Pyrrhonian skepticism
320 BCE – 200 c.
For every argument there is an equal one on the other side, so suspend judgement — and find that peace of mind arrives as a side effect rather than a goal.
- Active
- 320 BCE – 200
- Where
- Elis, and later Alexandria
- Status
- extinct as a school, permanent as a problem
- Tradition
- Greek
The claim
Oppose every appearance and every judgement with an equally weighty one. The result is equipollence, which forces suspension of judgement, which is unexpectedly followed by tranquillity.
What it held
Pyrrhonism is not the claim that nothing can be known — that would be a dogma, and the whole point is to hold none. It is a practice. Confronted with any assertion, the sceptic assembles the opposing case until the two are equal in weight, at which point assent becomes impossible and simply stops.
Sextus records the modes by which this is done: the same tower looks round from a distance and square from close, the same honey is sweet to one and bitter to another, and no criterion for settling such disputes can be offered without either assuming what it sets out to prove or requiring another criterion behind it. That last move — the regress — is the sceptic's most durable weapon.
What makes it liveable is the distinction between how things appear and how they are. The sceptic does not deny that honey seems sweet; he declines to say that it is. Life continues by following appearances, custom and instruction, without commitment about the reality behind them.
How it argued
The ten modes of Aenesidemus and the five of Agrippa: systematic procedures for generating equal and opposite arguments until judgement suspends itself.
What it was arguing against
Every dogmatic school at once, and specifically the Stoic claim that some impressions carry the mark of their own truth.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether a sceptic can live his scepticism, which is the standing objection. Whether Pyrrhonism differs meaningfully from Academic scepticism, which the Pyrrhonists insisted it did — they accused the Academy of dogmatically asserting that nothing can be known.
Common misconceptions
That the sceptic doubts everything and is therefore paralysed. The sceptic follows appearances quite normally; what is suspended is the further claim about how things really are. And tranquillity is not the aim — Sextus is explicit that it arrives unsought, like a shadow.
How it began
Pyrrho travelled to India with Alexander's army and met the gymnosophists, and ancient sources connect his equanimity to that encounter. He wrote nothing.
What became of it
The line ends with Sextus Empiricus around 200 CE. His works were barely read for over a millennium and then, printed in Latin in 1562, detonated across European philosophy.
Lasting influence
Montaigne, then Descartes, whose entire method starts from taking the sceptical challenge seriously. Hume's problem of induction is an Agrippan mode in modern dress. The regress problem is still the central issue in epistemology.
Why it still matters
Every contemporary account of justification has to answer Agrippa's trilemma: infinite regress, circle, or unsupported assumption. Nobody has a comfortable answer.
Put another way
A pair of scales that will not settle, and a person who stops trying to make them.
Where to start
Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I. It is orderly, unrhetorical and much easier than its reputation.
The surprising bit
Sextus was a practising physician, and his scepticism has a bedside manner: he presents the modes as remedies, to be applied in the strength the patient's dogmatism requires.
In their own words
To every argument an equal argument is opposed.
Tranquillity followed suspension of judgement as a shadow follows a body.
Connections
- Opposed by
- Early Stoicism, Epicureanism
- Parallel to
- Academic Skepticism
The verdict
The most successful philosophical time bomb ever left in a library.