Category: Ancient Skepticism
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Political Acrimony: Can Sextus Help?
Our beliefs, political and religious beliefs in particular, divide us and ignite sometimes murderous passions. A radical cure would be to find a way to abstain from belief, to live without beliefs, adoxastōs. Is this possible, and if possible, desirable? No on both counts. Such is the interim conclusion of my ongoing series on Pyrrhonian…
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Anti-Pyrrhonian Haiku
The truth we needWe cannot know.So we must believeThat it is so.
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E. M. Cioran and Skepticism
I brought Cioran into my latest Pyrrhonian post to lay bare the contrast between the Christian's pursuit of a "peace that surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) and the Pyrrhonian's peace which is beneath understanding inasmuch as it is predicated upon not understanding — and not caring any more about understanding. I then asked whether this…
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A Peace Worth Wanting? Problems with Pyrrhonian Ataraxia: Passivity and Porcinity
The Pyrrhonians see clearly that part of our misery in this life is due to our inability to attain certain knowledge. Wanting certainty, but unable to secure it, we are thrown back upon conflicting beliefs that inflame passions. The heat of the passions seems to vary inversely with the rational unprovability of the beliefs that…
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Presumption and Suspension of Judgment
I continue my Pyrrhonian ponderings. What is exercising me at the moment is the question of how suspending judgment as to the truth or falsity of a proposition p is related to presuming that p. I will propose that there are two forms of suspension of judgment. There is suspension in the service of…
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Pyrrhonism and Buddhism
Anyone familiar with both will have noticed the similarities between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism. The theme is explored in an on-line book I just discovered but haven't read: Adrian Kuzminski, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism. Related articles The Competency of Desire Can Philosophy be Debated? Just Say 'No' to 'No Self'
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The Pious Pyrrhonian: Is Beliefless Piety Possible?
Is it possible to be a religiously pious Pyrrhonian? The Pyrrhonian skeptic, aspiring to tranquillity of mind, tries to live without beliefs. These of course include religious beliefs which are a prime cause of bitter and sometimes bloody contention. So one might think that a skeptic of the stripe of Sextus would have nothing to…
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Is it Psychologically Impossible to Assent to a Proposition for which the Evidence is Divided?
Seldom Seen Slim comments and I respond in blue: Enjoyed your Sunday post on Pyrrhonism. It’s been a while since I worked on Sextus, but it strikes me that your essay on the Skeptics’ route to adoxia passes by an important premise: the attainment of equipoise and proper role of philosophy. The skeptics don’t depend…
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Is Pyrrhonism a Doctrine? Can One Live Without Beliefs?
"Pyrrhonism is not a doctrine, but a way of intellectual life, a way of thinking, talking, and acting." (Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way, Oxford UP 1996, p. 66) Mates is a careful writer and his meaning is clear: Pyrrhonism is not a doctrine at all. It involves no beliefs or teachings or doctrines or dogmas.…
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Inquiry, Doxastic Equipose, and Ataraxia
Seldom Seen Slim writes, I'm very happy to see you writing (so well) about the summum bonum. I don't have the text of Sextus at hand to cite you chapter & verse, but I think I recall this correctly. It would be pretty ironic for a skeptic to denigrate inquiry since skeptikos means precisely…
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Ataraxia and the Impossibility of Living Without Beliefs
John Lennon bade us "imagine no religion." But why single out religious beliefs as causes of conflict and bloodshed when nonreligious beliefs are equally to blame? Maybe the problem is belief as such. Can we imagine no beliefs? Perhaps we need to examine the possibility of living belieflessly. In exploration and exfoliation of this possibility we…
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The Characteristic Attitude of the Pyrrhonist
Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way, Oxford UP, 1996, p. 5: ". . . the characteristic attitude of the Pyrrhonists is one of aporia, of being at a a loss, puzzled, stumped, stymied." Aporia is not doubt. Doubt implies understanding, but aporia is a lack of understanding. The modern skeptic may doubt, but not the ancient skeptic.…