Skepticism
Suspending judgment before the equal force of opposing arguments, to find .
365 BCE – 200
Ancient skepticism traces back to (fourth century BCE), an almost legendary figure who wrote nothing and whose imperturbability, it was said, never wavered before any danger. Two strands stand apart: Academic skepticism, born when and then Carneades turned 's Academy against the of the Stoics, and the more radical Pyrrhonian skepticism, which codifies around 200 CE in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, our principal source. The problem the school confronts is that of the criterion: how to decide between rival doctrines that all claim to be true? Long marginal, this tradition resurfaced in the Renaissance with the rediscovery of Sextus: it fed the doubt of , the methodical doubt of who sought to overcome it, and later the empiricism of .
No certainty about the hidden nature of things is attainable: every proof is met by a contrary proof of equal force, which compels suspension of judgment.
We never grasp a thing as it is in itself, but only relative to who perceives it and to the conditions of its appearance.
One should live by without granting them dogmatic assent: acting on what appears, holding nothing to be true by nature.
Tranquillity of mind () is not won but arrives of itself, as the unexpected fruit of suspending judgment.
Justification
Any claim to know the hidden nature of things presupposes a criterion of the true; yet that criterion would itself need validating by another, and so on without end, or else guarantee itself, which begs the question. The skeptic therefore does not assert that nothing is knowable, which would still be a thesis: he observes that for every proof advanced a contrary proof of equal force stands (the ), and that this unresolved conflict forces . What sets him apart from dogmatists and Academics alike is that he concludes neither to knowledge nor to ignorance: he keeps inquiring, without closing the matter.
To every argument an equal argument is opposed.Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 12
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 8-10 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, IX, 78-79
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Justification
To grant assent to a thesis about the non-evident nature of things is to hold true what one cannot prove: the skeptic sees this as a fault and abstains on principle. But an objection looms: would a life without any belief even be livable? He answers by distinguishing two assents. To the that force themselves upon him (that it is day, that he is hungry) he yields without resisting, for they are not up for dispute; what he refuses is the further assent that would add "and so it truly is, by nature." He therefore acts, guided by phenomena and customs, while never positing a dogma.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 13-24
Justification
Since every rational deduction of the essence of things runs aground on the equipollence of doctrines, all that remains for conduct is what imposes itself without asking our leave: sensory and phenomena. The skeptic does not erect them into a source of truth; he undergoes them as a purely practical criterion, enough to act on without asserting anything. Sextus' epithet, the Empiricist, marks this reversal: no longer deducing the real from above, by speculative reason, but relying on the given, from below, without claiming to pierce its nature.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 21-24 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, IX, 105-106
Justification
The same thing appears differently according to the animal perceiving it, the sense organ, the subject's state, distance, mixture, or custom: this is the observation that Aenesidemus' ten tropes catalogue and order. Yet to adjudicate these irreconcilable appearances and say which one delivers the real thing, one would need an absolute standpoint, outside every condition of appearance, which no one has. The trope therefore bites exactly where the claims to describe natures in themselves: we never grasp anything but the relative, which reduces every assertion about essence to .
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 36-163 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, IX, 79-88
To adopt a definition of truth (correspondence, coherence, usefulness) would be to assert a criterion of the true, which the skeptic holds to be indemonstrable: any proposed criterion already presupposes another criterion to validate it, and so on without end. He therefore suspends judgment on the nature of truth itself and merely records what appears to him, without positing it as true.
The school chooses neither truth nor illusion: it suspends. is not a chosen illusion but the renunciation of settling the matter, and tranquility () follows as the shadow follows the body, without any false belief being embraced: the axis's alternative presupposes a stand on truth which the skeptic precisely declines to grant.
Justification
What torments a person, the skeptic argues, is not the event but the opinion held about it, judging it good or bad by nature: whoever pursues what he takes for a good and flees what he takes for an evil knows no rest. To suspend that opinion is therefore to defuse the disturbance at its source. is thus not a goal the skeptic aims at directly, which would make him dependent once more: it supervenes by surprise, as the unexpected fruit of . Here lies the school's paradox: one reaches serenity precisely by giving up the search for it in a knowledge of the good.
Tranquillity followed the suspension of judgment as a shadow follows its body.Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 29
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 25-30 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, IX, 107-108
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Does suffering have a value, or is it only an evil to flee? Skepticism does not decide: to judge it good or bad by nature would be a dogmatic thesis. Its practical bent, deflating torment by suspending value judgments about things, would bring it close to the median, but it precisely refrains from erecting this ataraxia into a doctrine of suffering's value.
The origin of meaning, an end inscribed in things, a created meaning, or the absence of meaning, is a theoretical question on which skepticism suspends judgment: to decide would be to maintain a dogmatic thesis. The skeptic lives by appearances and custom, and draws his tranquility from this very suspension, without adopting any of the axis's three attitudes.
Skepticism suspends judgment on what death is: annihilation, survival of the soul, mere passage are so many dogmatic theses on which, unable to decide, it abstains. The skeptic lives by appearances and invests death with none of the axis's attitudes, his tranquility coming from suspension itself, not from a doctrine.
Skepticism suspends judgment on the dogmatic question whether things have a real essence: to decide between essentialism and its opposite would be to maintain a metaphysical thesis, which the forbids. The skeptic holds to appearances and custom, without pronouncing on any hidden nature.
Skepticism suspends judgment () on dogmatic metaphysical questions, and the quarrel of free will and determinism is one of them. The skeptic takes no side: he lives by appearances and custom without settling the hidden cause of his acts. To assign him a pole would contradict his very stance.
Justification
By ceasing to hold anything good or bad by nature, the skeptic frees himself from the vehement desires and aversions that disturb the soul. He feels only the unavoidable affections (hunger, thirst) and meets them with measure: a discipline of detachment, akin to that of the other schools, but grounded in the suspension of judgment rather than in a doctrine of the good.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 25-30
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Skepticism claims none of the foundations of morality: it holds neither good nor evil to be knowable realities, and to judge an ethics true would be to dogmatize. The skeptic acts according to appearances, the customs and laws of his country, without seeing in them a knowledge: his practice is regulated, but deprived of any theoretical foundation, which the axis cannot represent by a single pole.
The skeptic upholds neither a good and evil universal by nature nor relativism erected into a thesis: he observes that moral customs diverge radically from one people to another (the tenth trope) and concludes that no value can be established as good by nature. He suspends judgment and conforms, without dogmatic adherence, to the laws and customs of his country.
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The Pyrrhonian skeptic suspends judgment on the existence and nature of the gods, a dogmatic question par excellence: he affirms neither theism nor atheism. Sextus lays out the arguments for and against the divine and concludes to equipollence, hence to ; in ordinary life he conforms, without belief, to the religious customs of his city.
On the ultimate constitution of reality (matter, mind, principles), the skeptic declines to decide: these are questions about the non-evident nature of things, where dogmatic theses of equal force clash. He turns the natural philosophers' own contradictions against them and suspends judgment (), without himself endorsing materialism, idealism, or dualism.
Suspending judgment: epochēRuleRelation to certainty
Set against every certainty its opposite; unable to decide, suspend.
The set against every thesis a contrary thesis of equal strength (); unable to decide, they suspended judgment, , and found in that suspense an unexpected tranquility, . This rule takes up their gesture: faced with a certainty sweeping you along, building the opposing case yourself, weighing it, and agreeing not to conclude. Today it defuses the flare-ups and quarrels where one defends an opinion more than one examines it.
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