Pyrrhonism is an Ancient Greek school of philosophical skepticism which rejects dogma and advocates the suspension of judgement over the truth of all beliefs. It was founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE, and said to have been inspired by the teachings of Pyrrho and Timon of Phlius in the fourth century BCE.
Pyrrhonism is best known today through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, writing in the late second century or early third century CE.
History
Pyrrhonism is named after Pyrrho of Elis, a Greek
philosopher in the 4th century BCE who was credited by the later Pyrrhonists with forming the first comprehensive school of
skepticism. However, ancient testimony about the philosophical beliefs of the historical Pyrrho is minimal, and often contradictory:
his teachings were recorded by his student Timon of Phlius, but those works have been lost, and only survive in fragments quoted by later authors, and based on testimonies of later authors such as
Cicero. Pyrrho's own philosophy as recorded by Timon may have been much more dogmatic than that of the later school who bore his name.
While Pyrrhonism would become the dominant form of skepticism in the early Roman period, in the Hellenistic period, the
Platonic Academy was the primary advocate of skepticism until the mid-first century BCE, when Pyrrhonism as a philosophical school was founded by Aenesidemus.
[Stéphane Marchand, "Sextus Empiricus' Style Of Writing", in New Essays on Ancient Pyrrhonism, p 113]
Philosophy
The goal of Pyrrhonism is
ataraxia,
[
] an untroubled and tranquil condition of soul that results from a suspension of judgement, a mental rest owing to which we neither deny nor affirm anything.
Pyrrhonists dispute that the dogmatists – which includes all of Pyrrhonism's rival philosophies – claim to have found truth regarding non-evident matters, and that these opinions about non-evident matters (i.e., dogma) are what prevent one from attaining eudaimonia. For any of these dogmas, a Pyrrhonist makes arguments for and against such that the matter cannot be concluded, thus suspending judgement, and thereby inducing ataraxia.
Pyrrhonists can be subdivided into those who are ephectic (engaged in suspension of judgment), aporetic (engaged in refutation)
Modes
Although Pyrrhonism's objective is ataraxia, it is best known for its
Epistemology arguments. The core practice is through setting argument against argument. To aid in this, the Pyrrhonist philosophers
Aenesidemus and Agrippa developed sets of stock arguments known as "modes" or "tropes."
The ten modes of Aenesidemus
Aenesidemus is considered the creator of
the ten tropes of Aenesidemus (also known as
the ten modes of Aenesidemus)—although whether he invented the tropes or just systematized them from prior Pyrrhonist works is unknown. The tropes represent reasons for suspension of judgment. These are as follows:
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Different animals manifest different modes of perception;
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Similar differences are seen among individual men;
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For the same man, information perceived with the senses is self-contradictory
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Furthermore, it varies from time to time with physical changes
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In addition, this data differs according to local relations
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Objects are known only indirectly through the medium of air, moisture, etc.
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These objects are in a condition of perpetual change in colour, temperature, size and motion
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All perceptions are relative and interact one upon another
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Our impressions become less critical through repetition and custom
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All men are brought up with different beliefs, under different laws and social conditions
According to Sextus, superordinate to these ten modes stand three other modes: that based on the subject who judges (modes 1, 2, 3 & 4), that based on the object judged (modes 7 & 10), that based on both subject who judges and object judged (modes 5, 6, 8 & 9), and superordinate to these three modes is the mode of relation.
[Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Trans. R.G. Bury, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1933, pp. 25–27]
The five modes of Agrippa
These "tropes" or "modes" are given by
Sextus Empiricus in his
Outlines of Pyrrhonism. According to Sextus, they are attributed only "to the more recent skeptics" and it is by Diogenes Laërtius that we attribute them to Agrippa.
[Diogenes Laërtius, ix.] The
five tropes of Agrippa are:
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Dissent – The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among philosophers and people in general.
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Regress argument – All proof rests on matters themselves in need of proof, and so on to infinity.
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Relativism – All things are changed as their relations become changed, or, as we look upon them from different points of view.
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Presupposition – The truth asserted is based on an unsupported assumption.
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Circularity – The truth asserted involves a circularity of proofs.
According to the mode deriving from dispute, we find that undecidable dissension about the matter proposed has come about both in ordinary life and among philosophers. Because of this we are not able to choose or to rule out anything, and we end up with suspension of judgement. In the mode deriving from infinite regress, we say that what is brought forward as a source of conviction for the matter proposed itself needs another such source, which itself needs another, and so ad infinitum, so that we have no point from which to begin to establish anything, and suspension of judgement follows. In the mode deriving from relativity, as we said above, the existing object appears to be such-and-such relative to the subject judging and to the things observed together with it, but we suspend judgement on what it is like in its nature. We have the mode from hypothesis when the Dogmatists, being thrown back ad infinitum, begin from something which they do not establish but claim to assume simply and without proof in virtue of a concession. The reciprocal mode occurs when what ought to be confirmatory of the object under investigation needs to be made convincing by the object under investigation; then, being unable to take either in order to establish the other, we suspend judgement about both.[Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhōneioi hypotypōseis i., from Annas, J., Outlines of Scepticism Cambridge University Press. (2000).]
With reference to these five tropes, that the first and third are a short summary of the earlier Ten Modes of Aenesidemus.[Brochard, V., The Greek Skeptics.]
Criteria of action
Pyrrhonist decision making is made according to what the Pyrrhonists describe as the
criteria of action holding to the
phantasiai, without beliefs in accord with the ordinary regimen of life based on:
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the guidance of nature, by which we are naturally capable of sensation and thought
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the compulsion of the Pathos by which hunger drives us to food and thirst makes us drink
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the handing down of customs and laws by which we accept that piety in the conduct of life is good and impiety bad
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instruction in techne
[Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I Chapter 11 Section 23]
Skeptic sayings
The Pyrrhonists devised several sayings (Greek ΦΩΝΩΝ) to help practitioners bring their minds to suspend judgment.
[Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I Chapter 18] Among these are:
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Not more, nothing more (a saying attributed to Democritus
[Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book II Chapter 30])
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Non-assertion ( aphasia)
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Perhaps, it is possible, maybe
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I withhold assent
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I determine nothing (Montaigne created a variant of this as his own personal motto, "Que sais-je?" – "what do I know?")
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Everything is indeterminate
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Everything is acatalepsy
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I do not apprehend
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To every argument an equal argument is opposed
Texts
Except for the works of
Sextus Empiricus, the texts of ancient Pyrrhonism have been lost. There is a summary of the
Pyrrhonian Discourses by
Aenesidemus, preserved by Photius, and a brief summary of Pyrrho's teaching by Aristocles, quoting Pyrrho's student Timon preserved by
Eusebius:
'The things themselves are equally indifferent, and unstable, and indeterminate, and therefore neither our senses nor our opinions are either true or false. For this reason then we must not trust them, but be without opinions, and without bias, and without wavering, saying of every single thing that it no more is than is not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not.
Influence
In Ancient Greek philosophy
Pyrrhonism is often contrasted with Academic skepticism, a similar but distinct form of Hellenistic philosophical skepticism.
While early Academic skepticism was influenced in part by Pyrrho, it grew more and more dogmatic until
Aenesidemus broke with the Academics to revive Pyrrhonism in the first century BCE, denouncing the Academy as "Stoics fighting against Stoics. Some later Pyrrhonists, such as
Sextus Empiricus, go so far as to claim that Pyrrhonists are the only real skeptics, dividing all philosophy into the dogmatists, the Academics, and the skeptics.
[Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism] Dogmatists claim to have knowledge, Academic skeptics claim that
acatalepsy, while Pyrrhonists assent to neither proposition, suspending judgment on both.
The second century Roman historian
Aulus Gellius describes the distinction as "...the Academics apprehend (in some sense) the very fact that nothing can be apprehended, and they determine (in some sense) that nothing can be determined, whereas the Pyrrhonists assert that not even that seems to be true, since nothing seems to be true.
"
Sextus Empiricus also said that the Pyrrhonist school influenced and had substantial overlap with the Empiric school of medicine, but that Pyrrhonism had more in common with the Methodic school in that it "follows the appearances and takes from these whatever seems expedient."[Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.237, trans. Etheridge (Scepticism, Man, and God, Wesleyan University Press, 1964, p. 98).]
Although Julian the Philosopher[ Epistles lxxxix 301C] mentions that Pyrrhonism had died out at the time of his writings, other writers mention the existence of later Pyrrhonists. Pseudo-Clement, writing around the same time (-320 CE) mentions Pyrrhonists in his Homilies[Pseudo-Clement, Homilies, 13.7] and Agathias even reports a Pyrrhonist named Uranius as late as the middle of the 6th century CE.[Agathias II 29-32, cited in Jonathan Barnes, Mantissa 2015 p. 652]
Similarities between Pyrrhonism and Indian philosophy
A number of similarities have been noted between the Pyrrhonist works of Sextus Empiricius and that of
Nagarjuna, the
Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher from the 2nd or 3rd century CE.
[Conze, Edward. Buddhist Philosophy and Its European Parallels. Philosophy East and West 13, p.9-23, no.1, January 1963. University press of Hawaii.] Buddhist philosopher
Jan Westerhoff says "many of Nāgārjuna's arguments concerning causation bear strong similarities to classical sceptical arguments as presented in the third book of Sextus Empiricus's
Outlines of Pyrrhonism,"
[Jan Westerhoff Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction 2009 p93] and
Thomas McEvilley suspects that Nagarjuna may have been influenced by Greek Pyrrhonist texts imported into India.
[Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought 2002 pp499-505] McEvilley argues for mutual iteration in the
Buddhist logic between Pyrrhonism and
Madhyamika:
An extraordinary similarity, that has long been noticed, between Pyrrhonism and Mādhyamaka is the formula known in connection with Buddhism as the fourfold negation ( Catuṣkoṭi) and which in Pyrrhonic form might be called the fourfold indeterminacy.[, p.495]
McEvilley also notes a correspondence between the Pyrrhonist and Madhyamaka views about truth, comparing Sextus' account
[Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, II.14–18; Anthologia Palatina (Palatine Anthology), VII. 29–35, and elsewhere] of two criteria regarding truth, one which judges between reality and unreality, and another which we use as a guide in everyday life. By the first criteria, nothing is either true or false, but by the second, information from the senses may be considered either true or false for practical purposes. As Edward Conze
[Conze 1959, pp. 140–141] has noted, this is similar to the Madhyamika Two Truths doctrine, a distinction between "Absolute truth" (
paramārthasatya), "the knowledge of the real as it is without any distortion,"
[Conze (1959: p. 244)] and "Truth so-called" (
saṃvṛti satya), "truth as conventionally believed in common parlance.
[, p. 474]
Other similarities between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism include a version of the tetralemma among the Pyrrhonist maxims, and more significantly, the idea of suspension of judgement and how that can lead to peace and liberation; ataraxia in Pyrrhonism and nirvāṇa in Buddhism.[Sextus Empricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book 1, Section 19]
Some scholars have also looked farther back, to determine if any earlier Indian philosophy have had an influence on Pyrrho. Diogenes Laërtius' biography of Pyrrho reports that Pyrrho traveled with Alexander the Great's army to India and incorporated what he learned from the Gymnosophists and the Magi that he met in his travels into his philosophical system.[Adrian Kuzminski, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism 2008] Christopher I. Beckwith
However, other scholars, such as Stephen Batchelor[Stephen Batchelor "Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's encounter with early Buddhism in central Asia", Contemporary Buddhism, 2016, pp 195-215] and Charles Goodman[Charles Goodman, "Neither Scythian nor Greek: A Response to Beckwith's Greek Buddha and Kuzminski's "Early Buddhism Reconsidered"", Philosophy East and West, University of Hawai'i Press Volume 68, Number 3, July 2018 pp. 984-1006] question Beckwith's conclusions about the degree of Buddhist influence on Pyrrho. Conversely, while critical of Beckwith's ideas, Kuzminsky sees credibility in the hypothesis that Pyrrho was influenced by Buddhism, even if it cannot be safely ascertained with our current information.
Ajñana, which upheld radical skepticism, may have been a more powerful influence on Pyrrho than Buddhism. The Buddhists referred to Ajñana's adherents as Amarāvikkhepikas or "eel-wrigglers", due to their refusal to commit to a single doctrine.
Modern
The recovery and publication of the works of Sextus Empiricus, particularly a widely influential translation by
Henri Estienne published in 1562,
ignited a revival of interest in Pyrrhonism.
Philosophers of the time used his works to source their arguments on how to deal with the religious issues of their day. Major philosophers such as Michel de Montaigne,
Marin Mersenne, and
Pierre Gassendi later drew on the model of Pyrrhonism outlined in Sextus Empiricus' works for their own arguments. This resurgence of Pyrrhonism has sometimes been called the beginning of modern philosophy.
adopted the image of a balance scale for his motto,
[Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer 2011 p 127 ] which became a modern symbol of Pyrrhonism.
It has also been suggested that Pyrrhonism provided the skeptical underpinnings that René Descartes drew from in developing his influential method of
Cartesian doubt and the associated turn of early modern philosophy towards
epistemology.
In the 18th century,
David Hume was also considerably influenced by Pyrrhonism, using "Pyrrhonism" as a synonym for "skepticism."
[Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, page 7, section 23.].
Friedrich Nietzsche, however, criticized the "ephectics" of the Pyrrhonists as a flaw of early philosophers, whom he characterized as "shy little blunderers and milquetoasts with crooked legs" prone to overindulging "his doubting drive, his negating drive, his wait-and-see ('ephectic') drive, his analytical drive, his exploring, searching, venturing drive, his comparing, balancing drive, his will to neutrality and objectivity, his will to every
sine ira et studio: have we already grasped that for the longest time they all went against the first demands of
morality and
conscience?"
Contemporary
The term "neo-Pyrrhonism" is used to refer to modern Pyrrhonists such as
Benson Mates and
Robert Fogelin.
[Michael Williams, "Fogelin's Neo-Pyrrhonism", International Journal of Philosophical Studies Volume 7, Issue 2, 1999, p141]
See also
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Apophasis
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Apophatic theology
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Cognitive closure (philosophy)
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Cratylism
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De Docta Ignorantia
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Defeatism
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Quietism
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Buddhism and the Roman world
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Greco-Buddhism
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Ancient Greece–Ancient India relations
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E-Prime
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Trivialism
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The Hedgehog and the Fox
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List of unsolved problems in philosophy
Notes
External links
