) works
