EXPLANATORY NOTES
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The Outlines of Pyrrhonism is a sort of manifesto of scepticism aimed at the general reader. As such, it is generally quite easy to understand, despite its having been written 1,800 years ago. However, there are some unfamiliar concepts and allusions, which I explain in the footnotes.
One of the reasons why I am asking you to read the text itself (apart from its momentous importance at the time of the birth of modern philosophy) is because it has been badly misunderstood — in antiquity, in the early modern period, and even today. I myself remember having to respond to a paper by a distinguished professor of philosophy, who gave the following argument (admittedly this is a bit of a caricature):
Scepticism is manifestly self-defeating, since the sceptics’ claim that they know nothing, is a claim that they know at least one thing, namely that they know nothing.
Therefore it follows that we know something.
It is incomprehensible how we could penetrate through to the real nature of things if we were merely physical objects having sense impressions.
Therefore we have an immaterial and immortal soul.
I hope you will shortly be able to do better than this, and say precisely what is wrong with the initial premise, and the deductions from it. For example, if some particular sceptic over there has managed to defeat himself, does it follow that all sceptics defeat themselves? And if all sceptics defeat themselves, does it follow that you know anything? And if it follows that you know something, how does the plight of the sceptics help you to distinguish between your true and false beliefs?
The only conclusion I can draw is that the professor never read Sextus — which gives you a distinct advantage. It is clear from Sextus’s text that he was having to tackle misunderstandings of scepticism which were just as crass as this 20th-century example; and he too complains that people haven’t read what was being said.
The three main charges levelled against scepticism were the following: (1) that it is self-defeating; (2) that it ‘removes the phenomena’ (in other words, that it absurdly denies the existence of the world of experience); and (3) that it provides no grounds for doing one thing or another — or, indeed, doing anything at all.
1. That scepticism is self-defeating.
Sextus defines three possible types of philosophy. The first is ‘dogmatic’, which includes all those philosophies which make positive assertions about the nature of reality. His prime target was Stoicism, which was the dominant school at the time; but he also had in mind Aristotelianism, Platonism, Epicureanism, and other schools. The second type is what he calls the ‘Academic’ philosophy, meaning the doctrines of the Academy when it went through its sceptical period. On his interpretation, the Academic sceptics positively asserted that we know nothing (one might call this ‘negative dogmatism,’ or ‘dogmatic scepticism’). Sextus places Pyrrhonian scepticism, the third type of philosophy, between these two extremes, on the grounds that it neither asserts nor denies that we know anything.
Academic scepticism is clearly open to the charge that it is self-defeating. It is a logical contradiction to claim to know nothing, since the claim is itself a knowledge-claim. And if you can succeed in formulating it so that the only thing we know is that we know nothing else, then it is difficult to justify exempting this particular item of knowledge from a blanket scepticism. Throughout the extract you will see Sextus distancing himself from any suggestion that he knows that he knows nothing. As you read it, I want you to take careful note of the various ways in which he does this. A brief list might be:
(i). When he says he knows nothing, he is not asserting anything about reality, but merely reporting on his state of mind.
(ii) It is merely a slogan, or a command, and not a proposition which is true or false. It means that to be a sceptic, you undertake to find an equally forceful argument for the opposite of any position proposed by a dogmatist (even the proposition that we know nothing).
(iii) Even if you assert ‘I know that I know nothing’ in opposition to ‘I know that I know something,’ the assertion does its work of bringing about suspension of judgment. It cannot be established as true, but it works like a purgative medicine, which is expelled from the body along with the poison, leaving the body in a state of proper balance.
2. That scepticism ‘removes the phenomena’
Sceptics do not deny the world of experience, in that we are forced by our very nature to experience things as external to us. Even if we can briefly contemplate the world as being nothing but mental images, we are soon forced into treating it as a relatively stable world of external objects. What the sceptics deny is (a) that we all perceive the world the same way, and that there are any objective grounds for preferring one way of perceiving it to another; and (b) that we can have any rational or scientific knowledge of the nature of any underlying reality.
Here it is important to note the sharp distinction which Sextus makes between objects of experience (‘phenomena’, ‘affections’, emotions, etc.), which we just have to take at face value; and objects of thought, reason, or verbal description (‘noumena’), which can never give us any knowledge of the nature of things.
3. That scepticism removes all grounds for action
Scepticism about absolute moral values doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have any values at all. What it means is that we have no objective criterion for judging the values and customs of the community we belong to. Consequently, we should accept them as they are.
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