Pyrrhonism
Part of a series on |
Pyrrhonism |
---|
Philosophy portal |
Pyrrhonism is an Ancient Greek school of
History
Pyrrhonism is named after
Philosophy
The goal of Pyrrhonism is ataraxia,[5] 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)[6] or zetetic (engaged in seeking).[7] An ephectic merely suspends judgment on a matter, "balancing perceptions and thoughts against one another,"[8] It is a less aggressive form of skepticism, in that sometimes "suspension of judgment evidently just happens to the sceptic".[9] An aporetic skeptic, in contrast, works more actively towards their goal, engaging in the refutation of arguments in favor of various possible beliefs in order to reach aporia, an impasse, or state of perplexity,[10] which leads to suspension of judgement.[9] Finally, the zetetic claims to be continually searching for the truth but to have thus far been unable to find it, and thus continues to suspend belief while also searching for reason to cease the suspension of belief.
Modes
Although Pyrrhonism's objective is ataraxia, it is best known for its epistemological 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:[11]
- Different animals manifest different modes of perception;
- Similar differences are seen among individual men;
- For the same man, information perceived with the senses is self-contradictory
- Furthermore, it varies from time to time with physical changes
- In addition, this data differs according to local relations
- Objects are known only indirectly through the medium of air, moisture, etc.
- These objects are in a condition of perpetual change in colour, temperature, size and motion
- All perceptions are relative and interact one upon another
- Our impressions become less critical through repetition and custom
- 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.[12]
The five modes of Agrippa
These "tropes" or "modes" are given by
The five tropes of Agrippa are:- Dissent – The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among philosophers and people in general.
- Infinite regress– All proof rests on matters themselves in need of proof, and so on to infinity.
- Relation – All things are changed as their relations become changed, or, as we look upon them from different points of view.
- Assumption – The truth asserted is based on an unsupported assumption.
- 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.[14]
With reference to these five tropes, that the first and third are a short summary of the earlier Ten Modes of Aenesidemus.[13] The three additional ones show a progress in the Pyrrhonist system, building upon the objections derived from the fallibility of sense and opinion to more abstract and metaphysical grounds. According to Victor Brochard "the five tropes can be regarded as the most radical and most precise formulation of skepticism that has ever been given. In a sense, they are still irresistible today."[15]
Criteria of action
Pyrrhonist decision making is made according to what the Pyrrhonists describe as the criteria of action holding to the appearances, without beliefs in accord with the ordinary regimen of life based on:
- the guidance of nature, by which we are naturally capable of sensation and thought
- the compulsion of the passions by which hunger drives us to food and thirst makes us drink
- the handing down of customs and laws by which we accept that piety in the conduct of life is good and impiety bad
- instruction in techne[16]
Skeptic sayings
The Pyrrhonists devised several sayings (Greek ΦΩΝΩΝ) to help practitioners bring their minds to suspend judgment.[17] Among these are:
- Not more, nothing more (a saying attributed to Democritus[18])
- Non-assertion (aphasia)
- Perhaps, it is possible, maybe
- I withhold assent
- I determine nothing (Montaignecreated a variant of this as his own personal motto, "Que sais-je?" – "what do I know?")
- Everything is indeterminate
- Everything is non-apprehensible
- I do not apprehend
- 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.[19]
Influence
In Ancient Greek philosophy
Pyrrhonism is often contrasted with Academic skepticism, a similar but distinct form of Hellenistic philosophical skepticism.[9][20][21] While early Academic skepticism was influenced in part by Pyrrho,[22] 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.[23]" 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.[20] Dogmatists claim to have knowledge, Academic skeptics claim that knowledge is impossible, while Pyrrhonists assent to neither proposition, suspending judgment on both.[9][20][24] 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.[25][21]"
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 "follow[s] the appearances and take[s] from these whatever seems expedient."[26]
Although
Similarities between Pyrrhonism and Indian philosophy
According to Diogenes Laërtius, Pyrrho was said to have
According to
Furthermore, Buddhist philosopher
An extraordinary similarity, that has long been noticed, between Pyrrhonism and Mādhyamika is the formula known in connection with Buddhism as the fourfold negation (Catuṣkoṭi) and which in Pyrrhonic form might be called the fourfold indeterminacy.[38]
McEvilley also notes a correspondence between the Pyrrhonist and Madhyamaka views about truth, comparing Sextus' account
However, other scholars, such as Stephen Batchelor[43] and Charles Goodman[44] 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.[31]
While discussing Christopher Beckwith's claims in Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia, Jerker Blomqvist states that:
On the other hand, certain elements that are generally regarded as essential features of Buddhism are entirely absent from ancient Pyrrhonism/scepticism. The concepts of good and bad karma must have been an impossibility in the Pyrrhonist universe, if "things" were ἀδιάφορα, 'without a logical self-identity', and, consequently, could not be differentiated from each other by labels such as 'good' and 'bad' or 'just' and 'unjust'. A doctrine of rebirth, reminiscent of the Buddhist one though favored by Plato and Pythagoras, was totally alien to the Pyrrhonists. The ἀταραξία, 'undisturbedness', that the Pyrrhonists promised their followers, may have a superficial resemblance to the Buddhist nirvana, but ἀταραξία, unlike nirvana, did not involve a liberation from a cycle of reincarnation; rather, it was a mode of life in this world, blessed with μετριοπάθεια, 'moderation of feeling' or 'moderate suffering', not with the absence of any variety of pain. Kuzminski, whom Beckwith hails as a precursor of his, had largely ignored the problem with this disparity between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism.[45]
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.[46] Scholars including Barua, Jayatilleke, and Flintoff, contend that Pyrrho was influenced by, or at the very least agreed with, Indian skepticism rather than Buddhism or Jainism, based on the fact that he valued ataraxia, which can be translated as "freedom from worry".[47][48][49] Jayatilleke, in particular, contends that Pyrrho may have been influenced by the first three schools of Ajñana, since they too valued freedom from worry.[50]
Modern
The recovery and publication of the works of Sextus Empiricus, particularly a widely influential translation by
Contemporary
The term "neo-Pyrrhonism" is used to refer to modern Pyrrhonists such as Benson Mates and Robert Fogelin.[55][56]
See also
- Ajñana
- Apophasis
- Apophatic theology
- Cognitive closure (philosophy)
- Cratylism
- De Docta Ignorantia
- Defeatism
- Quietism
- Buddhism and the Roman world
- Greco-Buddhism
- Ancient Greece–Ancient India relations
- E-Prime
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Trivialism
- The Hedgehog and the Fox
- List of unsolved problems in philosophy
Notes
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7156-1238-5. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
- OCLC 65192690.
- OCLC 715184861.
Pyrrhonism, in whatever form it might have taken after Timon's death in 230 BCE, was utterly neglected until Aenesidemus brought it back to public attention
- ^ Stéphane Marchand, "Sextus Empiricus' Style Of Writing", in New Essays on Ancient Pyrrhonism, p 113
- ^
Warren, James (2002). Epicurus and Democritean ethics: An archaeology of ataraxia. Cambridge University Press. p. I. ISBN 0521813697.
- ^ Pulleyn, William (1830). The Etymological Compendium, Or, Portfolio of Origins and Inventions. T. Tegg. pp. 353.
- ^ Bett, Richard Arnot Home (28 January 2010). The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. Cambridge University Press. p. 212.
- ^ Bett, Richard Arnot Home (28 January 2010). The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. Cambridge University Press. p. 213.
- ^ a b c d Klein, Peter (2015). "Skepticism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 25 July 2018. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
- ^ McInerny, Ralph (1969). A History of Western Philosophy, Volume 2. Aeterna Press. pp. Chp III. Skeptics and the New Academy, A. Pyrrho of Elis section, para 3–4.
- ^ public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aenesidemus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 257–258. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Trans. R.G. Bury, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1933, pp. 25–27
- ^ a b Diogenes Laërtius, ix.
- ^ Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhōneioi hypotypōseis i., from Annas, J., Outlines of Scepticism Cambridge University Press. (2000).
- ^ Brochard, V., The Greek Skeptics.
- ^ Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I Chapter 11 Section 23
- ^ Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I Chapter 18
- ^ Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book II Chapter 30
- ^ Eusebius. "Praeparatio Evangelica Book XIV". Tertullian Project. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
- ^ OCLC 23367477.
- ^ OCLC 715184861.
- OCLC 715184861.
- OCLC 715184861.
Aenesidemus criticized his fellow Academics for being dogmatic...Aenesidemus committed his scepticism to writing probably some time in the early-to-mid first century BCE...leading Aenesidemus to dismiss them as "Stoics fighting against Stoics."
- )
- OCLC 635311697.
- ^ Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.237, trans. Etheridge (Scepticism, Man, and God, Wesleyan University Press, 1964, p. 98).
- ^ Epistles lxxxix 301C
- ^ Pseudo-Clement, Homilies, 13.7
- ^ Agathias II 29-32, cited in Jonathan Barnes, Mantissa 2015 p. 652
- ^ "Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers Book IX - Chapter 11. PYRRHO (c. 360-270 b.c.)". www.perseus.tufts.edu.
- ^ ISBN 9781000350074.
- ^ ISBN 9781400866328.
- ISBN 9781400866328.
- ^ Sextus Empricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book 1, Section 19
- ISBN 978-3-89733-518-9.
- ISBN 01953849622009 p93
- ^ Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought 2002 pp499-505
- ISBN 1-58115-203-5., p.495
- ^ Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, II.14–18; Anthologia Palatina (Palatine Anthology), VII. 29–35, and elsewhere
- ^ Conze 1959, pp. 140–141
- ^ a b Conze (1959: p. 244)
- ISBN 1-58115-203-5., p. 474
- ^ Stephen Batchelor "Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's encounter with early Buddhism in central Asia", Contemporary Buddhism, 2016, pp 195-215
- ^ 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
- ^ says, Unknown. "Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia – Bryn Mawr Classical Review".
- ^ Jayatilleke, K.N. Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, p. 122.
- ^ Barua 1921, p. 299.
- ^ Jayatilleke 1963, pp. 129–130.
- ^ Flintoff 1980.
- ^ Jayatilleke 1963, pp. 130.
- ^ OCLC 65192690.
- ISBN 1590514831
- ^ Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, page 7, section 23.
- ^ Friedrich Nietzsche; Maudemarie Clark; Alan J. Swensen (1998). On the Genealogy of Morality. Hackett Publishing. p. 79.
- ^ Michael Williams, "Fogelin's Neo-Pyrrhonism", International Journal of Philosophical Studies Volume 7, Issue 2, 1999, p141
- ^ Smith, Plínio Junqueira; Bueno, Otávio (7 May 2016). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Skepticism in Latin America. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
References
- Barua, Benimadhab (1921). A History of Pre-Buddhistic Indian Philosophy (1st ed.). London: University of Calcutta. p. 468.
- Flintoff, Everard (1980). "Pyrrho and India". Phronesis. 25 (1). Brill: 88–108. JSTOR 4182084.
- Jayatilleke, K.N. (1963). Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (PDF) (1st ed.). London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 524. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 September 2015.
- Thorsrud, Harold. "Ancient Greek Skepticism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Vogt, Katja. "Ancient Skepticism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
External links