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( Speusippus)
Speusippus (407 BC-339 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher. Speusippus was Plato's nephew by his sister Potone. After Plato's death, Speusippus inherited the Academy and remained its head for the next eight years. However, following a stroke, he passed the chair to Xenocrates. Although the successor to Plato in the Academy, he frequently diverged from Plato's teachings. He rejected Plato's Theory of Forms, and whereas Plato had identified the Good with the ultimate principle, Speusippus maintained that the Good was merely secondary. He also argued that it is impossible to have satisfactory knowledge of any thing without knowing all the differences by which it is separated from everything else. Speusippus was a native of Athens, and the son of Eurymedon and Potone, a sister of Plato.[1] We hear nothing of his life until the time when he accompanied his uncle Plato on his third journey to Syracuse, where he displayed considerable ability and prudence, especially in his amicable relations with Dion.[2] His moral worth is recognised even by Timon, though only that he may heap the more unsparing ridicule on his intellect.[3] The report about his sudden fits of anger, his greed, and his debauchery, are probably derived from a very impure source Athenaeus[4] and Diogenes Laërtius[5] can adduce as authority for them scarcely anything more than some abuse in certain letters of Dionysius the Younger, who was banished by Dion, with the cooperation of Speusippus. Having been selected by Plato as his successor as the leader (scholarch) of the Academy, he was at the head of the school for only eight years (347-339 BC.). He died, it appears, of a lingering paralytic illness,[6] presumably a stroke. He was succeeded as the head of the school by Xenocrates. Speusippus was interested in bringing together those things which were similar in their philosophical treatment,[6] and to the derivation, and laying down, of the ideas of genera and species for he was interested in what the various sciences had in common, and how they might be connected.[7] Thus he furthered the threefold division of philosophy into Dialectics, Ethics, and Physics, for which Plato had laid the foundation, without losing sight of the mutual connection of these three branches of philosophy. For he maintained that noone could arrive at a complete definition who did not know all the differences by which a thing which was to be defined was separated from the rest.[8]
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