Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present 9781472507716, 9781474218894, 9781472514363

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SKEPTICISM

Also available from Bloomsbury The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Barry Dainton and Howard Robinson The Bloomsbury Companion to Epistemology, edited by Andrew Cullison A Critical Introduction to Skepticism, Allan Hazlett

SKEPTICISM FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT

Edited by Diego E. Machuca and Baron Reed

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 This paperback edition published 2019 Copyright © Diego E. Machuca and Baron Reed, 2019 Diego E. Machuca and Baron Reed have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. Cover design: Clare Turner Cover image © Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany / Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Machuca, Diego E., editor. Title: Skepticism: from antiquity to the present / [edited by] Diego E. Machuca and Baron Reed. Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017030623 (print) | LCCN 2017043043 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472511492 (ePub) | ISBN 9781472514363 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781472507716 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Skepticism–History. Classification: LCC B837 (ebook) | LCC B837 .S53 2018 (print) | DDC 149/.7309–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030623 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-0771-6 PB: 978-1-3500-9713-1 ePDF: 978-1-4725-1436-3 eBook: 978-1-4725-1149-2 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

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CONTENTS

L ist

of

C ontributors

ix

L ist

of

A bbreviations

xi

General Introduction  Baron Reed and Diego E. Machuca

Part I: Ancient Skepticism

xiii

1

Introduction  Diego E. Machuca 3 1 The Cyrenaics and Skepticism  Richard Bett

14

2 Pyrrho and Timon  Casey Perin

24

3 Arcesilaus  Anna Maria Ioppolo

36

4 Carneades  Harald Thorsrud

51

5 Aenesidemus  Luca Castagnoli

67

6 Philo of Larissa Harold Tarrant

81

7 Cicero J. P. F. Wynne

93

8 Menodotus and Medical Empiricism James Allen

102

9 Middle Platonism and Skepticism: Plutarch and Favorinus Carlos Lévy

114

vi

CONTENTS

10 Sextus Empiricus  Tad Brennan and Cliff Roberts

125

11 Skepticism in Classical Indian Philosophy  Matthew R. Dasti

145

Part II: Medieval and Renaissance Skepticism

163

Introduction  Diego E. Machuca 165 12 Augustine and Skepticism  Stéphane Marchand

175

13 John of Salisbury’s Skepticism  David Bloch

186

14 Skepticism in Classical Islam: The Case of Ghazali  Paul L. Heck

196

15 Nicholas of Autrecourt and John Buridan on Skepticism  Christophe Grellard

209

16 Divine Deception  Henrik Lagerlund

222

17 Michel de Montaigne  Gianni Paganini

232

18 Pierre Charron  Gianni Paganini

247

19 Francisco Sanchez: A Renaissance Pyrrhonist against Aristotelian Dogmatism  Damian Caluori

260

Part III: Modern Skepticism

271

Introduction  Baron Reed 273 20 François de La Mothe Le Vayer  Sylvia Giocanti

283

21 Gassendi on Skepticism  Antonia LoLordo

295

22 Descartes and the Force of Skepticism  David Cunning

306

CONTENTS

23 Varieties of Modern Academic Skepticism: Pierre-Daniel Huet and Simon Foucher  Michael W. Hickson

vii

320

24 Spinoza on Skepticism  Alison Peterman

342

25 Pierre Bayle  John Christian Laursen

355

26 Berkeley and Skepticism  Margaret Atherton

369

27 A Pyrrhonian Interpretation of Hume on Assent  Donald L. M. Baxter

380

28 Thomas Reid’s Engagement with Skeptics and Skepticism  René van Woudenberg

395

29 Johann Georg Hamann  Gwen Griffith-Dickson

407

30 Kant and External World Skepticism  Georges Dicker

419

31 Hegel: Philosophy as a Kind of Skepticism  Dietmar H. Heidemann

430

32 Friedrich Nietzsche  Andreas Urs Sommer

442

33 Russell’s Logical Construction of the External World  Peter J. Graham

454

34 Moore and Mooreanism  Annalisa Coliva

467

35 Wittgenstein and Skepticism: Illusory Doubts  Michael Williams

481

36 Richard Popkin on the History of Skepticism  José R. Maia Neto

506

Part IV: Contemporary Skepticism

521

Introduction  Baron Reed 523

viii

CONTENTS

37 Regress Arguments and Skepticism  Richard Fumerton

535

38 The Problem of the Criterion  Andrew D. Cling

550

39 Neo-Pyrrhonism  Markus Lammenranta

565

40 Disagreement and Skepticism  Bryan Frances

581

41 Skepticism and the Internalism-Externalism Debate  Matthias Steup

592

42 Skepticism and Fallibilism  Stephen Hetherington

609

43 Skepticism and Contextualism  Michael Blome-Tillmann

620

44 External World Skepticism  Ram Neta

634

45 Disjunctivism and Skepticism  Duncan Pritchard and Chris Ranalli

652

46 Inductive Skepticism: A Functional Investigation  Ruth Weintraub

668

47 Skepticism about A Priori Knowledge  Otávio Bueno

685

48 Skepticism about Other Minds  Anil Gomes

700

49 Moral Skepticism  Richard Joyce

714

50 Religious Skepticism  J. L. Schellenberg

727

N ame I ndex

739

S ubject I ndex

742

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

James Allen, University of Toronto, Canada Margaret Atherton, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States Donald L. M. Baxter, University of Connecticut, United States Richard Bett, Johns Hopkins University, United States David Bloch, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Michael Blome-Tillmann, McGill University, Canada Tad Brennan, Cornell University, United States Otávio Bueno, University of Miami, United States Damian Caluori, Trinity University, United States Luca Castagnoli, University of Oxford, United Kingdom Andrew Cling, University of Alabama in Huntsville, United States Annalisa Coliva, University of California, Irvine, United States David Cunning, University of Iowa, United States Matthew Dasti, Bridgewater State University, United States Georges Dicker, SUNY College at Brockport, United States Bryan Frances, University of Tartu, Estonia Richard Fumerton, University of Iowa, United States Sylvia Giocanti, Université de Toulouse Le Mirail, France Anil Gomes, University of Oxford, United Kingdom Peter Graham, University of California, Riverside, United States Christophe Grellard, EPHE, PSL Research University, France Gwen Griffith-Dickson, King’s College London, United Kingdom Paul Heck, Georgetown University, United States Stephen Hetherington, University of New South Wales, Australia Dietmar Heidemann, Université du Luxembourg, Luxembourg Michael Hickson, Trent University, Canada Anna Maria Ioppolo, Sapienza - Università di Roma, Italy Richard Joyce, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Henrik Lagerlund, Stockholm University, Sweden

x

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Markus Lammenranta, University of Helsinki, Finland John Christian Laursen, University of California, Riverside, United States Carlos Lévy, Université Paris-Sorbonne, France Antonia LoLordo, University of Virginia, United States Diego E. Machuca, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina José Raimundo Maia Neto, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil Stéphane Marchand, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France Ram Neta, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States Gianni Paganini, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy Casey Perin, University of California, Irvine, United States Alison Peterman, University of Rochester, United States Duncan Pritchard, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom Baron Reed, Northwestern University, United States Cliff Roberts, University of Victoria, Canada J. L. Schellenberg, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada Matthias Steup, University of Colorado Boulder, United States Harold Tarrant, The University of Newcastle, Australia Harald Thorsrud, Agnes Scott College, United States Andreas Urs Sommer, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany Ruth Weintraub, Tel Aviv University, Israel Michael Williams, Johns Hopkins University, United States René van Woudenberg, VU University, The Netherlands J. P. F. Wynne, Northwestern University, United States

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

3D Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous Acad. Cicero, Academica Ad Att. Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum Adv. Col. Plutarch, Adversus Colotem AM

Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos

Apol. Plato, Apology of Socrates AT  Œuvres de Descartes, 11 vols., edited by C. Adam & P. Tannery. Paris: Vrin, 1996. Bibl. Photius, Bibliotheca C. Acad. Augustine, Contra Academicos Chronic. Can. Eusebius, Chronicus Canon Conf. Augustine, Confessiones CSM  The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols. 1 & 2, edited by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984/5. CSMK  The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3, edited by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, and A. Kenny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. De Alex. fort. Plutarch, De Alexandri Magni Fortuna Comp. med. gen. Galen, De compositione medicamentorum per genera De E Plutarch, De E apud Delphos De Or. Cicero, De Oratore De Prim. Frig. Plutarch, De Primo Frigido De rep. Cicero, De re publica De sect. ingred. Galen, De sectis ingredientibus De ut. cred. Augustine, De utilitate credendi Div. Cicero, De Divinatione DL

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

EHU Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding Fat. Cicero, De Fato

xii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Fin. Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Gorg. Plato, Gorgias Met. Aristotle, Metaphysics MM Galen, De methodo medendi Mur. Cicero, Pro Murena ND Cicero, De Natura Deorum NA

Aulas Gellius, Noctes Atticae

Off. Cicero, De Officiis Opt. Doct. Galen, De Optima Doctrina PH

Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonian Outlines

PHK Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge Praep. evang. Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica Proem. Celsus, Proemium Prot. Plato, Protagoras QNS Sanchez, Quod nihil scitur Rep. Plato, Republic St. Rep. Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis Subfig. emp. Galen, Subfiguratio empirica T Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature Theaet. Plato, Theaetetus Tusc. Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes Vit. Soph. Philostratus, Vitae Sophistarum

General Introduction BARON REED AND DIEGO E. MACHUCA

Skeptical concerns arise in a variety of cultures. Most famously, the possibility that our experiences of the world are merely a dream is explored by many different thinkers, including by the Chinese sage, Zhuangzi: Last night Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly . . . and did not know about [Zhuang] Zhou. When all of a sudden he awoke, he was Zhou with all his wits about him. He does not know whether he is Zhou who dreams he is a butterfly or a butterfly who dreams he is Zhou. (Quoted in Raphals 1994: 501) By a Nahuatl tlamatinimi (poet-sage) in pre-Conquest Mexico: Do we speak the truth here, oh Giver of Life? We merely dream, we only rise from a dream. All is like a dream . . . No one speaks here of truth . . . . (León-Portilla 1963: 7) And, in the history of Western philosophy, by Plato: The question I imagine you have often heard asked—what evidence could be appealed to, supposing we were asked at this very moment whether we are asleep or awake, dreaming all that passes through our minds or talking to one another in the waking state? (Plato, Theaetetus 158b) By Cicero: But you quite miss the point when you refute the false impressions of the insane or dreamers by their own subsequent recollection. The question isn’t what recollection dreamers or the insane have when they are awake or their fits subside, but what kind of impression they had at the time. (Acad. II 90) By al-Ghāzalī: Do you not see how, when you are asleep, you believe things and imagine circumstances, holding them to be stable and enduring, and, so long as you are in that dream-condition, have no doubts about them? And is it not the case that when you awake you know that all you have imagined and believed is unfounded and ineffectual? Why are you confident that all your waking beliefs, whether from sense or intellect, are genuine? They are true in respect of your present state; but it is possible that a state will come upon you whose relation to your waking consciousness is analogous to the relation of the latter to dreaming. In

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comparison with this state your waking consciousness would be like dreaming! (From al-Ghazālī’s Deliverance from Error, quoted in Watt 1953: 23.) And, of course, by Descartes: How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events—that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire—when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! . . . As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. (Descartes 1984, CSM II 13; AT VII 19) Although this curiosity about how and whether our minds are properly fitted to reality is widely shared, perhaps even universal, it is also important not to lose sight of the differences in how that concern has been shaped and answered. Skepticism has been many things in its long history: a puzzle, a paradox, a challenge, an argument, an attitude, a way of life. Adopting a broad perspective allows us to see that it has also been a tradition, linking philosophers across the centuries who have been impelled to ask, why do we believe what we believe? and do we know what we take ourselves to know? These questions are as old as philosophy itself—and perhaps essential to it. Understanding skepticism in its full variety is of particular importance in the present philosophical age, as the predominant reactions to it have been attempts at refuting or solving it (see, e.g., Klein 1981 and DeRose 1995). The skeptical tradition is marked by a pair of dualities. The more obvious contrast is between skepticism and anti-skepticism. Some philosophers, like the Pyrrhonists and Montaigne, put forth skeptical arguments because they think skepticism is true, or rational, or part of a good life, or leads us toward faith instead of knowledge, or perhaps simply because they find it unavoidable. Others, like Descartes and G. E. Moore, take up skeptical arguments because they think skepticism is a useful challenge, or an obstacle to be overcome, or a deep and possibly dangerous philosophical problem. And some philosophers, like Wittgenstein, have a more ambiguous relationship to skepticism, both resisting it and articulating new forms of it. The second duality was submerged through most of the twentieth century, though it is perhaps now becoming more visible. The contrast here is between radical and mitigated skepticism. Where radical skeptics take most or all of our beliefs to be without epistemic legitimacy, mitigated skeptics do allow for the possibility that some beliefs are better than others, though most or all of them fall short of certainty. Both forms of skepticism appear throughout the history of philosophy, with the radical sort being championed by the Pyrrhonists in the ancient world and used methodologically by Descartes in the early modern period. Mitigated skepticism is associated with some of the later Academic skeptics, with Cicero, and with Charron and Gassendi. More common, especially in the modern world, are philosophers like Montaigne and Bayle who draw on both varieties as it suits their own needs. Hume is the best-known skeptic of this sort, as he favors a “more mitigated skepticism or academical philosophy,” which results when Pyrrhonism is “corrected by common sense and reflection” (Hume 2000, XII 24).1

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

xv

Like philosophical views of every sort, the various developments of skepticism— including in present-day philosophy—must be understood in the context of wider concerns. Some philosophers have been drawn to skepticism as a broadly ethical way of life—for example, the Pyrrhonists, Cicero, and Charron—while others, like Descartes, have used it in the service of scientific certainty or, like al-Ghazālī and perhaps Bayle, have thought that skepticism clears the way for a purer religious faith. The aims for which skeptical arguments can be mustered often determine the force and value of those arguments. To borrow an image from Sextus Empiricus, skepticism is like the color of a dove’s neck, changing as one’s perspective on it shifts (PH I 120). If that makes it difficult to come to grips with skepticism, it also makes the effort all the more rewarding. The present collection aims to provide an up-to-date critical survey of both the entire history of the various skeptical traditions and the systematic discussion of skeptical problems and arguments in the current philosophical scene. Although its scope could perhaps be expanded even further, the ground covered in the fifty chapters collected here is much more extensive than anything found in other scholarly works on skepticism, making it the first of its kind. The book is chronologically divided into four parts— ancient, medieval and Renaissance, modern, and contemporary skepticism—each preceded by an introductory chapter. Each chapter provides an authoritative overview of its topic, advances ongoing debates, and indicates new directions of research. We are grateful to Colleen Coalter, the philosophy senior commissioning editor at Bloomsbury, who approached us with the project of putting together an anthology on skepticism and later accepted the proposal to edit instead a book of newly written chapters. She has been patient and supportive through a variety of vicissitudes, including the tragically early death of Tony Brueckner, one of the very first people to join the list of contributors. His passing was a grievous loss both to this book and to the entire community of philosophers who work on skepticism. We are also grateful to the authors, some of whom overcame injury and illness in the writing of their chapters, and all of whom have greatly enriched our understanding of skepticism as it has been, as it is, and as it might yet become.

NOTE 1. It is perhaps worth noting here that the editors disagree with each other over the most fruitful way to think of skepticism. One favors a mitigated approach, while the other prefers his Pyrrhonism uncorrected by common sense and reflection.

REFERENCES Cicero. 2006. On Academic Scepticism, translated by C. Brittain. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. DeRose, Keith. 1995. “Solving the Skeptical Problem,” Philosophical Review 104: 1–52. Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. II, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hume, David. 2000. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by T. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Klein, Peter. 1981. Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. León-Portilla, Miguel. 1963. Aztec Thought and Culture, translated by J. E. Davis. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Plato. 1961. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, edited by E. Hamilton and H. Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Raphals, Lisa. 1994. “Skeptical Strategies in the Zuangzhi and Theaetetus,” Philosophy East and West 44: 501–526. Sextus Empiricus. 2000. Outlines of Scepticism, edited by J. Annas and J. Barnes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watt, W. Montgomery. 1953. The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazālī. London: George Allen and Unwin.

PART ONE

Ancient Skepticism

2

Introduction Ancient Skepticism DIEGO E. MACHUCA

As noted in the General Introduction, we have aimed to offer a comprehensive picture of both the history of the various skeptical traditions and the contemporary philosophical discussions of skeptical views, problems, and arguments. Consequently, this first part devoted to ancient skepticism includes chapters not only on the two main Western traditions, namely Pyrrhonism and Academic skepticism, but also on the skeptical aspects of two schools with which they bear close historical and philosophical connections, namely Cyrenaicism and medical Empiricism. Likewise, we have decided to include chapters not only on the chief representatives of Pyrrhonism (Pyrrho, Timon, Aenesidemus, and Sextus) and the skeptical Academy (Arcesilaus and Carneades), but also on less important figures (Menodotus, Philo, Cicero, Plutarch, and Favorinus). Finally, in order not to focus exclusively on Western thought, we have included a chapter devoted to the skeptical strands within classical Indian philosophy, which exhibit remarkable richness and sophistication. Some scholars have argued that there exist both historical and philosophical connections between Pyrrhonism and classical Indian thought. While the evidence for the historical link is both meager and problematic, we do find certain philosophical similarities—particularly in the skeptical argumentative strategies used by members of the two traditions—as anyone can realize by reading the chapter on Indian skepticism.1 The reader will also find significant parallels with skeptical views and arguments discussed in contemporary analytic epistemology. It should be observed that the authors covered by that chapter (Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrīharṣa) range from the second to the twelfth century CE, a timespan that falls within the classical period of Indian philosophy. Although this span of time goes, in the periodization of the history of Western philosophy, from the Imperial period to the Middle Ages, it did not make much sense to split the chapter into two and place the second portion in the part on medieval and Renaissance skepticism. Until not long ago, most scholars of Greco-Roman philosophy undervalued or neglected the skeptical traditions of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, the main reason being the widespread view that any form of skepticism is of no intrinsic philosophical significance. The voluminous extant corpus of a Pyrrhonist like Sextus Empiricus was read almost exclusively as a key source of information about the views of non-Pyrrhonian thinkers and schools. The powerful skeptical

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argumentative armory expounded therein was either ignored or regarded as a collection of sophisms. This tendency began to recede particularly in the early 1980s, and at present scholarship on ancient skepticism has reached a high degree of development, rigor, and sophistication. Scholars have not only addressed complex historical and exegetical issues, but also examined the consistency and livability of the distinct strands of ancient skepticism as well as assessed the scope and soundness of the skeptics’ arguments. This reevaluation of ancient skepticism has no doubt been essential to a better understanding of Hellenistic and Imperial philosophy and medicine. But it has also had a much broader effect inasmuch as the form of Pyrrhonism described in Sextus’s writings has exerted a strong influence on contemporary philosophy, primarily in the field of epistemology. As a result, hardly anyone familiar, first- or second-hand, with ancient skepticism would today question its philosophical import. Those approaching ancient skepticism for the first time should be aware that it was not uniform, not only because there were different traditions but also because there were significant transformations within each of them. This is also a cautionary reminder to those already familiar with ancient skepticism. For there is sometimes a tendency to neglect especially the differences between the members of a single tradition, ascribing to earlier figures a stance or an argument that was arrived at only at a later stage. Keeping in mind the heterogeneous character of ancient skepticism not only prevents historical and interpretive mistakes, but also allows one to appreciate its richness and to make sense of some of the discrepancies between our sources or within a single source. This is not to say that it is easy or in all cases possible to provide a precise account of the distinct skeptical traditions or the various brands of skepticism within the same tradition, and of how they influenced each other or diverged from each other. The main reason for such a difficulty is that some key figures like Pyrrho, Arcesilaus, and Carneades wrote nothing, and that the works of most of those who did are lost to us. Most of the time we must therefore content ourselves with fragments, reports, and summaries that are usually meager, sometimes of doubtful reliability, and on occasion hard to reconcile.2 As already observed, ancient Western philosophy knew two major and closely related skeptical traditions, the Pyrrhonian and the Academic, both of which originated in the Hellenistic era and continued into the Imperial age. Even though in pre-Hellenistic philosophy one can find skeptical inclinations, themes, and arguments, it is only at the beginning of the Hellenistic age that the possibility of knowledge and justified belief was called into question in a systematic way by means of elaborate argumentative strategies. Pyrrhonism is no doubt the most prominent and influential form of skepticism in the history of Western philosophy. Not only was it an important philosophical movement in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, but, as we will see in the other three parts of this book, it also had a profound impact on Renaissance and modern philosophy and is a topic of discussion in contemporary epistemology. Pyrrhonism was thus named after its eponymous figurehead, Pyrrho of Elis (360–270 BCE), whose stance is known primarily through the poems and prose works of his leading disciple Timon of Phlius (320–230 BCE), parts of which survive in fragments and

INTRODUCTION

5

second-hand reports. What we know of Pyrrho’s thought, however, differs in key respects from our current conception of Greek Pyrrhonism, which derives from the works of the later Pyrrhonists. The later ancient Pyrrhonian tradition, sometimes called “neo-Pyrrhonism” by ancient philosophy scholars,3 began in the first century BCE with Aenesidemus of Cnossos and culminated with Sextus Empiricus (probably late second century CE) and his immediate successors. Succinctly put, by the standards of the later representatives of the tradition, Pyrrho should be regarded as a “Dogmatist,” since he made assertions, even if negative in kind, about what things are like by nature. In describing Pyrrho’s stance in terms of the suspending of judgment, the refraining from dogmatic determinations, and the following of that which appears (DL IX 62, 106), Aenesidemus was actually projecting onto Pyrrho his own skepticism. It could likewise be argued that the picture of Pyrrho painted by Timon was molded by the latter’s own skeptical stance. Timon is close to the later Pyrrhonists in refraining from affirming that things are as they appear and in taking that which appears as a guide in practical matters (DL IX 105). For this reason, it has even been claimed that the epistemological views ascribed to Pyrrho by Timon are actually the latter’s, who should therefore be considered the first Pyrrhonist.4 As for Sextus, he cautiously explains the connection between Pyrrho and the skeptical philosophy in relative terms: the skeptical way of thought is called “Pyrrhonian” because “Pyrrho appears to us to have attached himself to Skepticism more tangibly and more conspicuously than his predecessors” (PH I 7). One should therefore refrain from assuming that the type of skepticism expounded in great detail in Sextus’s substantive extant writings, which are our chief source for ancient Pyrrhonism, is nothing but a more developed version of Pyrrho’s stance. Nonetheless, it is not arbitrary that Pyrrho was taken as a forerunner or an inspiration by the later Pyrrhonists, for this can be explained by his having claimed that the state of tranquility or undisturbedness (ἀταραξία), which the later Pyrrhonists took as their aim, is attained by mistrusting our sensations and opinions as a guide to determining the nature of things.5 The preceding remarks may give the misleading impression that the later Pyrrhonian tradition was homogeneous. In fact, there appear to be considerable differences between what we can reconstruct of Aenesidemus’s outlook and the skeptical stance expounded in at least most of Sextus’s surviving works.6 For Aenesidemus seems to have made both negative and relativized claims that would have been viewed by Sextus as violating suspension of judgment in that they amount to assertions about non-evident matters.7 It should also be noted that even within Sextus’s own corpus there seem to coexist differing varieties of Pyrrhonism that cannot always be reconciled and that can at least in part be accounted for by his drawing on different sources to compose his works. One of the tensions between distinct forms of skepticism that is detectable in his works concerns the sets of modes by means of which the Pyrrhonist seeks to induce suspension of judgment. In book one of PH, Sextus expounds the Ten Modes (PH I 36–163) and the Five Modes (PH I 164–177). These two sets of modes differ in nature: whereas each of the Ten Modes applies to a particular conflict of perceptual appearances or opinions,8 the Five Modes are thematically neutral and of universal application, since they can

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be employed in relation to any assertion or doctrine.9 In this case, it is possible to identify Sextus’s sources. First, at PH I 36 he ascribes the Ten Modes to “the older Skeptics,” and at AM VII 345 he speaks of “the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus.” We also know from Diogenes Laertius that Aenesidemus made use of the Ten Modes (DL IX 87).10 Second, Sextus ascribes the Five Modes to “the more recent Skeptics” (PH I 164), whereas Diogenes attributes them to Agrippa (DL IX 88), of whom we know nothing, except that he probably lived in the first century CE.11 Now, both the fact that the Aenesideman and the Agrippan modes differ in character and the fact that they were proposed by Pyrrhonists belonging to different phases of the Pyrrhonian tradition indicate that they correspond to differing types of skepticism. It should be remarked, however, that although the Ten Modes and the Five Modes differ in their scope and force, they are not incompatible and their joint presence in Sextus’s work does not actually threaten the coherence of his Pyrrhonism.12 As regards the Academy, most scholars agree that its skeptical phase arose out of both the epistemological debate between Academics13 and Stoics and the return to Socrates’s dialectical style of philosophizing, but they also think it possible that the figure of Pyrrho played a part in the origin of Academic skepticism. It should be noted that, while the Pyrrhonists were in general reluctant to recognize forebears or to acknowledge similarities between Pyrrhonism and other philosophies, the Academics believed that their skepticism was the culmination of a gradual development commencing with the Presocratics and that it was perfectly in keeping with the tradition of Socrates and Plato. The skeptical phase of the Academy ranges from Arcesilaus (316/5–241/0 BCE), through Carneades (214–129/8 BCE) and his student Clitomachus (187– 10 BCE), to Philo of Larissa (159/8–84/3 BCE) and Antiochus of Ascalon (130–69/8 BCE), to name only the main representatives. Arcesilaus adopted a radical form of epistemological skepticism characterized by universal suspension of judgment.14 In Carneades, skepticism was extended to other domains such as ethics and theology, but it may also have been mitigated by the espousal of a kind of fallibilism. There is, however, much dispute about what his stance was and even whether he adopted any stance in propria persona.15 For his part, Clitomachus defended a strong form of skepticism that he ascribed to Carneades, but after him Academic skepticism began to soften. Philo first defended a radical skepticism but later held that it is possible to have knowledge, albeit not of the type proposed by the Stoics.16 This decline of Academic skepticism was followed by a total departure from it on the part of Antiochus, who after espousing his teacher Philo’s skeptical outlook returned to what he took to be the position of the Old Academy, embracing what most scholars describe as a Stoicizing form of Platonism. With Antiochus begins the period known as “Middle Platonism,” which extends to the early third century CE.17 The influence of Academic skepticism did not however cease, since it is still present in Cicero (106–43 BCE), a student of both Philo and Antiochus, who considered himself to belong to that philosophical tradition. In relation to skepticism, Cicero is generally studied only as a major source of information on the skeptical Academy; his own moderate skeptical outlook is not usually discussed in companions and general introductions to ancient skepticism. For this reason, we decided to include a chapter

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entirely devoted to him.18 The presence of a mitigated form of Academic skepticism is also found in Favorinus of Arles (80–160 CE), who claimed to be an Academic skeptic, although he was also influenced by Pyrrhonism. In On the Best Method of Teaching, which is our most important source for Favorinus’s philosophical stance, Galen (129–210 CE) attacks the “younger” Academics, among whom was Favorinus.19 Thus, even though the Academy as an institution ceased to exist in the first century BCE, in the second century CE there was a group of Academics who were skeptical and prominent enough to merit Galen’s attack. It should also be noted that Plutarch (ca. 50–120 CE), Favorinus’s teacher, was sympathetic to Academic skepticism, albeit of course not in its radical form. Not only did he seek to defend Academic skepticism from the attacks of rival schools, but he also viewed it as part of a unitary tradition that extended from Plato to himself. He thought that the skeptical interpretation of Plato did justice to the aporetic aspect of the latter’s dialogues, but did not take it to be incompatible with the fact that Plato held doctrines.20 It is rather surprising that what may be called the “epistemological” position of the Cyrenaic school (late fifth to mid-third centuries BCE) is not generally discussed in presentations of Greek skepticism. It is true both that the Cyrenaics were not interested in epistemological issues per se, but only insofar as these were relevant to their ethical theory, and that they did not draw all the skeptical consequences of their epistemology that they could have drawn. Nonetheless, their epistemological stance seems to be more elaborate and subtle than those of the pre-Hellenistic philosophers in whom one may detect skeptical elements, and it bears close relations with both Academic and Pyrrhonian skepticism. The Cyrenaics claimed that we have knowledge of our own “affections” (πάθη),21 but not of the properties of the external objects that cause them because they are inapprehensible, and that we cannot know the content of other people’s affections. They even coined curious neologisms (“being whitened,” “being sweetened,” “being darkened”) so as to restrict themselves to talking about the various ways they are affected and to avoid any reference to the causes of the affections. Such neologisms are occasionally used by Sextus. In short, the Cyrenaic epistemological stance should be taken into careful consideration by anyone seriously interested in ancient skeptical thought.22 Another current in ancient skepticism was that of medical Empiricism, which stretched from the third century BCE to the second century CE and was one of the three main medical sects of the Hellenistic and Imperial ages, the other two being the Rationalist or Dogmatic and the Methodical. Medical Empiricism did not in fact constitute an independent skeptical tradition, since it was in intimate relation with Pyrrhonism. Not only are there significant philosophical similarities between the two outlooks (as the testimonies in Galen and Celsus attest), but we also know that several Pyrrhonists were Empirical doctors, the first of whom being probably Menodotus of Nicomedia, who flourished in the first part of the second century CE. Sextus Empiricus himself was an Empiricist, as both the external evidence and his sobriquet indicate, even though he explicitly distinguishes Pyrrhonism from medical Empiricism and expresses more sympathy for medical Methodism (PH I 236–241).23 It has been suggested that medical Empiricism contributed to the revival of the

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Pyrrhonian philosophy in the first century BCE. The Empirical doctors also seem to have been heavily influenced by the skeptical Academy, which is not in any case strange given the close similarities between Pyrrhonism and Academic skepticism and their mutual influence.24 I would like to conclude this brief introduction by making a few remarks about the application of the words “skeptic” and “skepticism.” While Aenesidemus did not probably use “skeptic” but only “Pyrrhonist,” Sextus prefers to employ “skeptic” and “skepticism” (or “the skeptical way”) when talking about the Pyrrhonist and his stance. Diogenes Laertius (third century CE) too uses “skeptic” and “Pyrrhonist” as synonyms. As is widely known, the Greek σκεπτικός means “inquirer” and σκέψις “inquiry.” It is commonly agreed that only in the early second century CE did those words come to be generally used as a designation of the Pyrrhonist and his stance. Now, the application of such terms in their technical sense to medical Empiricism is plainly legitimate, given its intimate historical and philosophical connection with Pyrrhonism. Their use in relation to Cyrenaicism, and to certain strands in Indian philosophy, is grounded on the fact that in such positions one can identify points of similarity with Pyrrhonism—and even with contemporary versions of skepticism. As for the Academics, it is sometimes remarked that, unlike the Pyrrhonists, they did not call themselves “skeptics,” nor did they describe their stance as “skepticism.” Some of our sources, however, state that “skeptic” was also applied to the Academics. For instance, in his Attic Nights (XI v 1), the second-century CE antiquarian Aulus Gellius tells us that Pyrrhonists are referred to as “skeptics,” but he later remarks that both Pyrrhonists and Academics are so designated (XI v 6). Note in addition that, since Favorinus is likely the source of Gellius’s text, one might infer that at least he and other Academics of the second century CE did actually call themselves “skeptics”—which may be accounted for by their having been influenced by Pyrrhonism. Be that as it may, the application of the label “skeptics” to figures such as Arcesilaus, Carneades, Clitomachus, Philo, Cicero, and Favorinus is grounded on the close similarities between their outlooks and the Pyrrhonian stance: for example, the advocacy of suspension of judgment, the practice of arguing on both sides of a question, and the dialectical style of argumentation. Such similarities explain, at least in part, why in the second-century CE authors like Seneca, Epictetus, Galen, Lucian, and even Favorinus tended to assimilate Academic skepticism to Pyrrhonism. There is also a historical connection between the two traditions, since it is almost unanimously accepted that Aenesidemus was a former member of the Academy whose desertion seems to have been motivated by Philo’s abandonment of the rigorous skepticism of the earlier Academics. It seems clear that the source of Aenesidemus’s argumentative practice is to be found in the dialectical method of the skeptical Academy, and our sources state that both Arcesilaus (PH I 232, cf. Acad. I 45) and Aenesidemus (DL IX 107, cf. PH I 30) conceived of suspension of judgment as their aim (τέλος). For such reasons, some have suggested that Aenesidemus’s revival of Pyrrho’s outlook was actually a return to radical Academic skepticism. In this connection, it must also be borne in mind both that it is possible that Arcesilaus was influenced to some extent by Pyrrho (PH I 234, DL IV 33) and that Aenesidemus viewed Pyrrho as a proponent of suspension of judgment (DL IX 62).

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NOTES 1. On the historical and philosophical connections between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism, besides Matthew Dasti’s chapter in this book, see e.g. Frenkian (1957), Flintoff (1980), Bett (2000: 169–178), Kuzminski (2008), and Beckwith (2015). 2. For useful book-length general presentations of ancient skepticism, see Hankinson (1998), Brochard (2002), Thorsrud (2009), and Bett (2010). For a shorter overview, with extensive bibliographical references in the main European languages, see Machuca (2011a,b,c). 3. This usage is common among French and Italian scholars. In English, the term “neoPyrrhonism” is employed in contemporary analytic epistemology to refer to presentday versions of Pyrrhonism or to the application of Pyrrhonian argumentative strategies to current debates. 4. This is the view defended by Brunschwig (1994, 1999). 5. On the early Pyrrhonism of Pyrrho and Timon, besides Casey Perin’s chapter in this book, see e.g. Ausland (1989), Brunschwig (1994), Conche (1994), Bett (2000), Long (2006), Clayman (2009), and Svavarsson (2010). 6. Bett (1997) claims that in AM XI one detects traces of the Aenesideman variety of skepticism. 7. See Woodruff (1988, 2010) and Bett (2000: ch. 4). On these and other aspects of Aenesidemus’s philosophical stance, including his so-called Heracliteanism, see, besides Luca Castagnoli’s chapter in this book, Polito (2004, 2014), Pérez-Jean (2005), and Schofield (2007). 8. The Aenesideman modes are also expounded by Diogenes Laertius (DL IX 78– 88) and Philo of Alexandria (On Drunkenness 169–205). On these arguments, see especially Annas and Barnes (1985); also Striker (1996) and Woodruff (2010). 9. The Agrippan modes are also expounded by Diogenes (DL IX 88–89). On these modes, see especially Barnes (1990). It should be noted that those modes have been the focus of much attention among contemporary epistemologists, who have recognized the seriousness of the challenge posed by the so-called “Agrippa’s trilemma” and proposed different ways to cope with it. On this issue, see Klein (2008), Lammenranta (2008), and Machuca (2015). 10. Scholars have usually thought that Aenesidemus was not strictly the author of the Ten Modes, but their compiler. 11. Sextus also expounds Two Modes of suspension of judgment (PH I 178–179), but they actually work by the application of three of the Five Modes and most likely derive from Agrippa. 12. See Machuca (2008: 51–57) for an overview of the varieties of skepticism found in Sextus’s corpus and the tensions between them. For book-length studies on Sextus’s Pyrrhonism, see especially Bailey (2002) and Perin (2010). 13. Following a usage found in some of our sources, I employ “Academics” to refer to the Academic skeptics. 14. On the skepticism of Arcesilaus, in addition to Anna Maria Ioppolo’s chapter, see Ioppolo (1986, 2000), Cooper (2004), and Vezzoli (2016). 15. On Carneades’s skepticism, besides Harald Thorsrud’s chapter in this book, see e.g. Bett (1989, 1990), Thorsrud (2002, 2010), and Obdrzalek (2006).

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16. On Philo’s skepticism, besides Harold Tarrant’s chapter in the present book, see Brittain (2001) and Glucker (2004). 17. On the philosophy of Antiochus and Middle Platonism in general, see, in addition to Carlos Lévy’s chapter, Glucker (1978), Tarrant (1985), and Sedley (2012). 18. On Cicero’s skepticism, see also Thorsrud (2009: ch. 5), Woolf (2015), and Nicgorski (2016). 19. On Favorinus’s skeptical views, besides Carlos Lévy’s chapter, see Ioppolo (1993, 1994, 2002) and Holford-Strevens (1997). 20. On Plutarch and skepticism, besides Lévy’s chapter, see De Lacy (1953) and Bonazzi (2014). 21. It should be noted that a πάθος is that which happens to someone or something as a result of being affected by an agent in the broad sense of this term. It refers to the physical and/or psychological state or condition in which the affected person or thing is. Although in ordinary English “affection” does not have this meaning anymore, it has become in the specialist literature a technical term to translate πάθος because it shows the connection that πάθος bears with the Greek verb πάσχειν (to affect). 22. On the skepticism of the Cyrenaic school, besides Richard Bett’s chapter, see Tsouna (1998) and O’Keefe (2011, 2015). 23. On Sextus’s relationship with the medical schools, see Machuca (2008: 40–50). 24. On Menodotus and medical Empiricism more generally, besides James Allen’s chapter in this book, see e.g. Edelstein (1967), Mudry (1982, 1990), Frede (1987, 1988, 1990), Hankinson (1987), and Perilli (2004).

REFERENCES Annas, Julia and Jonathan Barnes. 1985. The Modes of Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ausland, Hayden. 1989. “On the Moral Origin of the Pyrrhonian Philosophy,” Elenchos 10: 359–434. Bailey, Alan. 2002. Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beckwith, Christopher. 2015. Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bett, Richard. 1989. “Carneades’ Pithanon: A Reappraisal of its Role and Status,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 7: 59–94. Bett, Richard. 1990. “Carneades’ Distinction between Assent and Approval,” Monist 73: 3–20. Bett, Richard. 1997. Sextus Empiricus: Against the Ethicists. English translation with an introduction and commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bett, Richard. 2000. Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bett, Richard (ed.). 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Bonazzi, Mauro. 2014. “Plutarch and the Skeptics.” In M. Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch, 121–134. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Brittain, Charles. 2001. Philo of Larissa: The Last of the Academic Sceptics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brochard, Victor. 2002. Les Sceptiques Grecs. 4th ed. Paris: Le livre de poche. (First published in 1887.) Brunschwig, Jacques. 1994. “Once again on Eusebius on Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho.” In his Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, 190–211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1999. “The Beginnings of Hellenistic Epistemology.” In K. Algra, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld, and M. Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, 229–259. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clayman, Dee. 2009. Timon of Phlius: Pyrrhonism into Poetry. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Conche, Marcel. 1994. Pyrrhon ou l’apparence. 2nd ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. (First published in 1973.) Cooper, John. 2004. “Arcesilaus: Socratic and Sceptic.” In his Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy, 81–103. Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Lacy, Phillip. 1953. “Plutarch and the Academic Sceptics,” The Classical Journal 49: 79–85. Edelstein, Ludwig. 1967. “Empiricism and Scepticism in the Teaching of the Greek Empiricist School.” In his Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein, 195– 203, edited by O. Temkin and C. Temkin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Flintoff, Everard. 1980. “Pyrrho and India,” Phronesis 25: 88–108. Frede, Michael. 1987. “The Ancient Empiricists.” In his Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 234– 260. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frede, Michael. 1988. “The Empiricist Attitude Towards Reason and Theory.” In R. J. Hankinson (ed.), Method, Metaphysics and Medicine: Studies in the Philosophy of Ancient Medicine, special volume of Apeiron 21, 79–97. Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing. Frede, Michael. 1990. “An Empiricist View of Knowledge: Memorism.” In S. Everson (ed.), Companions to Ancient Thought I: Epistemology, 225–250. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frenkian, Aram. 1957. “Sextus Empiricus and Indian Logic,” The Philosophical Quarterly (India) 30: 115–126. Glucker, John. 1978. Antiochus and the Late Academy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Glucker, John. 2004. “The Philonian/Metrodorians: Problems of Method in Ancient Philosophy,” Elenchos 25: 99–152. Greco, John (ed.). 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Hankinson, Robert. 1987. “Causes and Empiricism: A Problem in the Interpretation of Later Greek Medical Method,” Phronesis 32: 329–348. Hankinson, Robert. 1998. The Sceptics. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. (First published in 1995.)

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Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. 1997. “Favorinus: The Man of Paradoxes.” In J. Barnes and M. Griffin (eds.), Philosophia Togata II: Plato and Aristotle at Rome, 188–217. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1986. Opinione e scienza. Il dibattito tra Stoici e Accademici nel terzo e secondo secolo a. C. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1993. “The Academic Position of Favorinus of Arelate,” Phronesis 38: 183–213. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1994. “Accademici e pirroniani nel II secolo D.C.” In A. Alberti (ed.), Realtà e ragione: Studi di filosofia antica, 85–103. Firenze: Olschki. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 2000. “Su alcune recenti interpretazioni dello scetticismo dell’Academia. Plutarch. Adv. Col. 26, 1121F–1122F: una testimonianza su Arcesilao,” Elenchos 21: 333–360. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 2002. “Gli accademici neōteroi nel secondo secolo d.C.,” Méthexis 15: 45–70. Klein, Peter. 2008. “Contemporary Responses to Agrippa’s Trilemma.” In Greco 2008, 484–503. Kuzminski, Adrian. 2008. Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism. Lanham: Lexington Books. Lammenranta, Markus. 2008. “The Pyrrhonian Problematic.” In Greco 2008, 9–33. Long, Anthony. 2006. “Timon of Phlius: Pyrrhonist and Satirist.” In his From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 70–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (First published in 1973.) Machuca, Diego. 2008. “Sextus Empiricus: His Outlook, Works, and Legacy,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 55: 28–63. Machuca, Diego. 2011a. “Ancient Skepticism: Overview,” Philosophy Compass 6: 234– 245. Machuca, Diego. 2011b. “Ancient Skepticism: Pyrrhonism,” Philosophy Compass 6: 246– 258. Machuca, Diego. 2011c. “Ancient Skepticism: The Skeptical Academy,” Philosophy Compass 6: 259–266. Machuca, Diego. 2015. “Agrippan Pyrrhonism and the Challenge of Disagreement,” Journal of Philosophical Research 40: 23–39. Mudry, Philippe. 1982. La préface du De medicina de Celsus. Lausanne: Imprimerie des Arts et Métiers. Mudry, Philippe. 1990. “Le scepticisme des médecins empiriques dans le traité De la médecine de Celse: modèles et modalités.” In Le scepticisme antique: perspectives historiques et systématiques, 85–96. Cahiers de la Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 15. Genève, Lausanne and Neuchâtel. Nicgorski, Walter. 2016. Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Obdrzalek, Suzanne. 2006. “Living in Doubt: Carneades’ Pithanon Reconsidered,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 31: 243–80. O’Keefe, Timothy. 2011. “The Cyrenaics vs. the Pyrrhonists on Knowledge of Appearances.” In D. Machuca (ed.), New Essays on Ancient Pyrrhonism, 27–40. Leiden: Brill.

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O’Keefe, Timothy. 2015. “The Sources and Scope of Cyrenaic Scepticism.” In U. Zilioli (ed.), From the Socratics to the Socratic Schools, 99–113. New York: Routledge. Pérez-Jean, Brigitte. 2005. Dogmatisme et scepticisme: L’héraclitisme d’Énésidème. Lille: Septentrion. Perilli, Lorenzo. 2004. Menodoto di Nicomedia: Contributo a una storia galeniana della medicina empirica. München and Leipzig: Saur. Perin, Casey. 2010. The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Polito, Roberto. 2004. The Sceptical Road: Aenesidemus’ Appropriation of Heraclitus. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Polito, Roberto. 2014. Aenesidemus of Cnossus: Testimonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schofield, Malcolm. 2007. “Aenesidemus: Pyrrhonist and ‘Heraclitean’.” In A. M. Ioppolo and D. Sedley (eds.), Pyrrhonists, Patricians, Platonizers: Hellenistic Philosophy in the Period 155–86 BC, 269–338. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Sedley, David (ed.). 2012. The Philosophy of Antiochus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Striker, Gisela. 1996. “The Ten Modes of Aenesidemus.” In her Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, 116–134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (First published in 1983.) Svavarsson, Svavar. 2010. “Pyrrho and Early Pyrrhonism.” In Bett 2010, 36–57. Tarrant, Harold. 1985. Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thorsrud, Harald. 2002. “Cicero on His Academic Predecessors: The Fallibilism of Arcesilaus and Carneades,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40: 1–18. Thorsrud, Harald. 2009. Ancient Scepticism. Stocksfield: Acumen. Thorsrud, Harald. 2010. “Arcesilaus and Carneades.” In Bett 2010, 58–80. Tsouna, Voula. 1998. The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vezzoli, Simone. 2016. Arcesilao di Pitane: l’origine del Platonismo neoaccademico. Analisi e fonti. Turnhout: Brepols. Woodruff, Paul. 1988. “Aporetic Pyrrhonism,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6: 139–168. Woodruff, Paul. 2010. “The Pyrrhonian Modes.” In Bett 2010, 208–231. Woolf, Raphael. 2015. Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER ONE

The Cyrenaics and Skepticism RICHARD BETT

1  SHOULD THE CYRENAICS COUNT AS SKEPTICS? The Cyrenaics are regularly described as having a skeptical epistemology.1 But some would say that the Cyrenaics do not belong in a book on skepticism. Prominent among them would be the Pyrrhonist skeptic Sextus Empiricus. At the end of the first book of his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus discusses several philosophies that were thought to be equivalent or at least similar to skepticism. It is not clear who thought so; were they skeptics themselves, or adherents of some other philosophical outlook? But Sextus is opposed to the whole project, arguing in each case that there are central differences between skepticism as he understands it and the philosophy in question. And one of these philosophies is that of the Cyrenaics (PH 1.215). Sextus points to two differences. First, the Cyrenaics posit pleasure as the end or aim (τέλος) of life, whereas the skeptic’s end is ἀταραξία, freedom from worry; referring to his earlier chapter on the skeptic’s end (PH 1.25–30), Sextus counters that a firm conviction that pleasure is the end will (whether or not one actually achieves it) lead to a great deal of trouble—that is, the opposite of ἀταραξία. The earlier chapter did not actually mention the specific case of pleasure, but argued that taking anything to be by nature good or bad, and thereby caring intensely about its presence or absence, will lead to turmoil; the same point can be found elsewhere (PH 3.235–238, AM 11.110–140). There are really two distinct issues here: the identity of the ends posited by each school, and the ways in which they are posited. First, pleasure and ἀταραξία are two different things, so the Cyrenaics do not have the same end as the skeptics. But second, holding to one’s view of the end (whatever one takes it to be) as a matter of firm conviction (in the present passage, διαβεβαιούμενος) will lead to results that are actually contrary to the skeptic’s end. The Cyrenaics are assumed to adopt their end in this committed way. By contrast, when Sextus states the skeptics’ own end, he is careful to put it much less decisively. He says: “Up to now we say that the skeptic’s end is freedom from worry” (PH 1.25).2 Rather than being posited, as ends usually are, as the end for human beings in general—as what humans as such should, or naturally do, strive

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toward—it is explicitly restricted to the skeptics themselves; and it is put forward tentatively, as a matter of their experience “up to now,” rather than definitively. In both respects it conforms to the suspension of judgment (ἐποχή) that Sextus regularly identifies as the centerpiece of his skeptical attitude. The centrality of suspension of judgment for the Pyrrhonist skeptic is also the basis of the second contrast Sextus draws between his school and the Cyrenaics. Here and elsewhere, Sextus distinguishes between the way objects strike us and the objects themselves, and says that concerning the latter, here referred to as “the external underlying things” (τῶν ἐκτὸς ὑποκειμένων), the skeptics suspend judgment,3 whereas the Cyrenaics “declare that they have an inapprehensible nature.” The Cyrenaics, then, assert that these objects are inherently unknowable, and that is an intellectual commitment, just as much as if one were to claim that they could be known; in modern scholarship, though Sextus does not use this terminology himself, such a position is generally called “negative dogmatism,” and Sextus is clear that this is different from skepticism. Now, the other side of this distinction— what I referred to as “the way things strike us”—is what led, as Sextus reports it, to the claim that the Cyrenaic position is the same as skepticism; the reason given is that “it too [i.e., skepticism] says that only the ways we are affected [πάθη] are apprehended,” just as the Cyrenaics did.4 Sextus does not necessarily endorse this characterization of skepticism; it is presented simply as the support offered by those who claim the identity. In fact, as I shall suggest in closing, he would be well advised not to endorse it; even here, the Cyrenaic and the skeptical positions are not identical. But his point in drawing this second contrast is that, even if we accept the supposed point of similarity, the Cyrenaics differ importantly from the skeptics in what they are prepared to say about the objects themselves. So Sextus, a card-carrying skeptic, explicitly repudiates the idea that the Cyrenaics are skeptics. Why, then, should we treat them as skeptics? The answer is that skepticism has taken numerous different forms in the history of philosophy. Although the Cyrenaic position may differ in crucial ways from skepticism as understood in the ancient period—the hallmark of which, both in Sextus’s hands and elsewhere, was suspension of judgment of one form or another—anyone approaching the Cyrenaics with a background in reflections about skepticism in the modern period will immediately see their philosophy as having a strong skeptical component. For skepticism in the modern period has generally been regarded as centering around the denial of the possibility of knowledge in some domain: about the “external world,” about other minds, about induction, and so on. As we have already noted, the Cyrenaics, if Sextus is right, hold something that clearly has at least a family resemblance with external world skepticism; we shall also see hints of a position resembling other minds skepticism. So to the extent that the Cyrenaics qualify as skeptics, it is in an anachronistic fashion, because of the resemblance of some of their views to views that would now be called “skeptical,” not because of anything that would have been recognized as skepticism in the ancient world. How close the Cyrenaic position is even to varieties of skepticism discussed today is an interesting and subtle question; I shall suggest in what follows that we should be careful not to try to assimilate them too closely. If I am right about this last point,

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then the Cyrenaics serve as an illuminating foil to skepticism in both the ancient and the modern periods. In order to develop this line of thought, however, we need to look more closely at what the Cyrenaic position actually was. I shall say no more about their ideas on pleasure, nor will I address the very interesting questions surrounding their picture of the relation between pleasure and happiness,5 except to say that this side of their thought seems to reveal the same tendency to restrict their concerns to what is immediately accessible to experience as we find in their epistemological ideas. It is the latter on which I shall concentrate from now on.

2  THE VIEW IN MORE DETAIL The passage of Sextus referred to in the previous section attributes to the Cyrenaics the view that only the πάθη, and not the objects causing them, are or can be apprehended (PH 1.215). We find the same attribution in another, considerably longer passage of Sextus in which the Cyrenaic view is summarized (AM 7.191–200—on the present point see especially 191, 195); this is a section of Sextus’s lengthy review, in the first book of Against the Logicians, of positions, positive and negative, concerning the criterion of truth. Several other authors also cite them as holding that only the πάθη can be apprehended: the Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus (on 152b, col. 65, 29–39), Aristocles of Messene in a passage on the Cyrenaics quoted by Eusebius (Praep. evang. 19.1–2), Eusebius himself in introducing this passage (Praep. evang. 18.31),6 and Diogenes Laertius in his life of Aristippus (DL 2.92). Despite the close verbal agreement among all these passages, there is room for some doubt as to whether the terminology of apprehension (κατάληψις) goes back to the Cyrenaics’ own original formulation of the position. As far as we can tell, this terminology was first given an epistemological connotation by Zeno of Citium, the first Stoic (Cicero, Acad. 2.145). Now, there is an unresolved debate (and the evidence may be insufficient to settle this) over whether the Cyrenaics’ epistemology was part of their position from its beginning with the older Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates, or was added later—probably by his grandson, also named Aristippus.7 But although the older Aristippus’s precise dates are uncertain, and those of his grandson even more so, it is clear that both must have predated Zeno, whose birthdate is generally placed in the later 330s BCE.8 Hence, if the report that Zeno invented κατάληψις as a philosophical term is correct, the Cyrenaic view is likely to have been developed too early to make use of it. By the time of the authors who are our sources, it was no longer restricted to Stoicism, but was common philosophical parlance for any kind of secure cognitive awareness; and this would explain why it became standard in describing the Cyrenaic position, even if the Cyrenaics themselves did not use this language. However, this need not trouble us, since what is clearly the same position is also reported to us without the language of apprehension.9 Plutarch tells us that the Cyrenaics saw each πάθος as “having its own evidence [ἐνάργειαν] within itself, which is not to be challenged” (Adv. Col. 1120E). In Hellenistic and later philosophical contexts, ἐνάργεια regularly indicates something’s being a matter of plain and incontrovertible experience, and hence it plays a role equivalent to

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that of apprehension in the other passages: it specifies that there is no room for doubt or dispute about how these πάθη come across to us.10 By contrast, Plutarch says that they “thought that the assurance [πίστιν] coming from them [i.e., from the πάθη] was not sufficient for firm declarations about the objects”—that is, the objects causing those πάθη (1120D); examples are whether honey is sweet, an oliveshoot bitter, hail cold, wine warm, the sun bright, or night dark (1120E). Similarly, Cicero tells us that the Cyrenaics held that “they do not know what has which color or which sound, but only sense that they are affected in a certain way” (Acad. 2.76.).11 The outlines of the view, then, are clear enough: we can have a certain kind of secure grasp of something about the πάθη themselves, but the objects that caused them are not amenable to any such grasp. It is now time to get clearer about what this amounts to. First of all, what is a πάθος? Most generally, it is something that happens to someone or something, or that someone or something undergoes. Most often, but certainly not always, it is human beings who are described as having πάθη, and this is clearly true for the Cyrenaics; it is our own πάθη of which we are said to have apprehension. In human contexts the word is frequently translated “emotions,” “passions,” or “feelings”; these can often be appropriate, but in the present case they are too narrow. From the texts already adduced, it is clear that the πάθη include cases of ordinary sense-perception, with no particular affective component; this is suggested by the frequent talk of the external objects (the character of which we cannot apprehend) versus our πάθη of them, and is confirmed by the examples from Plutarch and Cicero in the previous paragraph. Indeed, these appear to be the cases of most immediate interest for our purposes, although pleasure and pain are also included by the Cyrenaics among the πάθη (Sextus, AM 7.199, DL 2.86, Cic. Acad. 2.76). Above, in an attempt to capture this diversity, I translated πάθη as “ways we are affected”; it is not clear that any single English word will do.12 From now on I will simply use the Greek word. What, then, is apprehended on the Cyrenaic view, and what cannot be apprehended? On the side of the objects, it seems clear enough that we cannot apprehend the objects’ real or intrinsic character; we can know how we are affected by these objects, but not how they are in themselves.13 And it may seem that the answer on the side of the subject having the πάθη is equally clear: one apprehends, or has infallible access to, one’s own subjective experience of these objects. This may also seem to be supported by Sextus’s talk of the πάθη as “apparent” (φαινόμενα) to us (AM 7.194, 197).14 But the other sources do not use this language, and it may well be that Sextus is translating the Cyrenaics’ position into language with which he himself and his assumed audience are familiar (so Tsouna 1998: chapter 4.V). Sextus also reports the Cyrenaic view using a different form of language; the same form of words also appears in Plutarch’s report, and Plutarch explicitly claims to be giving the view as the Cyrenaics themselves present it—by contrast with the Epicurean Colotes, whom he criticizes for misrepresenting it (Adv. Col. 1120D–E). According to these sources, in characterizing the πάθη the Cyrenaics said that we are “sweetened,” “whitened,” “reddened,” “chilled,” “heated,” etc. (AM 7.192– 193, Adv. Col. 1120E); in what appears to be interchangeable terminology, Sextus

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also has them saying that we are “affected [or “activated,” κινεῖται] yellowly,” “redly,” etc. (AM 7.192, 198). Now, to say that we are “sweetened” or “whitened” does not seem the most natural language to use if one wanted to talk purely about experiencing something as sweet or white. Rather, it sounds as if something in us is being said to turn sweet or white.15 And this recalls another, roughly contemporary account of sense perception—at least as some scholars have read it. On one interpretation of Aristotle’s account of sense perception,16 the sense organs actually acquire, when one perceives, the sensory qualities belonging to the objects of senseperception; for example, the interior of one’s eye turns red when one sees a red tomato. Whether or not this is right about Aristotle, it seems a natural reading of the Cyrenaic terminology—thinking now, of course, about the perceiver’s side alone. For someone to be “reddened” is for something in that person to become red, the sense organ for vision being the obvious candidate; and the same would be true, mutatis mutandis, for “sweetened,” “chilled,” and the rest. The other language in Sextus (“affected redly,” etc.) does not point so clearly in this direction, but seems at least compatible with the reading just suggested. This reading might be challenged on the ground that the peculiar verbal forms reported in our sources extend considerably beyond the kind of basic sensory properties considered so far. Plutarch’s report includes the claim that the Cyrenaics also spoke of being “walled,” “horsed,” or “manned” (Adv. Col. 1120D). Now it would be hard to understand these other than as shorthand for “experience a perception as of a wall/horse/man”; that perceiving subjects in any sense become walls, horses, or men during these perceptions would surely be absurd. However, there is good reason not to accept this account of what the Cyrenaics said. Plutarch presents these terms as coming from Colotes’s portrait of the Cyrenaic view, which he says was offered in a spirit of mockery (κωμῳδῶν, 1120D) and which, as noted above, he explicitly rejects, contrasting it with his own account of what the Cyrenaics actually said, where only sensory properties are included. No other evidence includes these outlandish terms, which one would expect to have excited broader ridicule if they had really been part of the view.17 Sextus’s summary does say that “the person who presses on his eye is activated as if by two things,” and goes on to use the verb “doubled” to express this (AM 7.192–193); here is another purported Cyrenaic coinage outside the range of sensory properties, and given Plutarch’s evidence we may find this suspect as well. But, unlike in the case of “walled,” etc., it is not hard to understand “doubled” as referring to an actual change in the sense organ; pressing on your eye might well be thought to divide the material inside into two. Indeed, the reference to pressing on the eye may even support the general reading of these verbs as referring to physiological changes rather than to subjective experiences. If this is indeed what the Cyrenaics mean, we need not deny that they are interested in the experience of tasting something as sweet or seeing it as white; in speaking of the πάθη as apprehensible (or whatever equivalent terms they actually used), they clearly have in mind our grasp of something of which we are subjectively aware.18 Rather, the point is that they do not have a sharp distinction, such as is taken for granted in Descartes and much early modern philosophy, between mental and physical occurrences. One tastes something as sweet, and that thing turns one’s

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tongue sweet. Are these the very same event described in two different ways? There is no indication in the sources that the Cyrenaics have any concern to distinguish them. And if not, then our πάθη, the ways we are affected by objects, are not purely mental events; they are also effects on our bodies. By the same token, they are not purely subjective, but also things happening in the world, describable from a thirdperson perspective.19 And this is one reason why one should not try to assimilate the Cyrenaics too closely to the typical figure of “the skeptic” in modern philosophy. While it is not false that the Cyrenaics deny that we can know about the external world, “external” in this case means “external to our bodies,” not “external to our subjective awareness.”20 Another reason why it is hazardous to assimilate the Cyrenaics to the modern skeptic is that they do not seem to question the existence of the external world (in any sense of “external”). Instead, the question is consistently whether we know what the objects causing our πάθη are like. Their answer is that we do not know this; but that there are objects out there, to which our πάθη are somehow a response, is taken for granted. For example, Sextus tells us that, on the Cyrenaic view, “that we are whitened and we are sweetened, it is possible to say . . . irrefutably; but that the thing productive of the effect is white or sweet, it is not possible to assert” (AM 7.191). And Aristocles reports that “they said that, when being burned or cut, they knew that they were affected in some way; but whether the thing burning them was fire or the thing cutting them was iron, they were not able to say” (in Eusebius, Praep. evang. 14.19.1). Sextus’s report once seems to show them inching toward a question about existence; he says that “the external thing productive of the effect is perhaps (τάχα) a being, but it is not apparent to us” (AM 7.194). But there is no indication that they ever followed through on that suggestion and explicitly raised the question.21 One might say that this is simply a failure to see where the logic of their position was leading them. But if, as I have suggested, the πάθη are physiological events as much as experiences, it is not perhaps surprising; a view according to which there were human bodies, but maybe no world for them to inhabit, would be a strange view indeed. So if it is true that “external” means something different for the Cyrenaics from what it means for a Cartesian, this is not unconnected with their focus on the nature of external objects rather than their existence. In addition to doubts about our knowledge of the world around us, Sextus’s report includes doubts about our knowledge of the πάθη of others, which seems to anticipate what is today called “skepticism about other minds.” No other source mentions this, but it is hard to see why Sextus would simply invent it in the course of a description of what the Cyrenaics say. It appears to be introduced as part of the argument for external objects being inapprehensible; the idea seems to be that we cannot tell what objects are like because we cannot compare our πάθη with those of others and confirm that they are qualitatively the same (AM 7.196–197). One may wonder why, even if we could do this, it would give us knowledge of the way things are; might not all humans see things distortedly?22 But I am not sure the argument has to deny this; the idea may be that, since we cannot even tell whether we see things the same way as others—which, even if we could, might not be enough— the prospects for getting to a secure grasp of the nature of those things are truly

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hopeless. In any case, Sextus says that according to the Cyrenaics, “each person grasps the πάθος that is his own,” but that since we do not grasp each other’s πάθη, “it is rash to say that what appears a certain way to me also appears that way to the next person.” If our own πάθη are all we can be sure about, it is indeed not hard to see how the πάθη of others might be judged just as elusive as the character of the objects that produce them. But again, just as the existence of the external world does not seem to be an issue for the Cyrenaics, nor is there any hint of solipsism. Nothing in this passage suggests any doubt that there are other minds; what goes on in them is the question. Again, part of the reason for this may be that the πάθη are, as I put it earlier, not purely mental,23 but the connection is not as obvious as in the case of the external world. So the Cyrenaics interestingly anticipate what in modern times has been called skepticism about the external world, and also, if Sextus is to be believed, skepticism about other minds. There are also interesting and important differences. But certainly they are much closer to these modern forms of skepticism than are any other ancient thinkers—including, to return to my opening point, the ancient thinkers who called themselves skeptics. Finally, we can now see why Sextus ought to distinguish himself from the Cyrenaics not only, as he says, on the inapprehensibility of external things, but also on the apprehensibility of the πάθη, which was the point on which those who wished to assimilate the two schools were said to rely (PH 1.215). Sextus does not question the way things appear to him; indeed, he says that this is not a topic for discussion (PH 1.22). But this is not the same as asserting that a whole class of items, the πάθη, can be infallibly known about—which is what the claim of apprehensibility amounts to; that would be a theoretical claim.24 The Cyrenaics have an epistemological doctrine of which apprehensibility of the πάθη and the inapprehensibility of their objects are interconnected parts; both should equally be anathema to Sextus. True skeptics in the ancient sense are not philosophers, in any usual sense of the term; the Cyrenaics are.

NOTES 1. See, e.g., Matson (2006) and Taylor (2012), both in standard reference works. 2. Translations are my own. 3. The sentence also contains the difficult phrase ὅσον ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ: “as far as the argument goes,” “as far as reason is concerned.” However precisely one translates it, the point seems to be that the skeptic makes no attempt to theorize about the nature of these “external” objects. See Brunschwig (1994: 250). 4. I shall return to the question of what the πάθη are and how the word should be translated; the somewhat cumbersome translation “ways we are affected” is intended as a place-holder until that point. 5. On this, see especially DL 2.87–88, and for two partially differing interpretations, see O’Keefe (2002) and Tsouna-McKirahan (2002). 6. On this division of the text between Eusebius and Aristocles, see Chiesara (2001: fragment F5 and Introduction, section II, especially xxvi–xxviii).

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7. In this chapter, for reasons of space, I do not attempt to address the history of the school or possible differences among individual members. Our sources in any case consistently report Cyrenaic epistemology as adopted by the school in general (unlike their ethics, where we hear of a number of individual differences—see especially DL 2.93–100); the only question is whether it was part of their philosophy from the start. 8. The evidence on the older Aristippus’s chronology is conflicting and hard to interpret; see Giannantoni (1990: Note 13, vol. 4, 135–140), and for the ancient sources, Giannantoni (1990: vol. 2, section IV-A). There are no precise chronological indications for the younger Aristippus. But someone who was an adult in Socrates’s lifetime must have been born no later than the 420s, which almost certainly puts the younger Aristippus at least a generation earlier than Zeno. 9. Here (as on almost every other point in this section) I am in agreement with Tsouna (1998); see chapter 4.I on the present issue. This book is an essential resource for anyone wishing to pursue this subject further. 10. Hence ἀπερίσπαστος can confidently be translated (as above) “not to be challenged,” not merely “not challenged.” Adjectives ending in –τος routinely have this descriptive/prescriptive ambiguity, but the occurrence of ἐνάργεια shows that the prescriptive translation is not misleading. (Incidentally, ἐνάργεια is an emendation. But the mss. reading ἐνέργεια, “activity” makes no sense, and the correction is an easy one.) 11. In the same section, Cicero says that “they deny that anything external can be perceived, and that they perceive only those things that they sense with internal touch.” But “perceive” (percipi) in Cicero’s Academica is used as equivalent to the Greek καταλαμβάνειν, “apprehend,” even though his actual translation of καταλαμβάνειν is comprehendere (2.145–146); since my present interest is in evidence independent of the notion of apprehension, I leave these words aside. 12. The translation “affections” is still sometimes used, presumably intended as shorthand for “ways we are affected”; but in contemporary English the word “affections” has connotations that are hopelessly misleading in the current context. In the past I have used “effects,” but this fails to bring out the fact that a πάθος is something that happens to a subject (be that subject animate or inanimate). 13. Zilioli (2012) has argued that this is because, according to the Cyrenaics, there is no way things are in themselves; things are indeterminate in their nature. On this reading the Cyrenaics would resemble Pyrrho, on some interpretations of his thought. I have argued against this in Bett (2015); see also O’Keefe (2013). 14. See, however, Everson (1991), which argues that even the category of the apparent, in the hands of the Pyrrhonists, should not be construed in subjectivist terms. For some well-founded doubts about this, see Fine (2003), especially section 6. 15. Diego Machuca commented that the point may simply be to put the focus on the ways in which one is affected, and to avoid any reference to the causes. I quite agree that this is the intention. But what are the ways in which one is affected? This peculiar form of language suggests that the Cyrenaics mean to identify something other than pure subjective experience. The account that I go on to sketch seems to me the most natural way to make sense of this idiosyncratic terminology; given the state of our evidence, it would be rash to claim anything stronger.

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16. E.g., Ross (1923: 137), Sorabji (1974). 17. Here I follow Kechagia (2011: chapter 8.2). Tsouna (1998: chapter 6.III) also rejects Colotes’s picture. 18. My account is thus not inconsistent with that of Fine (2003: section 5) Fine’s focus is on the subjective aspect of the Cyrenaics’ πάθη; her concern is to rebut the idea, stemming from Burnyeat (1982), that ancient Greek philosophy does not recognize a category of the subjective that is anything like that which we find in philosophy since Descartes. I think that she is successful in this aim. But Fine does not deny that these πάθη are also physical states, though she is not particularly interested in their character. 19. Of course, whether these events could ever be reliably observed from a third-person perspective is put in doubt by the other side of the Cyrenaic position, that the objects causing the πάθη are not apprehensible. That you are “reddened” may be apprehensible to you, and this may have an objective aspect (your eye’s turning red) as well as a subjective one (something’s looking red to you). But your being reddened is not apprehensible to anyone else, because to everyone else your eye’s turning red is not a πάθος, but an external event. 20. That the conception of one’s body as “external” originates with Descartes is not a new idea; it was first made prominent in Burnyeat (1982). 21. Another passage of Sextus (AM 6.53) claims that the Cyrenaics thought that only the πάθη exist, which sounds like an outright denial, not just a questioning, of the existence of the external world. But this is in a polemical context in which some highly dubious claims are also made about Plato and Democritus; it should almost certainly be discounted. See Tsouna (1998: 80–81) and Bett (2013: 177–178). 22. Tsouna (1998: chapter 7) raises this objection and then explores alter­ native interpretations. 23. Tsouna (1998: 93–95) has some suggestions in that direction. 24. On this, see further O’Keefe (2011). Perin (2010) argues that Sextus takes us to have noninferential knowledge of how things appear to us. (Fine (2003: 209) also considers this possibility, but is uncertain.) But, first, this is an inference from other things that he says; he certainly does not say anything that could be translated by these words. What we think an ancient philosopher was committed to holding may not always correspond to what that ancient philosopher actually held. Second, even if we accept Perin’s view, it does not follow that Sextus would or should be comfortable with the dogmatic notion of apprehension; one can claim in a commonsense way to know things (even noninferentially, as in “I just know it”), without having or wishing to have any precise commitments concerning what that amounts to. Both Perin (2010: 160) and Fine (2003: 208) draw attention to the fact that Sextus reports the view of those who would assimilate the Cyrenaics to the skeptics with the words “it too says that only the πάθη are apprehended,” and does not reject the implication that this is the skeptic’s view. However, as I noted earlier, he also does not endorse this implication; and my claim here is that he is well-advised not to do so.

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REFERENCES Bett, Richard. 2013. “A Sceptic Looks at Art (but not Very Closely): Sextus Empiricus on Music,” International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3: 155–181. Bett, Richard. 2015. “Pyrrho and the Socratic Schools.” In U. Zilioli (ed.), From the Socratics to the Socratic Schools, 149–167. London: Routledge. Brunschwig, Jacques 1994. “The ὅσον ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ Formula in Sextus Empiricus.” In his, Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, 244–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1982. “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” Philosophical Review 91: 3–40. Chiesara, Maria Lorenza. 2001. Aristocles of Messene: Testimonia and Fragments, edited with translation and commentary. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Everson, Stephen. 1991. “The Objective Appearance of Pyrrhonism.” In S. Everson (ed.), Companions to Ancient Thought 2: Psychology, 121–147. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fine, Gail. 2003. “Subjectivity, Ancient and Modern: The Cyrenaics, Sextus, and Descartes.” In J. Miller and Brad Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, 192–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giannantoni, Gabriele. 1990. Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae, 4 vols. Naples: Bibliopolis. Kechagia, Eleni. 2011. Plutarch Against Colotes: A Lesson in the History of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matson, Wallace. 2006. “Cyrenaics.” In D. M. Borchert (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed., vol. 2, 619–620. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale. O’Keefe, Tim. 2002. “The Cyrenaics on Pleasure, Happiness, and Future-Concern,” Phronesis 47: 395–416. O’Keefe, Tim. 2011. “The Cyrenaics vs. the Pyrrhonists on Knowledge of Appearances.” In D. Machuca (ed.), New Essays on Ancient Pyrrhonism, 27–40. Leiden and Boston: Brill. O’Keefe, Tim. 2013. Review of Zilioli (2012), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013.04.14. Perin, Casey. 2010. “Scepticism and Belief.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 145–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ross, David. 1923. Aristotle. London: Methuen. Sorabji, Richard. 1974. “Body and Soul in Aristotle,” Philosophy 49: 63–89. Taylor, C. C. W. 2012. “Cyrenaics.” In S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed., 405. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tsouna, Voula. 1998. The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tsouna-McKirahan, Voula. 2002. “Is there an Exception to Greek eudaimonism?” In M. Canto-Sperber and P. Pellegrin (eds.), Le style de la pensée: receuil de texts en hommage à Jacques Brunschwig, 464–489. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Zilioli, Ugo. 2012. The Cyrenaics. Durham: Acumen.

CHAPTER TWO

Pyrrho and Timon CASEY PERIN

1  PYRRHO THE OBSCURE We know remarkably little about the life of Pyrrho. Born sometime around 365 BCE in Elis on the Peloponnesos, he was, according to Antigonus of Carystus by way of Diogenes Laertius, a failed painter turned philosopher. Several ancient authors report that Pyrrho traveled to India as part of Alexander’s expedition. There he is said by Diogenes Laertius to have encountered certain “naked wise men” (γυμνοσοφισταί) and, as a result, to have developed certain philosophical views. However, he did not record these views in writing as he appears to have written nothing. He died sometime around 275 BCE. It is arguable that we know even less about Pyrrho’s philosophical views than we do about his life. There is a consensus among scholars that the most important text for understanding Pyrrho’s philosophical position is a passage from the latefirst-century BCE or early-first-century CE Peripatetic philosopher Aristocles’s On Philosophy. This and other passages from Aristocles’s treatise are preserved in Eusebius’s (260–340 CE) Praeparatio evangelica. Aristocles reports a number of claims he attributes to Pyrrho’s disciple and publicist Timon of Phlius (c. 325–c. 235 BCE). Timon, in turn, attributes at least one of these claims to Pyrrho. It is not easy to tease out just what in the passage comes from Aristocles, what from Timon, and what, if anything, from Pyrrho. Few scholars think Aristocles is quoting Timon directly. Many, though, think his paraphrase of Timon is, at least for the most part, accurate. And many of these scholars think the text by Timon that Aristocles accurately paraphrases itself accurately reports Pyrrho’s views. Hence, these scholars think we can read back through Aristocles via Timon to Pyrrho. Other scholars are less optimistic and think that what we get in Aristocles’s passage is either mostly the views of Timon or, worse, the views of a Timon badly distorted by Aristocles.1 I see no way to settle these issues. However, unless we assume that what Aristocles tells us about Timon, and what Timon tells us about Pyrrho, is accurate, then Pyrrho as a philosopher is more or less lost to us. For this reason, I will proceed on the assumption that the Aristocles passage tells us something about Pyrrho and Timon if only we can make sense of what it is.2

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2  THE PASSAGE FROM ARISTOCLES Here, in as neutral a translation as I think possible, is the Aristocles passage in full. (For ease of exposition I have divided the passage into six sections [A] through [F].) A. It is necessary above all to consider our own knowledge; for if it is our nature to know nothing, there is no need to inquire any further into things. There were some among the ancients, too, who made this statement, whom Aristotle has argued against. Pyrrho of Elis was also a powerful advocate of such a position (ἴσχυσε μὲν τοιαῦτα λέγων καὶ Πύρρων ὁ Ἠλεῖος). B. He himself has left nothing in writing; his pupil Timon, however, says that the person who is to be happy must look to these three points: first, what are things like by nature (ὁποῖα πέφυκε τὰ πρὰγματα)? Second, in what way ought we to be disposed toward them (τίνα χρὴ τρόπον ἡμᾶς πρὸς αὐτὰ διακεῖσθαι)? And, finally, what will be the result for those who are so disposed? C. He [Timon] says that he [Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indistinguishable/indifferent (ἀδιάφορα) and unmeasurable/unstable (ἀστάθμητα) and indeterminable/indeterminate (ἀνεπίκριτα); D. for this reason (διὰ τοῦτο) neither our sensations nor our opinions (μήτε τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἡμῶν μήτε τὰς δόξας) tell the truth or lie (ἀληθεύειν ἢ ψεύδεσθαι). E. For this reason, then (διὰ τοῦτο οὖν), we should not trust them, but should be without opinions (ἀδοξάστους) and without inclinations and without wavering, saying about each single thing that it no more (οὐ μᾶλλον) is than is not or both is and is not or neither is nor is not.

F. Timon says that the result for those who are so disposed will be first an inability to say anything (ἀφασία), but then tranquility (ἀταραξία); and Aenesidemus says pleasure. These, then, are the main points of what they say. (Eusebius 14.18.1-5)3

The passage has the following structure. In [A] Aristocles attributes to Pyrrho the view that in virtue of our nature we can’t know anything. However, Aristocles himself notes that Pyrrho wrote nothing. Hence, when he attributes this view to Pyrrho, Aristocles must by relying on what someone else has said or written about Pyrrho. So in [B] Aristocles either quotes or paraphrases Timon. But the connection between the quotation from or paraphrase of Timon and the view attributed to Pyrrho in [A] is not obvious. Pyrrho is said to have held the view that we can’t know anything. Timon is said to have made a claim about what is required for someone to be happy. Specifically, Timon is reported as saying that to be happy a person must consider, and presumably answer correctly, three questions. Then, in [C], we get the only claim clearly and explicitly attributed to Pyrrho by Timon. And, apparently, this claim constitutes an answer, and is understood by Timon to be Pyrrho’s answer,

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to the first of the three questions relevant to happiness. In [D] an inference is made, either by Pyrrho or Timon or both, from the claim attributed to Pyrrho in [C]. A second inference is made in [E] and generates the answer given by either Pyrrho or Timon or both to the second of the three questions relevant to happiness. Finally, in [F], Aristocles reports the answer Timon gives, and may implicitly attribute to Pyrrho, to the third of the three questions relevant to happiness. Aristocles then claims to have presented the “main points” of what “they” (Pyrrho and Timon? and Aenesidemus?) say.

3  TWO READINGS OF PYRRHO The claim attributed to Pyrrho by Timon in section [C] is supposed to be an answer to the first of the three questions relevant to happiness. Hence, it is supposed to be a claim about what things are like by nature. The initial, and perhaps most fundamental, interpretative problem with the passage is how to understand the trio of adjectives by which Pyrrho describes what things are like by nature. Here there are two general interpretative options: the so-called subjective versus objective or, better, the epistemic versus the metaphysical reading of the adjectives. According to the former, Pyrrho’s fundamental claim is that things are indeterminable by us (as, on this reading, ἀνεπίκριτα is taken to mean), that is, we can’t determine, and hence can’t know, what things are like.4 More precisely, Pyrrho’s is the minimally informative claim that (α) Things by nature are such that we can’t know what they are like. A problem arises if, as appears to be the case, (α) falls within its own scope. (α) is a claim about what things are like by nature (otherwise it fails to answer the first of the three questions relevant to happiness). But (α) says that we can’t know what things are like. A fortiori we can’t know what things are like by nature. Hence, we can’t know that things by nature are such that we can’t know what they are like. And if that is so, we can’t know that (α) is true. So if (α) falls within its own scope, and if Pyrrho asserts (α) as something he knows, Pyrrho’s assertion of (α) is self-refuting. If (α) is something Pyrrho knows, it is false; if (α) is true, it is not something Pyrrho knows. Pyrrho can avoid these problems if he thinks that somehow (α) does not fall within its own scope. He would then think, for reasons we can only guess, that the one thing we can know about what things are like is that they are by nature such that we can’t know what they are like. On the metaphysical reading, Pyrrho is making a more substantial claim about what things are like by nature. This is the strange, almost paradoxical, claim that (as Richard Bett formulates it) “things in themselves have no fixed and definite character” (Bett 2000: 20).5 That is, things are “indifferent” in the sense that any one thing lacks properties that would distinguish it from any other thing; things are “unstable” in the sense that their natures change; and things are “indeterminate” in the sense that that they have no determinate features or properties. On the metaphysical reading, Pyrrho’s answer to the question “What are things like by nature?” is that there is nothing at all that things are like by nature.

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4  ZELLER’S EMENDATION Partisans of the metaphysical reading have argued, and many partisans of the epistemic reading have agreed, that the epistemic reading of Pyrrho’s claim wrecks the logic of Aristocles’s text as we have it. Either Pyrrho or Timon or both make an inference from the claim attributed to Pyrro in section [C] to the claim in section [D] that “neither our sensations nor our beliefs tell the truth or lie.” Most, though not all, scholars take the latter claim to mean that our sensations and beliefs neither constantly nor consistently tell the truth nor constantly nor consistently lie, that is, they are unreliable. Suppose the claim in section [D] is understood in this way. Suppose, further, that Pyrrho’s claim in section [C] is equivalent to or at least clearly implies that we can’t know what things are like.6 In Aristocles’s text as we have it, either Pyrrho or Timon or both would be making an inference from (1) We can’t know what things are like. to (2) Our sensations and beliefs are unreliable. Yet, as commentators regularly note, the inference ought to go the other way: at best (1) is a consequence of (2), not (2) of (1). Since this is so, partisans of the epistemic reading of Pyrrho’s claim have been thought to have only one option, namely, to emend Aristocles’s text so that either Pyrrho or Timon or both infer (1) from (2) rather than (2) from (1).7 Hence, partisans of the epistemic reading have accepted an emendation first proposed by the nineteenthcentury German scholar Eduard Zeller. Sections [C] and [D] of Aristocles’s text as we have it read (in the translation favored by the epistemic reading): [C] He [Timon] says that he [Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indistinguishable and unmeasurable and indeterminable; [D] for this reason, (διὰ τοῦτο) neither our sensations nor our opinions tell the truth or lie. Zeller altered the italicized phrase so that the emended text reads: [C] He [Timon] says that he [Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indifferent and unstable and indeterminate [D] on account of the fact that (διὰ τό neither our sensations nor our opinions tell the truth or lie. Zeller’s emendation reverses the direction of the inference made in sections [C] and [D]. Now either Pyrrho or Timon or both make an inference from (what they take to be the fact that) our sensations and beliefs are unreliable to the conclusion that we can’t know what things are like. And, the partisans of the epistemic reading of Pyrrho’s claim insist that inference is at least intelligible. Moreover, and importantly, there are linguistic and paleographic considerations that independently support, even if they do not strictly require, Zeller’s emendation.8

5  PYRRHO THE METAPHYSICIAN Partisans of the metaphysical reading of Pyrrho’s claim resist Zeller’s emendation as unnecessary. In their view, once Pyrrho’s claim and the claim made in section [D]

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are properly understood, the logic of Aristocles’s text as we have it is clear. On the metaphysical reading, the claim Pyrrho makes in section [C] is that (1) Things are indeterminate, that is, things do not have any determinate property. Now the inference from (1*) to (2) Our sensations and beliefs are unreliable. is not promising. But Bett argues that (2) does not capture the meaning of the claim reported in section [D] of Aristocles’s text. That claim is not (2) but (2) Our sensations and beliefs are neither true nor false. And, Bett insists, the inference from (1*) to (2*) is perspicuous. According to him, a sensation or belief is either true or false only if there is “some definite state of affairs” that the sensation or belief “either correctly or incorrectly represents” (Bett 2000: 23). The import of (1*) is that there are no definite states of affairs at all. So there is no state of affairs of, for example, lemons being yellow. Why? Lemons, like any other thing, have no determinate properties. Hence, they have no determinate color properties. Since this is so, the sensation or belief that lemons are yellow is not true. Nor, Bett argues, is it false. For it is false that lemons are yellow only if there is a state of affairs of lemons being not yellow but some other color. But, given their lack of determinate color properties, there is no color lemons are. Bett’s argument turns on two points, one linguistic and the other philosophical. First, it isn’t clear that the claim made in section [D]—that “neither our sensations nor our beliefs tell the truth or lie”—is best, or even plausibly, interpreted as (2*). We might think that in section [D] Aristocles preserves in its original formulation a claim made by Timon (and we might think this regardless of whether we think Timon, in turn, preserves in its original formulation a claim made by Pyrrho). But we might also think that what Aristocles gives us in section [D] is not unadulterated Timon but rather his—that is, Aristocles’s—explication of a claim made by Timon. If the words in [D] are not Timon’s but Aristocles’s, then the context in which they occur might give us some clue about how to understand them. That context is Aristocles’s treatise On Philosophy. Eusebius transcribes five sections of this treatise in his Praeparatio evangelica. Tad Brennan has shown in convincing detail that in this context the claim in section [D] is best understood as a claim about the general reliability of our sensations and beliefs and so as (2) rather than (2*) (Brennan 1998: 426–429). Second, Bett’s claim that the inference from (1*) to (2*) is perspicuous depends on a particular view about the conditions under which a proposition is false. On his view, a proposition of the form ‘x is F’ is false just in case some proposition of the form ‘x is G’ (where being G is incompatible with being F) is true. That is, ‘x is F’ is false just in case some determinate state of affairs contrary to x’s being F obtains (Bett 2000: 22–23 and n.19). Call this the strong conception of falsehood. Since, on the metaphysical reading of Pyrrho’s claim that Bett favors, no determinate state of affairs obtains, no proposition of the form ‘x is F’ is false. However, there are

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two problems with any version of the metaphysical reading of Pyrrho that relies on the strong conception of falsehood. First, as several scholars have noted, this conception of falsehood is neither mandatory nor standard.9 We might reject it in favor of the weak conception of falsehood according to which ‘x is F’ is false if the state of affairs specified by that proposition—x’s being F—fails to obtain. On the weak conception of falsehood, that is, a proposition’s being false requires only that a certain state of affairs does not obtain and not, as on the strong conception, that some other state of affairs does obtain. Given the weak conception of falsehood, the inference from (1*) to (2*) is invalid. If, as (1*) says or implies, no determinate states of affairs obtain, then it follows that every proposition of the form ‘x is F’ is false. Hence, every sensation or belief whose propositional content is of this form is false. So Bett must show that there is reason to think that either Pyrrho or Timon, or both, accepted the strong rather than the weak conception of falsehood. Even if he can do so, however, there is a second and even more serious problem. For it appears that the metaphysical reading can’t attribute the strong conception of falsehood to Pyrrho or Timon, or both, without undermining itself.10 On this reading they reject as false the claim that things are determinate where that just is or implies the claim that there are no determinate states of affairs. But this they can’t do if they accept the strong conception of falsehood. For on that conception of falsehood, it is false that (3) There are determinate states of affairs. only if some determinate state of affairs contrary to (3) obtains. But if any determinate state of affairs obtains, then (3) is true. So if Pyrrho or Timon, or both, accept the strong conception of falsehood, they can’t reject (3) as false. Hence, on pain of inconsistency, they must reject (1*) as false. If they do so, however, then the metaphysical reading is false. Alternatively, if they accept (1*), then, again on pain of inconsistency, they must reject the strong conception of falsehood. There is another option open to those inclined to favor a metaphysical reading of Pyrrho’s claim and to read the claim in section [D] as (2*) rather than (2). Again, the claim attributed to Pyrrho in section [C] is, on the metaphysical reading, that “things (πράγματα) are equally indifferent and unstable and indeterminate.” Jacques Brunschwig has argued, ingeniously, that the inference from (1*) to (2*) is perfectly acceptable if we make two assumptions. First, we assume that our sensations and beliefs are themselves “things” and so fall within the scope of Pyrrho’s claim. And, second, we assume that the way in which sensations and beliefs are “equally indifferent and unstable and indeterminate” is that they are neither true nor false (Brunschwig 1994: 199–202). It is not clear, though, that we have good reason to make either of these assumptions, especially the first. Brunschwig seems to think that the claim in section [D] must be part of the answer being given to the first of the three questions relevant to happiness, and so must be a claim about what things are like by nature. This is so only if our sensations and beliefs, and not just the things in the world they are of or about, are things (πράγματα). But why think that everything said in sections [C] through [F] of the passage must be part of an answer to one or another of the three questions relevant to happiness? Why not think, as

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Bett does, that [D] is the conclusion of an inference made from the answer given in [C] to the first of the three questions concerning happiness?

6  A LIFE WITHOUT BELIEFS In section [E] we get the answer either Pyrrho or Timon, or both, give to the second of the three questions relevant to happiness (“In what way ought we to be disposed toward things?”). We are told that we should not trust our sensations or beliefs or even have any beliefs at all. This claim is inferred from the claim made in section [D]. If that claim is construed as (2), the inference is easy: the claim that our sensations and beliefs are unreliable is the basis for the recommendation not to trust them but to suspend judgment. Bett has argued that if the claim in section [D] is construed as (2*), the inference is no less easy. But here we should ask why the fact that our sensations and beliefs are neither true nor false (the claim made in section [D] as Bett reads it) is a reason not to trust them and to avoid having any beliefs at all. According to Bett, we are subject to a misconception if we trust, and so accept as true, a sensation or belief that purports to be true but in fact is neither true nor false. Now I can think of only two possible conceptions of a misconception. It is, or consists in, either (a) a belief that isn’t true or (b) a belief that is false. (a) is the more capacious conception of misconception because the class of propositions that aren’t true (including, as it does, those propositions that are neither true nor false as well as those propositions that are false) is wider than the class of false propositions.11 Consider first (a). In this case Bett would be claiming that the reason to avoid having beliefs that are neither true nor false is that by having them we are thereby subject to a misconception. But, given (a), that misconception just is, or consists in, a belief that is neither true nor false. So Bett’s claim would then be that the reason not to have beliefs that are neither true nor false is that by having them we thereby have a belief that is neither true nor false. But, that, obviously, is no reason at all. It does not tell us what is wrong, in the first place, with having beliefs that are neither true nor false. Consider, next, (b)—the conception of a misconception as consisting in one or more false beliefs. What might be the false belief I acquire by trusting, and so accepting as true, a sensation or belief? On Bett’s own reading of the claim made in section [D] as (2*) rather than (2), it can’t be a false belief about the world. For (2*) says that our beliefs about the world are neither true nor false. So it must be a false belief about the particular sensation or belief I accept as true, namely, that that sensation or belief is true. This higher-order belief is false if my sensation or belief is either false or (as on Bett’s reading of the claim in section [D]) neither true nor false. Bett must think that if I trust, and so accept as true, the sensation or belief that p, then I believe not only that p but also, at least implicitly, that my sensation or belief p is true and so the kind of thing that is either true or false. These implicit beliefs are the content of the misconception to which, according to Bett, I am subject if I trust my sensations and beliefs. It seems to me just possible that this line of thought underwrites the inference from section [D] to section [E]. But, if it does, it makes that inference much less straightforward than it is on a reading of the claim in section [D] as (2) rather than (2*).

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In section [E] we are told that, in addition to not having any beliefs, we should be “without inclinations and without wavering” (καὶ ἀκλινεῖς καὶ ἀκραδάντους). It’s plausible to think that we are being told here that the doxastic state or condition we are told we should be in—not having any beliefs—should itself be stable in certain ways. We should be “without inclinations” in the sense that we should lack not only beliefs but also any inclination to believe anything or to accept any sensation as true or to reject it as false. If this is so, then there is a sense in which we will be, as we are told we should, “without wavering.” In the absence of any inclination to believe, we won’t vacillate between doxastic options by first believing one thing and then rejecting it in favor of another. Moreover, we won’t vacillate between having and not having beliefs. The state or condition in which we do not have any beliefs will be (to borrow terminology from Aristotle) firm and unchanging.12

7  MAKING UTTERANCES WITHOUT MAKING ASSERTIONS In section [E] we are also told that we should say “about each thing that it no more is than is not or both is and is not or neither is nor is not.” Either Pyrrho or Timon or both recommend that we take a certain disposition or stance toward things. This disposition consists not only in lacking beliefs but also, perhaps surprisingly, in making utterances. And, crucially, these utterances contain the locution ‘no more’. Here it is important to distinguish two questions we might ask about these utterances. The first question is syntactic: it concerns the scope of the locution ‘no more’. The second question is semantic: it concerns the meaning of that locution and so of the utterances in which it occurs. These utterances will seem slightly less baffling if we assume, as commentators frequently do, that some predicate is understood to follow the occurrences of ‘is’ and ‘is not’ in them (e.g., Bett 2000: 30). So to say that something no more is than is not is to say that it no more is than is not, for example, yellow or round or sweet. Now there are two ways to construe the syntax of the utterance we are told to make about each thing (Stopper 1983: 272–274; Bett 2000: 30). That utterance has three disjuncts. One possibility is that the locution ‘no more’ is embedded in and so governs only one of these disjuncts. On this reading (call it R1), we are being told to say about each thing that it A. no more is than is not; or B. both is and is not; or C. neither is nor is not. This complex disjunctive utterance has a ‘no more’ statement (A) as one and but only one of its disjuncts. Moreover, we might understand disjuncts (B) and (C) as alternatives to disjunct (A). We would then be saying about each thing that one of three things is true of it: either it no more is than is not F (for some predicate ‘F’), or it both is and is not F, or it neither is nor is not F. But we might understand the disjuncts (B) and (C) not as alternatives to (A) but as equivalent formulations of it.

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On this version of R1, to say about each thing that it no more is than is not F is just to say that it both is and is not F or that it neither is nor is not F. The other syntactic possibility is that the locution ‘no more’ is not embedded in any of the disjuncts but governs all three. On this reading (call it R2), we are being told to utter about each thing one complex ‘no more’ statement. That is, we are to say about each thing that it is no more than A. it is not, or B. it both is and is not, or C. it neither is nor is not. On R2 we would be saying about each thing that it is F no more than it is not F or it both is and is not F or it neither is nor is not F. As far as I can see, no independent consideration (i.e., no consideration independent of the interpretative commitments one has already made in reading the Aristocles passage) gives us good reason to favor R1 over R2, or vice versa. In this context, it is worth nothing that in section [F] Aristocles reports Timon as saying that anyone who adopts the disposition toward things described in section [E] will experience ἀφασία. Since this disposition consists in part in making meaningful utterances of a certain type, ἀφασία can’t be speechlessness or quietude. What might it be then? One plausible suggestion is that ἀφασία is a condition in which one refrains from making not utterances but assertions or at least sincere assertions that express beliefs. We are told in section [E] that we should be disposed toward things in such a way that we have no beliefs. And if we are so disposed, then we have no beliefs we can express in our assertions. Hence, we are in a state in which we refrain from making sincere assertions because we are incapable of making them. However, on either reading R1 or R2, the disjunctive utterances we are told we should make about each thing seem to constitute assertions. We are asserting that one of three disjuncts is true of a thing, or that something of which the three disjuncts are equivalent formulations is true of a thing (versions of reading R1), or that a thing has a certain property or feature no more than it lacks it or both has it and lacks it or neither has it nor lacks it (reading R2). So the prohibition on assertions does not give us reason to favor one syntactical reading of the utterances over the other.13 But how can we respect this prohibition (and so be in a state of ἀφασία) while also making utterances that, regardless of the way we construe their syntax, seem to constitute assertions? The answer we give to this question will depend on the answer we give to the question about the meaning of the locution ‘no more’. And here, again, there are two options that correspond to the epistemic and metaphysical readings of Pyrrho’s claim in section [C]. Partisans of the former will take their cue from the way Sextus Empiricus (PH 1.192) uses the locution ‘no more’ and understand it as expressing suspension of judgment. To say something of the form ‘x no more is than is not F’ is not to make any assertion about x, but rather to express one’s suspension of judgment about whether x is F. Utterances of this sort do not violate the prohibition on assertions. Now suppose we understand the meaning of ‘no more’ in this way. Suppose, further, that we accept reading R2 of the syntax of the utterances that contain this locution. We will then think that in section [E] we are being told that one part of the

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disposition we should take toward things consists in making utterances that do nothing more than express the attitude or state of mind (having no beliefs, but suspending judgment, about things) that constitutes the other part of that disposition.14 But suppose, instead, that we accept the metaphysical reading of Pyrrho’s claim and interpret it as the claim that things have no determinate properties. We will think that, unlike Sextus Empiricus, either Pyrrho or Timon or both uses ‘no more’ to assert about some particular thing x that it no more has than lacks a particular property F-ness (see Bett 2000: 32–33). We will also think that, for one reason or another, the prohibition on assertions does not apply to either assertions of this kind or Pyrrho’s more general assertion that things have no determinate properties. Finally, in section [F], Aristocles records Timon’s (if not also Pyrrho’s) answer to the third of the three questions relevant to happiness. Timon claims that those who adopt the correct disposition toward things—where that is a matter of living without beliefs and making utterances of a certain kind—will experience tranquility (ἀταραξία). And this tranquility just is, or at least is a principal component of, happiness.

8  PYRRHO THE SKEPTIC There is, then, little that is clear or uncontroversial about the passage from Aristocles that constitutes our best evidence for Pyrrho’s philosophical views. I have tried to sketch the range of difficult interpretative questions that passage raises. The answers we give to these questions (if we are confident enough to answer them at all) will determine what sort of skeptic, if any, we take Pyrrho and his apparently faithful student Timon to be. On the epistemic reading of his central claim in section [C] of the passage, Pyrrho is a skeptic in the following sense. He, unlike the skeptic described by Sextus Empiricus, has the view that nothing can be known. Moreover, he, or at least Timon, has the view that since this is so, a person ought not to have any beliefs. Hence, Pyrrho, or at least Timon, is also a skeptic in the sense that he adopts the attitude of suspension of judgment toward things. On the metaphysical reading, in contrast, there is little sense in which Pyrrho is a skeptic. He holds the general metaphysical view that things have no determinate properties. This view, in turn, commits him to the view that there are an indefinitely large number of truths we can know. These are truths of the form ‘x is no more F than not F’—for example, “the lemon is no more yellow than not” or “the honey is no more sweet than not.” Yet his general metaphysical view also commits him to the view that we know little of what we ordinarily take ourselves to know, for example, that the lemon is yellow or that the honey is sweet. And this is because, on that view, lemons are not yellow and honey is not sweet. So if, on the metaphysical reading, Pyrrho is less a skeptic than a dogmatic metaphysician, his metaphysical view still has skeptical implications.15

NOTES 1. For the former view, see Brunschwig (1994: 193–195), for the latter, Brennan (1998: 431–432). 2. For an extended defense of this assumption, see Bett (1994).

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3. The Greek text is most easily found in Long and Sedley (1987: II 5, text 1F). 4. For versions of the epistemic reading of Pyrrho’s claim, see especially Stopper (1983: 274 and 292 n.50), Brennan (1998), and Castagnoli (2002: 447). If we give “indeterminable” an epistemic reading, then we will feel pressure to read the other two adjectives in Pyrrho’s claim epistemically as well. Hence, we’ll take ἀδιάφορα to mean “indistinguishable” by us and ἀστάθμητα to mean “unmeasurable” by us. One possibility is that, on either the epistemic or the metaphysical of the adjectives, both occurrences of καί in Pyrrho’s claim are epexegetical. If this is so, then ἀστάθμητα gives the meaning of ἀδιάφορα, and ἀνεπίκριτα gives the meaning of ἀστάθμητα and so of ἀδιάφορα. 5. See also Long and Sedley (1987: I 16–17). Bett’s book offers the most extensive presentation and defense of the metaphysical reading of Pyrrho’s claim. It is, by some wide margin, the most important book on Pyrrho published in several decades. Some scholars have objected that the Greek adjective ἀνεπίκριτα can’t bear a metaphysical reading and can only mean, as on the epistemic reading, “indeterminable” by us. I assume here that a metaphysical reading of each of the trio of adjectives in Pyrrho’s claim is at least linguistically possible. 6. Even if Pyrrho’s claim is one about what things are like, on the epistemic reading it is a claim about what things are like in relation to us and, more precisely, our cognitive abilities. Moreover, it is reasonable to think that Aristocles at least understands Pyrrho’s claim as equivalent to, or at least as clearly implying, the claim he attributes to Pyrrho at the outset of the passage, namely, that our nature is such that we can’t know anything. 7. But see Svavarsson (2004) for what I take to be a version of the epistemic reading that does not rely on emending the text in this (or any other) way. 8. First, the phrase Zeller emends (διὰ τοῦτο) occurs again in section [E] of Aristocles’s text. That fact might explain the corruption from διὰ τὸ to διὰ τοῦτο. (Though, as Bett (2000: 25) notes, there is no trace of this corruption in the manuscript tradition. All manuscripts have διὰ τοῦτο here.) Second, the phrase Zeller emends appears to be asyndotic, that is, it lacks a particle where it is thought it should have one. Third, the forms of the negatives employed in section [D] are thought to be incorrect given the grammatical construction in which they occur. Bett (2000: 25–26) claims that these linguistic considerations do not constitute reasons to emend Aristocles’s text. I’m inclined to agree with Brennan (1998: 432–433) that Bett shows only that the text as we have it is linguistically possible, but not that it is correct or that the linguistic considerations in question aren’t good reasons to emend. 9. See especially the useful remarks in Castagnoli (2002: 447) and Brennan (1998: 421–22). 10. Thanks to Baron Reed for making this point clear to me. 11. Thanks, again, to Baron Reed for suggesting this conception of a misconception to me. 12. For this way of reading the injunction, see Bett (2000: 30). Brunschwig (1994: 209), following Ausland (1989), reads the injunction more broadly to cover practical as well as doxastic inclinations. He thinks we are being told to have no inclination to choose or pursue anything as choiceworthy or to reject or avoid it as not choiceworthy.

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13. See Stopper (1983: 274) for the claim that ἀφασία is non-assertion. (In making this claim he appeals to the gloss Sextus Empiricus gives the term at PH 1.192.) 14. That is, for any x and any predicate F, we suspend judgment about whether x is F or not F or both F and not F or neither F nor not F. 15. Many thanks to Diego Machuca and Baron Reed for their comments on the initial version of this chapter.

REFERENCES Ausland, Hayden. 1989. “On the Moral Origin of the Pyrrhonian Philosophy,” Elenchos 10: 359–434. Bett, Richard. 1994. “Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho: The Text, Its Logic and Its Credibility,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12: 137–181. Bett, Richard. 2000. Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brennan, Tad. 1998. “Pyrrho on the Criterion,” Ancient Philosophy 18: 417–434. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1994. “Once Again on Eusebius on Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho.” In his Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, translated by J. Lloyd, 190–211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castagnoli, Luca. 2002. “Review of Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy.” Ancient Philosophy 22: 443–457. Long, Anthony and David Sedley. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stopper, M. R. 1983. “Schizzi Pirroniani,” Phronesis 28: 265–297. Svavarsson, Svavar Hrafn. 2004. “Pyrrho’s Undecidable Nature,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 27: 249–295.

CHAPTER THREE

Arcesilaus ANNA MARIA IOPPOLO

1 INTRODUCTION Arcesilaus of Pitane (316/5–241/0) became the head of Plato’s Academy in 268 or 266 BCE and oriented the school toward skepticism. Since he did not write any philosophical work, we have to rely on secondary sources to reconstruct his philosophy. The ancient sources are not unanimous on the nature and origin of Arcesilaus’s skepticism, but offer conflicting testimonies. Arcesilaus himself claimed Socrates, Plato, and certain Presocratics as his predecessors. Some sources attribute his skepticism to the influence of Pyrrho of Elis, while others maintain that he only posed as a skeptic in order to conceal the true doctrine of Plato that he was secretly teaching. The main extensive sources, Cicero and Sextus Empiricus, are not unbiased and innocent. Both have a philosophical perspective they wish to defend, and both inform us about Arcesilaus’s philosophy by closely connecting it to his epistemological dispute with the Stoic, Zeno. Since the debate between the Academic skeptics and the Stoics did not end with Arcesilaus and Zeno in the third century BCE but raged through the following centuries down to Cicero’s day, the reconstruction of Arcesilaus’s philosophy is rather controversial, for the positions of individual representatives of the two schools would inevitably have changed in the course of this epistemological debate. The risk, then, is that Arcesilaus’s philosophy may have been distorted by the way that his successors elaborated on it. In order to produce a coherent account of Arcesilaus’s doctrine, we need to examine the testimonies, not in isolation, but by setting them within the philosophical and argumentative context of the sources recording them. We must take account of their date, philosophical preferences, and—last, but not least—of their polemical aims.

2  THE DIALECTICAL METHOD OF “ARGUING THE OPPOSITE” AT THE CORE OF ARCESILAUS’S PHILOSOPHY The most ancient testimonies trace Arcesilaus’s philosophy back to two opposing traditions, which in a way imply one another: one, originating with Arcesilaus himself, claims a strong link with his forerunners, Socrates and Plato, as well as with

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other illustrious philosophers of the past; the other, which is favored by Arcesilaus’s contemporaries, accuses him of plagiarizing other philosophers’ doctrines. In his Life of Arcesilaus, Diogenes Laertius states: “It seems that Arcesilaus admired Plato, whose books he possessed. Some say that he emulated (ἐζηλώκει) Pyrrho as well. He was very keen on dialectic and made use of the arguments of the Eretrians” (DL IV 32– 33, trans. Long and Sedley 1987 modified).1 The philosophical continuity between Arcesilaus and Plato was questioned by the philosophers of his day, and in particular by Aristo of Chios2 and Timon of Phlius, who both accused him of being a plagiarist. This charge was based on Arcesilaus’s own admission that he was “not saying anything new,” as he simply wished to refer to his predecessors’ doctrines (Plut. Adv. Col. 1121 F). Arcesilaus thus became a target for Aristo’s and Timon’s witty remarks: while exploiting Arcesilaus’s own claim not to be an original philosopher, they did not see in his teaching a conformity to Plato’s doctrines but instead attributed Pyrrho’s views to him. Timon implied that Arcesilaus lacked any originality as a thinker, since he made use of Menedemus’s eristic, and sought refuge under Diodorus’s dialectic and Pyrrho’s philosophy (“all flesh”). In a parody of a famous Homeric verse—“Plato in front, Pyrrho behind, Diodorus in the middle”—Aristo described Arcesilaus’s philosophy as a chimera: an eclectic monstrosity that seeks to reconcile what is irreconcilable, to wit Plato and Pyrrho via Diodorus.3 Arcesilaus’s detractors also included the Epicurean Colotes, who accused him “of rubbing off his doctrines about suspension of judgment and non-cognition (ἀκαταληψία) on Socrates, Plato, Parmenides, and Heraclitus, who did not need them” (Plut. Adv. Col. 26, 1121 F; trans. Long and Sedley 1987).4 It is clear, then, that the charge of unoriginality, if not of downright plagiarism, leveled against Arcesilaus by his contemporaries stemmed in particular from his use of philosophers of the past: Arcesilaus sought to “rub off ” his own doctrines on others with the aim of strengthening them. By proclaiming the identity between his own philosophy and that of his predecessors, Arcesilaus sought to lend credit to his skepticism, which in the eyes of his contemporaries represented a betrayal of his teachers, Socrates and Plato. Timon, Aristo, Colotes, and other unnamed detractors agreed in challenging Arcesilaus’s attempt to attribute his own “doctrines” to his forerunners5; in doing so, they also disputed his claim to be carrying on the philosophical tradition of his school. Aristo’s verse sums up his contemporaries’ refusal to grant Arcesilaus’s philosophy the legitimation it aspired to, on the grounds that through dialectical arguments Arcesilaus used Plato as a screen to conceal his Pyrrhonism.6 Still, given Colotes’s silence with regard to Pyrrho, we may rule out any connection between Arcesilaus and this philosopher; otherwise Colotes would no doubt have included Pyrrho among the authorities invoked by Arcesilaus. The lack of any philosophical connection between Arcesilaus and Pyrrho is further confirmed by the fact that Cicero knew nothing about Pyrrho’s role as a skeptic and presented him simply as a moralist.7 More generally, the whole Academic tradition, both dogmatic and skeptical, ignored Pyrrho completely. In order to understand the reason why Aristo attributed Arcesilaus’s skeptical turn to his plagiarism of Pyrrho’s philosophy, we must examine how Arcesilaus justified his connection with his predecessors in the school, and especially Socrates, whom both Zeno8 and Aristo9 claimed to be following.

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What is most revealing in this respect is the fact that, according to the tradition of the skeptical Academy (Acad. I 44–46), an antecedent for Arcesilaus’s skepticism is to be found in Socrates’s confession of ignorance, based on the idea that all things are hidden in darkness—an approach also common to the Presocratic philosophers Heraclitus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles.10 By drawing upon the aporetic Socrates of Plato’s dialogues, Arcesilaus saw Socrates’s practice of ἔλεγχος (refutation) as the chief instrument for purifying the mind of false beliefs. The central role he attributed to Socrates’s dialectical method enabled him to justify his own particular interpretation of Platonic philosophy, as well as to claim a degree of continuity between his own teaching and that of Plato (Acad. I 46; cf. De or. III 67). The ἔλεγχος was able to bring people who wrongly imagined that they possessed knowledge to realize their own ignorance. Unlike Socrates, however, Arcesilaus even denied that he could claim to know that he did not know: he therefore turned the aporetic stance against itself, yet without discarding it: [Arcesilaus] used to act consistently with this philosophy, and by arguing against everyone’s opinions he led most of them to his own, so that when reasons of equal weight were found on opposite sides on the same subject, the easier course was to withhold assent from either side. (Acad. I 45, trans. Long and Sedley 1987 modified)11 Arcesilaus would allow his interlocutor to speak first and only afterwards put forward the argument opposite to the one already advanced. The result was that he would speak in such a way as to present a counterargument, but without appearing to be involved in any assertion or denial (see Fin. II 2; De or. III 67; ND I 11). For Arcesilaus, arguing on the opposite side—that is, by opposing the thesis put forward by one’s interlocutor—represented the very essence of philosophizing, which fulfills itself and comes to a conclusion through this process, since the ἰσοσθένεια (equipollence) of contrary arguments can never be overcome: the suspension of judgment simply emerges from their opposition. From Diogenes Laertius we learn that “Arcesilaus was the first to suspend his assertions owing to the contrarieties of arguments, he was also the first to argue pro and contra and the first to change the traditional Platonic discourse, and by question and answer, to make it more of a debate contest” (DL IV 28, trans. Long and Sedley 1987). One may question whether the method of arguing pro and contra was first used by Arcesilaus, given that this method may be traced back to Protagoras—as Diogenes Laertius himself records (DL IX 51)—and it constituted an integral part of the dialectical training offered in the Peripatos.12 Arcesilaus was certainly the first to practice it in a different way from that common in the philosophical schools of his day, such as the Peripatos and the early Academy. In a sense—especially at a superficial glance—Arcesilaus’s dialectical method might have seemed little different from that of arguing pro and contra, given that the interlocutor would always be the first to state his view, with Arcesilaus then offering a counterview. A more in-depth philosophical analysis, however, reveals that Arcesilaus’s method of argument sharply differs from that of arguing for and against a given thesis, as witnessed by Chrysippus, who had carefully studied Arcesilaus’s arguments in an attempt to refute them.13

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Plutarch informs us that, according to Chrysippus, “arguing the opposite” (πρὸς τὰ ἐναντία διαλέγεσθαι) is only useful for those who suspend all judgment, with the aim of turning people away from cognition (κατάληψις).14 Chrysippus had thus developed a strategy to neutralize the effectiveness of the method of arguing the opposite. First of all, he warned his disciples not to let themselves be diverted by the persuasiveness of the arguments of those who suspend judgment; secondly, he encouraged his disciples to overturn the dialectical method of those suspending all judgment by presenting a counterargument without defending it, but only weakening it as a lawyer in a courtroom might do (see Ioppolo 1986: 109–120). Chrysippus’s words clearly confirm the idea that Arcesilaus’s dialectical method consisted in arguing against the thesis presented by one’s interlocutor, rather than arguing pro and contra a given thesis. Plutarch further informs us that Chrysippus feared this method because it has the power of turning away from cognition even the kind of people who base their knowledge on common sense.15 The aspect of Arcesilaus’s dialectical method that Chrysippus feared the most was not its capacity to make one argument prevail over another, but the fact that, by presenting two opposite arguments on a given thesis that have the same weight, so that neither can prevail, it prevents listeners from understanding the solutions.16 Chrysippus’s testimony thus agrees with Cicero’s view of Arcesilaus’s dialectical procedure, as presented in Academica I 45: faced with the equipollence of opposite theses on the same argument, the interlocutors will fail to find any solution and fall into aporia. Hence, the suspension of judgment does not dialectically depend upon the Stoic premises but rather invariably follows the aporia as a conclusion, due to the mutual contrariety of the arguments.17 In other words, ἐποχή is not the goal toward which Arcesilaus strives—for this would make it the preset aim of his dialectical method—but constitutes the unavoidable manifestation of aporia at an epistemological and linguistic level.18 In his Academica, Cicero records that the τέλος for Arcesilaus is not ἐποχή, but verum invenire velle (Acad. II 76). It is in the light of the search after truth that Cicero interprets the dispute with Zeno: “Arcesilaus did not fight with Zeno for the sake of criticizing him but from a wish to discover the truth” (Acad. II 76, trans. Long and Sedley 1987). With these words Cicero clears Arcesilaus of the charge of wishing to argue with Zeno simply for the sake of competitiveness or a taste for victory (see Acad. I 44, II 16). Cicero also tells us: “None of Zeno’s predecessors (nemo umquam superiorum) had clearly expounded, or even stated, that a human being can refrain from opining and that a wise man not only can but must do so. To Arcesilaus this idea seemed true and honorable and worthy of a wise man” (Acad. II 77, trans. Long and Sedley 1987). Cicero’s emphasis in presenting the agreement between the two philosophers on the thesis that “the wise man must absolutely never formulate opinions” suggests that this thesis played a pivotal role in the debate and at the same time that Arcesilaus’s agreement was sincere.19 Arcesilaus used this, however, as the premise for an argument from which he then drew a completely opposite conclusion. Cicero recounts the debate between Zeno and Arcesilaus in dialogue form. Arcesilaus asks Zeno what would happen if the wise man could cognize nothing at all and were absolutely required not to formulate any opinions. Zeno replies that he will not opine because there exists

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something cognitive, namely the presentation (φαντασία).20 He defines this as that which is “stamped and reproduced from something which is, exactly as it is” (Acad. II 77, trans. Long and Sedley 1987). But Arcesilaus gets Zeno to admit that if a true presentation does not possess that mark whereby it can be told from a false one, then, since it is indistinguishable therefrom, it cannot be grasped. Arcesilaus then focuses his criticism on the third clause (“such as could not arise from what is not”), which raises the problem of establishing how it is possible to distinguish a cognitive presentation from a noncognitive one, given that, in terms of cognizance, a person can have access only to his own presentation.21 Once Zeno has been forced to accept the third clause, Arcesilaus establishes the nonexistence of the Stoic criterion. This is not enough to conclude, however, that Arcesilaus upheld the opposite thesis to Zeno’s, that “nothing can be known”—that is, that he was a proponent of ἀκαταληψία. In this regard, it will be useful to compare Cicero’s account of the debate between Zeno and Arcesilaus to Sextus’s version.

3  ἈΚΑΤΑΛΗΨΊΑ AS A DIALECTICAL THESIS AGAINST THE STOICS Sextus’s testimony on Arcesilaus is rather problematic. Sextus speaks of Arcesilaus at AM VII 150–158 and PH I 232–234, but at first sight the two accounts appear to paint two different pictures of Arcesilaus. In PH I Sextus represents Arcesilaus as a philosopher close to Pyrrhonism: he does not assign him to any of the three currents into which he has divided philosophy (see PH I 3–4), nor in the course of his exposition does he ever refer to him as an “Academic”; rather, he includes Arcesilaus’s philosophy in his discussion of so-called neighboring philosophies. Moreover, although Sextus’s professed aim is to bring out the differences between Pyrrhonian skepticism and its neighboring philosophies, he personally undertakes to associate Arcesilaus with the Pyrrhonists (PH I 232). In AM VII, by contrast, when distinguishing skeptics and dogmatists in relation to the criterion of truth, Sextus includes not just Carneades but also Arcesilaus among those dogmatists who posit the criterion (AM VII 1, 46). Sextus introduces Arcesilaus’s criticism of the criterion by stressing that he did not determine any criterion, and does so through the use of a rather loaded and typically Pyrrhonian verb, ὁρίζειν (AM VII 150).22 However, he then reduces Arcesilaus’s perspective to his dialectical counterarguments, without explaining why Arcesilaus did not “determine” any criterion. Sextus maintains that the main difference between Academic and Pyrrhonian skepticism is to be found in the use of language: for the Academics it expresses a commitment to the truth of their assertions, whereas for the skeptics it simply means speaking without holding opinions, ἀπαγγέλλειν.23 Consequently, the terminology used is particularly significant. The procedure Sextus adopts in his account is also peculiar: before illustrating Arcesilaus’s criticism of the criterion, he presents the Stoic doctrine; this is followed by Arcesilaus’s arguments, which are clearly distinguished from the former in such a way as to bring out their dialectical and ad hominem character (AM VII 151–155).24 This procedure is

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perfectly in line with the dialectical method of arguing the opposite, which the most ancient and reliable sources attribute to Arcesilaus. The arguments that Arcesilaus raises against the Stoic epistemological doctrine are of Platonic inspiration in form as much as substance; hence, they are quite independent of the Stoic premises.25 The argument that κατάληψις is not a μεταξύ, since it is a mere name without any real determination, is not the dialectical reversal of a Stoic thesis, but a counterargument; and the same is true of the objection that κατάληψις does not exist if, as the Stoics argue, it means “assent to a cognitive presentation”: for the assent is given to the proposition, whereas presentation, according to Zeno’s definition, is a τύπωσις, which is to say simply an affection of the soul. After attacking the role of assent as a constitutive part of the definition of κατάληψις by questioning its existence, Arcesilaus questions the existence of the cognitive presentation that is claimed to be its object (AM VII 154). Once the Stoic has been forced to accept the thesis that alongside any purported cognitive presentation another false one may be found that is indistinguishable from it, Arcesilaus establishes the nonexistence of the Stoic criterion. Note that Arcesilaus infers ἀκαταληψία from his demonstration of the nonexistence of the Stoic criterion, not of a criterion in general. So the thesis that all things are non-cognitive does not concern him, but only the Stoics, according to whom κατάληψις exists. After having demonstrated the nonexistence of κατάληψις, Arcesilaus concludes: “If cognition does not exist, everything will be noncognitive. And if everything is noncognitive, it will follow that according to the Stoics too (καί), the wise man suspends judgment” (AM VII 155, trans. Long and Sedley 1987). Up until this point, Arcesilaus has only been disputing against, opposing Stoic arguments by counterarguments, according to the dialectical method of arguing the opposite. Arcesilaus’s argument is structured in such a way as to lead the Stoic sage to accept the thesis of ἀκαταληψία, which is precisely the opposite thesis to the Stoic one; yet he does not positively establish its truth. So, if ἀκαταληψία is a dialectical thesis, what still remains to be determined is whether ἐποχή is a conclusion to which Arcesilaus is committed, or whether he is resorting to the demonstration of ἀκαταληψία merely as a reductio ad absurdum of the stance of the Stoic wise man, in such a way as to lead him to universal suspension of judgment. In the latter part of his refutation (AM VII 156–157), starting from a reversal of the Stoic theses, Arcesilaus then turns them into their contradictory opposites. It is in this latter section that he demonstrates that, if the Stoic sage does not wish to opine, he must withhold assent, that is, that he is forced to ἀσυγκαταθετεῖν. If Arcesilaus merely wished to provide a reductio ad absurdum of the Stoic position, it would be enough for him to demonstrate that, since everything is non-cognitive, the only option the Stoic wise man has is to opine. Arcesilaus does not ignore this argument: in fact, he adopts it as an intermediate step before leading the Stoic sage to ἐποχή. Arcesilaus forces the sage to acknowledge that “assent to the non-cognitive is opinion,” drawing this definition from a reductio ad absurdum of Zenonian cognition. Hence, the above definition of opinion holds only against the Stoics. “But the wise man is certainly not one of those who opine”: this is the premise that Arcesilaus shares with Zeno and that they had agreed upon before engaging in the debate, as Cicero makes clear in his account (Acad. II 76–77). Sextus does not mention the two philosophers’

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agreement with regard to this premise, as he is not interested in presenting Arcesilaus’s point of view. If “assent to the non-cognitive is opinion” and “the wise is certainly not one of those who opine,” then the Stoic sage has no other option but to withhold assent. Yet, “to withhold assent (ἀσυγκαταθετεῖν) is no different from suspending judgment (ἐπέχειν)” (AM VII 157). From the shared premise that “the wise is certainly not one of those who opine,” two consequences follow: the Stoic sage is forced to withhold assent because κατάληψις does not exist, whereas in the face of the equipollence of two opposite theses—the Stoic thesis of the existence of cognition and the demonstration of its nonexistence—the Academic is forced to suspend judgment, since he finds himself in aporia, that is, incapable of asserting or denying that there is knowledge. The ἐποχὴ περὶ πάντων (universal suspension of judgment), that is, the attitude of the Academic wise man, is thus what the Stoic sage is left with, too—where “too” stresses the fact that it is the Stoic sage who must conform to the behavior of the Academic sage, if he wishes not to formulate any opinions. If “to withhold assent” (ἀσυγκαταθετεῖν) had the same meaning as “to suspend judgment” (ἐπέχειν), there would be no point in Arcesilaus forcing the Stoics to accept the equivalence of the two terms, since the Stoics themselves would be treating them as synonyms. Moreover the verb ἀσυγκαταθετεῖν is composed of α-privativ + the verb συγκαταθετεῖν, clearly referring to the Stoic concept of assent, to which Arcesilaus is not committed, as has been shown before, while the verb ἐπέχειν does not need necessarily assent as its object.26 The introduction of the two verbs makes sense only if we admit that they describe two attitudes that differ fundamentally, not just linguistically. The use of a different term to denote the attitude of the Stoic sage compared to that of the Academic sage reveals that ἐποχή is Arcesilaus’s own point of view, and cannot be reduced to a dialectical thesis. If then, as it seems, Arcesilaus does not infer ἐποχή from the nonexistence of the Stoic criterion, but upholds it as his own view, this must be on the basis of other considerations that are not mentioned here by Sextus.

4  UNIVERSAL SUSPENSION OF JUDGMENT AS THE “NATURAL” AND UNAVOIDABLE OUTCOME OF THE EQUAL STRENGTH OF OPPOSITE ARGUMENTS It remains to be established whether the previous considerations are compatible with skepticism. Sextus himself in PH I provides the considerations that he omits in AM VII: “[Arcesilaus] seems to me to have very much in common with the Pyrrhonian discourses, so that his school is practically the same as ours” (PH I 232, trans. Long and Sedley 1987).27 Sextus justifies his assertion in the following terms: Arcesilaus “is not found making assertions about the existence or nonexistence of anything, nor does he prefer one thing to another by way of credibility or incredibility, but suspends judgment about everything. He also says that suspension of judgment is the end” (PH I 232, trans. Long and Sedley 1987). Sextus provides two more possible interpretations of Arcesilaus’s suspension of judgment. According to one interpretation, attributed to an anonymous “someone” (τις), Arcesilaus, unlike

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the Pyrrhonists, speaks of suspension of judgment with regard to the real nature of things. But while Arcesilaus does not speak in favor of either the existence or nonexistence of things, there is no evidence for the idea that the expression “in reference to nature” (ὡς πρὸς τὴν φύσιν) may refer to a cognitive-ontological pronouncement on the nature of the external world. The third interpretation, again drawn from an anonymous source, presents Arcesilaus as being covertly Platonic. Yet Aristo’s parody of the Homeric verse, which is quoted in support of the esoteric interpretation, suggests the very opposite of what the charge of esotericism directed against Arcesilaus implies: for πρόσθε Πλάτων indicates that Arcesilaus was openly Platonic, not Pyrrhonian.28 While Sextus’s discussion of Arcesilaus’s philosophy is certainly based on διαφωνία (disagreement)—Arcesilaus is presented as a genuine skeptic first, then as a negative dogmatist, and finally as a covert Platonist—ultimately the three accounts are not set on the same level: not just because the account that assimilates Arcesilaus within Pyrrhonism is explicitly endorsed by Sextus himself,29 but also because the other two are only weakly justified. It is noteworthy, moreover, that Sextus does not ground Arcesilaus’s skepticism on his polemic against the Stoics, but rather presents ἐποχή as Arcesilaus’s point of view, in agreement with the most ancient sources, predating Sextus himself—from Chrysippus30 to Cicero. But if ἐποχή emerges from the opposition between two contradictory theses, neither of which prevails over the other (Acad. I 45; DL IV 28), then it simply describes the state of mind in which the Academic finds himself; as such, it cannot be the τέλος of Arcesilaus’s philosophy, as Sextus would have it. Besides, in his account on the criterion of conduct at AM VII 158, Sextus himself argues that according to Arcesilaus the goal of life is happiness, thus leaving open the possibility that the identification of ἐποχή as the τέλος may simply be a polemical expedient. In order to grasp the meaning of Arcesilaus’s ἐποχή, it is worth dwelling on the words with which Cicero ends his account of the debate between Zeno and Arcesilaus. He states that the thesis that “the wise man will assent to nothing” was no longer taken into consideration in the dispute, since the wise man “might ‘grasp nothing and yet opine’—a thesis Carneades is said to have accepted” (Acad. II 78). Indeed, the thesis of the opinionless31 sage may only be upheld provided one practices universal ἐποχή, as Arcesilaus did. However, this thesis has serious implications with regard to the issue of conduct, so much so that later Academics abandoned it.32 In Clitomachus’s day, Academics were still debating how to practice universal suspension of judgment. Clitomachus distinguishes between two ways of conceiving suspension of judgment: “one, when it means that he assents to nothing at all; the other, when he checks himself from responding in such a way as to accept or reject something with the result that he neither denies nor asserts something” (Acad. II 104; trans. Long and Sedley 1987).33 The latter way of conceiving suspension agrees with the meaning of ἐποχή that other sources attribute to Arcesilaus, as ἐπέχειν τὰς ἀποφάσεις. On Clitomachus’s account the action does not require assent: the skeptic may react positively or negatively provided he does not assent (dum sine adsensu).34 This means that Clitomachus, by distinguishing two modes of suspension, is offering not so much a theory of qualified assent as a theory of “qualified non-assent” (see

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Burnyeat 1997). Clitomachus rejects the notion of suspension as checking oneself from responding “Yes” or “No” to questions, which was implied by Arcesilaus’s ἐποχή περὶ πάντων, since it does not allow one to provide a rational justification for one’s actions, and hence to answer the charge of ἀπραξία (inaction) leveled against skeptics by dogmatists, as is illustrated by Arcesilaus’s difficulty in defining a criterion of conduct.

5  THE CRITERION OF CONDUCT AND THE LANGUAGE OF “NON-ASSERTION” Sextus focuses on the criterion of conduct in the last section of his account on Arcesilaus at AM VII 158. The first thing one notices here is the sudden change of tone compared to the previous section. Sextus directly presents Arcesilaus’s position, without first introducing the Stoic view, in open contrast to the dialectical procedure he has attributed to Arcesilaus so far. Furthermore, the criterion of conduct is presented as something that the person suspending his judgment must “investigate” after the criterion of truth has been abolished. Most importantly, the language used by Arcesilaus undergoes a shift of tone, as attested by the fact that all the finite verbs are expressed in the future tense to indicate that the philosopher is delivering an exhortation rather than arguing dialectically: Since after this it was necessary (ἔδει) to investigate (ζητεῖν) the conduct of life too, which is not of a nature (πέφυκεν) to be explained without a criterion, on which happiness too, i.e., the end of life, has its trust dependent, Arcesilaus says that one who suspends judgment about everything will regulate (κανονιεῖ) choice and avoidance and actions in general by the reasonable (εὔλογον); and by proceeding in accordance with this criterion, he will have success (κατορθώσει). (AM VII 158, trans. Long and Sedley 1987 modified.) It is significant that the expression οὐδὲν ὁρίζειν that Sextus had used to introduce the criterion of truth is matched here by the verb ζητεῖν, which introduces the criterion of conduct. Sextus’s stress on language, as a way of distinguishing Pyrrhonian skepticism from Academic skepticism, makes it unlikely that the choice of the two verbs, both belonging to the jargon of Pyrrhonian skepticism (see PH I 1–3, 7), is merely a casual one. The verb “to investigate” emphasizes that Arcesilaus is suggesting the adoption of a criterion of conduct, the εὔλογον, as an open, temporary solution, compatible with the universal suspension of judgment.35 The argument by which Arcesilaus recommends the εὔλογον is based on three premises: (1) happiness is attained through prudence; (2) prudence resides in successes (κατορθώματα); and (3) a success is whatever, once it has been done, has a reasonable defense. Arcesilaus concludes: “Therefore one who attends to the reasonable will have success and be happy.” This argument draws upon some concepts that are apparently of Stoic origin, such as εὔλογον, καθῆκον, and κατόρθωμα: what is especially crucial is Arcesilaus’s definition of κατόρθωμα, which is identical to Zeno’s definition of καθῆκον.36 And since the term καθῆκον is used in Stoic

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doctrine to refer to the action of the ordinary man, as opposed to κατόρθωμα, which describes the wise man’s action, the supporters of the dialectical interpretation have concluded that Arcesilaus was being ironical: that he sought to prove that once deprived of his knowledge, the Stoic sage is forced to act as an ordinary man, which is to say as a fool. We would be compelled to accept this interpretation if Arcesilaus had borrowed his notion of εὔλογον from the Stoa. But apart from the fact that the concept of εὔλογον was far from new in Greek thought, having previously been widely employed by Aristotle, in the debate between the Stoa and the skeptical Academy, it is not always easy to ascertain which school borrowed certain technical terms and concepts from the other (Glucker 1978: 33 with n.78; Görler 1994: 817). The use of a common technical terminology, therefore, is not enough in itself to prove Arcesilaus’s dialectical reading, unless evidence is found for the Stoic use of the same notions. Moreover, if Arcesilaus had wished to suggest the idea of an ironic exchange between καθῆκον and κατόρθωμα, he ought to have made at least some allusion in his arguments to the difference between the two kinds of actions according to the Stoics and to have recalled Zeno’s position—as he had indeed done in order to refute the criterion of truth. But unlike in the first section, where the noun “Stoics” occurs twice between 155 and 157, highlighting the ad hominem nature of the reply, in the section on the criterion of conduct that noun does not appear at all. Nor does Arcesilaus mention it in the three arguments by which he establishes the εὔλογον as the criterion to be adopted by the person who suspends his judgment in order to regulate (κανονιεῖ) his actions. The choice of the verb κανονίζειν likewise suggests a regulatory norm, a κάνων, with an epistemological and justificatory function, rather than a prescriptive one. The definition of κατόρθωμα—identical to Zeno’s definition of καθῆκον—is a formal one, since it stresses the a posteriori justification of action, yet without enunciating the principles on which this action is based. The past participle πραχθέν is used to emphasize that “rational defense” comes after the action has been performed, not before.37 Hence, the εὔλογον cannot be identified with the judgment “It is reasonable that p,” if this is expressed before performing the action, since the εὔλογον is not taken in this sense in the definition of κατόρθωμα. Either Arcesilaus had expressed himself unclearly, or Sextus has omitted some details, to shorten his account. Favoring the latter hypothesis is Sextus’s complete silence with regard to Arcesilaus’s answer to the charge of ἀπραξία. It is rather strange that Sextus ignores it, not just because the εὔλογον acquires a far clearer meaning when viewed in its light, but especially because this accusation represents a problematic issue that we know for sure Arcesilaus had to address, since it concerns the very credibility of skepticism, as witnessed by the accusation raised by his contemporary Colotes (see Adv. Col. 1121F–1124B). Faced with the charge leveled by Stoics and Epicureans that by removing assent the Academic can neither act nor avoid committing absurd or random actions, Arcesilaus replies that neither the Academic’s faculty of presentation nor his impulsive faculty are impaired. His impulse will thus naturally (φυσικῶς) lead him toward what is appropriate (οἰκεῖον), without assent ever coming into play. For error derives from opinion and hence from assent. Following nature means being guided by impulse without assenting to the presentations by which one is involuntarily affected. It is nature that ensures

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both the possibility of action and the possibility of not committing any errors. The importance of nature in providing guidelines for one’s conduct links the Academic’s description of the mechanism of action to the rational justification suggested by the εὔλογον, since the conduct of life “‘is not of a nature’ (οὐ πέφυκεν) to be accounted for without a criterion on which happiness too, i.e., the end of life, has its trust dependent.” Plutarch’s account, which explains how Arcesilaus describes the mechanism of action, not only answers the charge of total inaction,38 but also gives meaning to the εὔλογον, which otherwise could not be accounted for—be it as a dialectical reversal of a Stoic view or as a criterion of conduct. Only by integrating Plutarch’s testimony with Sextus’s is it possible to answer both objections contained in the charge of ἀπραξία, and—most importantly—to grasp the connection drawn by Arcesilaus between the criterion of conduct and nature, as asserted in both accounts. Sextus himself, in PH I as well as in AM XI, provides an explanation for the Pyrrhonist’s action without assent, which stresses the crucial role of nature and is very similar to Arcesilaus’s explanation for action without assent.39 What is also suspicious is Sextus’s silence with regard to Arcesilaus’s criterion of conduct in PH I, since he discusses and refutes the criterion of conduct of Carneades and Clitomachus at PH I 231, distinguishing it from the Pyrrhonists’ criterion of conduct, yet makes no reference to Arcesilaus’s formulation of a criterion. It cannot be ruled out that Sextus sought to conceal the role played by nature in Arcesilaus’s philosophy, as Pyrrhonian skepticism was greatly indebted to it. A comparative analysis of the sources shows that Arcesilaus’s skepticism does not involve any commitment to the doctrine of ἀκαταληψία but is compatible with universal ἐποχή. The latter is not the final goal for Arcesilaus, and hence does not represent a substantive belief. Rather, it is the practical expression of the theoretical difficulty that the Academic experiences in the face of aporia, which invariably emerges from the equipollence of opposite theses. The problem that Arcesilaus must address is one common to all forms of skepticism, namely: whether it is legitimate for the skeptic to communicate his own non-position to others by drawing upon concepts such as reason, opinion, and truth. The only way of communicating without making assertions that will concern oneself is to develop a language that is distinct from that of dogmatists, but that at the same time does not reject the use of their concepts. Traces of this reflection on language are to be found in various accounts of Arcesilaus’s philosophy, ranging from Cicero (Acad. I 45) to Diogenes Laertius (DL IV 36)40 and Sextus Empiricus himself. The quest for a language of “non-assertion” indicates that Arcesilaus foreshadowed Pyrrhonian skepticism in his awareness that every assertion, by implying the presence of a subject, can ultimately be turned against itself. Sextus himself, who chiefly perceives the difference between Pyrrhonian skepticism and Academic dogmatism as a matter of language, goes so far as to admit that Arcesilaus does not assert anything διαβεβαιωτικῶς,41 while at AM VII 150 he claims that Arcesilaus and his followers οὐδὲν ὥρισαν κριτήριον. More generally, both accounts, in PH I and AM VII, suggest that Arcesilaus employed not just a dialectical terminology drawn from a refutation of Stoic theses—which, as such, cannot be attributed to him—but also a language of his own to convey his skeptical attitude.

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NOTES 1. Cf. Antigonus of Carystus apud Philodemus, Academicorum Historia col. 19, 11–16 (154 Dor.= fr. 20A). As Long (2006: 96–114) has persuasively suggested, Diogenes’s Life of Arcesilaus almost certainly derives from Antigonus of Carystus—a reliable source, since he was a contemporary of Arcesilaus and “was still being read as late as the second century AD” (Long 2006: 101). 2. On the epistemological dispute between Aristo of Chios and Arcesilaus, see DL VII 162–163, as well as Ioppolo (1980: 26–33; 2013: 188–190) and Long (2006: 106–108). 3. See DL IV 33; PH I 234; Numenius apud Eusebius, Praep. evang. XIV 6, 4–5 = fr. 25 Des Places. 4. As Colotes’s work—Plutarch’s source—was written around 260 BCE, its doctrinal and polemical context can only coincide with the height of Arcesilaus’s career. On the reliability of Adversus Colotem as a source for Arcesilaus’s philosophy, see Ioppolo (1986: 121–156; 2000: 333–360; 2009: 123 n. 98); also Warren (2002: 333–360). 5. The same charge is leveled against Arcesilaus at Acad. II 15. 6. PH I 234 quotes the verse by intentionally interpreting it as meaning the very opposite (see below). 7. Cf. Acad. II 130; Fin. II 35, III 31, 43, IV 40, etc. 8. See DL VII 2; 31; Cicero, De or. III 61. On the Stoics’ claim to be following Socrates, see Philodemus, De Stoicis XIII 3. 9. See Ioppolo (1980: 78–90). 10. Some scholars interpret Acad. I 44–45 as evidence that ἀκαταληψία (noncognition) was endorsed by Arcesilaus. See Maconi (1988: 246–247). As Brittain and Palmer (2001: 44) note, however, “It is not clear . . . how Arcesilaus’s appeal to the Presocratics supports the akatalepsia premise because his appeal is susceptible to both a ‘dialectical’ and a ‘non-dialectical’ reading.” 11. huic rationi quod erat consentaneum faciebat, ut contra omnium sententias dicens, in eam plerosque deduceret ut cum in eadem re paria contrariis in partibus momenta rationum invenirentur, facilius ab utraque parte adsensio sustineretur. I follow Madvig’s reading dicens in eam, as this explains how Arcesilaus would lead his interlocutors to share his point of view, that is, to suspend all judgment. This controversial passage is crucially important for any attempt to understand Arcesilaus’s philosophy. 12. Cicero first attributes the method of in utramque partem disserere to Aristotle at Tusc. II 9. Cf. Fin. V 10–11 and De or. III 80. Arcesilaus had been a pupil of Theophrastus (DL IV 29). 13. See Plutarch, St. Rep. 1037A, ironically noting with regard to Chrysippus: “in the ambition to outdo Arcesilaus” (ὑπερβαλέσθαι φιλοτιμούμενος τὸν Ἀρκεσίλαον). This confirms the hypothesis formulated by Long (2006: 97): “Traces of Arcesilaus’s actual words, we may presume, were transmitted in writing through the Academy’s Stoic opponents, especially Chrysippus (DL 7.183), who was his student for a time.”

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14. St. Rep. 1036A: τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἐποχὴν ἄγουσιν περὶ πάντων ἐπιβάλλει, φησί, τοῦτο ποιεῖν. Regardless of which of Chrysippus’s works the quotation may be taken from, it confirms that the πρὸς τὰ ἐναντία διαλέγεσθαι method was at the core of Arcesilaus’s philosophy. 15. St. Rep. 10, 1035F–1037C, faithfully records Chrysippus’s words, as well as the titles of his works. 16. St. Rep. 1036 D–Ε: οὐχ ὡς ἔτυχεν δ’οὐδὲ τοὺς ἐναντίους ὑποδεικτέον λόγους . . . ἀλλ’εὐλαβουμένους μὴ καὶ περισπασθέντες ὑπ’αὐτῶν τὰς καταλήψεις ἀφῶσιν, οὔτε τῶν λύσεων ἱκανῶς ἂν ἀκοῦσαι δυνάμενοι καταλαμβάνοντες τ’εὐαποσείστως. 17. DL IV 28: ἐπισχὼν τὰς ἀποφάσεις διὰ τῆς ἐναντιότητας τῶν λόγων (suspending his assertions owing to the contrarieties of arguments). 18. The dialectical procedure cannot be cut off from its aim, which according to Platonists consists in the “search after truth”: see Plat. Apol. 21 B–23 B, 38 A; Gorg. 505 E. 19. The words vera . . . honesta . . . digna sapienti reveal that Arcesilaus shared this premise. It is worth recalling that the precondition for Socratic ἔλεγχος is to be found in the sincerity with which the two interlocutors express their views: see Plat. Gorg. 457D–458B; Prot. 331C–D; Rep. 346A; Theaet. 167D–168C. 20. In Ioppolo (1989: 232–233), I explain why I prefer to translate φαντασία as “presentation” instead of “impression.” 21. This is the problem that Carneades was to formulate more clearly by drawing a distinction between the two σχέσεις of presentation: see AM VII 168–169. 22. προηγουμένως μὲν οὐδὲν ὥρισαν κριτήριον. On the various possible ways of translating this passage, see Ioppolo (2009: 81–82). 23. See PH I 15; also PH I 197, 203, and Spinelli (2005: 114–126). 24. See AM VII 159–166, on the different dialectical procedures that Sextus adopts in his account on Carneades. 25. For a detailed analysis of Arcesilaus’s arguments, partly drawn from Plato’s Theaetetus, see Ioppolo (2009: 82–93). 26. See Arcesilaus’s explanation of how action is possible in the absence of assent in Plut. Adv. Col. 1121F-1124B. 27. The importance of this κοινωνία with Arcesilaus, acknowledged by Sextus himself, is further witnessed by the limits he sets to the κοινωνία with Protagoras at PH I 217. 28. Note that in the transition from his enunciation of ἐποχή as a good to that of its interpretation from a dogmatic perspective—ὡς πρὸς τὴν φύσιν—Sextus switches from the first person to the third person of his anonymous source: πλὴν εἰ μὲν λέγοι τις (PH I 233). Sextus mentions the charge of esotericism in even more hypothetical terms: εἰ δὲ καὶ τοῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ λεγομένοις πιστεύειν, φασίν (PH I 234). See also Ioppolo (2009: 42–52). 29. Note that Sextus uses the first person very rarely and usually only when his own view is not subject to διαφωνία: see PH I 237, 239; II 9, 10, 22, 98, 204, 212. 30. See Plutarch, St. Rep. 1036A. See also Colotes in Plut. Adv. Col. 1120C: τοὺς περὶ Ἀρκεσίλαον Ἀκαδημαικούς. Οὗτοι γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ περὶ πάντων ἐπέχοντες.

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31. See Acad. II 67 on the divergence between Arcesilaus and Carneades with regard to the thesis nihil opinari sapientem. See also Ioppolo (2007: 238–241). 32. Numenius apud. Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XIV 7, 15 (fr. 26 Des Places) distinguishes Arcesilaus’s position from that of Carneades precisely with reference to the ἐποχὴ περὶ πάντων, which Carneades does not maintain, since it abolishes the distinction between “uncertain” (ἄδηλον) and “noncognitive” (ἀκατάληπτον). Regarding ἄδηλον as a technical term of Arcesilaus’s philosophy, see Ioppolo (2009: 193–208). 33. Note that the verb ἐπέχειν does not always require συγκατάθεσις as its object: see Cicero, Ad Att. XIII 21, 3. Cicero discusses the matter in relation to the dispute between Chrysippus and Carneades on the sorites paradox at Acad. II 93 (see also Ioppolo 2007: 227–267). 34. I have discussed this topic extensively; see Ioppolo 2007. 35. The practice of ζητεῖν is a distinguishing feature of Arcesilaus’s philosophy, which was modeled after that of Socrates: see Plat. Apol. 21B–23B, 38A; DL II 22. Cf. Acad. I 44–46, II 76–77 on verum invenire velle. 36. See DL VII 107–108. On the peculiar meaning of Arcesilaus’s κατόρθωμα, see Ioppolo (2009: 118–124). 37. With regard to the word κατόρθωμα, Tsekourakis (1974: 121) observes: “Terms in -μα . . . seem to have presented the act as a whole, as finished and with its results present. . . . We often find a perfect tense in the definition of the concepts expressed by these terms.” 38. See Plut. Adv. Col. 1122B: ὥσπερ Γοργόνα τὴν ἀπραξίαν ἐπάγοντες. 39. See Adv. Col. 26 1122B–1122 F and PH I 23–24. See also AM XI 162–168 and Spinelli (1995: 325–335). Cf. AM VII 158 with AM VII 30. 40. Φυσικῶς δέ πως ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι ἐχρῆτο τῷ Φημ᾽ἐγώ, καί, οὐ συγκαταθήσεται τούτοις ὁ δεῖνα, εἰπὼν τοὔνομα. Φημ᾽ἐγώ. “I say” translates “Yes” in the context of an ordinary exchange during a discussion and may be explained as a natural impulse that would drive him to speak, even though this did not imply any claim to truthfulness with regard to the content of his words, thereby freeing the expression from any assertive meaning. 41. From the very opening of PH I 4 Sextus uses two specific verbs in order to distinguish dogmatic διαβεβαιοῦσθαι from the ἀπαγγέλλειν. Note that Sextus does not name Arcesilaus among the Academics, implicitly including him among the anonymous skeptics.

REFERENCES Brittain, Charles and John Palmer. 2001. “The New Academy’s Appeal to the Presocratics,” Phronesis 46: 38–72. Burnyeat, Myles. 1997. “Antipater and Self-Refutation: Elusive Argument in Cicero’s Academica.” In B. Inwood and J. Mansfeld (eds.), Assent and Argument: Studies in Cicero’s Academic Books, 277–310. Leiden. Glucker, John. 1978. Antiochus and the Late Academy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

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Görler, Woldemar. 1994. “Älterer Pyrrhonismus. Jüngere Akademie. Antiochos aus Askalon.” In H. Flashar (ed.), Die Philosophie der Antike 4: Die hellenistische Philosophie, 717–989. Basel: Schwabe. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1980. Aristone di Chio e lo Stoicismo antico. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1986. Opinione e scienza. Il dibattito tra Stoici e Accademici nel terzo e secondo secolo a.C. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1989. “Stoici e Accademici sul ruolo dell’assenso,” Elenchos 10: 231–246. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 2000. “A proposito di alcune recenti interpretazioni dello scetticismo dell’Accademia,” Elenchos 21: 333–360. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 2007. L’assenso in Clitomaco:un problema di linguaggio? In A. M. Ioppolo and D. Sedley (eds.), Pyrrhonists, Patricians, Platonizers. Hellenistic Philosophy in the Period 155–86 B.C., 225–267. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 2009. La testimonianza di Sesto Empirico sull’Accademia scettica. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Long, Anthony. 2006. “Arcesilaus in His Time and Place.” In his From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 96–114. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Long, Antony, and David Sedley. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maconi, Henry. 1988. “Nova Non Philosophandi Philosophia,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6: 251–253. Spinelli, Emidio. 1995. Sesto Empirico: Contro gli Etici. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Spinelli, Emidio. 2005. Questioni scettiche: Letture introduttive al Pirronismo antico. Roma: Lithos. Tsekourakis, Damianos. 1974. Studies in the Terminology of the Early Stoa. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Warren, James. 2002. “Socratic Scepticism in Plutarch’s ‘Adversus Colotem,’” Elenchos 23: 333–356.

CHAPTER FOUR

Carneades HARALD THORSRUD

1 INTRODUCTION Carneades of Cyrene (214–129/8 BCE) became head of the Academy sometime before 155 BCE, a little more than one hundred years after Arcesilaus initiated a skeptical movement in the school. Inspired by his reading of Plato’s dialogues, Carneades adopted a version of Socrates’s dialectical project—recognizing his own ignorance and the supreme importance of knowledge, he set about testing, and ultimately refuting, others.1 Carneades followed in Arcesilaus’s footsteps, continuing and strengthening this method.2 Like his predecessors, he wrote nothing,3 and was formidable if not unconquerable in debate.4 And as head of the Academy, he too must have acknowledged some connection with Socrates. So even though he focused on the refutation of the Stoics (see DL IV 62, St. Rep. 1035F), we should not lose sight of the Platonic or Socratic context for his argumentative practice. According to one version of the history of the Academy, Socrates initiated a dialectical method aimed at (i) relieving others of falsely believing they know what they don’t, and (ii) revealing the most probable solutions to the problems discussed, while (iii) concealing his own opinion so as not to interfere with the rational autonomy of the participants (Tusc. V 11).5 There is no doubt that Carneades devoted himself to the first of these three aims. He produced powerful objections to the Stoic view of divination,6 to both Stoic and Epicurean views of freedom and determinism,7 and he argued forcefully against Stoic theology.8 He also expanded the range of targets in ethics and epistemology, arguing not only against all the actual views held on the ethical τέλος and on the criterion of truth, but against all possible views, given certain restrictions on the candidates (Fin. V 16, AM VII 159).9 Whether, or in what sense, Carneades embraced (ii) and (iii) is controversial.10 He is credited with developing an account of living in accordance with the probable or persuasive impression11 to explain how, while suspending judgment, one might remain active and even attain wisdom and happiness. But it is not clear whether he himself relied on such impressions in day-to-day life and in the pursuit of truth, or whether this account was merely part of a dialectical strategy aimed exclusively at refuting the Stoics. In either case, the proper understanding of Carneades’s view of probability must still be determined.

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While the question about the content of his view should be kept distinct from the question about his attitude toward it, they are related in at least one important way. If Carneades’s theory successfully shows how one may live well in the absence of certainty, then it shows this for everyone, not just the Stoics; and in that case he too would have a powerful motive to accept his own account and live accordingly (Obdrzalek 2006: 253).

2  THE DIALECTICAL CONTEXT Like Arcesilaus before him, Carneades focused a great deal of effort on refuting the Stoic view of wisdom and its epistemic foundation in apprehension (κατάληψις). If the Stoic sage is to be infallible, there must be something worthy of his assent. Zeno defined such an apprehensible, or kataleptic, impression (καταληπτικὴ φαντασία) as (i) one that arises from what is, (ii) is stamped, impressed, and molded just as it is, and (iii) is of such a kind as could not arise from what is not (Acad. I 42, II 77; AM VII 252). One of the arguments Carneades deployed against the third, modal condition is an epistemological sorites. We begin with a false impression that is persuasive, for example, that some counterfeit is genuine. Suppose this initial impression is relatively easy to correct by careful examination. We may next imagine an impression of a more skillful counterfeit whose deceit is more difficult to discern. And we may increase this difficulty until we arrive at a false impression that is, for us, indistinguishable from an impression of the genuine article. For any level of skillful detection we care to name, we can always imagine an even more skillful counterfeit. In the end, two equally persuasive impressions, one false and one true, differ in nothing but number (Acad. II 47–49; AM VII 415–422). The consequences of Carneades’s arguments, if successful, would be devastating for the Stoics. For if there is no apprehension, the sage will either have to withhold assent or assent to what is not apprehended. Neither is acceptable: the former would render the sage inactive since the Stoics claimed assent is necessary for intentional action, and the latter would render the sage fallible (Acad. II 67). Without the possibility of apprehension, it seems the Stoics must choose between an infallible but inactive sage and an active but fallible one. In an attempt to remove the source of this dilemma, the Stoics provided some reductiones of the Academic denial of κατάληψις (i.e., ἀκαταληψία). These are referred to as apraxia arguments since they are supposed to show that if the Academic attack succeeds, certain sorts of action would be impossible.12 If there might be no discernible differences between true and false impressions, we can have no confidence in the truth of any of our impressions, and the worldviews we construct might always be systematically deceptive. We would be right in that case to withhold judgment, but that would paralyze us. Since it is absurd to claim that it is right to render ourselves utterly inactive, we must reject ἀκαταληψία. Similarly, if we suppose there is no apprehension, the sage can have no confidence in his moral judgments. This is especially problematic when morality demands we make

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a great sacrifice (Acad. II 23). So if there is no apprehension, there is no wisdom. But there is (or at least may be) wisdom according to the Stoics, so again we must reject ἀκαταληψία. Why would Carneades bother to respond to these apraxia objections? From a dialectical standpoint, ἀκαταληψία is not his view, and thus he should feel no need to defend it. But if the Stoics also maintained that no account other than their own could adequately explain wisdom, then Carneades may have developed a view in response to that challenge (Allen 1994: 87). In fact, Carneades is supposed to have offered two distinct alternatives. First, the sage might follow a persuasive impression without assent and the resulting opinion, and thus without committing himself to the truth, or even probable truth, of the impression (radical skepticism). And second, the sage might assent to the truth of persuasive impressions with the appropriate modesty or caution due to recognizing the possibility of error (mitigated skepticism). While it might be the case that neither of these is Carneades’s view, I will argue that the evidence strongly favors mitigated skepticism. First, note that there are two major problems with attributing radical skepticism to him. In order for the radical skeptic to be free from opinion, he takes no stand on the truth of what strikes him as probable (or better: plausible). On this view, Carneades’s radical skeptic appears no different from Sextus’s Pyrrhonist, who follows appearances without any commitment as to whether things really are as they appear. By suspending judgment the Pyrrhonist expects that the tranquility he desires will follow fortuitously. But since there is no reason to think Carneades’s radical skeptic has a similar expectation, or even prizes tranquility in the way the Pyrrhonist does, it is hard to see why such a life would be thought worth living. As a Socratic, he might cherish his intellectual integrity, but that alone seems an unacceptably thin account of wisdom and happiness. Without the payoff of tranquility, radical skepticism does not provide Carneades with an effective response to the apraxia objection in its entirety. At a minimum, his Stoic interlocutors would reject the claim that one may live a flourishing life in the absence not only of knowledge, but even reasoned opinion.13 The second problem arises from the incompatibility of radical and mitigated skepticism: one maintains that the sage is infallible (by holding no opinions), and the other that the sage is fallible. And yet Cicero appears to endorse both of these as the proper interpretation of Carneades in the Academica, one of our most important and detailed sources. Since Cicero explicitly intends to explain his Academic allegiance in this work (ND I 11), and since he consistently endorses and practices a mitigated skepticism in every other philosophical dialogue, we should seek an interpretation of the Academica that is consistent with such a mitigated skepticism (Thorsrud 2002, 2012). To the extent that we succeed, much of the support for Carneades’s radically skeptical proposal will vanish, and we will be left with the mitigated variety, even if the possibility remains that Carneades endorses nothing.14 In the remainder of this chapter, I will pursue this approach by discussing Carneades’s distinction between kinds of impression, the kinds of assent given to each, the varieties of cognitive state, or opinion, that arises from such assents, and the compatibility of wisdom with opinion.

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3  VARIETIES OF IMPRESSION Carneades argued that no impression could serve as the criterion of truth. Generalizing on the Academic arguments against Stoic epistemology, he claimed that for any true impression, an indistinguishable false one could be found. And he argued that impressions cannot reveal both themselves and their objects or states of affairs in such a way that we can grasp the correspondence between them with certainty. So all such criteria will “consist in an appearance [impression] that is common to both true and false. But the appearance that is common to these two is not apprehensive, and not being apprehensive, neither will it be a criterion” (AM VII 164).15 So it is surprising to find that, after refuting his predecessors, Carneades introduces the probable impression as yet another account of the criterion of truth, especially since he admits that what is probably, or persuasively, true is common to both what is in fact true and false. It appears that his earlier argument preemptively refutes this new proposal.16 But this will only be the case if he agreed with his Stoic opponents that a criterion of truth must infallibly indicate truth. Carneades’s innovation is to reject that view. “We should not,” he says, “because of the rare occurrence of this [an apparently and vividly true impression being false] distrust the one that for the most part tells the truth. For both our judgments and our actions are, as a matter of fact, regulated by what applies for the most part” (AM VII 175). Obviously there is no sophisticated or mathematical appeal to frequency in the notion of what happens for the most part. But it is just as clear that it is an appeal to an ordinary understanding of frequency—we can comfortably rely on such persuasive impressions because they have a good track record, they typically get things right. Carneades is proposing, apparently for the first time, the notion that probability is the very guide to life.17 In the absence of certainty, we are not left with the desperate and impractical view that everything is equally uncertain (Acad. II 99, 103), as if there were no basis whatsoever to prefer one impression to another.18 Such a view would undermine life in the way the Stoics objected. But this is not Carneades’s position. He holds that some impressions are persuasive because they appear to be true (AM VII 169), and that among these some are more persuasive and vivid than others, even though the most vivid may still turn out to be false (AM VII 173, PH I 227). Furthermore, he seems to have more than a purely dialectical interest in providing this account. Sextus reports that “since he [sc. Carneades] too requires some criterion for the conduct of life and for the achievement of happiness, he is in effect compelled for his own part to take a stand on this” (AM VII 166). Sextus does not tell us why he was so compelled. But insofar as there was broad agreement that happiness (εὐδαιμονία) is the proper specification of our τέλος, we may plausibly suppose that all Hellenistic philosophers would have been expected to offer guidance in attaining it (see Hadot 1995; Cooper 2013). There are additional distinctions to be made among persuasive impressions. In trivial matters, or when we simply don’t have the time or opportunity for further scrutiny, we rely on the merely persuasive impression without further ado. But

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in more important matters we examine the neighboring impressions, looking for confirmation or disconfirmation. For the extent to which an impression is convincing is, in part, a function of the coherence and mutual support provided by related impressions. So, for example, a good physician will not diagnose a patient on the basis of one symptom, but will rather look for corroborating evidence. And in matters of the greatest importance, that is, those pertaining to our happiness, we subject each of the associated impressions to additional scrutiny, rather than taking them at face value (AM VII 176–189; cf. PH I 227–229). But what might be the content of a persuasive impression pertaining to happiness? The examples typically involve some proposed course of action: for example, whether to avoid the object on the floor because it appears to be a snake, whether to set out on a sea voyage, sow crops, get married, etc. (Acad. II 109, AM VII 176–189, PH I 227). Successfully avoiding coiled snakes or safely crossing the sea is certainly important, but in what sense, if any, do these actions pertain to my happiness? It might turn out, unlikely though it seems, that I will be happier as a result of snakebite, shipwreck, failed crops, or a ruined marriage. If Carneades intended to limit persuasive impressions to those revealing expected outcomes, it would provide only the barest minimum of guidance with respect to attaining happiness. For living in accordance with such impressions will only make it more likely that we satisfy our desires, and not that we are more likely to be happy by doing so. Fortunately, there is good evidence that persuasive impressions extend well beyond the merely perceptual and predictive.19 According to Sextus, members of Carneades’s Academy affirm that what persuasively appears to be good is really good (PH I 226). Whether or not this claim is entirely accurate, it does suggest the existence of persuasive, evaluative impressions—for example, that it would be good to do something and not merely that the proposed action will succeed. Furthermore, Cicero tells us that when the sage is “asked about what it is appropriate to do [de officio]. . . . He won’t say he doesn’t know, as when asked about whether the number of the stars is even or odd” (Acad. II 110).20 This allows for deontic impressions, which we should expect given that “the wise person will use whatever strikes him as persuasive . . . and the whole structure of his life will be governed in this way (omnis ratio vitae gubernabitur)” (Acad. II 99; see also Acad. II 104, PH I 231).21 But since it would be frivolous to act on the basis of whatever happens to strike one as plausibly worth doing or as what one is plausibly required to do, the sage’s moral judgment must be informed by rational principles (Acad. II 35–36). Now if, as the Stoics think, the sage can have no principles (decreta = δόγματα) that he fails to securely grasp as true, Carneades would have to admit that his Academic sage securely grasps this much: that nothing is apprehensible. Cicero responds, on behalf of Carneades: “As if the wise person has no other principles and could live his life without principles! But just as he holds those as persuasive rather than apprehended principles, so with this one, that nothing is apprehensible” (Acad. II 109–110; see also Acad. II 29, PH I 226). Accordingly, Carneades seems to allow for philosophical impressions as principles governing the life of the sage.22 The only plausible explanation of how Carneades’s sage could arrive at such principles is philosophical investigation: the sage “will deliberate about what to

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do or not to do on the basis of [persuasive] impressions” (Acad. II 100). Indeed, Carneades and his followers are said to have been especially inspired by their claim that persuasive or truth-like impressions provide them with a rule for both conducting their lives and for philosophical investigation and disputation (regula et in agenda vita et in quaerendo ac disserendo) (Acad. II 32).23 Cicero tells us that the whole point of Carneades’s refutative practice was to discover the truth, or what is most like the truth, the most probable solution (ND I 11–12, Tusc. V 10–11; see also Acad. II 7–9, ND I 4, Div. II 150).24 If Carneades develops his account of persuasive impressions to show not only how we may navigate through the world but also how we may achieve wisdom, there will have to be a wide variety of persuasive impressions for the sage to rely on. And his dialectical practice of arguing for and against must, as Cicero repeatedly insists, be aimed not only at refutation but also at revealing which position is most truth-like, or rationally defensible; otherwise Carneades’s wisdom will merely enable the sage to navigate through the world and satisfy his desires. But how then can the method of subjecting sense-impressions to increasing degrees of scrutiny and the method of arguing pro and con both rely on the same criterion? The ordinary sense of frequency invoked in the former seems entirely out of place in the latter—our philosophical judgments aren’t regulated by what happens for the most part. While none of our sources address this problem, there is a ready solution. In both cases the reigning assumption is that truth is what survives refutation.25 When we subject an impression to closer scrutiny by first checking for overall coherence with its associated impressions and then by examining each of those impressions independently, we are seeking to falsify the target impression. If we fail to do so, the target impression becomes even more persuasive—it has survived refutation. The Academics do not deny that some impressions are in fact true, but only that we can be certain of which are true (Acad. II 73, 111). And the possibility that what is true can, at least in some cases, constrain our judgments is implicit in a remark that Carneades used to make: the sons of the wealthy and sons of kings do learn to ride on horseback, but they learn nothing else well and properly; for in their studies their teacher flatters them with praise, and their opponent in wrestling does the same by submitting to be thrown, whereas the horse, having no knowledge or concern even as to who is private citizen or ruler, or rich or poor, throws headlong those who cannot ride him. (Plutarch, Adulator 58f5, tr. Babbit 1927) Similarly, only life itself may correct those philosophical views that are left untouched by overly polite or incompetent interlocutors. In the dispute over Stoic epistemology, where we have competent opponents, the extent to which the claim that nothing is apprehensible survives refutation is the extent to which we will, and should, find it persuasive. The dialectical testing of philosophical impressions is thus analogous to the scrutiny of perceptual impressions. And while the notion of dialectical survival is admittedly vague, it does show how one might reasonably think that τὸ πιθανόν provides a rule for both the conduct of life and philosophical investigation.

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4  VARIETIES OF ASSENT Just as Carneades offers the persuasive impression as an alternative to the kataleptic impression as the sage’s guide to life, he also provides an alternative to the Stoic view of assent. According to the Stoics, strong assent is given only to kataleptic impressions (or more precisely, only to the true propositions that articulate the content of kataleptic impressions) and in such a way as to be irreversible. To be capable of assenting strongly requires the virtue of dialectic, which “conveys a method that guards us from giving assent to any falsehood or ever being deceived by specious probability, and enables us to retain and defend the truths that we have learned about good and evil” (Fin. III 72, tr. Rackham 1914). This dialectical virtue is also described as freedom from precipitant or rash judgment: “knowledge [of] when to give or withhold the mind’s assent to impressions,” or “the disposition not to assent in advance of apprehension” (DL VII 46–48; see also Plutarch, St. rep. 1056F, 1057B–C). Having this virtue, the Stoic sage never believes a falsehood, and never assents to anything that is not apprehended (Stobaeus, Anthologium II 7, 11m). By contrast, a weak assent is one that would not have been given had the circumstances been even slightly different. The foolish are too easily swayed by factors that are irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the proposition in question; when they get things right, it is to some extent just a matter of good fortune. The foolish lack the systematic knowledge that secures each individual piece of knowledge, so even when they assent to a true proposition, the assent is weak because changeable. These distinctions rest squarely on the possibility of apprehension. If there are no impressions worthy of strong assent, then all assent will be weak and rash on the Stoic view, and we will be back once again at the conclusion that we must withhold all assent. To avoid this conclusion, Carneades offers a very different distinction: The wise person is said to suspend assent in two senses: in one sense, when this means he won’t assent to anything entirely; in another, when it means he will restrain himself even from giving responses showing that he approves or disapproves of something, so that he won’t say “yes” or “no” to anything. Given this distinction, the wise person accepts the suspension of assent in the first sense, with the result that by following what is persuasive wherever that is present or deficient, he is able to reply “yes” or “no.” Since the person who keeps himself from assenting to anything nevertheless wants to move and act, Clitomachus maintained there are still impressions of the kind that excite us to action; and likewise, there are still responses we can use when questioned on either side, by just following our impressions on the matter, provided we do so without assent (Acad. II 104).26 Despite the lack of any explicit reference to the Stoics in this passage, it is reasonable to expect that, having eliminated kataleptic impressions, Carneades would finish the job by forbidding the sort of assent that is only properly given to such impressions— this is nicely captured by the expression “assenting entirely.” If so, we may take Carneades’s first kind of assent to correspond to the Stoic’s strong assent. Only now the point is that the sage refrains from such assent since there is nothing worthy of that absolute degree of confidence.

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The description of the second type of assent is brief and obscure—replying “yes” to what is persuasive and “no” to what is not. But if the distinction is offered by way of contrast, it will be a matter of not assenting entirely, but rather to a lesser degree, yet still with enough confidence to motivate action and provide guidance. The notion that such assent comes in degrees of confidence correlates perfectly with the degrees of persuasiveness among impressions. So we may say that, since no impression is apprehensible, the sage does not assent entirely to anything, but that he does assent to the extent that the persuasive impression has been thoroughly examined and is not contradicted by associated impressions. This amounts to a consciously fallible judgment of truth.27 Unlike the Pyrrhonists, Carneades holds that some impressions are more convincing than others (PH I 227). Since what we are convinced of, typically, is that something is the case, this amounts to saying that some impressions appear true to a greater degree than others. So the reason Carneades prefers persuasive impressions that have been subjected to the highest degree of scrutiny is that they are more likely to get things right and provide good guidance (PH I 229). It is precisely on this point that Sextus differentiates Carneades’s New Academy from Pyrrhonism.28 Academics assent in the way a dissolute man agrees with someone who urges extravagant living. What Carneades actually desires is not extravagance, of course, but truth.29 So the charge is that Carneades knows better than to assent to the apparent truth of merely persuasive impressions, but cannot resist doing so. The Pyrrhonists, by contrast, yields to some impressions, not because they are apparently true, but simply because they move him. What Sextus probably finds objectionable about the former sort of assent is that, unlike the Pyrrhonist’s yielding, it leaves one vulnerable to rational challenges and the disturbance that follows when those challenges are not met. To reply on behalf of Carneades, we may say that it would be truly blameworthy only if one were to assent entirely. This provides a good way to understand his almost Herculean labor of driving “assent—i.e., opinion and rashness—from our minds, as one would drive out a wild and savage monster” (Acad. II 108). Since it would be flagrantly inconsistent to insist that one should never assent to anything whatsoever and that one should assent in a more qualified manner to persuasive impressions, we may conclude that what Carneades drives out is assenting entirely. And we should provide this qualification as needed in Cicero’s discussion of the rashness of assent or the view that the sage withholds assent. For example: “Even if anything is apprehensible, the very habit of assent [i.e., assenting entirely] is slippery and dangerous. Hence, since it’s agreed that it is extremely vicious to assent [entirely] to anything false or unknown, it’s better to restrain all assent [i.e., assenting entirely] so the wise person doesn’t go awry by advancing rashly” (Acad. II 68). Similarly, what is most shameful is to approve of something false in place of the truth, or as if it were true [pro veris probare false] (Acad. II 66). By supposing that what we are assenting to is true, rather than probably true or persuasive, we give our assent entirely. Likewise, it is rash to assent to the unknown in place of, or as if it were, known (ne incognita pro cognitis habeamus iisque temere assentiamur) (Off. I 18).30 Once again, by supposing that what we are assenting to is securely known, we give our assent entirely—and this is rash.

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Consequently, the error Carneades seeks to eliminate is not simply assenting to what is false, but rather being credulous or gullible, especially with respect to the rational support of our own convictions. He would in that case be seeking, in good Socratic fashion, to relieve us of the rashness of thinking that we know what we do not and of obstinately defending the views we have grown attached to (Acad. II 9).

5  VARIETIES OF OPINION AND THE FALLIBLE SAGE There are, however, a number of passages in which both Carneades and Cicero seem to reject the view that it is ever wise to hold mere opinions. For example, Cicero openly approves of Zeno’s view that the sage will hold no opinions (Acad. II 113). On the basis of what I have argued so far, we may take him to mean that the sage never has the blameworthy mental state that arises from assenting rashly, that is, entirely, in the absence of apprehension. The fact that he chooses to call this “opinion” is potentially misleading since it may be confused with the cognitive state that guides the life of the Academic sage. Both sorts of opinion involve assenting to what is, or may be, false. The crucial difference is that from the Stoic perspective any such assent is necessarily a moral and epistemic failing, while from Carneades’s Academic perspective only assenting entirely is blameworthy.31 This explains why Carneades would not vehemently combat the Peripatetics when they affirm the sage will hold opinions. For the Peripatetics similarly think that fulfilling one’s epistemic obligation does not make one infallible, so assenting to what turns out to be false is not necessarily a transgression (Acad. II 112). This also illuminates Carneades’s dialectical strategy in combating the Stoics. When Carneades proposes, for the sake of argument, that the sage will sometimes have opinions, he is relying on the Stoic view of opinion. This is why the Stoic spokesman in the Academica describes his strategy this way: “Carneades was occasionally liable to sink so low as to say that the wise person would have opinions, i.e. that he would err” (Acad. II 59, see also II 67). In order to drive the Stoics to the unacceptable conclusion that the (Stoic) sage would transgress, Carneades had to rely on their own views of assent and opinion.32 Finally, we also find that the Academics identify rashness as either assenting to what is false or to what has not been sufficiently examined or comprehended.33 The disjunction is puzzling. Is it blameworthy to assent to what is false because it is shameful to have false opinions? Or is it blameworthy, as I have been arguing, to assent to what has not been adequately examined because this is contrary to what wisdom demands? These two options are potentially at odds. Suppose one assents to an adequately examined persuasive impression that turns out false. It would then be both rash to assent to it (because false) and not rash (because sufficiently examined). On the other hand, suppose one assents to a true impression that has not been sufficiently examined. Now it will be both rash to assent to it (because not sufficiently examined) and not rash (because true).34

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We may avoid this problem by taking the second disjunct as an emphatic alternative. In that case, the claim would be that it is rash to assent to what is false, or at least (since we are often not in a position to know whether the proposition in question is false) to what has not been sufficiently examined.35 In any case, we must maintain the fundamental point that, since Carneades’s sage assents to persuasive impressions and since such impressions may always turn out to be false, it necessarily follows that the sage will sometimes assent to what is false. So the Academic sage’s wisdom must be constituted by the distinctive manner in which he gives his assent. In particular, he will proportion the strength of his assent to the persuasiveness of the impression, whether through systematic scrutiny of his perceptual impressions or through argument pro and con in the case of philosophical propositions, and he will remain perpetually open to being corrected by subsequent experience and additional argument. On those rare occasions in which a thoroughly examined persuasive impression turns out to be false, or dialectically defeated, the sage’s opinion that it was probably true is not blameworthy.36

NOTES 1. See Cicero, De Or. III 67, Cooper (2004: 92–95), Ioppolo (1986), and Thorsrud (2010: 58–62). 2. See De Or. III 68, ND I 11, Acad. II 16. See also Acad. II 46, and Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 14.7.15. 3. See DL I 16, IV 65; Plutarch, De Alex. fort. 328A–B; Gellius, NA 17.15.1–3. Carneades’s student Clitomachus wrote over 400 books documenting the arguments of his teacher (DL IV 67; see Acad. II 16, Or. 51). None of these survive except in the form of quotations and paraphrases, which are collected by Mette (1985). Cicero and Sextus are the most important sources; however, Cicero is more sympathetic and closer in time, and over half of the lines of text collected by Mette are his or derive from his writing. Many of the central texts are also collected and translated in Long and Sedley (1987: 438-460). 4. See De Or. I 45, III 68; Fin. III 41; DL I 16, IV 65; De Alex. fort. 328A–B; Gellius NA 17.15.1–3; Praep. Evang. 14.8. Carneades, along with two other philosophers acting as Athenian emissaries in 155, convinced the Romans to reduce a fine levied against Athens for having sacked the city of Oropus. Powell (2013) has convincingly shown that the famous arguments for and against justice that Carneades is reported to have delivered on this occasion are likely to be a fabrication of Cicero’s. Had he really sought to show the Romans that they did not know what justice is, he would likely have betrayed his diplomatic charge. 5. Since it was common practice among Academic philosophers to locate the origin of their views in Plato and Socrates, there were a number of competing histories of the Academy—see Brittain (2001: 169–254). I am not presupposing that this is the correct account. I mention it here because it neatly contains the major features that one might find exemplified by Carneades, as indeed Cicero did. 6. See Cicero, Div.; also Hankinson (1988). 7. See Cicero, Fat.; also Bobzien (2002) and O’Keefe (2005: 138–149, 153–162).

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8. See Cicero, ND III; Sextus, AM IX. See also Burnyeat (1982a) and Long (1990). 9. On Carneades’s epistemological arguments, see Frede (1987b), Schofield (1999: 338–344), and Perin (2006). On his ethical arguments, see Long (1967), Algra (1997), and Annas (2007). 10. The current consensus is that he did not—see n. 32 below. 11. The proper translation of the property expressed by these impressions, τὸ πιθανόν, is also controversial. Cicero renders it probabile and veri simile (Acad. II 7–8, 99, 107; Tusc. I 17, II 5). See Glucker (1995). 12. Vogt (2010) illuminates the variety of apraxia arguments. 13. Obdrzalek (2006: 257) convincingly argues that in order for Carneades’s response to the Stoic apraxia charge to succeed, it must show how one can lead a coherent and happy life while refraining from dogmatic assent. 14. It is clear that there was some dispute among Carneades’s students regarding his position (Acad. II 78). I maintain that whatever the nature of that dispute, Cicero’s testimony does not support a radically skeptical Carneadean alternative. Görler (1994: 816–819) also rejects the view that Carneades was a radical skeptic insofar as he shares some basic convictions with the Stoics—for example, that sense-impressions exist and that some are true. For more on the extraordinarily complicated history of the post-Carneadean Academy, see Tarrant (1985), Glucker (1978), Brittain (2001), and Lévy (2010). 15. All translations of AM VII are from Bett (2005). 16. Ioppolo (2009) argues that Sextus relies on inconsistent accounts of Carneades’s criterion: on the one hand, exclusively practical, having no connection to truth, and on the other, epistemic. 17. This is hardly a novel proposal. Indeed, Cicero seems to have understood Carneades this way, as does Reid (1885) in his notes to the text of the Academica. More recently, see Stough (1969: 50–64) and Grundmann (2003). Jeffrey (1984: 73–75) and Niiniluoto (1984: 594) find in Carneades the historical precedent for their favored views of probability. In opposition, Burnyeat (1982b) argues, with reference to Hacking (1984), that Carneades does not, and in fact could not, share or even anticipate our contemporary view of probability (that X is good evidence for Y in proportion to the frequency with which X and Y go together). But even without any mathematical or statistical interpretation of frequency, one may still think that we are habituated by the regularity of experience to anticipate a certain effect from a certain cause. Furthermore, the fact that the Academic sage is guided by probable impressions indicates that it plays a normative role, showing not merely how people live, but also how they should live. 18. The one key issue on which Carneades is said to have departed from Arcesilaus is in claiming that it is impossible to suspend judgment on everything, but that fortunately while all things are inapprehensible, not all things are uncertain (Praep. Evang. 14.7.15; cf. Acad. II 59). 19. Görler (1994: 874–879) argues to the contrary that Carneades’s probable impressions are exclusively sensory and that the approval of philosophical views as probable is Cicero’s distinctively Roman innovation. 20. All translations of the Academica are from Brittain (2006).

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21. Compare ND I 12: persuasive impressions direct or regulate the life of the sage (sapientis vita regeretur). 22. Cicero reports that the Stoics and Peripatetics used to choose Carneades to adjudicate their disagreement over the proper understanding of the τέλος (Tusc. V 120), presumably because of his great oratorical skill. If so, they would have wanted him to judge which side was more persuasively argued, which suggests a straightforwardly philosophical application of Carneades’s skeptical criterion. 23. Brittain (2001: 95–96, 103–108) accounts for such passages as an intrusion of mitigated skepticism into Carneades’s real position of universal ἐποχή and an exclusively dialectical engagement with dogmatists. But see Glucker (1994: 147–152). 24. If Carneades really did argue pro and con for the sake of drawing out the most probable philosophical views, we may reasonably ask why there is no record of what he judged to be the dialectical winners. Cicero provides the answer: Academics conceal their views so that students may be guided by their own reason rather than by authority (Acad. II 60, Tusc. V 11, de Or. I 84). This would explain why Clitomachus used to say that he had never been able to understand what Carneades did accept (quid probaretur, Acad. I 139); it would make no sense for him to try to figure out what Carneades accepted if he had been confident that he accepted nothing. 25. Waterfield (1989) makes a persuasive case for attributing to the Socrates of Plato’s Socratic dialogues the view that truth is what survives refutation. 26. I have made a slight but crucially important modification to Brittain’s (2006) translation. For omnino eum rei nulli adsentiri he provides, “[The sage] won’t assent to anything at all,” whereas I follow Reid (1885: 300) in taking omnino as an adverb: “[The sage] won’t assent to anything entirely.” 27. For a very different interpretation see Bett (1990), and similarly: Frede (1987c), Striker (1996; 2010: 200), Schofield (1999: 334–337), and Ioppolo (2007). Bett argues that Carneades’s response to the apraxia objection involves distinguishing between an impression being convincing from our taking it to be true. On this view, Carneades proposes we may act in accordance with former while withholding assent to the latter. I believe, however, that finding something convincing is inextricably connected with taking it to be true, in some sense. 28. It is interesting to note that this is virtually the same argument that Sextus makes against those who would count Plato as a skeptic (PH I 222–223). 29. Carneades argued against Stoic theology “in such a manner as to arouse in persons of active mind a keen desire to discover the truth” (ND I 4; see also Acad. II 7, 66, 76). 30. For similar uses of pro, see Acad. II 53, Part. 44, ad. Brut. 1.5.2. 31. Similarly, when Cicero admits that he cannot resist assenting to some persuasive impressions and thereby holding opinions (Acad. II 66, 113), we should not suppose that he is sincerely convicting himself of foolishness—see Görler (1997). For if he sincerely believed that wisdom is incompatible with opinion, he could not endorse his Academic method, the whole point of which is to draw out the most probable views, that is, the most rationally defensible opinions. Elsewhere, he is quite happy to insist on the compatibility of wisdom and mere opinion (e.g., Mur. 63).

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32. However, we might also seek to explain Carneades’s rejection of the compatibility of wisdom with opinion by claiming, as some have, that the mitigated skeptic is merely a dialectical invention, which was later attributed to Carneades as his own positive view. With the inspiration of Couissin (1929), this has been developed and employed in a variety of ways by Burnyeat (1982b), Sedley (1983), Frede (1987c), Bett (1989; 1990), Allen (1994; 1997), Striker (1996; 2010), Schofield (1999), and Brittain (2001). Perhaps the most important piece of evidence in support of this view of Carneades is a reported dispute between his students: “[That the sage] could fail to apprehend anything and yet still have opinions … is said to have been the position approved by Carneades—although, since I [sc. Cicero] trust Clitomachus rather than Philo or Metrodorus, I consider it a position he argued for rather than approved” (Acad. II 78; see Brittain 2001: 76–82). For an interpretation of this passage that is consistent with the position I take here see Thorsrud (2012). 33. There are no texts that attribute this sort of disjunction explicitly to Carneades. The following three, however, could plausibly be linked to him. At Acad. II 68, Cicero, on behalf of the New Academy is describing our view. And Div. I 7 and ND I 1 are general descriptions and justifications of Cicero’s Academic methodology, which he does identify explicitly as Carneades’s elsewhere (Tusc. V 11). 34. Augustine explores some similar possibilities in C. Acad. III xv 34. 35. A prime example of this is Acad. II 7: the sole purpose of the Academics’ arguing on both sides is to draw out that which is either true or at least the closest approximation to the truth (aliquid quod aut verum sit aut ad id quam proxime accedat). See also Off. III 54, Tusc. V 51. 36. The inspiration for this view may have come from the Stoics themselves. In order to maintain the sage’s infallibility, some Stoics argued that, when the sage assents to some proposition p that turns out false, we should suppose that what he assents to is the proposition that it is reasonable that p. Regardless of whether p is true or false, it will still be the case that it was reasonable that p, and the sage will not have made a mistake (see DL VII 177, Brennan 1996). Similarly, when Carneades’s sage assents to the proposition that it is probable that p, he is probably right in doing so, and again even if p turns out to be false, he will not have made a mistake.

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Sedley, David. 1983 “The Motivation of Greek Skepticism.” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 9–29. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stough, Charlotte. 1969. Greek Skepticism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Striker, Gisela. 1996. “Sceptical Strategies.” In her Essays in Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, 92–115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Striker, Gisela. 2010. “Academics versus Pyrrhonists, Reconsidered.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 195–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrant, Harold. 1985. Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thorsrud, Harald. 2002. “Cicero on His Academic Predecessors: The Fallibilism of Arcesilaus and Carneades,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40: 1–18. Thorsrud, Harald. 2010. “Arcesilaus and Carneades.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 58–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thorsrud, Harald. 2012. “Radical and Mitigated Skepticism in Cicero’s Academica.” In W. Nicgorski (ed.), Cicero’s Practical Philosophy, 168–192. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press. Vogt, Katja. 2010. “Scepticism and Action.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 165–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waterfield, Robin. 1989. “Truth and the Elenchus in Plato.” In P. Huby and G. Neal (eds.), The Criterion of Truth, 39–56. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

CHAPTER FIVE

Aenesidemus LUCA CASTAGNOLI

1 INTRODUCTION Unlike many other philosophers who flourished at the dawn of the Hellenistic age, Pyrrho did not found a school. Probably as a result of this and of his choice not to write, his philosophy, and the fascination that his personality exercised during his life, failed to outlive his pupil Timon and to produce any lasting legacy beyond the third century BCE.1 In line with their standard practice, some post-Hellenistic doxographers reconstructed an uninterrupted “succession” of philosophers seamlessly linking Pyrrho and Timon with the later Pyrrhonian tradition (see, e.g., DL IX 116). But on the basis of other sources (e.g., Aristocles apud Eusebius Praep. Evang. 14.18.29) scholars tend to agree that this is a largely fictional construction, and that the history of Pyrrhonism actually lapsed after Timon and resumed only in the first century BCE. That is the time when Aenesidemus appropriated, revived, and (in some measure to be determined) reinterpreted and developed Pyrrho’s ideas and attitudes, thus initiating a new brand of skepticism that he chose to baptize after him. The terms σκέψις (“skepticism”) and σκεπτικοί (“skeptics”) were not yet in currency at Aenesidemus’s time, nor do they seem to have been introduced in his works either. Later on, however, others, both within and outside the Pyrrhonian school, adopted these terms to refer to the whole tradition from Pyrrho onwards and (but only outside the Pyrrhonian school) to the skeptical phase of Plato’s Academy between the third and first centuries BCE, that is, from Arcesilaus to Philo of Larissa.2 As we will see, Aenesidemus’s Pyrrhonian revival set itself in overt opposition to what he took to be contemporary forms of positive (e.g., Stoic) and negative (e.g., Academic) “dogmatism.” According to the scholarly vulgata, Aenesidemus was himself a member of the Academy before defecting (but see Decleva Caizzi 1992 and Polito 2004), and perhaps founded his own school precisely in reaction to the unacceptable slackening of skepticism under the two leading first-century BCE Academics, Philo and Antiochus. Although we can establish with a certain degree of confidence that he lived in the first century BCE, virtually nothing else is certain about Aenesidemus’s dates and life, except for the fact that at some point he worked in Alexandria. According

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to Diogenes Laertius (DL IX 115), he was originally from Cnossos in Crete, but, according to Photius (Bibl. 212, 170a41), he was from Aigai in Asia Minor.

2  PYRRHO’S DISPUTED LEGACY Because of Aenesidemus’s appropriation of Pyrrho, who was by his time a rather obscure figure, as the “noble father” of his newly founded school, any reconstruction of his brand of skepticism should not dispense with the question of how exactly it was related to Pyrrho’s original outlook. But since antiquity Pyrrho has been an exegetical puzzle, and especially within the last three decades, since fully informed research on Pyrrho has become possible thanks to the publication of a complete collection of testimonies (Decleva Caizzi 1981), the number of rival reconstructions has proliferated. Of these, the two most plausible and influential, and also most directly relevant to our study of Aenesidemus, are (1) the “epistemological” and (2) the “metaphysical” interpretations: (1) According to the former interpretation, which used to be the standard one, Pyrrho was essentially a skeptic in the same mold as Sextus Empiricus (second century CE),3 our key source for later Pyrrhonism. Having witnessed the weakness and unreliability of our senses and reason, which had led others, before him, to despair of the possibility of human knowledge, Pyrrho concluded that the correct attitude toward reality was withholding assent from any belief and claim, whether positive or negative. While registering how things appear to us, he suspended his judgment on how things really are (for defenses of this traditional interpretation, see, e.g., Stopper 1983; Thorsrud 2009; and Castagnoli 2013). (2) According to the latter interpretation, Pyrrho was impressed by the metaphysical insight of some earlier thinkers, like the Eleatics and Plato, who had made stability and absoluteness the mark of reality and truth, relegating change and relativity to the realm of appearance and mere opinion. He thus concluded that things cannot really be in any of the ever-changing ways in which they manifest themselves to our senses and minds. Because of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon of variability, that conclusion amounted to a nihilist metaphysics according to which reality itself, beneath the appearances, is completely indeterminate, and we should thus deny that things really are how they appear to be (see, e.g., Long-Sedley 1987; Hankinson 1995; and Bett 2000).4 The deep sensitivity to the pervasiveness of conflict and disagreement was Pyrrho’s starting point on both interpretations, but his diagnoses of the phenomenon would have been different, and indeed incompatible, on either interpretation. Finally, the two interpretations agree in attributing to Pyrrho the view that a correct understanding of reality, or of our prospects of knowing it, will transform our lives for the better: both (1) suspension of judgment and (2) recognition of the intrinsic indeterminacy of reality were supposed to induce in us a desirable state of psychological “tranquility”

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or “peace of mind” (ἀταραξία).5 This tranquility was presumably the result of relinquishing any positive commitment to the good and the truth, thus avoiding the anxiety, frustration, and fear related to the pursuit and preservation of them.

3  AENESIDEMUS: APPROACHES AND SOURCES While the number and divergence of the interpretations of Aenesidemus is not as wide as for Pyrrho, attempts to reconstruct his philosophy face analogous and related methodological issues. Unlike Pyrrho, Aenesidemus wrote several works, but none of them is preserved, and our later sources on Pyrrhonism, whether Pyrrhonian or hostile, tend either to be silent on Aenesidemus’s own distinctive position or to conflate it with Pyrrhonian skepticism as represented by later exponents like Sextus. The identification of original Aenesidemean fragments within our secondhand testimonia on his philosophy, or on Pyrrhonian philosophy as a whole, is often impossible or deeply conjectural. In light of the nature of the scant information available, it is difficult to establish the exact nature of the connection with Pyrrho’s earlier thought and to disentangle Aenesidemus’s position from the later Pyrrhonian (or “Neo-Pyrrhonian”) tradition which he initiated. Most interpreters have focused on the task of identifying and explaining those contributions that appear to be more distinctively Aenesidemean, especially on the basis of important evidence provided by Photius’s late (ninth century CE) summary of Aenesidemus’s Arguments of the Pyrrhonists (in eight books), but also by examining several passages scattered in book 9 of Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Philosophers (see Barnes 1992); in excerpts of Aristocles of Messene’s On Philosophy, preserved by the father of the church Eusebius of Caesarea (see Chiesara 2001); in Sextus Empiricus’s extant corpus; and in Tertullian’s On the Soul.6

4  AENESIDEMUS AGAINST THE ACADEMICS From our sources a decidedly polemical focus against the Academics emerges clearly as an Aenesidemean trait: their position is singled out from the beginning of the first book of the Arguments of the Pyrrhonists as the polemical foil against which it is possible to define the correct Pyrrhonian attitude. The question of how the Academics and the Pyrrhonists differ would become a topos in the first and second centuries CE (see, e.g., Gellius, NA 9.5.6), but it was clearly put on the map already by Aenesidemus. At the end of the first book of his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus will also include various Academics in his long list of “neighboring” philosophies not to be conflated with Pyrrhonian skepticism (PH I 220–235). While Sextus’s discussion is extensive, its position does not however show the same level of urgency originally displayed by Aenesidemus. Even the choice of expounding his philosophy in writing poses Aenesidemus in contrast with some of the leading Hellenistic Academics, such as Arcesilaus and Carneades, who had adopted the Socratic stance of not writing (Polito 2014). The point should not be overstated, however, since that choice also marks an interesting discontinuity with Pyrrho himself.

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According to Aenesidemus, the Academics are barely disguised dogmatists: far from being aporetic and suspending judgment about everything, they have all kinds of opinions. They confidently affirm certain things—for example, when they admit that some views or arguments are more persuasive than others (clearly a reference to the Carneadean doctrine of the πιθανόν)7—and unambiguously deny others—for example, when they claim, against the Stoics, that “nothing can be apprehended,” that is, grasped with infallible certainty. Contemporary Academics, like Philo and Antiochus, sometimes are even in agreement with Stoic doctrines, and are essentially “Stoics fighting against Stoics.” Moreover, they are guilty of contradicting themselves: they give their assent to a number of things, while denying the possibility of knowledge as firm apprehension (κατάληψις) of reality (Bibl. 212.169b36–170a17). Aenesidemus’s polemics against the Academy might have had not only a clear philosophical rationale, but also “political” roots: as we have seen, it is possible that Aenesidemus was himself an Academic renegade, and certainly he placed his school as a form of genuine anti-dogmatism in competition with it (see Decleva Caizzi 1992; Mansfeld 1995). Aenesidemus’s anti-Academic spin might also be reflected in his predilection for the Socratic/Platonic language of  aporia to describe the Pyrrhonian stance, and in the quasi-Socratic flavor (cf. Plato, Apol. 21b4–5) of his claim that “he who philosophizes after Pyrrho is happy not only in general but also, and especially, in the wisdom of knowing that he has no firm cognition of anything,” as reported by Photius (Bibl. 212.169b28–29).8 We are also informed that Aenesidemus took a position on whether Plato was a skeptic, something which had become a focus of controversy within the late Hellenistic Academy. Unfortunately, textual corruption in our source (PH I 222) makes that position impossible to determine with full certainty, but it seems more likely that Aenesidemus, like Sextus after him, rejected the skeptical credentials that some Academics had attributed to the founder of their school (Spinelli 2000).

5  AENESIDEMUS’S “HERACLITEANISM” Aenesidemus’s so-called Heracliteanism is another distinctive, and more puzzling, aspect of his thought, and as such has attracted ample scholarly attention (in recent years, Polito 2004; Pérez-Jean 2005; and Schofield 2007). Sextus reports, reproachfully, that “Aenesidemus and his followers said that the skeptical way is a path which leads to Heraclitean philosophy, since the idea that contraries appear to hold of the same thing leads to the idea that they actually hold of it” (PH I 210). In other words, the Pyrrhonian epistemological awareness of the pervasiveness of conflicting appearances would lead, somehow, to the Heraclitean metaphysical tenet of the unity of opposites. On a few occasions Sextus and other sources also mysteriously attribute dogmatic views—for example, about the soul or time—to “Aenesidemus κατά Heraclitus” (Aenesidemus “citing Heraclitus”? Aenesidemus “in accordance with Heraclitus,” that is, following him? Aenesidemus “in his Heraclitean mode”?). Although these testimonies have been taken by some scholars to attest to the existence of an early or late Heraclitean phase in Aenesidemus’s thought, this reading has been convincingly shown by others to be implausible. Aenesidemus’s

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interest in Heraclitus is more likely to have been instrumental in his dialectic with contemporary philosophical rivals: in particular, we know that the Stoics, who are with the Academics one of Aenesidemus’s primary targets, had appropriated Heraclitus as a precursor, and Aenesidemus could have engaged in Heraclitean exegesis to show that the Stoic interpretation of Heraclitus was tendentious, and that un-Stoic consequences actually followed from his doctrines. The exegesis might have gone as far as to claim that, if anything, Heracliteanism had more affinities with Pyrrhonism than with Stoicism—for example, in the measure in which the Pyrrhonian emphasis on the all-pervasive existence of conflicting appearances (and possibly on the undecidability of conflict: see below) is logically prior to, and explanatory of, the Heraclitean postulation of the unity of opposites (see Polito 2004).

6  AENESIDEMUS’S “MODES” OF SUSPENSION OF JUDGMENT The “invention” or compilation of the ten “modes” (τρόποι) of suspension of judgment (ἐποχή),9 which form the backbone of the Pyrrhonian argumentative strategies along with the “five modes” later introduced by Agrippa, is Aenesidemus’s most celebrated contribution to the history of Western skepticism (see, e.g., Striker 1983; Annas and Barnes 1985). A large body of conflicting appearances, observations, beliefs, and arguments was collected by Aenesidemus and arranged into ten broad groups. The material often derived from the previous philosophical tradition, but Aenesidemus systematized its collection and put it to a specific use within his skeptical project (for the scholarly controversy surrounding this use, see below). Following the order in which the modes appear in Sextus’s report (PH I 35–163), things appear in different ways relative to (1) different animals: for example, sea water is unpleasant and poisonous for human beings, but not for sea fish; (2) different human beings: for example, most human beings die if they drink hemlock, but some do not; (3) different sense organs: for example, perfume is pleasant to smell, unpleasant to taste; (4) different circumstances: for example, honey tastes sweet to the healthy, bitter to the sick; (5) different positions, distances, and places: for example, the same tower will appear round from far off, square from nearby; (6) different mixtures: for example, smells are pungent in the warm and humid air of a bath-house, faint in the cold air outside; (7) different quantities and constitutions: for example, a single grain of sand feels rough to the touch, but as part of a heap grains of sand feel smooth; (8) relativity: the mode, not exemplified, can be seen as a “super-mode” encompassing all the others;

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(9) different frequencies of experience: for example, the sun is not striking because we see it daily, while a comet appears impressive because it is observed only very rarely; (10) different ways of life, customs, laws, mythical beliefs, and philosophical views: for example, some people believe that the soul is immortal, some believe that it is mortal. The modes are presented in a slightly different way, number, and order in other reports by Philo of Alexandria (On Drunkenness 169–202), Aristocles of Messene (Praep. Evang. 14.18.11), and Diogenes Laertius (DL IX 78–88).

7  AENESIDEMUS’S MODES AGAINST CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS Aenesidemus argued extensively against dogmatic theories of causation and introduced eight “causal modes” specifically tailored to expose the weakness and inconclusiveness of any possible causal explanation (αἰτιολογία) devised by the dogmatists (Barnes 1983; Hankinson 1999). According to Sextus’s presentation of these modes (PH I 180–185), a causal explanation can be rejected on the grounds that (1) it is not itself evident and is not corroborated by agreed-upon evidence; (2) it is arbitrarily selected from a number of possible explanations available; (3) it is too simple to account for the order and complexity of the explanandum; (4) it extends without warranty to the non-evident what has been observed as evident; (5) it is based on “hypotheses,” that is principles or assumptions, which are not universally agreed upon; (6) it fails to take into due account opposite hypotheses; (7) it is incompatible with the hypotheses of its own proponents; (8) it is no less puzzling than the explanandum.

8  AENESIDEMUS AS A SEXTAN-STYLE SKEPTIC Apart from the distinctive views and contributions which can be attributed directly to Aenesidemus in the four areas mentioned above, traditionally interpreters have tended to presuppose that we should credit Aenesidemus with essentially the same form of skepticism as that presented in detail in Sextus Empiricus’s extant corpus. From the limited and second-hand evidence available in our sources, we know that Aenesidemus put forward a battery of arguments against all the main theories of dogmatic schools, systematically, along the lines of the standard Hellenistic division of philosophical discourse into physics, logic, and ethics, just as Sextus would later do (although in a different order). According to Photius (212.170b3–36), for example, in books 2 to 8 of his Arguments of the Pyrrhonists, Aenesidemus attacked dogmatic

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theories concerning first principles, passions, change, generation and corruption, thought, sensation and their properties (i.e., presumably, truth and falsehood), signs, nature, the world, gods, causal explanations (see above), what is good and bad, what is choiceworthy and to be avoided, virtue, happiness, and the goal of life. The assimilation of Aenesidemus’s skepticism with Sextus’s would also seem to be justified by those testimonies according to which Aenesidemus “determined absolutely nothing, not even this very claim, that nothing is determined” (Bibl. 212.170a11–12). Moreover, it seems that Aenesidemus was aware of the problem of self-refutation which the Pyrrhonian pronouncements risk incurring, a problem later addressed extensively by Sextus, when he explained that the Pyrrhonists utter the apparently assertoric formula “Nothing is determined” simply “because [they] have no other means of blurting out what [they] have in mind” (Bibl. 212.170a12–14). On this standard interpretation, Aenesidemus suspended judgment about everything. Suspension of judgment resulted from the realization that “there is no firm basis of cognition,” presumably as the result of Aenesidemus’s “collection of appearances or thoughts, of any kind,” which are “brought into confrontation with each other and, when compared, are found to present much disparity (ἀνωμαλίαν) and confusion (ταραχήν)” (DL IX 78), clearly a reference to the ten modes. From ἐποχή a happy state of tranquility will follow “like a shadow.” According to Aristocles’s report at Praep. Evang. 14.18.4, Aenesidemus somehow identified this state as “pleasure” (ἡδονή), but this need not be taken as a sign that he espoused a form of philosophical hedonism over and above the pursuit of ἀταραξία itself. That various forms of skepticism and other similarly unorthodox philosophical stances should lead to ἀπραξία (“inaction”), in the form of either vegetable-style paralysis or random, crazy, or self-destructive behavior, was a standard criticism in antiquity (see Vogt 2010). The targets of such criticism devised a variety of strategies to defend the “livability” of their position. Aenesidemus made “appearances” (φαινόμενα) the Pyrrhonists’ “criterion of action”: while suspending judgment on whether things are as they appear to be, they noncommittally “went along with” appearances in their dayby-day life, thus living an outwardly ordinary existence despite their alternative frame of mind (PH I 21–24). It is probable that for Aenesidemus the scope of appearances was broad and included cultural conventions and social norms (DL IX 107–108), just as for Sextus. Addressing criticism leveled at his teacher, Timon had claimed that Pyrrho “did not depart from normal practice” (DL IX 105), in contrast with several ancient anecdotes which depict Pyrrho’s behavior as wildly eccentric, unattractively non-humane, and dangerously erratic. Aenesidemus too offered a “normalizing” picture of Pyrrho, and maintained that “although he practiced philosophy on the principles of suspension of judgment, [Pyrrho] did not act carelessly in the details of daily life” (DL IX 62), because he “determined nothing dogmatically on account of opposite arguments, but followed appearances instead” (DL IX 106). A typical trait of late Hellenistic and late-antique philosophy is that formulating and clarifying one’s philosophical position was part and parcel of offering the correct interpretation and explication of the thought of the founders of the tradition or school to which one declared one’s allegiance. Aenesidemus was no exception, although in his case the interpretation could not be, of course, a matter of textual exegesis.

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No source reports Aenesidemus’s reasons for maintaining that the conflict of appearances, views, and reasons should induce us to apply the skeptical formula “no more” (οὐ μᾶλλον) to everything, and produce a mental state of ἐποχή.10 The idea that the conflict is not decidable (or, at least, has not been decided) because of the “equipollence” (ἰσοσθένεια), that is, the equal persuasive force, of the opposites is pivotal in Sextus’s account (PH I 8–10) and has traditionally been imported into the equation for Aenesidemus, too: (1) x appears F relative to S.

[Material provided by the ten modes.]

(2) x appears F* relative to R.

[Material provided by the ten modes.]

(3) We cannot prefer S and F to R and F*, or vice versa, because of equipollence. (4) We can neither affirm nor deny, neither believe nor disbelieve, that x is F, or that x is F* (i.e., we suspend judgment): x is no more F/F* than it is not.11

9  AENESIDEMUS AS A NEGATIVE OR “APORETIC” SKEPTIC The Sextan-style interpretation of Aenesidemus sketched above is by no means the only one on the market. It would be impossible to present here all of the available interpretations. I will focus on an alternative reconstruction of Aenesidemus’s outlook that has recently gained currency. It rejects the assumption that what we know from Sextus can be safely used to fill the gaps in our picture of Aenesidemus’s original Pyrrhonism. Woodruff (1988) and Bett (2000: 189–222), the two most notable supporters of this approach, have maintained that unprejudiced reassessment of our evidence will reveal that Aenesidemus’s brand of Pyrrhonism differed substantially from Sextus’s. Aenesidemus’s arguments did not aim to induce ἐποχή on the basis of the undecidable equipollence of conflicting appearances and arguments; they were meant to establish, for any object x and predicate F, the negative conclusion that x is not really or “by nature” F, on the basis of an “invariability condition” ultimately equivalent to the one endorsed by Pyrrho, according to some supporters of the metaphysical interpretation (see Section 2 above), and having the same Platonic pedigree: For an object to be a certain definite way “by nature,” it should be and appear that way invariably or without qualifications.12 Hence, something that manifests itself as F only to some people (but not to others), or only in some circumstances (but not in others), or only in certain respects (but not in others), cannot be F “by nature.” In virtue of this principle, and of the widespread conflict and variability catalogued in the ten modes, Aenesidemus concluded that not only should we refrain from making positive dogmatic claims determining how things are, but we should deny that anything really is any particular way: (1) x appears F relative to S.

[Material provided by the ten modes]

(2) x appears F* relative to R.

[Material provided by the ten modes]

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(3) Unless x appears invariably F (F*), x cannot be F (F*) “by nature.” [Invariability condition] (4) x is “by nature” neither F nor F*. On this reading, Aenesidemus’s negative or “aporetic” conclusions about the nature of things had as their counterpart a form of phenomenal relativism: he allowed relativized claims such as “x is F at time t,” “x is F for y,” or “x is F in circumstances C,” which, exactly because relative (or “ambiguous”), do not purport to determine the intrinsic, essential nature of things (Bibl. 212.169b38–170a11). Such claims would have qualified in Aenesidemus’s own terms as assertions about appearances and would have been allowed as objects of non-dogmatic belief and, perhaps, even (a mundane form) of knowledge, and not only as a practical criterion.13 The revisionary interpretation promoted by Woodruff and Bett was prompted by the observation that, in several reports of Pyrrhonian views and arguments which either are directly attributed to Aenesidemus or could have an Aenesideman pedigree (e.g., Sextus’s Against the Ethicists: see Bett 1997), we often find unqualified negative conclusions (e.g., signs do not exist at all, the various goals of life celebrated by dogmatic philosophers do not exist [Bibl. 212.170b12–14], nothing is good or bad by nature [AM XI 71]) and apparent formulations and uses of the invariability condition.14 These occurrences are insufficient, however, to establish conclusively that there must have been a form of Aenesidemean “aporetic” Pyrrhonism essentially distinct from Sextan “ephectic” (i.e., suspensive) Pyrrhonism. In Sextus’s works there are plenty of cases in which, although the context unequivocally shows that inducing ἐποχή on the basis of the equipollence is the goal, Sextus limits himself to providing only evidence and arguments for the negative conclusion that something is not the case or does not exist. This is typically explained by the fact that the equipollent positive evidence and arguments require no rehearsing, since they represent the default commonsense or philosophical position. That sources like Photius could have misinterpreted and misrepresented these typical Pyrrhonian strategies is not implausible; after all, Photius himself also attributes to Aenesidemus views to the effect that truths, causes, affections, motion, generation, destruction, nature, the world, gods, good, and bad are beyond our grasp or impossible to know. If taken as the ultimate conclusions of Aenesidemus’s arguments, these views would clearly be different from, and possibly inconsistent with, the negative conclusions of “aporetic” Pyrrhonism (although still unacceptable from the point of view of Sextan Pyrrhonism) and would be surprisingly at odds with Aenesidemus’s criticism of the Academics’ inapprehensibility conclusion.15 As for the invariability condition, we can conjecture that Aenesidemus used it only dialectically, to establish a negative antidogmatic conclusion starting from a dogmatic principle to which the Pyrrhonists themselves had no commitment, following, again, an argumentative trope pervasive in later Pyrrhonism (Thorsrud 2009: 102–122; Hankinson 2010).16 If not imposed by our evidence, is the revisionary reading of Aenesidemus at least consistent with it? Something especially problematic to account for on this reading is Aenesidemus’s vocal attitude toward contemporary Academics: how could he criticize Plato’s heirs for making negative and positive claims, and then

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adopt a position which, on the basis of positive adherence to a dogmatic principle with a clear Platonic pedigree, committed him to countless negative conclusions? One could also object that stressing Aenesidemus’s relativistic tendencies is difficult to reconcile with the therapeutic vocation of Pyrrhonism as a route to ἀταραξία, explicitly attested for Pyrrho and Sextus. If Pyrrhonian arguments conclude that nothing is good or bad in its own nature, while admitting that things can be correctly judged to be good or bad in relation to certain individuals, at certain times, and in certain circumstances, then the disturbing psychological effects of the dogmatic belief that certain things are good or bad “by nature” will be replaced by the no less disturbing effects of the Pyrrhonian belief that certain things are good or bad for me, at this time, and in my present circumstances. At the same time, however, a different objection can be leveled against Sextus’s own adoption of suspension of judgment as a route to ἀταραξία: the awareness of the possibility that there are truths about what is good and bad, which can in principle be known but which we have failed to grasp so far, could be thought to engender a psychological state of constant anxiety and fear rather than ἀταραξία (see Striker 1990).

10 CONCLUSION Any satisfactory interpretation of Aenesidemus must take into account the individual and cumulative force of arguments focusing on the terminology and logic of specific passages, on the nature and reliability of the relevant sources, on issues of intrinsic philosophical consistency, and on how to account for the dialectical relationship between Aenesidemus and his philosophical sources and targets. Hopefully, the recent publication of the first commented edition of Aenesidemus’s testimonia (Polito 2014) will give fresh impetus to the re-examination of such arguments and their relative weight. However, no satisfactory reconstruction of Aenesidemus’s thought can sidestep the additional question whether and how it can make sense of its pivotal position within the Pyrrhonian tradition as a whole. After all, Aenesidemus adopted Pyrrho as the noble father of his philosophy and was seen by later Pyrrhonists like Sextus as a bona fide representative of the “Pyrrhonian way.” As I have explained, the question is complicated, however, by the fact that Pyrrho’s outlook is itself subject to deep scholarly controversy, and thus our equation contains two variables. While Pyrrho is never attacked as a skeptic in pre-Aenesidemean sources, this argument from silence appears less urgent than the objection that, on the metaphysical interpretation, Pyrrho would seem to have little in common with what is supposed to be his tradition as represented to us by Sextus. For those who assume that Aenesidemus was himself a Sextan-style skeptic, the challenge would then be to explain why he appropriated the obscure metaphysician Pyrrho in the first place. Coordinating the metaphysical Pyrrho with the “aporetic” Aenesidemus would appear to offer an easy way out of the impasse: their philosophical core is essentially identical, despite the fact that the consequence of the “invariability condition” is cashed out slightly differently, in the former as a claim of indeterminacy of reality, in the latter as a series of definite denials concerning the nature of things. But while

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this exegetical move would make Aenesidemus’s adoption of Pyrrho as a figurehead easy to explain, the transition from Aenesidemus to Sextus would turn out to look problematic. According to Bett (2000), it originated from Sextus’s decision to drop Aenesidemus’s invariability condition. It is clear why a Sextan-style Pyrrhonist should have rejected as intolerably dogmatic that condition and its consequences: it is harder to imagine how he could still have thought to belong to the same school as someone who had made that condition the foundation of his philosophy. One would expect that the “aporetic” Aenesidemus should have deserved a place in the list of philosophers whom Sextus discards as bona fide skeptics (this consideration applies, of course, to the metaphysical Pyrrho as well). Was Sextus hypocritical, saving Aenesidemus (and Pyrrho) from well-deserved bashing? The aporetic reading also requires us to postulate that Aenesidemus understood and used most of the key Pyrrhonian concepts and terminology differently from Sextus. Έποχή cannot, on that reading, be a “standstill of the intellect, owing to which we neither deny nor affirm anything” (PH I 10, emphasis added). Consequently, all the skeptical slogans must carry different meanings than in Sextus (Bett 2000: 198–199). As we have seen, the concept of equipollence would have been extraneous to Aenesidemus’s strategy (just as to Pyrrho’s on the metaphysical reading), but the suggestion that this key concept might have been such a late addition is perplexing and possibly contradicted by the Anonymous commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus (61.26–30), whose dating is uncertain, but perhaps not much later than Aenesidemus. Moreover, as Polito (2014) suggests, the reference to the “equal persuasiveness” of the opposed positions at DL IX 79 might be part of the report of Aenesidemus’s account of the Pyrrhonian logos which begins at DL IX 78. I have also explained how the ten modes would themselves have had different functions and conclusions in Aenesidemus and Sextus according to the revisionary interpretation of the former. It has been suggested that the “aporetic” reading of Aenesidemus dovetails neatly with the moderate or “urbane” reading (see Burnyeat and Frede 1997) of the scope of Sextus’s skepticism (Hankinson 2010: 110), but this too is only partially correct. For the two agree on the target of the skeptical arguments, that is, dogmatic declarations about the non-evident nature of things, but not on the attitude adopted toward them: the “aporetic” Aenesidemus resolutely “refutes” the claim that x is F by nature, while the “urbane” Sextus suspends judgment on the very same claim. From this point of view, the label σκεπτικός (literally, “inquirer”), and Sextus’s emphasis on the fact that Pyrrhonism is an open-ended inquiry after the truth, which has not been shown to be inexistent or ungraspable by Pyrrhonian argument (see, e.g., PH I 1–4), would have also been difficult to retroject onto Aenesidemus. That such radical changes may have occurred at some point after Aenesidemus, in the later Pyrrhonian tradition preceding Sextus, despite our lack of any ancient record of this doctrinal earthquake, is not impossible but appears at first sight implausible. Someone might object that this impression is the result of our weighing plausibility anachronistically, on the basis of our own standards and expectations. The ancients could be much more flexible than we tend to be in their way of appropriating and interpreting philosophical antecedents, emphasizing continuity,

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and passing over differences within those traditions they constructed, whether for themselves or others. The shared core insight that happiness, as tranquility, will come from abandoning any positive belief (and not—as many other philosophers had suggested—from knowledge of reality) might be just enough to explain why Aenesidemus looked back at Pyrrho, and Sextus was comfortable in calling himself a “Pyrrhonist,” even if we decided that Sextus’s route to the abandonment of belief was very different from that traveled by Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, or both. But before we decide to stretch ourselves in such a way, and to reach for the very boundaries of plausible exegesis, we will need extremely compelling reasons to accept that this is the best way of making sense of the extant evidence on Aenesidemus (and Pyrrho) in its own right. It is questionable whether revisionary interpretations have succeeded in providing such reasons.

NOTES 1. On Pyrrho and Timon, see Casey Perin’s chapter in this book. 2. On the skeptical phase of the Academy, see the chapters in this book on Arcesilaus, Carneades, Philo, and Cicero. 3. On Sextus Empiricus, see chapter 10 of this book. 4. For discussion of these two interpretations, see chapter 2 of this book. 5. For the influence of the Democritean tradition on Pyrrho’s adoption of ἀταραξία as a desirable goal, see Warren (2002). 6. For very useful discussion of the nature and reliability of all these sources, see Polito (2014). 7. See Harald Thorsrud’s discussion of this topic in chapter 4. 8. On the question whether this and other pronouncements by Aenesidemus show awareness of the dangers of self-refutation, see below and Castagnoli (2010: 329–352). 9. The term ἐποχή, which probably had never been used by Pyrrho, was central in Academic skepticism. 10. For the ancient philosophical history of the formula οὐ μᾶλλον, see De Lacy (1958). 11. For a different, unorthodox interpretation of the logic of Sextus’s use of the Aenesidemean tropes, see Morison (2011). 12. This principle could also be connected to Aenesidemus’s “Heraclitean” definition of the true as that which appears to all in common at AM VIII 8. 13. Some narrower kind of “phenomenalism” restricted to perception has been associated by some (e.g., Polito 2007) with a possible influence of medical empiricism upon the development of Aenesidemus’s skepticism: the ancient reconstruction of the whole succession of Pyrrhonists conjoining Timon to Sextus’s pupil, Saturninus, however fanciful, is interesting in that it includes several Empiricist doctors and makes the Empiricist Heraclides of Tarentum Aenesidemus’s teacher. On medical Empiricism, see Allen (1993) and chapter 8 in this book.

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14. E.g. AM VIII 8: “Aenesidemus says that . . . the things that appear in common to everyone are true, while the ones not like this are false”; XI 69–71: “If there is anything good by nature, this is good in relation to all men, and if there is anything evil by nature, that is evil in relation to all.” 15. Some interpreters (e.g., Stough 1969; Hankinson 1995: 120–128; and Polito 2004) have suggested that from phenomenal variability Aenesidemus did draw the conclusion that the underlying nature of things is beyond our grasp. 16. For a different interpretation, which attributes to Aenesidemus some qualified commitment to a version of the condition, but relativized to ordinary experience, see Polito (2004: 40–101).

REFERENCES Allen, James. 1993. “Pyrrhonism and Medical Empiricism.” In W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 37.1, 646–690. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Annas, Julia and Jonathan Barnes. 1985. The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barnes, Jonathan. 1983. “Ancient Skepticism and Causation.” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 149–203. Berkeley: University of California Press. Barnes, Jonathan. 1992. “Diogenes Laertius IX 61–116: The Philosophy of Pyrrhonism.” In W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II, 36.6, 4241–4301. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Bett, Richard. 1997. Sextus Empiricus: Against the Ethicists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bett, Richard. 2000. Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bett, Richard (ed.). 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burnyeat, Myles and Michael Frede (eds.) 1997. The Original Sceptics. Indianapolis: Hackett. Castagnoli, Luca. 2010. Ancient Self-Refutation: The Logic and History of the Self-Refutation Argument from Democritus to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castagnoli, Luca. 2013. “Early Pyrrhonism: Pyrrho to Aenesidemus.” In F. Sheffield and J. Warren (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, 496–510. London and New York: Routledge. Chiesara, Maria Lorenza. 2001. Aristocles of Messene. Testimonia and Fragments. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Decleva Caizzi, Fernanda. 1981. Pirrone: Testimonianze. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Decleva Caizzi, Fernanda. 1992. “Aenesidemus and the Academy,” Classical Quarterly 42: 176–189. De Lacy, Phillip. 1958. “οὐ μᾶλλον and the Antecedents of Ancient Scepticism,” Phronesis 3: 59–71. Hankinson, Robert. 1995. The Sceptics. London and New York: Routledge. Hankinson, Robert. 1999. Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Hankinson, Robert. 2010. “Aenesidemus and the Rebirth of Pyrrhonism.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 105–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Long, Anthony and David Sedley. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1995. “Aenesidemus and the Academics.” In L. Ayres (ed.), The Passionate Intellect: Essays on the Transformation of Classical Tradition, 235–248. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers. Morison, Benjamin. 2011. “The Logical Structure of the Sceptic’s Opposition,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 40: 265–295. Pérez-Jean, Brigitte. 2005. Dogmatisme et scepticisme: L’héraclitisme d’Énésidème. Lille: Septentrion. Polito, Roberto. 2004. The Sceptical Road: Aenesidemus’ Appropriation of Heraclitus. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Polito, Roberto. 2007. “Was Skepticism a Philosophy? Reception, Self-Definition, Internal Conflicts,” Classical Philology 102: 333–362. Polito, Roberto. 2014. Aenesidemus of Cnossus: Testimonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schofield, Malcolm. 2007. “Aenesidemus: Pyrrhonist and Heraclitean.” In A. M. Ioppolo and D. Sedley (eds.), Pyrrhonists, Patricians and Platonizers: Hellenistic Philosophy in the Period 155–86 BC, 271–338. Naples: Bibliopolis. Spinelli, Emidio. 2000. “Sextus Empiricus, the Neighbouring Philosophies and the Sceptical Tradition.” In J. Sihvola (eds.), Ancient Scepticism and the Sceptical Tradition (Acta Philosophica Fennica 66), 35–61. Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland. Stopper, Malachi Rudolph. 1983. “Schizzi Pirroniani,” Phronesis 28: 265–297. Striker, Gisela. 1983. “The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus.” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 95–115. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Striker, Gisela. 1990. “Ataraxia: Happiness as Tranquillity,” The Monist 73: 97–110. Thorsrud, Harald. 2009. Ancient Scepticism. Durham: Acumen. Vogt, Katja Maria. 2010. “Scepticism and Action.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 165–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warren, James. 2002. Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: An Archaeology of Ataraxia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woodruff, Paul. 1988. “Aporetic Pyrrhonism,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6: 139–168.

CHAPTER SIX

Philo of Larissa HAROLD TARRANT

1  LIFE AND EVIDENCE Philo of Larissa was an adherent of the so-called New Academy, that is, one of those who saw themselves as philosophizing in the tradition of Arcesilaus as well as of Plato. Born between 159 and 153 BCE,1 he had apparently developed an interest in current Academic philosophy while still in his native town and set off to study at the Academy in Athens at the age of about twenty-four. His mentor for fourteen years was Clitomachus, apparently the strictest of the followers of Carneades, whose arguments against the criterion of knowledge were the most comprehensive and wide-ranging. While there is no evidence that the terms “skeptic” and “dogmatic,” so familiar from Sextus Empiricus, were yet in regular philosophical use, it is clearly appropriate for us to regard the Academy under which Philo had studied, and his teacher Clitomachus, as “skeptical” in important ways—as deserving of that description as any school up until that time. Philo became the scholarch (Head) himself on the death of Clitomachus in 110/109 BCE, and the evidence (Numenius fr. 29 = T. XXIII) suggests that there was at first little change in the official activities or stance of the school. It is therefore generally agreed among his interpreters that in the first instance Philo continued to philosophize in a manner compatible with his Carneadean heritage as normally interpreted. Ultimately, however, after the dispersal of the school in 88 BCE following the second Mithridatic War, Philo left for Rome where he already had admirers, and may have lived there for four to five years before his death. At any rate, soon after his arrival there, he wrote his two so-called Roman Books, which rapidly provoked considerable controversy among others who had studied with his school.2 That controversy is an important part of the background of Cicero’s Academica and, through Cicero, of Augustine’s work Against the Academics. It is important to realize that virtually the whole of the evidence for Philo is colored by this controversy, and that there are almost no neutral reports. Cicero himself was writing a dialogue, and in extant parts of it he may represent himself as speaking either for Philo or for the traditional Academic position attributed to Carneades; the anti-skeptical position is defended by his character Lucullus in the first version of the work (Academica Priora or Lucullus) and by Varro in a revised

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version (Academica Posteriora).3 The controversy was led by Antiochus of Ascalon, a former pupil of Philo who had begun to attract pupils of his own while the Academy still functioned at Athens, and who then claimed to teach the doctrines of the Old Academy, and particularly of Xenocrates and Polemo, the third and fourth scholarchs, respectively.4

2  ACADEMIC FREEDOM The Old Academy had been quite open about offering positive teaching and embracing doctrine, though given the variety of doctrine that one might claim to trace in Plato, it is not surprising that the early Academy seems to have been very flexible in its beliefs. Indeed, Cicero (Acad. II 7–9), in offering his own account of continuing Academic ideology, does not give a picture of a system of tenets, but of the acknowledgment that much is unclear and that human beings are consequently fallible, leading to the habit of giving every point of view a hearing and arguing both for and against positions. Philosophy’s ultimate goal will still be the truth or the closest possible approximation to it (Acad. II 7), but one that gives them the freedom to judge what is “probable” without fear that their judgments will be seen as involving disloyalty to their teacher and their school (Acad. II 8). While this position is not openly attributed to Philo, Cicero had been strongly influenced by his studies with Philo after he had come to Rome (Brutus 306 = T. II), and it would be surprising if the picture had differed greatly from that which Philo had painted when in Rome.5 It is vital to note two things in this account. First, the Academic is given the freedom to make judgments that appear to conflict with his loyalties to his school or to his personal teacher. Much is made by Philo’s enemies of his change(s) of stance, and disloyalty to what they saw as the Academic tradition (Acad. II 11–12 = T. XXIX, Acad. II 18 = XXVII). It is here clear that his own picture of the Academic tradition imposes no obligation of philosophical loyalty, disloyalty involving anything that approached a school doctrine. No doubt it would not excuse him if he were guilty of historical disloyalty involving the willful misrepresentation of earlier Academic positions, but it did excuse deviations from those positions. The Academy’s identity was determined by its culture of philosophic investigation, not by anything to be believed or provisionally accepted. Secondly, the Academic is expected to search without obstinacy for what can be maintained with most consistency (constantissime, Acad. II 9). It looks almost as if there is a kind of criterion for tentative assent being proposed here, whether it concerns the agreement of the claims with the facts, agreement among the claims themselves, or the wider agreement of trustworthy human beings. We know that the term “probable” here refers to the Greek πιθανόν that Carneades had employed as his basis for choice of action, that is, rather to what is capable of being believed or approved rather than to anything whose probability could be calculated objectively. A link between the Carneadean criterion and consistency may be intended, but if so the focus has shifted from trying to find single “presentations” (φαντασίαι) that have such startling clarity that they must be totally reliable, and toward having

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presentations that cohere with all other pertinent presentations that may occur either to the individual or indeed to any human being who examines the relevant considerations objectively. Has the single cognitive act lost its overriding importance in epistemology at this time? Can systems of knowledge be built on aggregations of cognitive experiences that are legitimately convincing when taken together, but not wholly convincing when taken singly?

3  PHILO’S FINAL EPISTEMOLOGY At this point, we should consider the position that is attributed to Philo regarding the Stoic criterion of truth, the “cognitive presentation” (καταληπτικὴ φαντασία). Sextus Empiricus (PH I 235 = T XXVIII) tells us that Philo’s adherents “say that things are non-graspable as regards the Stoic criterion, but graspable as regards the nature of things themselves.” It seems that the established New Academic theme that things were non-graspable (ἀκαταληψία) was being blamed not upon nature itself but upon a Stoic requirement that was so rigorous that no cognitive act could conform with it. Human beings simply do not have cognitive presentations such that there could not be another that was identical in all respects except insofar as it did not correctly present what had given rise to it. Since Sextus does not mention human beings here, it seems that Philo’s intention was to blame the lack of such presentations on the Stoics, who devised such a requirement, rather than on serious cognitive incapacity on the part of human beings in general.6 As if to confirm this, Sextus goes on to accuse Antiochus of introducing Stoic doctrine into the Academy, and Cicero presents the whole epistemological debate between Philo and Antiochus as being centered on the need for a criterion of truth such as the Stoics had conceived it, tracing accordingly the New Academic endeavor to Arcesilaus’s genuine problems with Zeno’s concept of a cognitive presentation (Acad. I 44). Sextus does not seek to limit his report to Philo’s final years in Rome, and taken together with what he had just said about the multiplicity of Academic positions, with Philo allegedly introducing a Fourth Academy and Antiochus a Fifth (PH I 220 = T V), it seems clear that he thought this position on the Stoic criterion had been shared by Philo’s Academic colleague Charmadas, who died three years before Philo came to Rome. Brittain agrees that this is what Sextus thought but claims that “he must have been mistaken” (2001: 54), since it does not agree with Brittain’s view of three clearly delineated phases of Philo’s thought. Yet Charmadas’s name here needs some explanation, for he is being treated as if he were virtually a coscholarch; perhaps it indicates that Philo had himself controversially made appeal to Charmadas, who as a former pupil of Carneades might have commanded greater authority regarding Academic traditions. In that case, it seems strange that Cicero did not give any hint that Charmadas had anticipated Philo’s position, except in one rather important respect. There have been various explanations of how the Roman Books had been doctrinally innovative. All of them face the difficulties that neither version of Cicero’s Academica has survived complete, the position of Philo is not explained in the extant parts, and Cicero himself seems to have found it unconvincing.

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Tarrant (1981 and 1985) was perhaps over-reliant on Numenius’s evidence (fr. 28 = T XXIII), where it was claimed that Philo was swayed “by the agreement and perspicuity of our experiences,” suspecting that Philo found little reason to doubt the evidence of the senses (and ultimately of empirically derived concepts), even if attempts to prove what is perspicuous were doomed to fail.7 Striker (1997: 274) appears uncertain that Philo ever specified how cognition might be possible without the existence of a cognitive presentation. She considers the possibility that Philo had claimed Carneades’s maximally probable presentations, which had been thoroughly tested, were enough to justify the inference to a proposition’s truth; but this is rejected in favor of the view that Philo distinguished, in his own mind at least, between (i) the belief that one has a reliable sensory indication that p (which he could allow) and (ii) the inference from that presentation that p is true (which he would have resisted). This would have given him “what could be called a criterion of truth,” but not an infallible one (1997: 274–275). Agreement between presentations would surely have been pertinent to the rejected possibility, while perspicuity would have been pertinent to the one chosen. Brittain (2001: 18–19) thinks that Philo simply dropped the Stoic requirement that a presentation should be such that it had to be true of its object in the relevant way. It seems to me that this option makes disappointingly little attempt to make Philo sound convincing. It seeks to understand Philo very much in terms of the traditional debate between Academics and Stoics, and seems not to consider something fundamental: that the traditional debate, which privileged the discussion of Stoic concepts in particular, had worked itself out (cf. Augustine, C. Acad. III 41 = T XXXI), and stood like an obstacle in the way of those who thought that philosophy had a salutary role to play in the shaping of human life—too important to be neglected because epistemological issues remained unsolved. In a briefer discussion, albeit informed by decades of working on these texts, Lévy (2010: 88) affirms that Philo’s originality was not in affirming an alternative to the Stoic criterion, but “in affirming that epochê, in a restricted version, could be put in the perspective of a knowledge rooted in the very nature of things.” While the claim seems to embody contradictions (affirmation and ἐποχή, ἐποχή and firmly grounded knowledge), it has the merit of conveying a little of the complexity of Philo’s project. Titles embody something of the different conceptions of what Philo’s contribution was like. In Lévy’s the key word seems to be “decline,” Brittain’s still calls Philo an “Academic skeptic,” Striker’s a “dogmatist fighting dogmatists,” while Tarrant (1985) preferred to ask whether he was a “skeptic” or a “Platonist.” If I had answered this directly I would perhaps have said “both, in some sense,” but “neither” might have been equally appropriate.

4. THE ONE-ACADEMY THESIS Stating an epistemological position was almost certainly not the principal purpose of the Roman Books. It was in fact not normal for Academic scholarchs to record their epistemological views in writing.8 Cicero announces what seems to have been the main function of these two books at the commencement of his Academica

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(I 13 = T XXX), where he says that they maintained the same thesis as Cicero had heard from him orally, that there was only one Academy, attacking those who believed in two separate schools, an Old and a New Academy. This may reflect the actual title of the books, given that a similar title was also employed by Plutarch,9 who, of the various Platonists of the Roman Imperial period, was certainly one of the most accommodating toward Arcesilaus and the so-called New Academic heritage. The books must have been aimed at Antiochus, who had already apparently acquired followers of his own (Acad. II 69–70),10 and whose raison d’être appears to have been the promotion of the “Old Academy” as it had functioned until the death of Polemo. Any scholarch of the school that Plato founded must have been offended at the suggestion that its allegiance to Plato had ceased with Arcesilaus, but Antiochus seems to have assumed, like Gerson (2013: 13–14), that anti-skepticism was a defining characteristic of Platonism proper. Antiochus’s offense at the content of the Roman Books when he read them in Alexandria in 87/6 BCE (Acad. II 11–12 = T XXIX) all but guarantees that they were written in direct opposition to him. In the course of arguing against the idea of a gulf between Old and New Academies, Philo made claims that were unfamiliar to all Academics present to the extent that they might not have believed these to be Philo’s books if it could not be confirmed by the presence of some who had heard him in Rome. The passage accuses Philo of telling “lies” (II 12: mentitur), a word usually used of historical rather than philosophical claims, and the topic obviously required an account of why Plato and the Academy had once seemed so much more willing to embrace their preferred theses than Arcesilaus and his successors. Somehow the gulf between Plato and the recent Academy had to be bridged, and there needed to be a single approach to epistemology that could plausibly be credited to both. In this way Philo was forced to reveal his current position on the criterion of truth, a position that he had not revealed before, even though he might long have been leaning in this direction. It is here that I must resist Brittain’s distinction between Philo’s Metrodoran phase and his Roman Book position; I think it more plausible that Philo moved toward his final position over a period of many years, which could better explain why Antiochus’s “Old Academic” teaching had initially been tolerated. It is quite possible that Philo’s One-Academy thesis was not a simple construction, especially given that it was expounded in a two-book work. It seems likely that the Academics had long had some kind of story to tell about Socrates and Plato being authorities for skepticism, and chapter 10 of the anonymous Prolegomena to Plato’s Philosophy lists five arguments designed to show that Plato was a “suspensionist” (ἐφεκτικός, i.e., a champion of suspension of judgment), which appealed to the Theaetetus and several other dialogues. Some such arguments were discussed earlier, in Cicero and others.11 In Cicero (Acad. I 44–45, cf. II 74) Socrates is supposed to have been led by the obscurity of certain matters to his profession of ignorance (at least in the course of any given investigation),12 in which only the knowledge of his own ignorance was made an exception. What Cicero’s character Varro says about Socrates at Acad. I 15–16 shows that even a spokesman for Antiochus’s side would have no great quarrel with this picture of Socrates, and that it could

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never be described as a “lie.” Correspondingly, Plato’s dialogues are supposed to have affirmed nothing, argued for both sides of many questions, inquired on all subjects, and resisted certainty (Acad. I 46). Such claims might easily have been used to support a more orthodox Academic skepticism that privileged argument on both sides of the question and the suspension of judgment, but it cannot have been new since it has Plato himself go beyond the requirements of the “Fourth Academy” position as stated by Sextus. This position accepts that things are not naturally shrouded in obscurity after all (as Socrates had allegedly thought), and that they would in fact be graspable as long as one does not make cognition depend on the Stoic cognitive presentation.13 In order to align Plato (and preferably Plato’s Socrates, too) with Academic thought and practice as Philo was now depicting it, there were really only two requirements: 1. Neither Plato nor Socrates could be depicted as accepting the Stoic cognitive presentation, though they did not need to be disowning every explanation of a cognitive grasp (κατάληψις); 2. Both should be seen as resorting on occasions to such Academic practices as suspension of judgment and argument on both sides of the question. Both of these requirements are easily met, given the variety of Platonic dialogues and the variety of the representation of Socrates therein. No great effort had to be made to present either Plato or Socrates as a genuine skeptic, for genuine skepticism was now no longer being attributed to the Academy (cf. Striker 1997: 276). If Philo was lying, it was not about the school’s founder but about his successors. Here two possibilities present themselves: either he gave a false account of the Old Academy after Plato, presumably including Xenocrates and Polemo whom Antiochus had appeared to favor, or he misrepresented the New Academy from Arcesilaus. The former alternative would have the advantage of tackling Antiochus’s new authorities for the true Academic discipline. Cicero’s Varro, speaking for Antiochus at Acad. I 17, claims that not only Aristotle but also Xenocrates had complete doctrinal systems, following Plato in the essentials, and abandoned the Socratic style of inquiry with its widespread doubts and resistance to final conclusions; later he claims that Polemo, Crates, and Crantor had defended diligently the tradition that they inherited (Acad. I 34). The overall picture is one of increasing certainty, to which Zeno would apply the final touches with his theory of a cognitive presentation, laying the ground for certain knowledge (Acad. I 41–42). Yet there is no suggestion in what survives that Philo had tried to argue over any of these Old Academics, and “Cicero” at I 46 simply judges the proper “Old Academic” position from what Plato seemed to have believed. But how could Philo have “lied” about the New Academy? There was nothing novel in the view that Arcesilaus devised his armory for an ad hominem attack against the Stoics, as that had been Metrodorus’s view; likewise Metrodoran was the view that the sage might on occasion “opine” owing to the lack of a secure cognitive act such as the Stoics demanded (Acad. II 78 = T XXV, cf. II 59, 148). Furthermore, Brittain (2001: 104–108) would assign the acceptance of “perspicuous” presentations

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at Acad. II 34 to the Philonian/Metrodoran position, that is, the one preceding the Roman Book position, so that the suggestion that Academics accepted “perspicuity” could not have been the Roman Book lie. Could he have attributed to the New Academy the acceptance of presentations that are true and “caused by the object in the relevant way,” dismissing only the clause that requires them to be true in such a way that a similar false one could not exist? This is the Roman position that Brittain would attribute to Philo (2001: 18–19, 129–168), but, though Philo himself may well have been thinking along such lines, it is most unlikely that he would have sought to attribute it to Academics from Arcesilaus to Clitomachus as anything like their official view (i) because they did not espouse official views and (ii) because Cicero explicitly regards this position as Peripatetic (Acad. II 112),14 suggesting perhaps that the Old Academy too might not have resisted it (Acad. II 113), but giving not the slightest hint that it had been attributed to any New Academic—or even openly adopted as his own by Philo. Philo’s “lies” resided neither in the attribution of New Academic doctrine to Plato and the Old Academy, nor in the attribution of Platonic, Old Academic, or even Peripatetic doctrine to the New. Rather, it lay in a theory of two strands always (or almost always) coexisting. That does not require a theory of esoteric dogmatism, as usually believed.15 The evidence sometimes understood as pointing to claims of esoteric dogmatism is as follows: 1. Augustine (C. Acad. III 43 = Cic. Acad. fr. 21) reports that according to Cicero “the Academics had been in the habit of concealing their view, and of only revealing it to those who had lived with them until old age”; 2. Sextus (PH I 224) mentions that some thought Arcesilaus, when he used to test aporetically whether his colleagues were well suited to the reception of Platonic doctrine, appeared to remain aporetic himself, but was still putting the teaching of Plato into the hands of the gifted among his colleagues; 3. Cicero’s Lucullus (Acad. II 60), presumably responding to some claim already made before the beginning of book II concerning the Academics’ practice of concealing the truth that they discover, asks “What are those mysteries?” One looks in vain for any word for teaching, or for anything indicating doctrine in texts 1 and 3. Text 1 seems to refer to no more than one’s preferred option on a given issue, but the long qualifying period agrees well with the esoteric doctrine of [Plato] Epistle VII 342c5–d2 (cf. II 314a5–7);16 text 2 suggests no commitment on Arcesilaus’s part to Platonic doctrines or writings, but rather an openness to communicating them so that suitable persons were entrusted with Plato’s written views17; text 3 perhaps seems sarcastic, and uses “mysteries” in part because of the claim that any fruits of Academic searches were not to be revealed, but it remains possible that Philo had somewhere used this term, whose application to Platonic studies is attested in early imperial Platonism (Theon of Smyrna, Expositio rerum mathematicarum ad legendum Platonem utilium XIV 18). However, mysteries typically involve not only a revelation for the initiate, but also some kind of ritual

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in the course of which that private revelation takes place. One was guided through the mysteries, not taught them. For the Platonist the model would be the revelation that is presented by Socrates at Theaetetus 155d–157c, where Socrates remains uncommitted and regards himself as a partner in Theaetetus’s search for a hidden truth—for ideas that are presented as “mysteries” such that they must be kept from the uninitiated and uncultured materialists. In both text 2 and text 3, the Academic teacher is being assimilated to “Socrates” in the Theaetetus.18 These texts suggest the existence of a view of the Academy that allowed individuals to hold more beliefs and to discover more truths than could be made public, but they still did not prescribe what beliefs might be held, provisionally or otherwise. Text 2 in particular suggests that Plato continued to be taught, not as scripture or dogma, but in the sense that he is taught today. Indeed, we find Charmadas teaching the Gorgias in the Academy close to the time when Philo took over as scholarch.19 We do not find Philo himself teaching Platonic writings, and those who had most to do with Plato’s writings under the Old Academy included Philip of Opus and Crantor; this last a figure of comparable stature with Polemo in the Old Academy just as Charmadas had comparable stature with Philo in the New. Plato was kept alive, but there may have been a separation of roles, so that the scholarch would not be constrained by the need to defend Plato.20 At any rate, the high regard in which Plato was held at that time cannot easily be disputed. It is entirely possible that Philo, in attempting to close the gap between Plato and the Academy’s recent past, had exaggerated the ongoing commitment of the school to its founder and the significance of the kind of Platonic “teaching” that was now being undertaken.

5 ETHICS There is only one substantial testimony about moral philosophy, which concerns the division of the types of discourse that it requires. The fragment is preserved in Stobaeus (Eclogues II 7 = T XXXII), via some intermediary21 who clearly admired Philo greatly and considered this contribution valuable. It pursues an analogy between philosophy and medicine. Like the doctor, philosophy must persuade the student to take the cure and argue against contrary advice, and this comes under the heading “protreptic.” At stage two the therapy will be introduced, involving the removal of false opinions, which have a deleterious effect on our faculties of judgment, and the imparting of healthy opinions. This requires discourse on the topic of things good and bad. A further stage will require discourse on the end or goal, that is, happiness, analogous to health in the case of medicine. This discourse involves discussion of types of life and many moral and political questions that will assist the preservation of one’s psychic health. Since the goal is essentially the privilege of the wise, Philo also demands ethical writings of a more summary kind for those of more modest ability. The obvious presence of a presumption that philosophical progress may be made and the talk of imparting opinions make it difficult to regard this division as the work of anybody who should be called “skeptic.” Rather, it bears out the view that Philo was anxious for philosophy to move on.

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6 RHETORIC The ethical testimony just discussed, insofar as it discusses types of discourse, has a link with rhetorical theory. It is clear from Cicero (Tusc. II 9, 26, = T XXXV– XXXVI) that Philo taught rhetoric as a separate discipline from philosophy and also had special skills in the recitation of poetry. None of this has much bearing on his relation to skepticism.

7 INFLUENCE In Tarrant (1985) my primary concern had been to further weaken the evidence that Antiochus was the force behind the Platonic revival, which followed under the early Roman Empire, by showing that his opponent Philo was producing an epistemological position that granted one considerable latitude and was closer to being something that could be used by subsequent generations of Platonists. The Stoic theory of knowledge and the Stoic cognitive presentation were not something that were taken up and used by those known as Middle Platonists, whereas Philo’s stance was not inimical to constructive philosophical inquiry in the Plato tradition. Dealing with those I thought to have been influenced by Philo, particularly the anonymous Theaetetus-commentator and Plutarch,22 both of whom seem to have held some kind of One-Academy thesis, I perhaps blurred the lines that separated them from Philo, thus giving somewhat too “Platonist” a picture of Fourth Academic activity—especially given uncertainty over when various Platonic themes were reintroduced as Platonist doctrine. Opsomer (1998) has clarified many of the issues involved. Antiochus is still looked upon by some as a key figure in the transmission of Platonic doctrine (see Bonazzi 2012), though there is an increasing feeling that no single re-inventor of Platonism should be sought. The version of Philo described by Brittain (2001) would certainly not have had much influence, either on Platonism or on skepticism, though however we describe Cicero it is clear that Philo, if not his Roman Books, did influence him greatly, and as a result Augustine and the western tradition have become more familiar with the issues surrounding Academic skepticism than they otherwise would have been.23

NOTES 1. According to T. I, i.e., testimony I in Brittain (2001), which is now more convenient to use for the testimony than Mette (1986), Philo was born in the archon-year of Aristaechmus, and accordingly Brittain (2001: 41) and Lévy (2010: 85) offer ca. 159/8 BCE. Dorandi (1999: 34) had given 154/3 BCE. Discrepancies arise from many uncertainties regarding the reconstruction of numbers of years in col. XXXIII of our papyrus source (Philodemus’s Academic Index from his Syntaxis Philosophorum). 2. Glucker (1978) was a seminal work in modern scholarship on this controversy. 3. It is important to note that, since an earlier part of the second version and a later part of the original version are extant, Acad. I conventionally refers to the later version and Acad. II to the earlier version.

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4. Sedley (2012) is an important and wide-ranging collection of articles on Antiochus, but the contributors are by no means agreed on several controversial issues. On Antiochus’s life, see particularly Hatzimichali (2012). 5. We are told by Cicero (ND I 59 = T XXII) that Cotta was advised by Philo to hear Zeno the Epicurean, a notable instance of the Academic policy of giving everybody a hearing. 6. To this extent I may be in disagreement with Sedley (1981: 72), who speaks of “human cognitive incapacity,” though he too sees that “incapacity” in terms of the lack of a Stoic criterion. 7. See Tarrant (1985: 52–53). Note particularly anonymous in Theaetetum, LXX, a work best consulted in Bastianini and Sedley (1995), on Academic attacks on growth, allegedly designed to demonstrate the inability to improve on perspicuity by rational proofs that growth happens. 8. Rather, versions of the lectures of Arcesilaus and Carneades were recorded by others (Philodemus Acad. XX 3–4, XXII 37–XXIII 6); the accusation that Philo’s position in the Roman Books was novel does not seem to have been supported by reference to any earlier epistemological text that he had written, so that I do not find it “probable that Philo wrote at least one work on the Philonian/Metrodoran position” (Brittain 2001: 71). Stobaeus Ecl. 2.7 (= T XXXI) gives his division of ethical discourse, and the verb πεπραγματεύεται suggests that this was laid out schematically, and hence probably in writing, though what we are told does not necessarily reflect its title. Nothing gives the impression that writing came naturally to Philo. 9. Lamprias Catalogue no. 63: On There Being One Academy since the Time of Plato. Nos. 64 and 134 seem also to testify to his Academic interests, and the extant Against Colotes defends Arcesilaus. 10. There is some discussion about when this happened, and how formal Antiochus’s group of followers was; I follow Hatzimichali (2012: 12–16) rather than Polito (2012: 32–34), and feel that Antiochus may well have taken over the role that Charmadas had been playing in 91 BCE. 11. One argument appeals to the repeated use of words like “perhaps” in the dialogues, and is found also in the anonymous Theaetetus-commentator (col. LIV). 12. This important qualification is proposed by Burnyeat (1997: 299). 13. Augustine (C. Acad. III 41 = T XXXI) adds that Metrodorus had previously denied that the Academics had adopted as their own position the theme that knowledge was impossible, but that it had emerged rather from their dispute with the Stoa (cf. Acad. I 44). On Metrodorus, see Lévy (2005). 14. “If I were dealing with a Peripatetic, who stated that this thing can be perceived that has the impression of something true, but doesn’t [append]* that important extra ‘in such a manner that it could not come from something false.’” The verb marked * cannot reliably be ascertained. 15. In Tarrant (1981: 70), I failed to recognize the limited nature of such reports, influenced perhaps by the One-Academy thesis of anon. in Tht. LIV–LV. Brittain (2001: 34) sees no merit in the theories of esoteric Platonism but wrongly attributes what I had said to Tarrant (1985).

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16. It would be perverse to tackle the vexed question of the authorship of this passage here; Cicero seems to be extending this idea of “living with” philosophers to living with their heritage at Acad. II 74: “I seem to have lived with them [Socrates and Plato].” 17. The passage needs careful translation. The aporetic testing referred to, in which suitable persons are given a taste of the doctrines of Plato, is reminiscent of Platonic midwifery in the Theaetetus, particularly 150b–151b for testing, the suspension of judgment by the tester, and the rejection of unsuitable candidates, and 157c–d for testing, continued suspension of judgment, and the offer of a taste of the thoughts of the wise. For a new study of Arcesilaus’s use of midwifery, see Snyder (2014). 18. On the early importance of this dialogue, see Tarrant (2013). 19. Evidence in Cicero, de Oratore I 47 where Crassus says: “Then at Athens I read the Gorgias rather carefully with Charmadas”; the influence of Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus is evident in Charmadas’s arguments against non-philosophical rhetors at De Or. I 84–94, though Charmadas did not of course openly reveal his own views in the course of these arguments (De Or. I 84). For a view of Charmadas as a conservative Carneadean, see Lévy (2010: 84–85). 20. I suspect that Arcesilaus became an exception, and that he had taken over his close friend Crantor’s role, “acquiring Plato’s books” before unexpectedly becoming scholarch, too. 21. Stylistically, the passage that we have resembles other material that follows, at least some of which derives from Eudorus of Alexandria. 22. Plutarch refers to Philo in his Lucullus (42 = T XIV), where he praises Cicero’s Lucullus highly, and his Cicero (3, 4 = T XX, XV), in which the praise of Philo’s character contrasts with the suggestions that Antiochus was swayed rather by ambition than by any genuine perspicuity that he discovered through the senses. 23. For some account of the “afterlife” of the Academy, see Lévy (2010: 89–102).

REFERENCES Bastianini, Guido and David Sedley (eds). 1995. Edition of anonymous In Theaetetum in Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini, iii: Commentari, 227–562. Firenze: Olschki. Bonazzi, Mauro. 2012. “Antiochus and Platonism.” In D. Sedley (ed.), The Philosophy of Antiochus, 307–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brittain, Charles. 2001. Philo of Larissa: The Last of the Academic Sceptics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1997. “Antipater and Self-refutation: Elusive Arguments in Cicero’s Academica.” In B. Inwood and J. Mansfeld (eds.), Assent and Argument: Studies in Cicero’s Academic Books, 277–310. Leiden: Brill. Dorandi, Tiziano. 1999. “Chronology: The Academy.” In K. Algra, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld, and M. Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, 31–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gerson, Lloyd. 2013. From Plato to Platonism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Glucker, John. 1978. Antiochus and the Late Academy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Hatzimichali, Myrto. 2012. “Antiochus’ Biography.” In D. Sedley (ed.), The Philosophy of Antiochus, 9–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lévy, Carlos. 2005. “Les petits Académiciens: Lacyde, Charmadas, Métrodore de Stratonice.” In M. Bonazzi and V. Celluprica (eds.), L’Eredità Platonica: Studi sul Platonismo da Arcesilao a Proclo, 51–77. Naples: Bibliopolis. Lévy, Carlos. 2010. “The Sceptical Academy: Decline and Afterlife.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 81–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mette, Hans-Joachim. 1986. “Philon von Larisa und Antiochos von Askalon,” Lustrum 28: 9–63. Opsomer, Jan. 1998. In Search of the Truth: Academic Tendencies in Middle Platonism. Brussels: Koninklijke Akademie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten. Polito, Roberto. 2012. “Antiochus and the Academy.” In D. Sedley (ed.), The Philosophy of Antiochus, 31–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sedley, David. 1981. “The end of the Academy,” Phronesis 26: 67–75. Sedley, David (ed.). 2012. The Philosophy of Antiochus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snyder, Charles E. 2014. “The Socratic Benevolence of Arcesilaus’ Dialectic,” Ancient Philosopy 34: 341–361. Striker, Gisela. 1997. “Academics Fighting Academics.” In B. Inwood and J. Mansfeld (eds.), Assent and Argument: Studies in Cicero’s Academic Books, 257–276. Leiden: Brill. Tarrant, Harold. 1981. “Agreement and the Self-Evident in Philo of Larissa,” Dionysius 5: 66–97. Tarrant, Harold. 1985. Scepticism or Platonism: A Study of the Fourth Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrant, Harold. 2013. “L’importance du Théétète avant Thrasylle.” In D. el Murr (ed.), La Mesure du savoir: Études sur le Théétète, 243–266. Paris: J. Vrin.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cicero J. P. F. WYNNE

1  CICERO’S SKEPTICISM The Roman orator and politician, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), earned his place in this book with a sequence of skeptical dialogues he wrote late in life (Hortensius, Academica, On ends, Tusculan disputations, On the nature of the gods, On divination, On fate). These dialogues pioneered attractive writing about the whole of philosophy in Latin, and they did so from a skeptical perspective. For Cicero, who had met, and often studied with, most of the leading philosophers of his day, had been won over to the skeptical “new” Academy at about the age of twenty by the visit of Philo of Larissa to Rome, and he was to retain his Academic affiliation throughout his life.1 But he was not, I shall argue, a follower of Philo’s brand of skepticism. When we study Cicero’s skepticism in these writings, we face a complex task of interpretation. For from his dialogue dedicated to Academic philosophy (the Academica), we learn that the recent history of the skeptical Academy had been tangled.2 Usually, then, to characterize Cicero’s own skepticism, we must first offer an interpretation of the historical background he describes, and then try to place him in it.3 But in this book the first stage would duplicate the preceding chapters.4 So I shall simply give my answer to the controversial question of where Cicero suggests that his affiliation lay.5 In the Academica, it is plain that Cicero follows Clitomachus’s interpretation of Carneades, the dominant figure in the later skeptical Academy. Clitomachus was by birth a Carthaginian who moved to Athens to pursue a philosophical career. He became Carneades’s student and successor as the head of the Academy, and was succeeded by Cicero’s teacher, Philo, in turn.6 Like the Academics in general, Clitomachus argued against the Stoic “cognitive” or “grasping impression,” the sort of impression the Stoics claimed could not be false. He argued that for any impression at all, even one which seems to offer a cognitive “grasp” on its content because it seems that it cannot be false, there could be an identical, but false, impression (Acad. II 40, 83). A further Stoic premise was that a wise person would never opine, that is, would never assent to impressions which could be false (Acad. II 66–67). Thus,

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if the Academics were right and there were no such impressions, a Stoic would have to conclude that the wise person would never assent—and that neither should anyone else. Now sometimes Carneades seemed to depart from the Stoic premise, and said that the wise person might assent, but sometimes he seemed to endorse it and conclude that the wise person would never assent. His own thoughts on the matter were therefore open to interpretation. Clitomachus’s interpretation was to take Carneades’s deployment of the Stoic premise to heart, and to conclude that indeed, Stoic or not, one should never assent (Acad. II 59, 67, 78). By contrast, other, “mitigated” skeptics, including Cicero’s teacher Philo, thought Carneades was rightly not in earnest about the sage’s universal suspension of assent. They decided that we may assent to an impression—take it to be true—even though it might be false (Acad. II 78, 112, 148). Clitomachus faced the “inactivity” objection to his skepticism: how could he act if he never took anything to be true? Clitomachus replied that commitment to the truth of any impression does not seem necessary to act. For impressions differ in how plausible or persuasive they seem or, as Cicero often puts it in Latin, how “like the truth.”7 Clitomachus says that a wise Academic will live by “following” or “accepting” the impressions that seem plausible, rather than by “assenting” to them, that is, rather than rationally committing himself to them by taking them to be true (Acad. II 103–105). In the Academica, Cicero follows Clitomachus on both points: he interprets the proper recommendation of the skeptical Academy he follows to be the avoidance of mere opinion, and aims to follow what is plausible instead.8 He says, “I trust Clitomachus when he writes that Carneades endured a Herculean labor because he dragged assent, which is to say opinion and rashness, from our souls as though it were a wild and savage monster. . . . [W]hat keeps somebody from acting, who follows things plausible, so long as nothing impedes him?”9 Cicero’s and Clitomachus’s skepticism, by contrast with the mitigated kind, is sometimes called “radical.”10 But it might seem not so radical. For, you might say, if someone does philosophy in order to encounter and delight in what seems like the truth, is she so radical a skeptic? But notice that, epistemically speaking, what seems like the truth is a world away from the truth. For example, what seems like the truth can be false, as what is true cannot. It seems like the truth that the Earth does not move—at least, it seems so when I look out my window—but it moves. To have found only what seems like the truth, then, is to have made no progress toward finding the truth, so far as you can tell. Again, you might say, a radical skeptic would not consider the goal of philosophy to be the truth, or what seems like the truth, or discovery, at all. She would take as her goal (you might say) suspension of judgment and emancipation from the tyranny of the truth. Yet notice how little Cicero’s pursuit of the truth commits him to. He takes to be true no theory of truth, nor any scheme of logic. He has no idea what, in truth, discovery would be like. He shares the dogmatist’s conception of the goal of the philosophical enterprise only in the vaguest and most abstract way. Nevertheless, he shares that conception of the goal: discovery. On this interpretation, Cicero has no way to tell when, if ever, he has encountered the truth. You might ask, then how can he tell which impressions are like the truth,

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when he has no truth with which to compare them? The answer must be that the phrase “like the truth” is potentially misleading. When Cicero accepts that something seems like the truth, he neither accepts that it approximates the truth nor that it is likely to be true, for he has no way to assess such claims. Rather, some impressions seem to him such that he is inclined to accept them, in ways that are presumably familiar: they seem perceptually clear and distinct, for example, or their content seems to follow from a seemingly sound argument. It seems to Cicero that this is what the truth would be like, if he found it. But he has no way to tell if he is right about that. It is my view that Cicero presents himself in all his skeptical dialogues, and not just in the Academica, as an occupant of Clitomachus’s position.11 (Where he stood earlier in life is harder to say.)12 I shall say more to support this thesis in the next section.

2  CICERO AND THE ETHICS OF BELIEF In Section 1, I sided Cicero with Clitomachus in the internal debates of the skeptical Academy. I shall now try to bring Cicero’s skepticism to life: why did Cicero choose to be a skeptic of this kind, when his charismatic teacher, Philo, was not? In answer to this question, I shall suggest that Cicero reports a strong intuition about what we call today the ethics of belief debate, an intuition for which he found a theoretical model in some Stoic psychology. A focus of the debate over the ethics of belief is this question: ought we, or may we, ever form a belief in the absence of sufficient evidence for its truth? For example, suppose that there is insufficient evidence for the truth of the proposition that God exists. But suppose also that those who believe in Him act more justly and have a unique source of comfort. In such circumstances, would we be permitted, or obliged, to form the belief that God exists? The contemporary version of this debate was begun by W. K. Clifford, who held firmly the “evidentialist” line that we ought never to form a belief in the absence of sufficient evidence (Clifford 1877). I wish to suggest that Cicero describes a similar evidentialist intuition. To see this, let us look first at a passage where he tells his friends about his personal attitude to skepticism. Cicero begins his defense of skepticism in the second book of the Academica as follows: So I shall get on with it, if I may first say a few things about my reputation, so to speak. For if I was led to apply myself to this philosophy in particular by some sort of need to show off, or by eagerness to pick a fight, I think that not only my stupidity should be condemned, but also my character and nature. For if we reprove stubbornness in small matters and punish misrepresentation, would I wish, when the condition and design of my whole life is at stake, to contend with others just for the sake of the fight, and to cheat them, and myself too? Thus, if I didn’t think it unfitting to do in this speech what it is sometimes customary to do in political debate, I would swear by Jupiter and by the gods of the city, both that I am aflame with zeal to discover the truth, and that I state my own views. For how could I not desire to find the truth, when I rejoice if I find something like

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the truth? But just as I judge that this is most beautiful—to see the truth—just so it is most vicious to accept falsehoods in place of truths. Nevertheless, I am not the sort of person who never approves anything false, who never assents, who opines not at all. But we are inquiring about the wise person. I am indeed a great opiner, for I am not wise. I steer my thoughts not by the little Cynosure [the constellation of the Little Bear] . . . but by Helice [the Great Bear], that is, by reasons that are bigger in the mind’s eye, not filed down to a fine point.13 Thus it comes about that I err and wander more widely. But as I said, our inquiry is about the wise man. For I accept those impressions that strike the mind or the sense sharply, and sometimes I even assent to them—but I do not grasp them, for I judge that nothing can be grasped. I am not wise, thus I yield to impressions, nor can I resist. (Acad. II 65–66) Cicero’s latter point is that he does not conduct his mental life according to the skeptical standard he accepts, in that he sometimes assents. But he says that a wise person would never assent. To be wise is to have succeeded at philosophy, to be the ideal for one who pursues wisdom. Thus I think it is clear that Cicero regrets his frequent lapses into assent, even while he is proud that what skeptical discipline he manages to maintain affords him some measure of guidance.14 Why does Cicero wish to be the sort of wise man who does not assent? The key to this question is in the sentence I have underlined in Acad. II 66 above. Cicero desires to find the truth. But, crucially, his desire is discriminating. The difference is like that between somebody who is looking for love and thus is ready to go on a date with anybody promising, and somebody who is already in love and thus wishes to date his beloved and to avoid dating anybody else. Cicero’s burning desire for the truth is of such a sort that he judges it “most vicious to accept falsehoods in place of truths.” To “accept in place of truths” is to take to be true, to assent. “Most vicious” translates the superlative of Cicero’s term of art turpe, which in everyday use means “foul.” Cicero uses turpe for what is ethically repulsive, the opposite of what is virtuous.15 Thus Cicero says here that it is ethically vicious to assent to what is false. Now, this particular ethical judgment of Cicero’s is not Clifford’s evidentialist judgment: Cicero says that it is vicious to assent to what is false, Clifford to assent where there is insufficient evidence. Clifford’s judgment is more stringent, because it rules out assent even to what is true when there is not enough evidence. But in fact Cicero is prone to deliver Clifford’s judgment, too. For example, in On Divination I 4, he says, “rashness and error in assent are vicious in all matters.”16 So, does Cicero’s judgment that assent to what is false is vicious motivate his further view that rash assent, assent to what might be false, is vicious? I think so, as follows. The truth, if it were available, would be available to Cicero through his impressions. To find the truth would involve the recognition of the truth of a true impression, that is, assent to the impression. But the Academics have made it seem to Cicero that he cannot tell which, if any, of his impressions are true. Now one reaction—even for somebody repulsed at the thought of assent to what is false—would be to assent to everything, or, more realistically, to any impression that seemed like the truth.

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For in so assenting one might expect to have assented to some truths, albeit perhaps at the repulsive cost of assent also to some falsehoods. Cicero rejects this wager. Thus he must see some asymmetry between the gain of assent to the truth and the loss of assent to the false, such that the risk of the latter trumps the chance of the former. I suggest that, for Cicero, to assent to a truth which one cannot tell is true is not to find the truth, but rather to fool oneself that an impression is true which, coincidentally, happens to be true. Thus there is nothing virtuous in having a true impression, or in taking it to be true.17 For either thing can happen to any fool. By contrast, assenting to what is false in place of what is true is most vicious, because that is precisely the wage of foolishness: taking to be true what might, so far as she could tell, be false, the fool has taken to be true what was false. Thus we have found Cicero’s asymmetry. Where there are no cognitive impressions, to assent to what is true is not ethically virtuous, but to assent to what is false is ethically vicious. Thus the risk of assent to what is false trumps the chance of assent to the truth. In this way, Cicero’s judgment that it is vicious to assent to what is false, combined with his skepticism, leads to his judgment that rash assent, assent to what might be false, is itself vicious, the equivalent of Clifford’s contention. But why does Cicero think that rash assent is an ethical failing? Why is it not merely a stumbling block in the pursuit of knowledge or wisdom? It is easy to see why a mistake in the pursuit of truth is ethically vicious for thinkers like the Stoics, who hold that virtue is identical with knowledge. But why so for Cicero, who was not a Stoic? We can answer this, and make better sense of many of Cicero’s pronouncements quoted in this chapter, if Cicero cherished an aspect of human psychology described theoretically in a text on Stoic ethics he wrote for his son, On Duties. Cicero there presents four basic drives in the human soul, each of which is the basis for one of four cardinal virtues. One of these is the natural drive for truth or knowledge, which is the basis for the virtue of wisdom (see also Off. I 15–16; cf. Fin. III 17–18): The search for and inquiry into the truth, above all, are proper to humanity. Thus when we are free of pressing business and care, we yearn to see something, to hear, to learn, and we suppose that the grasp of matters hidden or wonderful is necessary for the happy life. (Off. I 13) Of these four topics, it is the one that has to do with the grasp of the truth that most of all gets at human nature. For we are all dragged about and led on to a desire for cognition and knowledge, in which we think it beautiful to excel, but we say that to slip, to err, to be ignorant, to be deceived is both bad and vicious. While this kind of drive is both natural and virtuous, we must avoid two flaws in it. One is that we might hold what we have not grasped in place of what is grasped, and assent to these impressions. Anyone who wishes to escape this flaw—and everyone should wish to—must use both time and care in pondering matters. The second flaw is that some people bestow too much enthusiasm and effort on subjects difficult, obscure and indeed not necessary. (Fin. 1.18–19) It is the former of these two flaws that Cicero worries about in his skepticism: the desire to grasp can itself lead one to assent to what one does not grasp. The point, I imagine, is that faced with a plausible but possibly false impression, we

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wish to decide that it cannot be false, so that we may assent to it. If we yield to this temptation, we placate our desire for a grasp of the truth, but only by gulling ourselves with a counterfeit. Cicero reports similar views of his own in the Academica. First, on the point that we have a natural urge for the truth, here Cicero concludes his arguments against dogmatism in physics with the remark that physical inquiry should continue: Investigation into these most important but most hidden matters holds a delight of its own. If something turns up which seems like the truth, the soul is filled with the most human of pleasures. Thus both your [dogmatic] sage and our own [skeptical sage] inquire into these things, but yours with the result that he assents, he trusts, he makes sure, ours with the result that he fears that he might rashly opine, and so that he thinks he has done famously, if he has found something like the truth in matters of this kind. (Acad. II 127–128) The pleasure that a skeptic feels on finding something even like the truth is the “most human of pleasures.” Both dogmatist and skeptic, it appears, are responding to the sort of drive we saw Cicero describe in On duties. Second, on the point that dogmatists yield to a sort of temptation to assent, here is the conclusion to Cicero’s arguments against dogmatism in ethics: So do you gentlemen think that, when I hear these things and countless others like them, I am entirely unmoved? I am moved just as you are, Lucullus, nor should you think me less human than you. The difference is only that when you are moved, you give in, you assent, you agree, you wish it to be true and sure and grasped and perceived and reasoned and firm and fixed, and you cannot be moved nor pushed out of it by any argument. But I judge that nothing is of such a sort that, should I assent to it, I would not often assent to something false, since truths are distinguished from falsehoods by no mark, especially since there are no criteria of logic. (Acad. II 141) Cicero’s diagnosis of dogmatism here is that dogmatists wish to grasp that their views are true, and give in to this temptation, while the skeptic holds firm against it. Thus in the Academica Cicero shares views with the sorts of Stoics he was to describe in On duties, that humans have a natural and laudable drive for the truth but that this very drive tempts people into rash assent. I suggest this explains why Cicero considers rash assent to be an ethical failure. To allow the most distinctive aspiration of our rational and valuable nature to trip itself up is to betray that nature. In this light, we can understand the whole sequence of thought in Cicero’s remarks on his attraction to skepticism (Acad. II 65–66, quoted above). Cicero’s love for the truth leads him to despise assent as ethically vicious, just as the same love leads people at large to despise mendacity as ethically vicious.18 I shall now return to the question of Cicero’s affiliations. For you might see in Cicero’s repeated declaration of his devotion to the truth a sign that he is a mitigated skeptic, aligned with Philo, after all.19 At times, you might point out, he even says that in skeptical discourse, “[his] goal is to speak both for and against all philosophers, for the purpose of discovering the truth” (N.D. I 11, emphasis added).20

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But I have shown that, on the contrary, it is exactly Cicero’s discriminating love of the truth that leads him to disagree with the mitigated skeptics, because it leads him to think that assent to what might be false is always vicious. While discovery of truth is indeed his fond hope in skeptical inquiry, a more realistic statement of his goal is to find, “either what is true or what approaches as closely as possible to the truth” (Acad. II 7).21 So far he has found at best the latter, to which he must not assent because it might not be true. We might see tragedy in Cicero’s situation. He is the man who loved truth so faithfully that he lost it altogether. But Cicero does not seem downcast. On the contrary, he presents himself as confident and content in his skepticism. He is free to navigate away from danger, while the dogmatist clings to whatever rock life’s storms drove her onto (Acad. II 8). As Cicero remarks when challenged in the Tusculans that he has contradicted one of his own arguments in On Ends, “We live for the day. We say whatever strikes our minds as plausible. Thus only we are free” (V 33).

NOTES 1. For Cicero’s philosophical studies see, e.g., Cicero’s Brut. 306309, Fam. XIII 1.2, N.D. I 6–7, and Plutarch, Life of Cicero IV 24. For his attraction to Philo, see Brut. 306, De Inv. II 10 (cf. De Or. I 5), N.D. I 11–12 and 17. See also n. 11. 2. For an accessible translation, with help on the work’s confusing history, see Brittain (2006). 3. I substantially follow the interpretation of these debates in Brittain (2001; 2006: xxii–xiii). For some recent alternatives, see Glucker (2004) (a critical review of Brittain), Thorsrud (2009: chs. 4–5; 2010), and Lévy (2010). 4. See the chapters on Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Philo of Larissa in this book. 5. For different conclusions about Cicero’s skepticism from much of the same material as I examine in this chapter, see Thorsrud (2009: ch. 5; 2010: 76–78) and Görler (1997). 6. Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Philosophers IV 67; Cicero, De Or. I 45. There is also information about Clitomachus in a papyrus discovered at Herculaneum, the Index Academicorum. A synthesis of the evidence on Clitomachus’s life, in German, is Görler (1994). See also the chapters on Carneades and Philo in this book. 7. “Like the truth” translates veri simile and “plausible” probabile, both of which reflect Carneades’s term. For the data on what these various terms might mean, see Glucker (1995), who draws different conclusions than I do. 8. Here I alert readers to a difficulty thrown up by the form in which Cicero writes, narrated conversations in which “he” plays a part as a character. It is possible that what “Cicero” in the drama says is not meant to express the views of Cicero the author. But for simplicity’s sake I shall refer to both Cicero the author and “Cicero” the character as Cicero in this chapter. Readers who rightly wish to be wary on this point should consult the context of each quotation. 9. Acad. II 108. For Cicero’s other Clitomachean pronouncements in the Academica, see II 65–66, 78, 127–128, 141. 10. See Brittain (2006: xxvii).

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11. Some passages in other dialogues which support my view are: Fin. II 43; Tusc. I 8, IV 47, V 32–33; N.D. I 12, III 95; Div. I 4, II 150. Brittain (2016) is an example of how one might interpret a dialogue other than the Academica as radically skeptical. Woolf (2015) gives an extended and accessible picture of a more radically skeptical Cicero. 12. Cicero seems to have been a skeptic at about the age of twenty, after his encounter with Philo (see On Invention II 10; cf. De Or. I 5). But at Leg. I 39, written about a decade before the skeptical dialogues, Cicero’s character invites the skeptical Academy to step aside from the discussion, which could ground an argument that Cicero was then in a dogmatic phase (see Glucker 1988). But the latter passage does not require that interpretation, and arguably does not support it (see Görler 1995). 13. In Cicero’s day, there was no pole star, because the north celestial pole lay in a dark part of the sky between the “backs” of the Great and Little Bears. The Little Bear was thus a useful guide to true north and more precisely so than the Great Bear, because the Little Bear swept a circle of smaller radius around the pole. Navigation by the Little Bear was associated with the seafaring Phoenician peoples, of whom Clitomachus, as a Carthaginian, was one (ND II 105–106, translating Aratus, Phaenomena 39). 14. Thorsrud (2010: 77) and Görler (1997: 38, 56) think Cicero is proud that he has mere opinions. Thorsrud interprets Cicero as a mitigated skeptic and thus supposes that Cicero means that his opinions are the result of responsible inquiry. 15. See, e.g., Fin. III 38, Tusc. V 27, Off. I 10. 16. See also: N.D. I 1, Acad. I 45, Off. II 8. Cicero acknowledges the Stoics as allies in this: Fin. III 72. 17. You might object: Cicero says it “is most beautiful to see the truth,” so must he not think it is virtuous to see the truth? But I do not think Cicero means that it is virtuous to see the truth. He uses the adjective pulcher, “beautiful,” which he habitually keeps distinct from honestus, “ethically attractive” or “noble” (for pulcher see, e.g., Tusc. IV 31, for honestus, e.g., On Ends III 27–28). Certainly, the beauty of “seeing the truth” cannot be something distinctive of the experience of having or assenting to true impressions, because then true impressions would offer to us a mark of their own truth, the beauty of having or assenting to them, and thus true impressions would be cognitive, such that they could not be false. The beauty of somebody “seeing the truth,” whether this means having or assenting to a true impression, must either be a beauty that is also to be had from false impressions, or, if distinctive of an encounter with the truth, it must be something Cicero imagines from the outside: it is fitting that a rational mind should encounter, perhaps even take to be true, the truth that it desires, even though it cannot tell that it has done so. But if so, this is a beauty that both wise men and fools could exemplify. 18. In On Ends, Cicero makes this sort of parallel explicit in a related argument against Epicurean ethics: “Since [n]ature has implanted in humanity a desire to see the truth, as is easily apparent when, once freed from care, we wish to know what happens even in heaven, we are drawn on by these first stirrings to love everything true, i.e. what is trustworthy, simple and consistent, while we hate what is empty, false and deceptive, like fraud, perjury, malice and injustice” (Fin. II 46). 19. See Thorsrud (2010: 76–78).

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20. For the discovery of truth as Cicero’s goal in skeptical inquiry, see also Fin. I 13. 21. See also: Acad. I 45; Off. II 8. Cicero acknowledges the Stoics as allies: Fin. III 72.

REFERENCES Bret, Richard. 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brittain, Charles. 2001. Philo of Larissa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brittain, Charles (trans.). 2006. Cicero: On Academic Scepticism. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Brittain, Charles. 2016. “Cicero’s Sceptical Methods: The Example of De finibus.” In J. Annas and G. Betegh (eds.), Cicero’s De Finibus: Philosophical Approaches, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 12–40. Clifford, W. K. 1877. “The Ethics of Belief,” Contemporary Review 29: 289–309. Glucker, John. 1988. “Cicero’s Philosophical Affiliations.” In J. Dillon and A. A. Long (eds.), The Question of “Eclecticism”. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 34–69. Glucker, John. 1995. “Probabile, Veri Simile, and Related Terms.” In J. G. F. Powell (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 115–143. Glucker, John. 2004. “The Philonian/Metrodorians: Problems of Method in Ancient Philosophy,” Elenchos 25: 99–152. Görler, Woldemar. 1994. “Die Akademie zwischen Karneades und Philon.” In H. Flashar (ed.), Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie v. 4.2, 898–914. Basel: Schwabe. Görler, Woldemar. 1995. “Silencing the Troublemaker: De Legibus 1.39 and the Continuity of Cicero’s Scepticism.” In J. G. F. Powell (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers, 85–113. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Görler, Woldemar. 1997. “Cicero’s Philosophical Stance in the Lucullus.” In Brad Inwood and Jaap Mansfeld (eds.), Assent and Argument, 36–57. Leiden: Brill. Inwood, Brad and Jaap Mansfeld (eds.) 1997. Assent and Argument. Leiden: Brill. Lévy, Carlos. 2010. “The Sceptical Academy: Decline and Afterlife.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Scepticism, 81–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Powell, J. G. F. (ed.). 1995. Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schofield, Malcolm. 2002. “Academic Therapy: Philo of Larissa and Cicero’s Project in the Tusculans.” In G. Clark and T. Rajak (eds.), Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in Honour of Miriam Griffin, 91–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thorsrud, Harald. 2009. Ancient Scepticism. Durham: Acumen. Thorsrud, Harald. 2010. “Arcesilaus and Carneades.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Scepticism, 58–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woolf, Raphael. 2015. Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Menodotus and Medical Empiricism JAMES ALLEN

1 INTRODUCTION Menodotus of Nicomedia was a physician and philosopher, who probably flourished in the first half of the second century CE (cf. Capelle 1931: 901–902). The Empirical school of medicine to which he belonged arose in the third century BCE, defining itself in opposition to the rationalist tendency then dominant in the profession. Though our sources often speak of a rationalist “school” or “sect” (a logikē hairesis), rationalism was not a proper school in the way Empiricism was, that is, a collective with common doctrines and/or projects and methods, leaders or recognized authorities, and a felt group identity (cf. von Staden 1982). The term was applied polemically by the Empiricists to members of different schools—properly so-called—who were often sharply at variance with each other. The contrast between reason and experience on which the opposition is based is an old one. In Plato’s Gorgias, citing medicine as an example, Socrates maintains that the practitioner of a genuine art (technē) selects the measures he will employ on the basis of an understanding of the nature of the object upon which he acts, and he insists that a true artist must be able to give an account (a logos) of his actions in the light of this understanding by specifying the causes because of which that object is as it is and those because of which the measures he applies will have the desired effects (501a; cf. 465a, Phaedrus 270b, Laws IV 720b ff.; cf. 857c). In the terminology favored by later rationalist physicians, who accepted Plato’s view, the pathological condition indicates its own treatment. From the perspective of Socrates and those sharing his outlook, mere experience can by contrast never constitute an art because it is confined to recording conjunctions and sequences among observed events without grasping the nature of the beings that act or are acted on in them, and therefore without being able to get at the cause or explanation, which must refer to the underlying nature of what is observed. According to Galen’s testimony, in the view of the rationalists, reason was above all a faculty that enables us to grasp natural or rational relations of consequence (akolouthia) and exclusion (machē) (Subfig. emp. 87, 7; 89, 12, 15 Deichgräber).

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The grasp of indication is one application of this faculty, which also explains one of the distinctive marks of rationalist medicine: its reliance on (alleged) truths about so-called non-evident matters, which, because they are forever beyond the reach of observation, can become objects of knowledge only with the aid of such a power (cf. Galen, De sect. ingred. SM III 11, 16–19; Subfig. emp. 62, 24–31 Deichgräber; On Medical Experience 100, 102, 103, 104–105, 107, 111, 132–133, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 153 Walzer). In effect, medical Empiricists came to the defense of the position attacked in the Gorgias. Though they developed their position with an eye on medicine, they held that it applied to other arts as well (Celsus, Proem. 31–32; Galen, MM X 126, 15–127, 1 K; Subfig. emp. 86, 23–87, 4 Deichgräber). They strove first to show that experience, which had its origin in observation and was confined to objects accessible to observation, was equal to the task of constituting an art without the aid of reason and the unobservable entities allegedly discovered by it. But the Empiricists also took the battle to their opponents by trying to show that the difficulties in which the rationalists and their theories were entangled undermined the claims they made for reason.

2  SKEPTICISM AND EMPIRICISM Menodotus owes his place in the history of skepticism, and his presence in this book, to the intriguing fact that, like several other Empiricists, he was also a Pyrrhonian skeptic.1 The list of Pyrrhonists in Diogenes Laertius includes at least three more Empiricists apart from Menodotus: his fellow student, Theodas, Sextus Empiricus, who is identified by his surname as an Empiricist, and Sextus’s student Saturninus (IX 115 = fr. 9 Deichgräber). Others on the list and Pyrrhonists not mentioned in it may also have been Empiricists. Sextus and Menodotus are also included in the list of Empiricists in the pseudo-Galenic medical work, Introductio seu Medicus (9, 23–24 Petit = XIV 683, 11 Kühn = fr. 6 Deichgräber). Like the Academics, the Pyrrhonists were dogged from the outset by the charge that their philosophy, which was expressed in skeptical slogans like “Everything is inapprehensible” and “Suspension of judgment about all things,” made life impossible. Sextus stoutly rejects this charge, maintaining that skeptics live and act under the guidance of a criterion, namely what appears (to phainomenon), which amounts to living in accordance with everyday observance, one of whose four elements is the teaching of the arts (PH I 21–23). Like the members of other medical schools, Empirical physicians diagnose, make prognoses, and prescribe and administer treatments and regimens—all of which would seem to require a high level of discrimination and judgment. Yet they, or those of them who were also Pyrrhonists, plainly thought they could discharge their responsibilities as doctors without compromising skeptical suspension of judgment. An understanding of the art practiced by so many Pyrrhonists may give us some insight into the skeptical form of life they claimed to lead or at the very least, by affording us a fuller picture of such a life, give us a better understanding of the explanandum.

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Sextus wrote a work on Empirical medicine, which has not survived (AM I 61).2 The extant philosophical works contain expressions of sympathy for the Empiricists and their ideas (PH II 246, 254; AM V 104, VIII 288, 291; cf. Spinelli 2010). At one point, Sextus even treats Empiricists and Pyrrhonists as allies who join forces to argue that non-evident matters are not apprehended (AM VIII 191), and at another, without mentioning the Empiricists, he presents the skeptics as disagreeing not only with dogmatic philosophers, but also with the Empiricists’ principal opponents, rationalist physicians (AM VIII 157).3 When he tackles the question whether as “some people say” medical Empiricism is the same as skepticism, however, Sextus takes Empiricism severely to task for dogmatic tendencies unacceptable to true skeptics, and he suggests that Pyrrhonists interested in medicine might be better advised to practice as members of the socalled Methodist school of medicine (PH I 236–241). Although it can be argued that Sextus did not intend to condemn Empiricism, but to criticize tendencies in it (cf. Frede and Walzer 1985: xxv–xxvi; Allen 2010), we must look elsewhere in order to learn how someone could be both a Pyrrhonian skeptic and an Empirical physician. Attention to Menodotus is likely to prove especially rewarding. Owing to Galen’s interest, we know a good deal about his views on the issues that divided the Empiricists from their rivals in medicine as well as the stands he took in controversies internal to Empiricism.

3  ART AND EXPERIENCE The form the Empiricists’ positive account of their art took was shaped in part by a challenge put to them by their rationalist opponents: experience, based as it is on observation, is available to laypeople as well as to experts; therefore, it cannot be the art that sets the latter apart from the former. The Empiricists acknowledge that the capacity for observation that is the basis of experience and a certain amount of experience itself are common to everyone, but insist that there is such a thing as expert experience (cf. Galen, On Medical Experience 98–99 Walzer; MM 126, 10 ff. K = fr. 45 Deichgräber). And it is experience conceived in this way, they maintain, that constitutes an art worthy of the name. Galen devotes much attention to the Empiricists’ ideas about this issue, especially in the Subfiguratio empirica.4 Two terms, peira and empeiria, which are translated as “experience,” both derived from the verbal root, peirān, meaning “to put to the test.” They are not always kept apart, and the latter especially has several related senses that must be clearly distinguished. Peira is typically used to mean the knowledge one gains from a single episode of observation (Subfig. emp. 44, 6 ff. Deichgräber). Such episodes can be by chance; result from an intervention by an observer, who tries something to see what will happen; and they can be the result of efforts to reproduce a previous observation. Individual episodes like this or the pieces of knowledge one has as a result of each taken singly do not qualify as experience strictly so-called. Experience (empeiria) in this privileged sense is knowledge or memory of what has been observed to happen many times in the same way, which can now be formulated as a theorem, which specifies, whether, for example, bleeding is followed by the cessation of fever

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always, for the most part, roughly half the time, or rarely (Subfig. emp. 45, 24–46, 14; 50, 23 Deichgräber). In another sense, “experience” means the art composed of such theorems as a whole (47, 26; 54, 10–13; cf. De sect. ingred. SM III 3). Experience has its origin in observation, but as the Empiricists acknowledge, we can profit not only from our own observations, but also from those of others. Hence they distinguish two sources of empirical knowledge, autopsia, one’s own observation, and historia, the experience of others as preserved in books or oral teaching—one practitioner’s autopsy becomes history for another (De sect. ingred. SM III 3, 17–20). So much was common ground, but two related issues especially were subject to controversy in the school and figured in important developments in the school’s position. One concerned the status of the so-called transition to the similar, the other, how the Empiricists understood the kind of reason that they reject. Over the course of their school’s history, Empiricists adopted different stances toward reason. Some, especially early on, took a very hard line, while other, mostly later, Empiricists admitted that there was a place in the art for something they were willing to call reason, but they insisted that it did not qualify as reason as the rationalists understood it, and to mark the difference they employed two terms, epilogismos for the form of reason they found acceptable and analogismos for the kind peculiar to rationalism (Subfig. emp. 62, 22–63, 1 Deichgräber). Theodas maintained that the method through similarity was a form of rational experience (Subfig. Emp. 50, 2–4). The transition to the similar is the Empiricists’ response to an obvious challenge, namely, what will the Empirical physician do when faced with a case of a new type? The answer is that he will use the transition to the similar by applying a therapy that has already been effective when applied to one part of the body to another part similar to it, or by applying the same therapy to diseases that are similar to one against which it has proven effective (and if the disease is familiar from experience but the known remedy is unavailable, he will use a similar remedy). But what part can be played in an empirical art by the transition to the similar, whose point of departure is, to be sure, something that has been observed and remembered by the practitioner, but that leads him beyond his experience? A difficult passage in the Subfiguratio empirica reviews some of the opinions held by Empiricists (49, 23 ff.; cf. Perilli 2004: 154–157). It begins with a scholarly question about what an early Empiricist, Serapion, may have thought and becomes—though it is unclear precisely where—a discussion of the merits of different views about the issue itself. “Did Serapion judge that transition to the similar is a third constitutive part of medicine [together with autopsy and history]?” Menodotus is cited for his view: “No, he only uses it.” Probably still following Menodotus, Galen says: “There is a difference between using something and using it as a part.” Menodotus, then, appears to have held that Serapion used transition to the similar without using it as a constitutive part of medicine, that is, as a reliable source of medical knowledge. Others, Galen notes, held that it was better viewed as an instrument (organon). It seems that an Empiricist cannot put the results of the transition on a level with those of autopsy and history without compromising his empiricism. When Galen returns to the subject, he again appeals to the authority of Menodotus, who held that the

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transition to the similar is not a true criterion, but rather a criterion of the possible (69, 33 ff., 70, 7) and “a road to experience” (70, 6). Experience remains the ultimate authority. Nonetheless, the distinction between two moments that is implicit in this account of the nature and value of the transition to the similar is noteworthy. On the one hand, there is the task of testing or confirming the potential theorems suggested by the transition; on the other, that of inventing or “thinking up” what is submitted to the test of experience. An empirical account of the latter is not impossible, and there are traces of one in Galen’s testimony. In past experience similarities in certain respects, for example, in the taste and smell of remedies, have proved more reliable predictors of therapeutic efficacy than in others, for example, color. But it is also easy to see how the choice of similarities to which to attend could provide scope for reasoning.

4  THE ROLE OF REASON IN THE DEBATE Everything depends on what counted as reason in the debate. There are three relevant ways of understanding reason, which can be roughly ordered in terms of logical strength, so that it is fair to speak of three degrees of rationalist commitment to which correspond three levels of antirationalism. What is entailed by the first and weakest degree of commitment is revealed in an argument brought against the Empiricists by Asclepiades of Bithynia, a prominent physician and medical theorist active in Rome in the first century BCE. He espoused a paradigmatically rationalist theory, according to which health is ultimately the flow at the proper rate of microscopic bodies through passages in the body and diseases are due to their excessive or deficient flow. According to Asclepiades, the finite number of types under which infinitely various experiences can be classified are not given in experience, but discovered by reason. He gives as an example the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet, with the aid of which infinitely various verbal sounds can be apprehended (On Medical Experience 88 Walzer). And he argued that the observation of what happens many times in the same way cannot begin without the prior contribution of reason—the reason exercised in concept-formation (Galen Subfig. emp. 88, 25 Deichgräber; De sect. ingred. SM III 9, 9–13; On Medical Experience 85 ff. Walzer). The argument is ingenious and touches on important issues. The problem is that this is not what the Empiricists, or most of their opponents, meant by reason. And it begs the question to assume that it is impossible to possess the capacities that Asclepiades counts as rational for the purpose of his argument without also having the rational faculties that the Empiricists claimed to do without. The second degree of rational commitment covers reasoning as inference, the drawing of a conclusion on the basis of grounds or evidence, arguably a practice in which, in some form or to some degree, almost all human beings engage. The third and last degree of commitment is reason as characterized in the account of the debate between rationalism and Empiricism, namely, as a power to apprehend relations of consequence and exclusion, which is the peculiar property, at least in its refined and developed form, of highly trained experts and whose most striking

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and distinctive manifestation is the discovery of non-evident entities and processes beyond the reach of observation and unknown to laypeople. Whether and how this power is related to reasoning corresponding to the second degree of rational commitment could be a matter of controversy. No Empiricist embraced reasoning of the last kind. None rejected reason of the first degree, though they may have questioned how useful it is to speak of “reason” in connection with it. It was the second degree of rational commitment about which there was controversy and their attitude to which seems to have undergone development over time. How far some Empiricists were willing to go in their rejection of reason is plain from Galen’s summary of the account some of them gave of the discovery of the “cephalicum” drug (MM X 163, 14 ff. Kühn = fr. 105 Deichgräber; cf. Comp. med. gen. XIII 366, 2 ff. Kühn = fr. 106 Deichgräber; cf. Frede 1990: 233). It is a mixture of ingredients that have been effective treating the same ailment when applied singly to different patients. Some Empiricists, Galen maintains, say that discoveries of this sort could be suggested by a dream, or that, after the ingredients had been mixed by chance, someone might have ventured to try the mixture. This, says Galen, is so much nonsense, and he contrasts this account with the epilogistical method employed by other Empiricists. In his words, a physician employing this method, having experience of the curative effect of each of the simple uncompounded ingredients, may discover that not every one of them suits every patient’s nature. He will then use epilogismos to conclude that he should mix together as many simple remedies for the affliction as he can in order that each nature will be supplied with the remedy that suits it. It is not easy to see how a human being can lead a life, let alone practice an art, without doing anything of the kind that we or the Empiricists who countenance epilogismos would describe as inferring, drawing a conclusion, and the like. Yet it seems that radically “anti-rational” Empiricists refused to agree to the second degree of rational commitment and tried to explain as an exercise of the faculty of memory what others would call reasoning. According to this way of thinking, repeated observation of occurrences that coincide, precede, or follow one another, supplemented by history based on the experience of other people, forms dispositions in us to be reminded of one thing by another. When one sees smoke, on this account, one does not infer that there must be fire by appreciating the grounds that favor this conclusion, let alone by apprehending relations of consequence and exclusion imposed by the nature of fire. Rather, one is simply put in mind of fire. It would not be wrong to borrow talk of custom from Hume and like-minded philosophers and regard the Empiricists’ view as a variety of associationism. A contrast like this one is the basis for the distinction between indicative and commemorative signs, to which Sextus Empiricus devotes two lengthy discussions (PH II 97–133; AM VIII 141–299). The former signify that of which they are signs by their own nature and constitution; the latter by reminding us or recalling to mind matters with which they have been co-observed in past experience, as, for example, smoke signifies fire. Though the matter remains controversial, it has been argued that the conception of commemorative signification is due to the Empiricists.5

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We can trace the progress in the Empiricists’ attitudes toward reason through the way in which they handled certain oppositions. As part of his discussion of the transition to the similar in the Subfiguratio empirica, Galen compares two ways of understanding the term “transition” (metabasis). It looks as if metabasis is being presented as a genus whose two main species are inference or rational inference, on the one hand, and the Empiricists’ alternative, on the other: Rational transition derives knowledge indicatively from the nature of the matter; Empirical transition follows matters that are known from experience, not because it is plausible that like things are productive of like effects, or that they stand in need of like measures or are similarly affected—it is not for this reason that [the Empiricists] insist on using the transition, but because we have experienced like things behaving in this way. (Subfig. emp. 70, 10 ff. Deichgräber) Note that “rational,” and by implication “reason,” belong on the rationalist side of the opposition between two varieties of transition. “Rational” also attaches to the “consequence” (assecutio, akolouthia) that figures in Galen’s characterization of indication (Subfig. emp. 44, 9; 64, 7 Deichgräber), and as we have seen consequence together with conflict are the objects grasped by the special faculty of reason, commitment to which was in Galen’s view the defining characteristic of medical rationalism (Subfig. emp. 87, 4–7).

5  EMPIRICAL REASONING: EPILOGISMOS A different picture emerges from the work that has the most to say about epilogismos, On Empirical Medicine. Though we are fortunate to have it, apart from two short fragments, it survives only in an Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of the Greek, edited and translated into English in 1944 by Richard Walzer (reprinted in Frede and Walzer 1985). My interpretation is based on Walzer’s English translation, and the reader should be aware of the layers standing between the lost original and the present author. Galen first presents the anti-Empirical polemic due to Asclepiades mentioned above and then an extended response from the Empiricists. In the part relevant to our present purpose, the spokesman for Empiricism takes the opportunity afforded by the rationalists’ charge that “[the Empiricists] have no method of drawing a conclusion, with the help of which inferences are drawn from the visible to the invisible” to expound “[his] opinion [that] there are two kinds of logoi: the one called epilogismos, the other called analogismos” (On Empirical Medicine 131– 132). The extent to which the Empiricist is willing to take over the language of his rationalist opponents is remarkable. Thus we find: “The conclusion from visible to visible that is known as epilogismos,” which is contrasted with “the conclusion from the visible to the invisible” (141); “the method of reasoning from visible to visible” (149); “Epilogismos is an inference from common and universally used by all mankind” (133); “the conclusion and logos known as epilogismos” (135, 139); and “in affirming what is necessitated by something that is said or done, you will find two kinds of affirmation, one after the manner of the logos known as epilogismos,

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the other after the manner of the logos known as analogismos” (135–136). And there is no missing the fact that the battle lines in the case made by Galen’s Empiricist have been redrawn. The dispute is no longer simply between the partisans of reason and those of memory and observation, but between advocates of two kinds or two understandings of rational inference. According to the Empiricists, epilogismos is confined to evident matters; it does not, as analogismos purports to do, extend the reach of human knowledge beyond the realm of observable items. Unlike analogismos, it is not the possession of a few specialists but common to all humankind. And in sharp contrast to analogismos, it yields results on which all can agree instead of giving rise to endless and apparently irresolvable controversy (De sect. ingred. SM III 11, 8; Subfig. emp. 62, 24–31 Deichgräber; On Medical Experience 133–135, 140 Walzer). It covers what we call inference based on empirical generalizations (cf. De sect. ingred. SM III 10, 23–24; 11, 9–10), but it also seems to cover the invention or thinking-up of new ideas that I mentioned earlier in connection with the transition to the similar. It is perfectly clear that a difference exists between each logos and conclusion used by the dogmatists [i.e., rationalists] and the logos and conclusion known as epilogismos, which is universally used by everybody, namely that epilogismos seeks the guidance of visible things—and it is from this that it seeks confirmation of its truth and rightness. (On medical experience 139, cf. 133–134 Walzer) The specimen of epilogistical reasoning about the cephalicum discussed above may furnish an example (MM X 163, 14 ff. Kühn = fr. 105 Deichgräber; cf. Comp. Med. gen. XIII 366, 2 ff. Kühn = fr. 106 Deichgräber). Although it appeals to the “natures” of the patients’ bodies, it does so in a completely general way: in effect “the nature, whatever it is, that responds to an ingredient in the drug,” and the upshot must of course be submitted to the test of experience. Most controversial is the use of reason by the Empiricists in anti-rationalist polemic. They argued plausibly that the conflicting results reached by the rationalists, using their version of the rational method, undermined the claims they—the rationalists—made for it. This and the attempts by some Empiricists to show where the rationalists’ anti-Empirical arguments go wrong may invite the charge that the Empiricists were more invested in reason than they allowed or than can be explained as simple epilogismos. Menodotus stands accused of yet another offense, however. According to Galen, he contradicts himself: Menodotus often introduces something third, in addition to memory and perception; he calls this third thing “epilogism”; often though, he does not posit anything in addition to memory except perception. (Subfig. emp. 87, 25–88, 1) According to one attractive suggestion, in taking different and incompatible positions at different times, Menodotus was acting as a skeptic (cf. Frede 1990: 248– 249). Academics like Carneades were known to argue for incompatible positions about, for example, the question whether the wise person will have opinions, at most one of which can have been their real view (cf. Cicero, Acad. II 67, 78).6

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By arguing in this way, they could show that their dogmatic opponents were not entitled to certain conclusions even granted certain concessions. Following this strategy, Menodotus could, for example, have argued that an art of medicine was possible on the basis of experience even if, contrary to fact, they foreswore the use of reason, including epilogismos. A close look at the polemical context of this charge, leveled in the twelfth and last chapter of the Subfiguratio, suggests another possibility, however. The favorable attitude toward Empiricism on display in most of the Subfiguratio is conditional: provided they stick to what—in Galen’s view—they did best. In chapter XI, to which we shall return because it faults Menodotus for failing to live up to the ideal of Pyrrho, Galen says that the account so far covers Empirical medicine that is sufficient for the good treatment of patients. He turns now to the criticism of superfluous additions made by leaders of the Empirical school (Subfig. emp. 80, 16–81, 20 Deichgräber). In Galen’s view, the ideal Empiricist is a man of deeds and very few words, who makes his mark by curing patients, not by engaging in disputes. Chapter XII, which belongs to the same polemic, rejects the view, apparently held by some Empiricists, that medical experience includes parts that resolve the difficulties raised against Empiricism by its opponents and furnish arguments against the opponents’ own positions (Subfig. emp. 86, 15–23 Deichgräber). Galen maintains that people who claim to base an art solely on evident perception and memory have no business attempting to show what is wrong with the rationalists’ case against Empiricism, let alone arguing against their theories. To do this, one would have to accept that human beings have a faculty capable of evaluating and judging relations of consequence and exclusion, that is, the rational faculty as Galen and the rationalists understood it (Subfig. emp. 87, 4–12; cf. 89, 5–23, 44, 9–10, 63, 23–26 Deichgräber). To accept this, however, places one under an obligation to develop the power by the study of logic according to Galen. Only then will one have earned the right to participate in the debates from which he thinks Empiricists should otherwise remain aloof. This is the occasion for Galen to mention the Empiricists who found a place for reason. “[Heraclides] knows that there is [such a faculty] and is seen to use it on many occasions” (Subfig. emp. 87, 19–21). The problem is that he never did what he needed to do to develop it. For this reason, “he is as much worse a doctor than Hippocrates as he is a better one than Menodotus” (Subfig. emp. 87, 22–25), who is now accused of contradicting himself. Galen, then, is looking for the thin end of the wedge, evidence that some of the Empiricists were committed to the existence of a faculty of reason, which he can then use to fault them for failing to develop this faculty as they would have to have done to make their arguments against the rationalists worthy of serious consideration. His evidence is Heraclides’s self-conscious use of reason and Menodotus’s acceptance of a form of reasoning that he styled “epilogismos.” The argument would surely have seemed tendentious to the Empiricists, however. They were at pains to distinguish the form of reasoning they accepted from the rationalists’ alternative. There is no reason to think that they would have agreed that the use of epilogismos committed them to accepting the existence of a special rational faculty answering to the description supplied by Galen or to

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acknowledging the attendant obligation to study logic. It may be doubted, then, whether they viewed the adoption of epilogismos as a sharp break with the past. The interpretation of Serapion’s views about the transition to the similar shows that, in the manner of other long-established schools, many of them wanted to see themselves as in fundamental agreement with their distinguished predecessors. Despite his wholehearted endorsement of epilogismos, the Empirical spokesman in On Medical Experience describes Empiricists as proponents of memory and observation and recognizes a sense of “reason” in which it is the exclusive possession of the rationalists (138, 154 Walzer). If this proposal is on the right lines, Menodotus will have regarded the acceptance of epilogismos as compatible with a commitment to memory and observation as the sole ultimate bases of knowledge. Epilogismos, as he conceived of it, is reasoning based on and not departing from what we know through these powers. The innovation, if it amounted to that, will simply have been to describe better what the Empiricists had been doing all along.

6  WAS MENODOTUS AN INCONSISTENT PYRRHONIST? In chapter XI of the Subfiguratio, Galen levels another charge of inconsistency. He tells us that as the Pyrrhonist is in the whole of life so the Empiricist is in the medical sphere; he informs us that Menodotus had held up Pyrrho as a model for his fellow Empiricists to follow; and he faults him for failing to live up to the ideal that Pyrrho represented. This is powerful evidence that Menodotus, together with at least some other Empiricists, was a Pyrrhonist and regarded himself as one. Galen’s criticism of Menodotus contains two charges that are not clearly distinguished. The first, that unlike Pyrrho, Menodotus is a man of many words (multiloquus) and that, far from avoiding disputation, he is constantly engaged in it, is easily answered. The evidence furnished by Sextus Empiricus about the Pyrrhonian tradition to which both he and Menodotus belonged shows that disputation was the life blood of Pyrrhonism and that the Pyrrhonists were aware that they likely differed from Pyrrho in important ways while they continued to find aspects of his life exemplary (see PH I 7). According to Galen, Menodotus’s too many words were also often vituperative and buffoonish, and worst of all—this is the second main charge—he was guilty of making rash and dogmatic assertions. Thus according to Galen, in his writings against Asclepiades of Bithynia, Menodotus declares that he knows certainly that all of his doctrines are false—despite the fact that “in many of his writings, he has demanded that one should approach everything non-evident as if perhaps it is true and perhaps it is not” (Subfig. emp. 84, 18–31)—the true Pyrrhonian attitude. If Menodotus did really claim to know for certain that Asclepiades’s theories were false, he was guilty of the second inconsistency of which Galen accuses him. Galen’s charge bears some resemblance to Sextus’s complaints about the unskeptical firmness with which Empiricists speak about non-evident matters, with the difference that Sextus thinks Empiricists are too ready to pronounce non-evident matters to be inapprehensible while, if Galen is right, Menodotus claimed to know that one theory was false.

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Nonetheless, this shows not that Menodotus was not a Pyrrhonist, but at worst that he was an inconsistent one. We do not have the evidence on which Galen based his charge, but in view of his penchant for uncharitable interpretations of his opponents, it is at least possible that it might support a different and lesser charge: in his impatience with Asclepiades, Menodotus so far forgot himself as to say, or to say things that imply, that he knew Asclepiades was all wrong. Though Galen may have been too hard on Menodotus, that there could be a tension between Empiricism and Pyrrhonism is undeniable. The Empirical position, stated simply and without qualifications, is dogmatic. The denial that knowledge of non-evident matters is possible, of which Sextus complains, can be combined with the equally unskeptical conviction that knowledge of evident matters is. According to Galen, Empiricists hold that the fact that “each thing has appeared as it is confirms the correctness of those who are right and refutes those who are not [about evident matters by contrast with non-evident ones]” (De sect. ingred. SM III 1120–1112, 4; cf. On Medical Experience 103, 133–135 Walzer). Pyrrhonists acknowledge that things appear a certain way, to be sure, but of course “investigate whether the real object is such as it appears” and cannot “be sure regarding the phenomena whether they are as they appear” (PH I 19; AM VIII 142, cf. 357). If some Pyrrhonists embraced Empiricism, they will not have endorsed the conviction about the phenomena or appearances that Galen ascribes to the Empiricists. This will not have prevented them from following the same appearances as the Empiricists. They will have done so with the proviso that things may not be as they appear, however. Such a person would be a skeptical Empiricist, differing from his dogmatic colleagues not necessarily by following appearances with a different content, but in the character of his attitude to them. Empiricism will most likely have recommended itself to a Pyrrhonist of this kind because of the way in which it purported to be nothing more than a refinement of everyday observance and so a form of artistic teaching that had a place in the Pyrrhonists’ criterion. Even if Menodotus is guilty of the lapses of which Galen accuses him, he likely was, or strove to be, a Pyrrhonian Empiricist of this kind.7

NOTES 1. If a corrupt passage in Sextus (PH I 222) contains a reference to Menodotus, he may have taken an interest in the much debated question whether Plato was a skeptic. See Spinelli (2000), who favors this view, and Perilli (2005), who rejects it. 2. Thought by scholars to be the same as the “Medical Commentaries” cited at AM VII 202. 3. Consider, however, AM VIII 327–328, where the Empiricists are pitted against dogmatic philosophers and rationalist physicians as parties to a dispute—about the existence of demonstration—regarding which skeptics suspend judgment. 4. Latin text in Deichgräber (1965); English translation in Frede and Walzer (1985). 5. See Allen (2001: 106–139), with references to the literature on page 107 n. 19. Ebert (1987) argues for an entirely different origin of the theory of signs discussed in Sextus.

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6. On Carneades, see Harald Thorsrud’s chapter in this book. 7. Medical Empiricism is discussed in standard histories of skepticism: Brochard (1923: book IV, ch. 1), Robin (1944: part IV, ch. 1), and Hankinson (1995: ch. XIII). Menodotus is the subject of specialized monographs: Favier (1906) and Perilli (2004).

REFERENCES Allen, James. 2001. Inference from Signs: Ancient Debates about the Nature of Evidence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Allen, James. 2010. “Pyrrhonism and Medicine.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 232–248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brochard, Pierre. 1923. Les sceptiques grecs, 2nd edn. Paris: Vrin. Capelle, Wilhelm. 1931. s.v. “Menodotos (2).” RE XXIX, cols. 901–916. Deichgräber, Karl. 1965. Die griechische Empirikerschule: Sammlung der Fragmente und Darstellung der Lehre. 2nd edn. Berlin and Zürich: Weidmann. (First published in 1930). Ebert, Theodor. 1987. “The Origin of the Stoic Theory of Signs in Sextus Empiricus.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 5: 83–126. Favier, Albert. 1906. Un médecin Grec du II siècle ap. J.-C. précurseur de la méthode expérimentale moderne: Ménodote de Nicomédie. Paris: Jules Rousset. Frede, Michael and Richard Walzer. 1985. Galen: Three Treatises on the Nature of Science. Indianapolis: Hackett. Frede, Michael. 1990. “An Empiricist View of Knowledge: Memorism.” In S. Everson (ed.), Epistemology, 225–250. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hankinson, Robert James. 1995. The Sceptics. London and New York: Routledge. Perilli, Lorenzo. 2004. Menodoto di Nicomedia: Contributo a una storia galeniana della medicina empirica. Leipzig: Saur. Perilli, Lorenzo. 2005. “Quantum coniectare (non) licet: Menodotus between Sextus Empiricus (P 1.222) and Diogenes Laertius (9.116),” Mnemosyne 58: 286–293. Robin, Léon. 1944. Pyrrhon et le scepticisme grec. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Spinelli, Emidio. 2000. “Sextus Empiricus, the Neighbouring Philosophies and the Skeptical Tradition (again on Pyr. 220–225).” In J. Sihvola (ed.), Ancient Scepticism and the Sceptical tradition. Acta Philosophica Fennica 66: 36–61. Spinelli, Emidio. 2010. “Pyrrhonism and the Specialized Sciences.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 249–264. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. von Staden, Heinrich. 1982. “Hairesis and Heresy: The Case of haireseis iatrikai.” In B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (eds.) Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. III: Selfdefinition in the Graeco-Roman World. 76–100, 199–206. London: Fortress Press.

CHAPTER NINE

Middle Platonism and Skepticism: Plutarch and Favorinus CARLOS LÉVY

1 INTRODUCTION The concept of skepticism has at least two different meanings. The first is general (M1), the second is more restricted (M2). A tendency to doubt the things commonly considered as clear was present in many ancient philosophical doctrines (M1). That was the reason why the neo-Academics were so eager to show that their absolute ἐποχή, far from being an invention of their own, was the result of a long tradition that included thinkers as different as Democritus, Xenophanes, and Socrates (Cicero, Acad. II 72–74). But generally the term “skepticism” is used in studies on ancient philosophy to designate only two schools (M2), the New Academy, inaugurated by Arcesilaus, and neo-Pyrrhonism, which was the creation of Aenesidemus in the first century BCE.1 One of the reasons for this duality is that skepticism as a technical concept did not appear before Aenesidemus. For example, Arcesilaus, scholarch of the Academy in the third century BCE, never used this concept. He defined his own philosophical identity as that of an Academic practicing a radical suspension of judgment (ἐποχὴ περὶ πάντων), not as that of a skeptic belonging to the Academy. Inside these two schools, the problem of continuity versus rupture was a permanent one, with a complex net of strategies to differentiate themselves from each other, as we will see in the case of Plutarch. Academics seem to have ignored contemptuously Aenesidemus, and two centuries later, Sextus Empiricus, defining himself as a skeptic and Pyrrhonist, worked hard in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism to demonstrate that the neo-Academics were not authentic skeptics (see Bonazzi 2011). The problem I will tackle in this chapter is how to understand the presence of skeptical terms and themes in Middle Platonism, a rich and confused period between the Hellenistic systems and Neo-Platonism, focusing my analysis on Plutarch and Favorinus.2

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2  THE MIDDLE PLATONIC BACKGROUND 2.1  Problems of Method There are two possible interpretations of the presence of skeptical terms and themes in Middle Platonism. First, one may consider skepticism and dogmatic Middle Platonism as radically different. On this interpretation, the skeptical themes are only traces, without any essential meaning, of the previous period. Second, Platonism may be deemed a paradoxical product of the evolution of skepticism, as the response to some of its aporias; and so there would be no deep rupture between the two periods. When examining the history of the New Academy, one realizes that skepticism seems to have become more and more moderate from Arcesilaus to Philo of Larissa, who, while continuing to fight Stoic dogmatism, asserted that things were knowable by nature, but without saying what the criterion of such a knowledge could do (see Brittain 2001: 138–145). Philo opened the door to an interpretation of Platonic thought that would not be entirely determined by the traditional Academic hostility toward Stoicism. The best example of this continuity can be found in the Commentary on the Theaetetus, the date of which is still at the center of many discussions.3 The author criticizes the Stoic idea that justice has a natural foundation. In order to demonstrate the falsity of this doctrine, he uses an example found in the famous antilogy of the third book of Cicero’s De re publica. In his dialectic refutation of the Stoic ethical immanentism, Carneades said that if a ship was wrecked and two shipwrecked sailors had to compete for holding on to a board, the struggle for life would be stronger than any ethical concern (Cicero, De rep. 3. 26). The solution to this Stoic aporia was, in the opinion of the author of the Commentary, the return to a dogmatic version of Platonism. It was based on the famous so-called digression of the Theaetetus 176B, namely, the view that justice could not be founded on the idea that the world is the city of gods and mankind, but in the φυγή, the flight away from the world of sensation. The difference between the position of Carneades and that of author of the Commentary is clear. For the former, at least from what we can deduce from the complex Ciceronian metaphrasis, the essential thing was to demonstrate that the premises of Stoic ethics lead to the exact opposite of what they pretended to prove, but he did not offer any alternative solution of his own. The Theaetetus, and more precisely the concept of ὁμοίωσις κατὰ τὸ δύνατον, indicates the way to avoid the difficulties inherent in naturalistic ethics. It is likely that the Theaetetus, a dialogue certainly frequently read in the New Academy that was aporetic and contained a digression with an assertive tone, was the best means to try a kind of conciliation between Carneadean skepticism and a much more dogmatic form of Platonism.

2.2  A Pioneer: Transcendence and Skepticism in Philo of Alexandria Plutarch was not the first philosopher of the Middle Platonic period to have interpreted skepticism as both an access road to transcendence and a consequence of it. In the first decades of the first century CE, Philo of Alexandria, who certainly

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was not a philosopher in the technical sense of the word but had an excellent knowledge of the philosophical milieu and texts, opened this way. He was the first, at least in our testimonies, to have expounded the tropes of Aenesidemus, not in order to affirm his own skeptical affiliation, but as a path to his rather fideistic theology. In Philo’s treatises, there are some quite interesting allusions to Academics and skeptics of his time, but their interpretation is complex, both because the allusion that seems to have been the most explicit one has reached us in an Armenian translation and because Philo has a tendency to transform the skeptics in an allegory of the resurgence of Sophistic (Lévy 2008: 105–110).4 But we find in De fuga et inventione (136), in the exegesis of the sacrifice of Isaac, an articulation between the concept of ἐποχή and the almightiness of God, which is not only interesting from the perspective of Biblical studies, but as the sign of a change in the intellectual climate, making it possible to create a strong link between doubt and transcendence. Above all, Philo’s De ebrietate has been considered by prominent scholars like von Arnim and Bréhier as being probably the closest to the classification elaborated by Aenesidemus (von Arnim 1888: 79; Bréhier 1907: 210). More recent scholars expressed a different opinion about Philo’s testimony, but without convincing evidence.5 In any case, it is important to notice that in about 30 CE, the approximate date of the redaction of most Philo’s treatises, a quite learned man with a real philosophic formation was able to bring together Academic concepts (ἐποχή, πιθανόν, εὔλογον), neo-Pyrrhonian modes, and, last but not least, the motto of Middle Platonic thought, the Platonic recommendation to become “like God so far as it is possible” (Theaet. 176b). The conditions under which this mixture took place are far from clear, but it is important that some decades before Plutarch the structures of the intellectual environment in which he was going to write his own philosophical treatises were already present.

3 PLUTARCH 3a  General Remarks John Glucker (1978: 257–279) demonstrated, rather convincingly in my opinion, that the claim that Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca. 45–120 CE) studied in an organized Academy lacks evidence. The passages in which he mentions the Academy do not allow us to say firmly that, after having been Ammonius’s pupil, he went to the Platonic school, where he would have received all his knowledge about Academic skepticism. One of the most interesting elements about Plutarch’s relation to skepticism is that he had a precise knowledge not only of the tradition represented by Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Clitomachus, but also of the neo-Pyrrhonian tradition. He wrote books in the anti-dogmatic, and especially anti-Stoic tradition of the New Academy, such as On the Contradictions of the Stoics and Against the Stoics on Common Notions, but he was also the author of On the difference between the Pyrrhonists and the Academics and of On the Pyrrhonian Ten Tropes. Plutarch’s literary and philosophical production is enormous, and any attempt to give a complete account

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of it in a few pages is impossible. However, it seems that Plutarch’s relation to skepticism has different aspects that it is necessary to present separately.

3b  The Critique of Stoicism The first aspect is his anti-Stoicism, or more exactly his hostility toward the Hellenistic dogmatisms, since he did not spare Epicureanism, against which he wrote many treatises (see Hershbell 1992). However, since the refutation of Stoicism was much more fundamental in the history of the New Academy than that of Epicureanism, I will focus on this aspect of Plutarch’s thought. In fact, his relation to Stoicism is quite complex, as Daniel Babut (1967) showed, but that does not prevent him from carrying on and extending the long tradition of criticism of the Stoic doctrine elaborated by Arcesilaus and his successors in the New Academy. In the Catalogue of Lamprias, an exhaustive list of the titles of Plutarch’s books, eight explicitly anti-Stoic treatises are mentioned, three of which have reached us, the third one being a short and polemic treatise in which Stoics are accused of saying things more absurd than those said by the poets. However, many other treatises are attacks against particular aspects of the Stoic doctrine, even if neither the name of this school nor any specific Stoic concept are present in the title. As an example, the treatise “Is rhetoric a virtue?” was certainly anti-Stoic, since these philosophers were those who had defined true rhetoric as a component of wisdom. The two main treatises, On the Contradictions of the Stoics and Against the Stoics on Common Notions, though being rich in references and often explicit about sources, are full of mysteries. It is probable that these anti-Stoic treatises were written more or less at the same time as the anti-Epicurean ones, when Plutarch was still influenced by his Platonic formation under the direction of Ammonius. Babut’s argument that these treatises are full of too much philosophical information to have been written by a young scholar is not entirely convincing, given that Plutarch could have used material carefully elaborated in the New Academy.6 Von Arnim remarked that no Stoic philosopher later than Antipater, who was more or less contemporary with Carneades, is quoted in the On the Contradictions of the Stoics. He deduced from this terminus ante quem that Plutarch used a book of the prolific Clitomachus, the successor of Carneades at the head of the Academy, as a source for his own treatise (von Arnim 1903: XI–XIV). In my opinion, it is quite probable that this neo-Academic material was the basis of the refutation by Plutarch of his main adversary, Chrysippus. However, the idea of a single source must be rejected, since his deep knowledge of the Stoa allowed him to use his own material, at the risk of creating a great deal of disorder in the composition of these treatises. Plutarch remains in the dialectical tradition of Carneades, about whom the testimonies are fewer and often more difficult to understand.7 Indeed, in many places Carneades says that he does not want to bring a dogmatic response to the philosophical problems tackled by the Stoics, just to highlight the contradictions inherent in their argumentation. Actually, his purpose was somewhat more perverse than he declares, since Stoicism argued that it was impossible to remove one element

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(Cato says one letter) without destroying the whole system (Cicero, Fin. 3.74). What Jacques Brunschwig (1995) called “the conjunctive model” was both the structure and the essence of the doctrine. To highlight contradictions was not only a dialectical ploy inside the Stoic system, it aimed to demonstrate that Stoicism had no legitimacy to give satisfactory responses to any philosophical problem. In the Contradictions, Plato is never presented as the holder of the truth. At the same time, Plutarch wants to show how unfair was Chrysippus’s criticism of many aspects of Plato’s dialogues. This βοήθεια, this effort to protect Plato against inequitable attacks was already present in the ancient Academy, though there were many differences between Speusippus or Xenocrates and the founder of their school. There is no conclusive part in the Contradictions. The last paragraphs are a discussion of Chrysippus’s dogma that it is impossible to act and to follow impulse without assenting to it, a problem involving concepts like liberty, God, and the wise, but without any attempt to go outside of the anti-Stoic debate. The same polemical context characterizes the Common Notions. Though Stoic texts can seem nowadays quite difficult to understand, even for a learned reader, Zeno or Chrysippus did not want to write abstruse treatises. On the contrary, they intended to build their system on common notions, formed from representations of reality that are the same for everyone. For example, Plutarch says that it is contrary to common sense to have two τέλη, two supreme goals in life (Common Notions 1070F). That would be true if the Stoics had really asserted the existence of this duality. In fact, by saying that the τέλος was to be found in doing one’s best for reaching the goods that conform to nature, they tried to avoid the intrusion of Fortune in the field of ethics (Soreth 1968). Plutarch resumes here in a rather confused way Carneades’s polemics against Diogenes of Babylon’s and Antipater’s teleological theories, which tried to render precise Zeno’s definition of the τέλος, namely, to live in harmony. Indeed, if we only knew the On the Contradictions of the Stoics and the Against the Stoics on Common Notions, we would consider Plutarch as a philosopher in the tradition of the New Academy, differing from Carneades by his ability to openly defend Plato, without however giving a dogmatic interpretation of his thought. This could lead us to identify him as a thinker in the tradition of Philo of Larissa’s Roman Books. But things are more complex. Plutarch is not only the defender of Academic skepticism, someone who highlights the contradictions of the Stoics in their attacks against Plato, but also someone with positive Platonic beliefs.

3c  Plutarch and Plato What Jan Opsomer (1998: 127) called the “interplay between Academic and Platonic themes in Plutarch” is a very complex problem. Plutarch wrote a treatise On the Unity of the Academy from Plato Onwards, a theme developed by Philo of Larissa at the end of his life (Boys-Stones 1997: 55 n. 2), but it did not reach us. If we knew with some precision the chronology of the Moralia, it would perhaps be easier to interpret this articulation as the result of an intellectual evolution. Plutarch tackled the controversial question of the origin of Academic skepticism in the Adversus Colotem, his reply to a highly polemical work written by a disciple

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of Epicurus against both Socrates and Arcesilaus. One of the main elements of Plutarch’s argumentation is that, far from being a foolish invention of Arcesilaus, Academic skepticism was continuous with the philosophy of doubt practiced by prestigious thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, Parmenides, and Heraclitus. Actually, Plutarch says to be grateful to Colotes and to everyone showing, though in a hostile way, that the Academic outlook came to Arcesilaus as an ancient tradition. Plutarch’s position is not fundamentally different from the one we find in Cicero, when he evokes at length the quite honorable genealogy of Academic skepticism.8 Colotes charged Socrates with being a Sophist who criticized the senses while acting in contradiction with this criticism, especially when he said that he was seeking to discover what human nature is (Plutarch, Adv. Col. 1118C). Plutarch’s reply to the Epicurean attacks against Socrates and Plato does not refute the interpretation of them as skeptics. One of the main arguments developed at length in the treatise and attributed to Arcesilaus is that which aims to demonstrate that assent is not necessary for action. The interpretation of this argument is too controversial to be discussed here. Was it defended by Arcesilaus in propria persona or only dialectically? Be that as it may, Plutarch seems to consider it a fully convincing argument. The real problem is to determine how he, the author of a treatise aiming to demonstrate the unity of the Academy throughout its complex history, could be both a Platonist and a skeptic. Plutarch, who actually defined himself as an Academic, never as a Platonist, knew about the many differences between philosophers who all referred to Plato as the inspirer of their thought. What could be for him the logic of this unity? If one accepts the concept of “metaphysical skepticism,” coined by Pierluigi Donini, it is possible to say that Plutarch’s position presents three main aspects (see Donini 1986 and Bonazzi 2016). The first is the refutation of all the doctrines proclaiming the truth of all sensations (Epicureanism) or of most of them (Stoicism). The second is that truth must be searched for in the principles identified with God, a frequent feature of Middle Platonism. The third attributes the truth only to God, so that men are reduced to looking for it carefully, without ever yielding to the temptation of asserting, as the Stoics did, that a human sophia was exactly the same as that of God, and even greater than the divine perfection, since conquered by free will. Dualism and the perfection of God are for Plutarch principles about which doubt is not allowed. That is one of the reasons why Babut suggests that his thought can be defined as a kind of fideism, speaking of “a conscious tension between the need of rationality and the divine transcendence whose manifestations go beyond the capacity to understand of our reason” (Babut 2007: 93). This is very close to the conclusion of the On the E at Delphi, where Ammonius shows that the eternity of God and human weakness, despite seeming to be contradictory, are in reality complementary (Plutarch, De E 393BC). An alternative to Babut’s fideist interpretation is Boys-Stones’s, for whom “Plutarch felt himself able to draw positive conclusions from his skepticism, and even his most Academic works—as notably the de Stoic. rep.—should still be read as vehicles for an expression of his Platonism” (Boys-Stones 1997: 55). In any case, scholarship now seems to be unanimous in having a unitarian interpretation of Plutarch’s thought, even if the formulations of this unity are different.

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3.4  Plutarch and Pyrrhonism The third aspect of Plutarch’s relation to skepticism is his attitude toward Pyrrhonism, a subject about which the loss of his treatise on the differences between Pyrrhonists and Academics leads us to a quasi-silence. It can seem quite strange that he could have written his anti-Stoic and anti-Epicurean treatises without any reference to neo-Pyrrhonism, though this doctrine was much closer to him from a chronological point of view. This only means that the strength of a philosophical affiliation was so compelling that discussions that were almost four centuries old could seem to Plutarch of a greater topicality than a skeptical doctrine that appeared less than two centuries earlier. He did not ignore Pyrrhonism, but he was not interested in it; he seems to want to use it as an instrument of his own reflection. In his extant writings at least, there is no allusion to the modes elaborated by Aenesidemus, though they were certainly extensively diffused at the beginning of the second century CE. The only reference to a specifically major Pyrrhonian concept—since ἐποχή was common to the Academics and the Pyrrhonists—namely, that of ἀφασία, is in the Adversus Colotem, without any precise reference to Pyrrhonism (Plutarch, Adv. Col. 1123C; see Ioppolo 1994, 2004; Bonazzi 2016). Plutarch says that the Epicurean claim that all sensations are true leads to the claim that sensation has the same degree of reliability as that ascribed to dreams and illusions. Here he establishes an implicit link between Epicureanism and Pyrrhonism, considering the later as a sort of consequence of the former. It seems that for an Academic philosopher, as he perceived himself, this intra-Hellenistic link between two forms of philosophy that rejected all forms of transcendence was of no interest.

4  FAVORINUS AND THE ACADEMY 4a  A Strange Personality Favorinus (ca. 80–160 CE) was not unknown to Plutarch, who dedicated the treatise on the principle of cold to him (Plutarch, De Prim. Frig. 945F–946A). He wrote a book on the Academic method, the title of which was Plutarch. He seems to have been an interesting, contradictory, and somewhat mysterious person. He said himself that there were three contradictions in his life (Philostratus, Vit. Soph., I, 8=test. 6 Barigazzi): (i) despite having been born in Arles, in the South of Gaul, he lived in a Greek way; (ii) despite being an eunuch, actually an hermaphrodite, he was accused of adultery; and (iii) despite having been hostile toward the emperor Hadrian, he was still alive. The testimonies about his philosophical identity are of two kinds. First, the Suda says that he was a very learned man (πολυμαθής), but more interested in rhetoric than in philosophy (Suda s.v. Favorinus = Barigazzi 1). It must be added that Eusebius evokes a polemic between him and Polemo the rhetor (Chronic. Can. 166 Schöne = Barigazzi 2). Second, Philostratus presents him as a philosopher who was considered a sophist because he was very eloquent (Vit. Soph. 1.8.1 = Barigazzi 2). He never says that Favorinus was a Pyrrhonist but affirms that his best writings were

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his Pyrrhonian speeches, in which, despite saying that Pyrrhonists were ephectics, he allowed them to assume the functions of judges (Vit. Soph. 1.8.6). For Lucian, too, he was a philosopher, if Favorinus is the Celtic eunuch belonging to the Academic tradition who is mentioned in the Eunuch (Eun. 7 = Barigazzi 4). Gellius, who was his disciple, mentions him many times and describes him as a philosopher, without giving any precision on his philosophical affiliation. However, in a passage of the Noctes Atticae (20, 1, 10), Favorinus presents himself as belonging to a sect that preferred research over decision (inquirere potius quam decernere), a motto quite close to the definition of the Academic attitude given by Cicero.

4b  Favorinus as Platonist Favorinus was quite interested in Plato. He wrote Memorabilia, a book on the history of philosophy in which evidently Plato had a great role, a treatise on Plato (Περὶ Πλάτωνος) and another one on Forms (Περὶ ἰδεῶν), which some scholars think was a writing about rhetoric, but which could as well have been a philosophical writing. If that was the case, Barigazzi’s (1966: 171) thesis that he had criticized idealism from a skeptical point of view is merely speculative. There is no evidence that, despite being a friend of Plutarch, he thought that it was impossible to find any kind of conciliation between Platonism and skepticism. The most extensive account of his philosophical position is given by Galen, who says that like other “recent Academics” he was sometimes so fiercely ephectic that he said that even a representation (φαντασία) of the sun could not be said to be certain, and sometimes so dogmatic that he transmitted doctrines to his disciples without having a critical approach to the criteria of knowledge (Opt. Doct. 40 = Barigazzi 28–31). Galen also says that he changed his mind between his writings, since he said in his Plutarch that something could be known with certainty, while in the Alcibiades he asserted the contrary. But if we read carefully what Galen wrote, we realize that, in fact, Favorinus always spoke in a prudent, that is, probabilistic way. He never went beyond what seemed probable to him, practicing a kind of disputatio in utramque partem (antilogy) between the possibility and the impossibility of knowledge.9 Despite being a probabilist, Favorinus had a special interest in Pyrrhonism, since he wrote a treatise in ten books about the Pyrrhonian tropes, devoting one book to each of them.10 In front of so many philosophical attitudes, Eugenio Amato (2005) has defined Favorinus as a brilliant eclectic. I am not sure that was the case. Actually, Favorinus is in my opinion an extremist of what could be named “Platonocentrism,” that is to say, the Academics’ tendency to think that their school was not a school among others, but the source of philosophy as a whole. In the famous excursus of book 3 of the De oratore, Cicero affirms that Socrates and Plato were at the origin of most philosophical schools: “Many people virtually took their origin from Socrates, since different followers seized upon different aspects of his discussions, which had been varied and diverse and had branched out in all directions” (De or. 3.61, transl. May and Wisse). It is likely that for Favorinus to be close to Pyrrhonism was not to adopt a new doctrine but to display an interest in what he thought to be a variant of Academic skepticism, itself a

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variant of Platonism. This genetic conception of philosophy is perhaps the key to what otherwise could appear as a patchwork.

5 CONCLUSION Is the problem of the relation between skepticism and Platonism in the Middle Platonist period artificial? What seems strange to us was considered normal by many prominent philosophers of that time. From a methodological point of view, we are not bound to study ancient authors with concepts of their time. But at the same time, we cannot ignore that some of the concepts we use, and especially that of Middle Platonism, did not exist at their time. To analyze concepts is of course an essential task of historians of philosophy, but one should realize that these concepts were elements of dynamic processes of identification, implying quite a number of factors that are not all explicitly conceptualized. In ancient philosophy, as Foucault and Hadot argued, there was no clear separation between thought and life. What the subject of this chapter has shown us is that the life of traditions, often so disconcerting, is a topic at least as fascinating as the static analysis of the elements that compose them.

NOTES 1. On the outlooks of Arcesilaus and Aenesidemus, see Ioppolo’s and Castagnoli’s chapters in this book. On the controversial question of Aenesidemus’s dating, see Decleva Caizzi (1992). 2. Dillon (1977) chronologically defines this period as the one between 80 BCE and 220 CE. Other delimitations are possible, since such a dating includes Antiochus of Ascalon, which is controversial. On this, see Sedley (2012). 3. On this point, see Tarrant (1985) and Bonazzi (2003: 79–212). It seems difficult to adopt for the Commentary a date later than the first century BCE. 4. The text that has reached us in an Armenian version is Quaestiones in Genesim 3.33. 5. See Striker (1983: 97), who considers it likely that Philo was a contemporary of Aenesidemus, a quite improbable hypothesis in my opinion. The absence of “the skeptical framework” in Philo’s exposition of the modes is not a convincing argument, since we have no proof that Aenesidemus’s framework of the tropes was the same as the one found in Sextus. 6. See Babut (2004: 18), for whom the most probable date of composition is ca. 80 CE. 7. On Carneades, see Thorsrud’s chapter in this book. 8. The main difference between Cicero and Plutarch is that the former does not mention Heraclitus. 9. On Favorinus’s use of antilogy, see Amato and Julien (2005: 180–181). 10. On Favorinus and the Pyrrhonists, see Ioppolo (1993).

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REFERENCES Amato, Eugenio. 2005. “L’éclectique.” In E. Amato and Y. Julien (eds.), Favorinos d’Arles: Œuvres, Tome 1. Introduction générale. Témoignages. Discours aux Corinthiens sur la Fortune, 167–176. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Amato, Eugenio and Yvette Julien. 2005. Favorinos d’Arles: Œuvres, Tome 1. Introduction générale. Témoignages. Discours aux Corinthiens sur la Fortune. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Babut, Daniel. 1967. Plutarque et le stoïcisme. Paris: PUF. Babut, Daniel. 2002. Plutarque: Œuvres morales. Traité 72: Sur les notions communes contre les Stoïciens. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Babut, Daniel. 2004. Plutarque: Œuvres morales. Traité 70: Sur les contradictions des Stoïciens. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Babut, Daniel. 2007. “L’unité de l’Académie selon Plutarque. Notes en marge d’un débat ancien et toujours actuel.” In M. Bonazzi, C. Lévy, and C. Steel (eds.), A Platonic Pythagoras: Platonism and Pythagoreanism in the Imperial Age, 63–98. Turnhout: Brepols. Barigazzi, Adelmo. 1966. Favorino d’Arelate. Opere. Introduzione, testo critico e commento. Florence: Le Monnier. Bonazzi, Mauro. 2003. Academici e Platonici. Il debattito antico sullo scetticismo di Platone. Milano: LED. Bonazzi, Mauro. 2008. “L’offerta di Plutarco. Teologia e filosofia nel De E apud Delphos (capitoli 1–2),” Philologus 152: 205–211. Bonazzi, Mauro. 2011. “Again on Sextus on Aenesidemus and Plato.” In D. Machuca (ed.), New Essays on Ancient Pyrrhonism, 11–20. Leiden: Brill. Bonazzi, Mauro. 2012. “Plutarch on the Difference between the Pyrrhonists and the Academics,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 43: 271–298. Bonazzi, Mauro. 2016. “Le platonisme de Plutarque de Cheronée entre scepticisme, théologie et métaphysique.” In A.-I. Bouton-Touboulic and C. Lévy (eds.). Scepticisme et religion: Constantes et évolutions, de la philosophie hellénistique à la philosophie médiévale, 75–88. Turnhout: Brepols. Boys-Stones, George. 1997. “Thyrsus-Bearer of the Academy or Enthusiast for Plato? Plutarch’s De Stoicorum repugnantiis.” In J. Mossman (ed.), Plutarch and His Intellectual World, 41–58. London: Duckworth. Bréhier, Émile. 1907. Les idées philosophiques et religieuses de Philon d’Alexandrie. Paris: Picard. Brittain, Charles. 2001. Philo of Larissa: The Last of the Academic Sceptics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1995. “Le modèle conjonctif.” In his Études sur les philosophies hellénistiques, 161–187. Paris: PUF. (First published in 1978.) Decleva Caizzi, Fernanda. 1992. “Aenesidemus and the Academy,” Classical Quarterly 42: 176–189. Dillon, John. 1996. The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D. 220. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (First published in 1977.) Donini, Pierluigi. 1986. “Lo scetticismo accademico, Aristotele e l’unità della tradizione platonica secondo Plutarco.” In G. Cambiano (ed.), Storiografia e dossografia nella filosofia antica, 203–214. Torino: Tirrenia stampatori.

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Frazier, Françoise. 2008. “Philosophie et religion dans la pensée de Plutarque. Quelques réflexions autour des emplois du mot πίστις,” Études platoniciennes 5: 41–62. Glucker, John. 1978. Antiochus and the Late Academy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hershbell, Jackson P. 1992. “Plutarch and Epicureanism.” In W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 36 (5), 3353–3383. Berlin: de Gruyter. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1993. “The Academic Position of Favorinus of Arelate,” Phronesis 38: 183–213. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 1994. “Accademici e Pirroniani nel II secolo d.C.” In A. Alberti (ed.), Realtà e ragione. Studi di filosofica antica, 85–103. Florence: L.S. Olschki. Isnardi Parente, Margherita. 1988. “Plutarco contro Colote.” In I. Gallo (ed.), Aspetti dello stoicismo e dell’epicureismo in Plutarco, 65–88. Ferrara. Lévy, Carlos. 2005. “Deux problèmes doxographiques chez Philon d’Alexandrie: Posidonius et Énésidème.” In A. Brancacci (ed.), Philosophy and Doxography in the Imperial Age, 103–120. Florence: Leo S. Olschi. Lévy, Carlos. 2008. “La conversion du scepticisme chez Philon d’Alexandrie.” In F. Alesse (ed.), Philo of Alexandria and Post-Aristotelian Philosophy, 103–120. Leiden: Brill. Lévy, Carlos. 2009. “Favorinus et les Academica,” Revue des Études Anciennes 111: 45–54. Lévy, Carlos. 2013. “Plutarque juge et partie: à propos des débats entre l’Académie, le Jardin et le Portique,” Aitia 3. May, M. James and Jakob Wisse. 2001. Cicero on the Ideal Orator. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Opsomer, Jan. 1998. In Search of the Truth. Academic Tendencies in Middle Platonism. Bruxelles: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen. Sedley, David. 2012. Antiochus of Ascalon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soreth, Marion. 1968. “Der zweite Telosformel des Antipater vor Tarsos,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 50: 48–72. Striker, Gisela. 1983. “The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus.” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 95–116. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Tarrant, Harold. 1985. Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. von Arnim, Hans. 1888. Quellenstudien zu Philon. Berlin: Weidmann. von Arnim, Hans. 1901. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner.

CHAPTER TEN

Sextus Empiricus TAD BRENNAN AND CLIFF ROBERTS

1 INTRODUCTION There is no evidence that, in his own day, Sextus Empiricus was a figure of any great prominence. If we look to sources outside his writings, we find only a few contemporaries who mention him, in lists of teachers and students, and they credit him with no philosophical innovations (DL IX 116; Ps-Galen 14.683). If we look inside his writings, we find a clever and competent compiler of other people’s arguments, who claims no originality for either the structure or contents of his works. For all that we know, it may be that in his own day Sextus was a very minor figure. But accidents of transmission have led to his becoming a very major figure indeed for the modern era. In the history of skepticism in the West, Sextus is central and indispensable: he is the conduit through which the most copious streams of Ancient Greek skepticism flooded into Renaissance Europe, with effects both cataclysmic and fertilizing.1 In St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, a modest plaque marks the tomb of Christopher Wren, its architect. It reads “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice.” So too, the reader looking for a fitting monument to the influence of Sextus Empiricus may look around this book as a whole, and see something of his influence in nearly every chapter. In the present chapter, we devote Section 2 to an overview of the life and works of Sextus Empiricus. We then introduce the problem of how to characterize the philosophical project of Pyrrhonism, and in particular its claim to offer practical guidance in living (Section 3). This problem has been discussed extensively in the literature, and we focus on two especially influential proponents of opposing viewpoints, Michael Frede and Myles Burnyeat (Section 4). In Section 5, we consider controversies about how to understand Sextus’s use of Modes of Skeptical argumentation.

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2  OVERVIEW OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF SEXTUS EMPIRICUS The evidence for Sextus’s life is “frightfully meager,” as Burnyeat (1984: 242) put it—estimates of his dates range anywhere within a century on either side of 200 CE. His location can be specified with comparable imprecision—he probably lived in a major city somewhere in the Mediterranean basin. Scholarly arguments for locating him in Rome or Alexandria turn out to be tissue-thin, as House (1980) has shown. He is clearly a follower of the Neo-Pyrrhonian School of Aenesidemus. He is very well informed about the main philosophical schools of the period from 300 BCE to 100 BCE, but he seems curiously unaware of philosophical developments in the centuries closer to him. We must imagine that he or his sources had access to a good library, given the many texts that he quotes; but nothing about his works suggest that he is in daily contact with a community of philosophers, whether of his own school or opponents. The reasons to think he was a medical doctor begin with the name “Empiricus,” attached to him in his own manuscripts and in the two contemporary references, which suggest that he was connected with the Empiricist school of medicine. The picture is somewhat confused by his stated preference for the Methodical school of medicine, but not in a way that speaks against his having been a trained physician (PH I 237–241). He also refers at two points to treatises that he wrote on medicine2; these and a treatise “On the Soul” have not survived (ΑΜ X 84). The works that have survived are three: a treatise in three books called Outlines of Pyrrhonism (cited as PH from the initials of its Latin title); a treatise in six books called Against the Professors (AM, likewise from its Latin title), and a treatise in five books of the same name (AM VII–XI), but composed independently of the second, six-book treatise. The Outlines begins with an overview of the Skeptical system (PH I), before turning to the detailed refutations of dogmatic theories of logic and epistemology (PH II), and physics, theology, and ethics (PH III). In AM I–VI, Sextus offers arguments against the advocates of the liberal arts, sc. grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music (in that order). In AM VII–VIII, he investigates theories of logic and epistemology; in AM IX–X he investigates physics and theology; and in AM XI he investigates ethics. As that brief account indicates, Sextus gives us two separate treatments of each of the main topics in philosophy: logic and epistemology are discussed both in AM VII–VIII and in PH II; physics in AM VIII–IX and in PH III, and ethics in AM XI and PH III. Much material is reused, though seldom through verbatim copying from one treatise to another. And indeed, scholars disagree about which of the two sources was written earlier. Janáček (1963) argued that the shorter, more summary treatments in PH were written before the fuller treatments in AM, but Bett (commentary to Sextus 1997) has argued for the opposing view. Most of the material in these treatises is, by design, quoted from dogmatic philosophers. Sextus begins his investigation of a given dogmatic tenet by presenting the view at length before arguing against it. Often his counterarguments, too,

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are drawn from dogmatic sources. As a result, his works are a treasure-trove of dogmatic arguments, as well as skeptical arguments. His reporting of earlier schools is generally fair and accurate, so far as we are in a position to judge the matter, and accordingly his evidentiary value is very high. However, precisely because so much of his work consists in quotations, it is also not directly useful for understanding his own Skeptical outlook. Sextus had no philosophical dogmata—so he claims—but he did practice a way of life. And he does offer us a variety of comments and explanations about what he does as a Skeptic.

3  SEXTUS’S SKEPTICAL OUTLOOK: SKEPTICAL VERSUS DOGMATIC ASSENT The clearest and most direct statement of his own understanding of the Skeptical outlook and life is given by Sextus in the first book of PH, in particular, §§1–35. The outlook there portrayed is a (perhaps turbulent) marriage of two separate aspects. The first aspect captures our familiar contemporary view of skepticism as exclusively destructive.3 Sextus defines the Skeptic as someone who possesses the ability, when faced with any claim, to generate an equally strong case for its contrary. The Skeptic, and anyone else exposed to the competing arguments and considerations pro and con, then has no better reason to assent to the given claim than to its contrary. Since the Skeptic cannot assent to both claims (they are, after all, contraries), her most natural recourse is the suspension of assent (ἐποχή) with respect to claims: to assent neither to the claim nor to its contrary. Yet a virtue can be made of what appears, at first, to be mere rational necessity, for the Skeptic discovers, upon suspending belief, that she has achieved some measure of peace of mind, what the Skeptic calls “quietude” or “freedom from disturbance” (ἀταραξία), which is the final end of the Skeptical philosophy. It is no wonder, then, that Sextus devotes the lion’s share of the first book of PH to characterizing the elaborate and various forms of argument—called “Modes” (τρόποι)—by means of which ἐποχή is to be secured; for without a sufficiently robust armory of such arguments, there is little hope of securing ἐποχή, and beyond it, the grail of ἀταραξία.4 Neither ἐποχή nor ἀταραξία makes a life; the former, in particular, is a merely negative stance of withholding assent. Yet the Skeptic, in Sextus’s words, “cannot help but be active” (PH I 23), and a distinctively human life, one given structure and content by reasons, seems to demand assent. Without assent a human is reduced to a merely vegetative life, a life without action. This apparent conflict need not perturb the Skeptic, for the Skeptic’s commitment to ἐποχή is fully consistent—so Sextus insists—with the Skeptic’s giving assent, when this assent is limited to the standard or criterion of “appearances” or “what is apparent.” This is the second or positive aspect of Sextus’s Skepticism, which is less familiar to contemporary readers (PH I 19–24, 29–30). It is appearances to which the Skeptic assents in living her life, and it is appearances that determine a quite ordinary life lived in light of the natural human capacities for thought and sensation, the constraint of feelings (e.g., of thirst and hunger), the familiar customs and laws, and the teachings of the crafts (PH I 23). While it is true that these appearances are objects of Skeptical

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assent, her assent on these matters is consistent with her advocacy of ἐποχή, since she withholds assent only to the “things underlying” (ὑποκείμενα) appearances, not to the appearances themselves. These ὑποκείμενα are precisely the objects of that form of assent, dogmatic assent, which the Skeptic avoids at all costs. Thus the Skeptic aspires to navigate the twin perils of inaction and dogmatic assent. Whether this aspiration can be realized has been the subject of much scholarly controversy. A verdict on this issue presupposes answers to specific questions about the difference between dogmatic and Skeptical assent: is it a difference in the object of assent or a difference in the kind of assent? Is Skeptical assent to be understood, like dogmatic assent, as assent to the truth of a claim? Does it constitute what we would now think of as belief? What are the “apparent” or “evident” matters to which the Skeptic may assent, and how are they to be distinguished from the topics about which the Skeptic suspends? Very different answers to these questions have been given by interpreters, and it is to those answers that we now turn.

4  INTERPRETING SEXTUS ON ASSENT: FREDE AND BURNYEAT For the last four decades, philosophical discussions of how the Pyrrhonist lives have been dominated by the work of Michael Frede and Myles Burnyeat, and the reactions that their work has provoked. In two papers, Frede (1979, 1984) argued for a radical revision of the standard understanding of Sextus’s philosophy and accompanied this rereading of Sextus with a novel account of the development of ancient skepticism as a whole. In two other papers, Burnyeat (1980, 1984) argued for a more traditional, Humean understanding of Sextus. These papers are brilliant examples of how to write the history of philosophy, engaging with questions of the broadest philosophical scope as well as the most minute philological detail. They deserve and repay repeated study. That said, they can be frustrating because of their difficulty and obscurity.5 In the next two sections, we will discuss the work of Frede and of Burnyeat.

4a  Frede’s Sextus Empiricus In his first paper on skepticism, Frede (1979) drew attention to the fact that Sextus claims not to eschew all beliefs in general, but only dogmatic beliefs, that is, beliefs about “non-evident” or “non-apparent” matters, matters of dogmatic investigation. Frede proposed that the scope of the “evident” is very inclusive; Sextus possesses an extensive collection of beliefs that are quite ordinary in their character and subject matter. The Pyrrhonian Skeptic goes through his or her day believing most of the things that anyone else believes about the ordinary objects and events in their world. What the Pyrrhonist feels no inclination either to accept or to deny are the theories of the Dogmatic schools, and their elaborate, non-evident stories about Democritean atoms, Platonic forms, Aristotelian entelechies, and so on. Believing in those things is what makes one a Dogmatist. But through his investigations of these theoretical posits, and through his ability to construct arguments in opposition to the Democritean, Platonic, and so on arguments for special entities and theories, the

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Pyrrhonist has come to feel that the case for and against all of these things is perfectly equipollent. As a result, he suspends judgment about their existence. But doing so is fully compatible with believing all of the ordinary things that non-philosophers believe about the world around them. And since the Skeptic has very nearly the same number and kind of beliefs that any ordinary person has, the traditional question of how a Skeptic can live without any beliefs simply never arises. So far as their ordinary interactions with tables, chairs, food, cliffs, and the other people in their lives, the Skeptic lives just as anyone else lives. That, in broad outline, is the reading that Frede advanced. When we move to the details of Frede’s reading, however, it becomes more complex and obscure. The complexity is not in itself a defect in Frede’s reading; any adequate interpretation of a complex philosophical text will have to be a complex interpretation. The obscurity, however, is a lamentable artifact of Frede’s own failure to make his views clear. The crux of the problem is his characterization of the difference between the beliefs that Pyrrhonists may have (about “evident” or “apparent” matters), and those that they reject as dogmatic (concerning the “non-evident”). At first sight, it may seem that the difference is one of content—the Pyrrhonist may believe in the evident chairs around them, but not in the non-evident Form of the Chair. But it is fairly clear that this could not have been what Sextus meant, and that it is not what Frede thought he meant. We can see this because Sextus sometimes attacks beliefs as dogmatic even when they have the same content as beliefs he elsewhere accepts. As Frede says, “it is not the content of theoretical views . . . that makes them dogmatic views; it is, rather, the attitude of the dogmatist” (1979: 195). So it is clear that Frede did not think that the difference between evident and non-evident matters is one of disjoint subject matters. However, it can be very difficult to tell where precisely Frede does locate the crucial difference. In parts of his first paper, he suggests that the difference between the Skeptic’s beliefs and the Dogmatist’s beliefs consists in the difference between believing that P and believing that it is true that P; or passively believing P and actively believing P; or implicitly and explicitly believing P; or unconsciously and consciously believing P. Fine (2000) does a thorough and excellent job of showing insurmountable problems with all of these glosses. In his second paper, Frede distinguished between “holding a view” that P and “taking a position” that P. Frede clearly wanted these phrases to convey some distinction, but on their own they get us no further toward understanding what he meant. We are inclined to find the core of Frede’s view in a different set of glosses that he sometimes uses, according to which the Dogmatic beliefs present themselves as part of an ultimate scientific theory of the world: [Dogmatic beliefs claim to contain] deeper insights into the true nature of things. (Frede 1979: 179) [I]t is characteristic of the dogmatists that they believe it is possible to go behind the surface phenomena to the essence of things, to the nature of things, to true reality. (Frede 1979: 187) [The Skeptic does not think that his impressions are] such that they will come out true on the true theory of things. (Frede 1984: 210)

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[In dogmatic assent, one] commits oneself to a belief about what will come out as true on the true theory of things, about what would turn out to be true if one really knew what things are like. (Frede 1984: 215) Dogmatists think that the philosophical project, the ζήτησις that they began along with the Pyrrhonists, aims at the ultimate possession of a deep, explanatory, comprehensive, rationally justified theory of the world; a scientific knowledge of the nature of things, expressed in the language of science, whose nouns name the real entities and whose predicates map the real properties of the world. This is the kind of theory whose possession will purge our lives of anomaly and disturbance. Once one has it, one will be able to say individual true things, of course, but far more than that: one will have scientific knowledge of the true things one says and be able to show, for any truth one utters, exactly how one’s grasp of it counts as knowledge, how it is justified by its place in the total system. It is possible that the Pyrrhonists share or shared (in the beginning) some parts of this characterization of the project, the ultimate aim of their ongoing ζήτησις. But the Dogmatists think that their school already has attained it, or some large coherent fragment of it, and that the pronouncements they make as members of that school are already deliverances of that ultimate theory. They are not merely true; they are a part of the ultimate true theory, and so inherit from it those features of consistency, coherence, explanatory adequacy, ideal vocabulary, and so on. This, so far as we can tell, is the reason that Frede sometimes wrote as though the essence of the Dogmatic stance was the additional belief that P is true; he was using “true” as a shorthand for “is a deliverance of the ultimate true, explanatory, rationally justified, etc. theory,” or as he says, “is true on the true theory.” “For them [sc. Dogmatists], those things count as truths which on the true account of things would come out as truths” (1984: 210, 215). In the modest sense of “true” in which every belief that P entails believing that it is true that P (which we take to be the normal sense of “true,” as well as the normal account of belief), it is clearly not the case that “taking something to be true” means “committing oneself to its being explanatory, expressed in the ideal vocabulary, and so on”—that is, the whole long range of properties that Frede abbreviates by calling them “true.” Fine (2000) raised a number of decisive points against the idea that a Skeptic can believe P without believing that P is true, in the ordinary sense of “believe” and “true.” We think that Frede’s best response would be simply to concede that she is right, and that he was using “true” and “truth” in a nonstandard sense. It is a sense with some parallels among ancient Dogmatists—for example, Parmenides’s “Way of Truth” or the Stoic idea that only the Stoic Sage has “truth”—but it is certainly not the normal sense of “truth.” This is how Sextus understands what it is to be a Dogmatist and what it is to assent to something dogmatically: to assent to something dogmatically is to arrogate to one’s belief the status of ultimacy, to present it as part of the ultimate theory of everything. When one reflects on the writings of actual Dogmatists such as Plato, Aristotle, or Chrysippus, this characterization of them may seem unfair. There is much that is tentative and provisional in their work, places where one can see that their thoughts

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are still developing and will continue to develop. If Frede’s Sextus characterizes dogmatic belief in terms of granting something the status of ultimacy, it seems that Plato, Aristotle, and Chrysippus turn out not have been uniformly dogmatic after all, and this outcome may look like an objection to Frede’s characterization of Sextus’s position. But it is not. For the same mismatch between the figure of the Dogmatist in Sextus and the actual schools that Sextus opposes is clear from the opening lines of the work. The Dogmatists of PH I 1 are figures whose searching has terminated, because they claim to have discovered the truth. It is clear to us as sensitive readers of Plato (e.g.,) that this misrepresents his attitude toward many of his own doctrines; his own searching was by no means at an end when he wrote his dialogues. But Sextus clearly characterizes Plato and other Dogmatists as people who believe that their answers have put an end to searching. Frede is not misrepresenting Sextus on this point; but is Sextus misrepresenting his opponents? Is “the Dogmatist” in Sextus merely an idealization or projection rather than an accurate report of people whom Sextus had met or whose writings he had read? The answer is presumably mixed, inasmuch as the historical figures themselves had mixed attitudes toward their own views. Plato, for instance, seems to have been willing to try a number of competing characterizations of the “participation-relation” between Forms and particulars; nothing in his writing suggests that he thought he had worked out that part of his doctrine in a final form. By contrast, his attitudes toward such statements as “There are gods” and “Virtue is good” look to be clear cases of Dogmatism, whether by Sextus’s characterization in the opening trichotomy of PH I 1, or by Frede’s criterion of ultimacy: Plato thought his search with respect to those questions had ended with the successful discovery of truths that would form parts of the ultimate true theory of everything. Whatever else might change as his doctrine evolved, these claims would remain unaltered. If Plato’s own attitude toward his doctrine was a mixture of the tentative and the dogmatic, Epicureanism featured an even higher proportion of the dogmatic, and even less invitation to future revision or innovation. Finally, when we consider the Stoics, it is worth remembering that, according to their own theory of assent (which formed the structural basis for the Skeptic doctrine of assent and suspension), one should assent to an impression only when it is cataleptic, that is, true, guaranteed to be true by its content, and of such a sort that if a Sage were to assent to it, her assent would be unshakeable by any rational argumentation. No future findings of philosophy or science could give the Sage reason to reverse their assent or revise their views on this topic. Here the Skeptical equation of dogma with ultimacy is entirely justified. So the Skeptic conception of dogmatic assent is not a gross distortion of the ambitions of Sextus’s opponents, though it also does not apply to all of their practices. Many of his opponents put forward many of their views as though they were the deliverances of the final, ultimate theory, which would be vindicated by any future perfected version of philosophy. Such views are the Skeptic’s lawful prey. True, some Dogmatists put forward some of their views as provisional or tentative hypotheses awaiting development. But it is not unfair for Sextus to attack these views, either, given that the attack simply culminates in a request that the Dogmatist not assent to them in a dogmatic way. And if the view in question was advanced by

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the Dogmatist in a merely provisional or tentative way, then the Dogmatist does not need to do anything new in order to comply with the Skeptic’s request. Because the Skeptic rejects only dogmatic pronouncements, that is, assertions that arrogate to themselves the status of ultimacy, the Skeptic can consistently have and use a wide range of other beliefs about ordinary life. The non-philosopher thinks it is day, and thinks that it is true that it is day, but does not have any view about whether the ultimate theory of the world will make reference to “days” or eliminate them in favor of some purified vocabulary. The Pyrrhonists do the same, both about days and about the rest of their ordinary practical life. This expansion in the range of the Pyrrhonist’s beliefs leads directly to a contraction in the range of the Pyrrhonist’s ἀταραξία. All interpretations of Sextus must agree that he promises tranquility with respect to the prohibited dogmatic opinions and moderated disturbance with respect to what is necessary.6 But this boundary or surface between the necessitated things and the realm of dogmatic opinion shifts a great deal between rival interpretations. The classic Humean reading has the surface shrink to a minuscule bubble inside the Pyrrhonist’s own mind; within that bubble, Skeptics will necessarily have appearances and suffer the moderate affections of being appeared to in various ways. But they can attain tranquility outside that bubble by refusing to believe that there is a war on, not assenting that their family was just captured by the enemy, suspending judgment about whether they are being trussed up for execution, and so on. On Frede’s reading, the realm of moderate affections moves outward to encompass ordinary life, including families and wars, and the realm of tranquility shrinks to a sphere around the doctrinal posturings of the Dogmatic schools. The Pyrrhonist has little choice but to suffer the ordinary injuries, both physical and mental, that ordinary people are prey to; and they are content if they can share only moderately in the frailties of flesh. But they can achieve one important kind of tranquility: they can resist adding on to their inevitable injuries the voluntary and self-inflicted disturbance that comes from fanatical devotion to a speculative creed. Much less is being promised by the Pyrrhonist on this reading; they can offer little advantage over ordinary life. But, as they have learned, no other school can credibly offer any great advantage, either. And the Skeptic can offer a huge advantage over the rival Dogmatic schools: they can show you how not to worsen your life with dogma. They offer no miracle cure for ordinary suffering—injuries, worries, grief, and pain are all necessary concomitants of life. It is the Dogmatists who offer miracle cures, and the Pyrrhonists can show you that they are all charlatans and quacks, whose remedies give you a new disease you did not have before. That, in outline, is the picture that Frede offers. It allows Sextus to give a very robust answer to the traditional charge that the life of the Skeptic is not livable: the Skeptic in this view can live a very ordinary life indeed, with the same beliefs, actions, attitudes, desires, and so on that the ordinary person has.

4b Burnyeat’s Sextus Empiricus Burnyeat’s first article was written largely without reference to Frede’s work; only the sixth of its seven sections (“Controversial Interlude”) acknowledges Frede’s reading

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of Skepticism, and it does so in order to consider it as a possible objection to the paper’s main conclusions and then dismiss it. Otherwise, the paper advances a view of Skepticism that is traditional in its verdicts (inspired by Hume, a long quotation from whom begins the paper), although brilliantly sophisticated in its methods. Those main verdicts are two: first, that if it were possible to live the life that Sextus describes, it would be horrible, repellent, and sub-human: “The life without belief is not an achievement of the will, but a paralysis of reason by itself ” (Burnyeat 1980: 42). Second, Burnyeat argues that the description of the life is incoherent in any case: it claims to be a life without belief, but the central elements of the Skeptic’s life—opposing arguments, equipollence, suspension, and tranquility—all require to be explained in terms of belief. This is the burden of the last section of the paper. Burnyeat’s article, too, contains some puzzles. To begin with, he claims early in the paper that the word “true” in Ancient Greek philosophical contexts means “‘true of a real objective world’ . . . as distinct from mere appearance . . . . Statements which merely record how things appear . . . are not called true or false” (1980: 25–26). He then notes that belief involves “the accepting of something as true,” and then concludes that there can be no beliefs about how things appear, since there is no truth about such matters. In line with this distinction, Burnyeat argues that assents to matters of real existence constitute beliefs, and are contrasted with assents to appearances, which are not beliefs and do not have truth-values (1980: 26–27). It is quite unclear how Burnyeat intended to establish or argue for his claim that truth in Greek philosophical contexts is restricted to beliefs about “matters of real existence.” This is not something that one can look up in a dictionary, nor are there ancient statements to this effect. Barnes (1982: n. 21) and Fine (2000) have both rejected this line of argument, and in the article Burnyeat does little more than assert it. It is unsurprising, therefore, that later interpreters such as Fine (2000) and Perin (2010a,b) have accepted Burnyeat’s claim that Skeptical assent pertains only to subjective matters of appearance (not objective matters about the world), while rejecting his further claim that such assent cannot be viewed as belief, that is, as assent to the truth of the subjective matters. The claim that “truth” cannot apply to appearances plays a central role in Burnyeat’s arguments. It leads immediately to the conclusion that the Skeptic cannot have any beliefs. For Sextus says he assents only to appearances, but (according to Burnyeat) appearances have no truth-values, and things without truth-values cannot be beliefs (Burnyeat 1980: 26). Since Burnyeat takes the Pyrrhonist to have no beliefs whatsoever, he assumes that Pyrrhonian suspension and tranquility must also occur without beliefs, on pain of inconsistency. Accordingly, he imagines that the Pyrrhonist will claim, not that they believe that opposed arguments are equipollent, but that the opposed arguments merely appear to them to be equipollent, without their believing that they are. (This sort of appearance claim is called by both Frede and Burnyeat a “non-epistemic” appearance claim, but we agree with Fine (2000: 83 fn. 11) that it is more useful and more accurate to call it a “non-doxastic” appearance claim, since the speaker disavows even the correlative belief, much less the correlative knowledge). And here Burnyeat protests: “this appearance, so called, being the effect of argument, is only

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to be made sense of in terms of reason, belief, and truth—the very notions the sceptic is most anxious to avoid” (1980: 50). Furthermore, he argues that no tranquility can be produced by suspension unless the Skeptic is “in some sense satisfied . . . that no answers are forthcoming, that contrary claims are indeed equal . . . How can Sextus then deny that this is something he believes?” (1980: 52). So Burnyeat’s Skeptic is committed to beliefs at two stages in the process: “[b]oth the causes (reasoned argument) . . . and the effects (tranquillity) are such as to justify us in calling it a state of belief ” (1980: 52). In pressing the argument against the first stage, Burnyeat anticipates that the Pyrrhonist will claim that opposed arguments merely appear equipollent. But he denies they can do so coherently: “In the philosophical case, the impression, when all is said and done, simply is my assent to the conclusion of an argument, assent to it as true” (Burnyeat 1980: 53). This argument is rather mysterious. Why can it not appear to someone that two arguments are of equal weight, without her believing that they really are? And what does it mean to say that “the impression . . . simply is my assent”? This last phrase, although it makes an attractive slogan, is surely a category mistake, given the terms of Hellenistic epistemology. An impression is a sort of state, a static configuration of one’s soul; an assent is a movement of one’s soul.7 No state can be a movement. And in particular, no impression can ever be anything more than a possible object for some psychic action such as entertaining, assenting, rejecting, investigating, and so on. Impressions stand to assents as propositions stand to propositional attitudes, and to say “the impression just is an assent” is no more sensible than saying “the proposition just is a wondering whether.” Burnyeat seems to be aware that he has overstated his case, since in the next sentences he talks more carefully of the impression “presupposing” or “including” assent, and of its being not “independent of ” assent. So presumably what he meant was not that the impression at issue “simply is” an assent, but rather that it somehow presupposes one or more assents. Since the impression at issue is an impression that two arguments are of equal weight, then perhaps this is his thought: if I have the impression that A and B are both equally probative arguments, then I must have assented, previous to having this comparative impression, to the two earlier impressions that A is a probative argument and B is a probative argument. But that simply raises a second round of questions: why can I not have the impression that A is a probative argument, without assenting to that impression (and likewise for B)?8 Here Burnyeat’s response might be: the impression that A is a probative argument is not (of course) itself an assent, but it depends, in turn, on earlier assents, as for instance my assenting to the impressions that A is formally valid, and that the premises of A are cogent and plausible. So my impression of equipollence “includes” and “presupposes” my assent to impressions of probative force, and my impressions of probative force “include” and “presuppose” my assents to impressions of validity and cogency. The impressions at every higher level presupposes assents to the impressions at lower levels. But do they? Why cannot the form appear valid and the premises cogent, without my assenting to those appearances? Why cannot the entire practice of Skeptical argument build up from the lowest level with nothing but a sequence of impressions,

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to which no assents are forthcoming? I have the impression that certain premises are cogent, and that certain forms are valid; as to whether they are or not, I suspend judgment. I have the impression that the argument they constitute is probative, but I do not assent to its being so. I have the impression that a pair of such forms, filled out with such premises, is roughly balanced in its force; nonetheless no assent eventuates. Burnyeat does not seem to have a way to rule this out. Perhaps at this juncture he switches to the second stage of the argument and appeals to the “effects” of suspension, instead of its “causes”: if I am not “convinced by the argument[s]” on both side, and then convinced of their equality of weight, then I will not be “in some sense satisfied . . . that contrary claims are indeed equal,” and thus no tranquility will ensue (Burnyeat 1980: 53). Nothing short of assent can alleviate my worries. Perhaps this was Burnyeat’s thought in this passage. But if so, then he could have convicted the Skeptic of having beliefs in much easier ways. Nothing especially philosophical needs to be introduced; we may simply suppose the Skeptic is sitting comfortably in a chair. The Skeptic will claim to suspend judgment about whether the chair will continue to hold him up or will disappear and drop him abruptly to the floor—there are arguments on both sides, after all. But the comfortable Skeptic will also manifest no concern about the possibility of being dropped abruptly to the floor. If, according to Burnyeat, nothing short of assent can alleviate the Skeptic’s worries, then the unworried chair-sitter must be “in some sense satisfied” that the chair will not disappear. And how can he then deny that this is something he believes? Our point is that this problem of tranquility is perfectly general, and has no special connection to philosophical impressions. There is a general question, applicable to both chairs and equipollence: “how can you be tranquil about danger D, when you suspend judgment about whether D impends?” If the Skeptic cannot answer it for chairs, then Burnyeat can make his point without the complexities of arguments and equipollence and philosophical impressions. If the Skeptic can answer it, then the answer will serve just as well for equipollence as for chairs. And put in terms of chairs, the Skeptic answer should be familiar. When asked why “someone who suspends judgment does not rush away to a mountain instead of to the bath,” Plutarch answers on behalf of the Academic Skeptics, “because, of course, it is not the mountain but the bath that appears a bath to him” (1122E, trans. LS). The Skeptic is careful around cliffs and comfortable in chairs because it is the cliff, not the chair, that appears dangerous to him. In the same way, the Skeptic can be comfortable with equipollence because the arguments appear equipollent. Assent is not a precondition of tranquility. So the claim that the Skeptic’s suspensive practice commits him to beliefs, either in its causes or its effects, does not strike us as successful. And the claim that the life without belief is a “paralysis of reason” is based on the idea that the Skeptic can have no beliefs of any sort, which in turn is based on an idiosyncratic claim about Greek theories of “truth.” It also does not take account of Frede’s suggestion that the Skeptic has a wide variety of beliefs that can be employed in life. Burnyeat’s second article “The Skeptic in his Place and Time” is presented as a direct response to Frede’s reading (1984: fn. 13). He argues that Frede is attributing

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to Sextus a strategy of “insulating” some areas of discourse from other areas of discourse. If one “insulates” the claims of ordinary life from the claims of philosophy, then they cannot clash or contradict; we may claim philosophically that there is no such thing as time, while claiming in ordinary life that there is enough time to catch the train, without either claim “affecting or being affected by” the other (Burnyeat 1984: 227). No ancient Skeptic, Burnyeat argues, ever practiced insulation. Thus Frede’s reading of Sextus is anachronistic, attributing to him a view he could not possibly have had. That is a rough outline of Burnyeat’s strategy in the article. But in detail it goes slightly differently. He introduces at least two kinds of “insulating” readings of skepticism, one derived from Gassendi and Montaigne that he calls “insulation by subject matter,” or the “Country Gentleman’s Interpretation,” the other derived from Kant, which he refers to as “insulation by level,” or “transcendental skepticism” (Burnyeat 1984: 233, 252). On the Country Gentleman’s Interpretation, a Skeptic scrutinizes such philosophical posits as Platonic Forms and Epicurean atoms but accepts as evident our ordinary talk of tables and chairs. On the transcendental reading, there is no distinction of subject matter, but rather “two ways of understanding a statement like ‘The stove is warm,’ the plain way and the philosophical way, and it is only the philosophical claim to an absolute knowledge that the sceptic wants to question” (Burnyeat 1984: 252). Burnyeat’s comments about “insulation by level” are clearly intended to be a sympathetic presentation of Frede’s reading, in which Skeptical enquiry is restricted to “the dogmatist’s belief that he can achieve a further or deeper kind of knowledge and truth than the plain man requires for the purposes of ordinary life” (Burnyeat 1984: 233). He spends the bulk of the article (§§III–IX) looking closely at arguments in Sextus about the concept of “place” (τόπος) in order to show that Sextus did not insulate by subject matter in that discussion, and (by implication) that he did not insulate by subject matter in the rest of his work. He then argues (§§X–XI) that no one ever insulated by level until Kant. He concludes that it is anachronistic to suppose that Sextus insulated by level. But evidently there is a problem here: Burnyeat never examines Sextus directly to see whether he insulated by level (rather than by subject matter). He has no argument to that conclusion, other than the claim that no one prior to Kant insulated by level. And this indirect argument from anachronism simply begs the question against Frede: Kant was not the first person to insulate by level if Sextus did it before him. This gap in Burnyeat’s argumentative strategy could be closed if it could be shown that anyone who insulates by level must also insulate by subject matter. In that case, the demonstration that Sextus does not insulate by subject matter in his discussions of place would go some way toward showing that he could not be insulating by level, either. But in fact, insulation by subject matter does not follow from insulation by level. Quite to the contrary: the hypothesis on which Sextus insulated by level actually presupposes that Sextus did not insulate by subject matter. Here is why. The hypothesis on which Sextus insulated by level claims that he directed his skeptical scrutiny toward statements and assertions only when they

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are read or understood in one way (as dogmatic pronouncements), and not when they are understood in another way (as claims in ordinary life). But it is also part of this hypothesis that Sextus is confronting Dogmatists who themselves refuse to insulate by subject matter. These Dogmatists—idealized rather than historical, as noted above—think that their dogmatic philosophies are so coherent, so complete, so all-embracing, that every statement that they make is a deliverance of some part of the correct ultimate science of nature, the final Theory of Everything. And this applies just as much to their statements about practical affairs and medium-sized objects as it does to their more abstruse proclamations. So the Dogmatist does not insulate by subject matter. Accordingly, the Skeptics who insulate by level must treat any Dogmatic statement, on any subject matter, as a theorem of the Dogmatist’s favorite candidate for the Theory of Everything. If uttered by a Dogmatist, the statement—no matter what its subject matter may be—is inextricably bound up with the Dogmatist’s favored theory. If the Dogmatist says “my house is some miles west of here,” then they are staking a claim that the ultimate theory will vindicate the existence of substances like houses, locations like “here,” the coherence of directions like “west of,” of metrics like “some miles,” and so on. The Skeptic who insulates by level is exactly responding to Dogmatists who refuse to insulate by subject matter: the Skeptic attacks all of the Dogmatist’s claims as philosophical claims, no matter what their subject matter may be, because the Dogmatist’s own ultimate theory is meant to apply to practical affairs as well as theoretical ones. Accordingly, the Skeptic distinguishes two levels of discourse about, for example, stoves, one outside and one inside the Dogmatist’s discourse. But for this very reason, the Skeptic will not want to distinguish two types of subject matter within the Dogmatist’s discourse. And this is what Burnyeat shows in the central part of this paper: the Skeptic does not insulate some kinds of Dogmatic pronouncements about place from other kinds of Dogmatic pronouncements about place. Both kinds of Dogmatic talk occur at the same level. But that means that the paper misfires as a refutation of the claim that the Skeptic practices insulation by level; that hypothesis is simply never tested. And the results of the test that is conducted (on insulation by subject matter) are perfectly compatible with the hypothesis that Sextus himself insulated by level.

5  THE MODES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION As mentioned earlier, the bulk of PH I (§§36–186) is devoted to a survey of the Modes (τρόποι) or argument forms essential to generating the opposition among claims that rationally compels ἐποχή. Sextus considers various collections of Modes: the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus (§§36–163), the Five Modes of Agrippa (§§164–177), the Two Modes (§§178–179), and the “Causal” Modes (§§180–186). The first two collections are most important, not only because they figure prominently in Sextus’s arguments throughout his work and have exerted a profound influence on the subsequent history of philosophy

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after Sextus, but also because they seem to capture the essential character of Skeptical argument. The Ten Modes depend upon the familiar fact that things ostensibly the same will appear differently either to different observers or in different circumstances or when other factors differ. When these appearances are incompatible, the argument concludes that one must suspend assent with regard to how the object is. There seems to be an important connection between the Five Modes and the Ten, since one of the Five Modes—the Mode from “Relativity” (πρός τι)—seems to capture the basic form of the Ten Modes as a whole and, indeed, Sextus suggests precisely that (PH I 167).9 A similar point can be made with regard to the Mode from Disagreement (διαφωνία), which, while perhaps not as closely related to the Ten Modes, nevertheless seems to share a similar structure. The remaining three Modes, by contrast, look to be quite different. Each of them—the Modes from Infinite Regress, Reciprocity, and Hypothesis—involve showing that a line of argument for a claim is vitiated either by regress, by circularity, or by lack of any support beyond bare assertion. It is quite clear that Sextus conceives of the Five Modes as forming a “loose system”10 (PH I 170–177), and this suggests that both the Five and the Ten Modes might be used together, though whether this “togetherness” is more loose collection or genuine system is a matter of dispute. Indeed, in the next section we will consider a recent attempt to precisely articulate both the structure of the Ten and the Five Modes and the nature of their connection with a view to deepening our understanding of both.

5a  Morison’s Understanding of the Modes Recently, Ben Morison (2011; 2014)11 has argued that all of the Skeptic’s arguments against some dogmatic thesis P must take the form of arguments in favor of ~P.12 In line with this proposal, Morison argues that the Ten Modes are best analyzed as “devices for generating an equal and opposing argument in response to a dogmatist’s attempt to show how things are” (Morison 2014: §3.5.1). When the Dogmatist argues that P, the Skeptic who has mastered the Ten Modes will be able to respond with an argument that ~P. Morison’s discussion of his proposal, and his rejection of the earlier understanding of the Ten Modes, is thoroughly convincing. Morison has also suggested that we cannot understand the Five Modes of Agrippa as they have been traditionally construed. Traditionally, critics have assumed that the point of showing that a Dogmatist’s proof of P rests on an infinite regress or a reciprocity is to persuade the Dogmatist that their argument for P is a “bad argument,” and so should be abandoned as a reason for believing P.13 Morison thinks that this cannot be the correct construal of Sextus’s practice, because showing a Dogmatist that their argument for P is a bad argument does not give them a reason to believe ~P. And if the Skeptical argument does not give the Dogmatist a reason for believing ~P, then it is not an opposed argument of the kind that is essential to the Skeptic’s practice. In conformity with his thesis that the Skeptic responds to Dogmatic arguments for P only by producing positive arguments for ~P, Morison has suggested that

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the Five Modes should also be understood as “devices for generating an equal and opposing argument.” So, for instance, when the Dogmatist has argued that P, and the Skeptic shows the Dogmatist that her argument is guilty of an infinite regress, that diagnosis of regress is not itself the Skeptical response to the argument for P. Rather, the Skeptic counters the Dogmatist by constructing a symmetrical argument for ~P, using the same method: infinite regress is to be used constructively to provide an infinitely regressive argument for ~P in order to counter the infinitely regressive argument for P that the Skeptic finds in the Dogmatist’s system.14 This looks like a very perverse and laborious way for the Skeptic to argue, and such a construal is certainly not suggested by the text. But more importantly, this understanding of how the Skeptic sets out to produce oppositions is unjustifiably narrow, as can be seen by looking at what Sextus says about equipollence, in his gloss on the definition of Skepticism in PH I 10: By “equipollence” we mean an equality in respect of credibility and incredibility (ἰσότης κατὰ πίστιν καὶ ἀπιστίαν), so that none of the conflicting arguments will stand out from the others as being more credible. Morison’s thesis gives a good account of what it means to say that the conflicting arguments have “equality in respect of credibility” (ἰσότης κατὰ πίστιν): there is as much positive reason to believe P as there is positive reason to believe ~P. But what is ἰσότης κατ’ ἀπιστίαν, that is, equality in respect of incredibility? This equality, presumably, is the result of producing reasons not to believe P (as well as reasons not to believe ~P, should they be needed for balance). Now, one sort of reason not to believe P is any positive argument in favor of ~P. But that case has already been covered in the ἰσότης κατὰ πίστιν clause. So the ἰσότης κατ’ ἀπιστίαν must be a distinct kind of reason to lose faith in P, or to find one’s P-credences diminished. And undermining arguments are the obvious candidates. Sextus’s idea of “incredibility” (ἀπιστία) is thus a matter of having a proposition’s credibility reduced or undermined. P is ἄπιστος when it lacks support, or has its support weakened or undermined, even if this does not involve an improved position for ~P, or any active increase in the credences for ~P. So the text which gives Sextus’s official account of how Skeptical opposition is supposed to work clearly shows that undermining arguments are envisioned as playing a role in the production of equipollence. But the same result emerges when we turn to the texts in which Sextus exercises his own antithetical powers. For instance, we can see the clear use of undermining arguments in his discussion of demonstrating P by means of P at PH I 61. If P is used to demonstrate P, Sextus says, then P will be at once πιστός and ἄπιστος: πιστός insofar as it is being used as a premise in the demonstration, but ἄπιστος insofar as it is being treated as a conclusion in need of demonstration. In a related sense, Sextus will call a method or a source of testimony ἄπιστος in order to undermine its credibility. So for instance, at PH I 98, the philosophers disagree about what nature is. Who can decide the question? Not the philosophers, since they are the parties to the disagreement. But not a layman, either, since he is ἄπιστος (according to the philosophers). To say that the layman is ἄπιστος does not do anything to establish the contradictory of

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his account of nature. Instead, it takes away from the credibility of his testimony, it increases its incredibility: it undermines what he says. Similarly, at PH I 117, Sextus argues that we cannot sort out the problem of the criterion without a good account of demonstration, and we cannot settle the problem of demonstration without an adequate account of the criterion: “And thus both criterion and demonstration collapse into the reciprocal mode (διάλληλος τρόπος), in which both of them are found to be incredible (ἄπιστα). For, since each of them is dependent on the credibility of the other, each of them is just as incredible [ἄπιστος] as the other.” The Skeptic here counters demonstrations of P not by arguing for ~P, but by undermining the credibility of the grounds for P, that is, by undermining the demonstration directly. These examples are only the first few of many in Sextus, in which ἀπιστία is invoked in the course of bringing about equipollence. Sextus’s use of undermining arguments should not surprise us, since his thoughts about equipollence are at least in part modeled on the dynamics of a weighing-scale in which arguments on each side are thought of as “weighty” or “light” (ἐμβριθές, κουφότερον, PH III 281). If the Dogmatists put a kilogram of sand into one pan of the scale, the Skeptic can bring the pans to a balance by subtracting some of the sand from the Dogmatist’s pan as well as by adding some sand to the opposite pan. Thus, in order to bring the Dogmatist to equipollence, Sextus may well use—as we see he often does use—a multiplicity of arguments, some of them directly arguing for ~P, and some of them undermining the Dogmatist’s case for P. This means that the notion of an argument (λόγος) is doing slightly different work in different passages of Sextus. It can sometimes refer to a particular piece of evidence (e.g., the evidence of the sun’s motion, against Zenonian denials of motion) or a particular sequence of premises and a conclusion (PH I 202). Or, it can refer to the portfolio or suite of arguments on either side, the total cumulative case that the Skeptic makes in bringing a question to equipollence. In this sense of “argument,” the cumulative “argument” against motion will contain many particular “arguments.” It is only in the cumulative sense that Sextus can declare that, “to every argument there is an equal argument opposed.” This utterance (φωνή) sums up the state of affairs that emerges after Sextus has presented a multiplicity of arguments against the Dogmatist’s position: after a series of particular moves which have supported ~P or undermined P or done both, the net result is an equality in respect of credibility and incredibility. For this reason, then, we can be sure that the Skeptic slogan that “to every argument there is an equal argument opposed” cannot mean that every particular Skeptical argument against the Dogmatic advocacy of P must take the form of an argument advocating ~P. Instead, it must refer to an equality between the accumulations of particular arguments on either side, that make up the aggregate cases pro and con. Among the particular arguments, there is no reason why each one must be an argument directly opposed to the Dogmatic argument as ~P to P, and indeed there is good reason why each one cannot be of equal and opposite weight to the Dogmatist’s argument. It may help to distinguish two claims:

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(a) Every equipollence is an equipollence between P and ~P. (b) Every argument used to produce equipollence is an argument in favor of P or an argument in favor of ~P. (a) is correct, but (b) does not follow from it. The equipollence between P and ~P may be brought about both by arguing for ~P and also by confronting Dogmatic arguments that raise the credibility of P with Skeptical undermining arguments that lower the credibility of P. It is also worth noting that several of the cases cited above, in which Sextus uses the word ἄπιστος or ἀπιστία in the context of undermining, involve tropes that Agrippa gathered into the Five Modes. At PH I 117, we saw an invocation of the Mode of Reciprocity (διάλληλος τρόπος) leading to a verdict of ἀπιστία. At PH I 61, the allegation of ἀπιστία followed on the charge that the Dogmatist was attempting to ground P in P, which Sextus may have attacked through the Mode of Hypothesis.15 This evidence that Agrippan modes produce ἀπιστία supports the picture above: the Five Modes are intended to undermine the Dogmatist’s case for P, not to provide constructive arguments for ~P. Moreover, if this picture of the Five Modes is correct, then we can see a further way in which the Five Modes complement the Ten. Morison’s picture of the Ten Modes presents them as means to generate arguments for ~P in response to the Dogmatist’s arguments for P, while we have argued the Five Modes are meant to undermine the arguments for P.16

6  CONCLUSION ABOUT VARIOUS INTERPRETATIONS In our opinion, the view of Frede is still an open interpretive option, although faced with many difficulties of formulation—its friends find it suggestive and stimulating, its critics complain that it has escaped definitive refutation only by remaining amorphous and underspecified. The more traditional view according to which Sextus assents to nothing more than his own internal appearances—which Burnyeat, Fine, and Perin all endorse in various forms—has an easier time with some of the evidence for Sextus’s epistemic stance but offers very little hope of vindicating Sextus’s claims to be describing a livable life.17 The aspirations of philosophical interpretation—either to produce a reading that consistently verifies the whole of Sextus’s system, or a refutation that clearly shows the conceptual fissures between its parts—remain to be achieved by future critics, unless they are permanently frustrated by the limitations of Sextus’s own writings.

NOTES 1. See Popkin (1979), Schmitt (1983), Floridi (2002; 2010). 2. “Medical Notes” (AM VII 202) and “Empirical Notes” (AM I 61). These may have been alternate titles for one treatise. 3. For evidence of this aspect, see PH I 7–10, 12, 26–30.

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4. Detailed discussion of the Modes is provided in Section 5 below. 5. Barnes (1982), reprinted along with the two by Frede and the two by Burnyeat, in Burnyeat and Frede (1997), is equally good and far less obscure than the others—its laudable clarity perhaps leading to less subsequent literature. Its central polemical contention, that “urbane” skepticism inevitably collapses into “rustic” skepticism because of the need for a criterion, was challenged by Brennan (1994), and definitively rebutted by Schwab (2013). 6. The same phrase, τὰ κατηναγκασμένα, that is, “the necessitated or compelled things,” is used both to mark out the sphere of things to which the Pyrrhonist will give their assent in PH I 13 and the sphere of things in which the Pyrrhonist must be content with “moderate disturbance” in place of total tranquility, in PH I 26 and 30. 7. These are standard claims in Stoic theory, which gave the Skeptics the machinery of impressions and assent. 8. Fine (2000: 84) gives the example of my considering an argument propounded by a notorious logical trickster: it appears sound to me, but because of my previous experience with its author, I do not assent to its really being sound. 9. Whether or not Sextus is referring to the Ten Modes at PH I 167 is something of a vexed question. For discussion, see Barnes (1990). One of us has argued elsewhere (Brennan and Lee 2014) that the Agrippan “Mode of Relativity” was originally intended as a prohibition on epistemic self-grounding and had nothing to do with the kind of relativity that features in the Ten Modes. That paper also argues that Sextus conflated the two issues through his own failure to understand Agrippa. Sextus’s reference at PH I 167 was indeed intended to refer back to the Ten Modes, but Agrippa would not have assimilated his Relativity to the earlier relativity. The revisionist proposal of Brennan and Lee has not (yet?) become the standard view, so in this paper we take the more conventional view about Agrippa’s Mode of Relativity. 10. In the words of Powers (2010: 157). 11. We are grateful to Morison for discussions about these topics. 12. More precisely: in favor of ~P, or of some other proposition opposed to and incompatible with P. Sextus explicitly notes in PH I 10 that the opposition is not restricted to the case of contradiction. What is important is simply that both cannot be true together. In the main text we use “~P” as a sort of abbreviation for “some proposition incompatible with P.” 13. Morison (2014) quotes Barnes (1990) for the phrase “bad arguments” as a summation of the verdict that Sextus intends to convey with the Five Modes. 14. Morison (2011: 293–294): “I take it that all the sets of modes [including the Five Modes just mentioned] can be made to work in the way the Ten Modes do: that is, all the sets of modes are devices to be deployed by the sceptic in forming opposing arguments to the arguments they encounter in the course of their philosophical investigations.” 15. Brennan and Lee (2014) argue that Agrippa himself would have brought this under the Mode of Relativity, which (we argue) prohibits grounding a proposition reflexively in itself. 16. For a different view of the relation between the Five and Ten, see Powers (2010).

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17. Fine (2000) adduces one philosopher who thinks that internal appearances may be sufficient for action. Perin argues that internal appearances allow the Skeptic to rebut the charge of being reduced to total inaction, but he also concludes that they are insufficient to provide the Skeptic with actions that are fully human in any richer sense (see Perin 2010: 113).

REFERENCES Barnes, Jonathan. 1982. “The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society N.S. 28: 1–29. Barnes, Jonathan. 1990. The Toils of Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bett, Richard (ed.). 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brennan, Tad. 2000. “Criterion and Appearance in Sextus Empiricus,” Acta Philosophica Fennica 64: 63–92. Brennan, Tad and Jongsuh James Lee. 2014. “A Relative Improvement,” Phronesis 59: 246–271. Burnyeat, Myles. 1980. “Can the Sceptic Live His Scepticism?” In M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and J. Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, 20–53. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1983. The Skeptical Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1984. “The Sceptic in His Place and Time.” In R. Rorty, J. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History, 225–254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burnyeat, Myles and Michael Frede (eds.). 1997. The Original Sceptics: A Controversy. Indianapolis: Hackett Press. Fine, Gail. 2000. “Sceptical Dogmata: Outlines of Pyrrhonism I 13,” Méthexis 13: 81–105. Floridi, Luciano. 2002. Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism. New York: Oxford University Press. Floridi, Luciano. 2010. “The Rediscovery and Posthumous Influence of Scepticism.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 267–287. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frede, Michael. 1979. “Des Skeptikers Meinungen,” Neue Hefte für Philosophie, Actualität der Antike, Heft 15/16: 102–129. (First appeared in English as “The Skeptic’s Beliefs.” In his Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 179–200. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) Frede, Michael. 1984. “The Sceptic’s Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possibility of Knowledge.” In R. Rorty, J. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History, 255–278. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frede, Michael. 1987. Essays in Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. House, D. K. 1980. “The Life of Sextus Empiricus,” Classical Quarterly 30: 227–238. Janáček, Karl. 1963. “Die Hauptschrift des Sextus Empiricus als Torso erhalten?” Philologus 107: 271–277. Morison, Benjamin. 2011. “The Logical Structure of the Sceptic’s Opposition,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 60: 265–295.

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Morison, Benjamin. 2014. “Sextus Empiricus,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sextus-empiricus/ Perin, Casey. 2010a. The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Perin, Casey. 2010b. “Scepticism and Belief.” In R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 145–164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Popkin, Richard. 1979. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza. Berkeley: University of California Press. Powers, Nathan. 2010. “The System of the Sceptical Modes in Sextus Empiricus,” Apeiron 43: 157–172. Rorty, Richard, Jerome Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (eds.). 1984. Philosophy in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, Charles. 1983. “The Rediscovery of Ancient Scepticism in Modern Times.” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 225–251. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schwab, Whitney. 2013. “Skepticism, Belief, and the Criterion of Truth,” Apeiron 46: 327–344. Sextus, Empiricus. 1997. Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos XI), translation and commentary by Richard Bett. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Skepticism in Classical Indian Philosophy1 MATTHEW R. DASTI

1 INTRODUCTION There are some tantalizing suggestions that Pyrrhonian skepticism has its roots in ancient India. Of them, the most important is Diogenes Laertius’s report that Pyrrho accompanied Alexander to India, where he was deeply impressed by the character of the “naked sophists” he encountered (DL IX 61). Influenced by these gymnosophists, Pyrrho is said to have adopted the practices of suspending judgment on matters of belief and cultivating an indifferent composure amid the vicissitudes of ordinary life. Such conduct, and the attitudes that it embodied, became inspirations to later skeptical thinkers. It is a fact that practices of the sort attributed to Pyrrho are richly evident in a number of ancient Indian philosophical and ascetic movements. On this basis, attempts have been made to determine the identity of these gymnosophists and, further, to pinpoint the dialectical tropes within Pyrrhonism that may have their basis in Indian thought. But despite these attempts, and in the absence of any new discoveries, these suggestions will likely remain just that. The paucity of the historical data and the problematic nature of the data itself prevent us from reconstructing a solid bridge between ancient India and Greek skepticism that may serve as the basis of robust historical theorizing.2 Classical India does, however, lay claim to a sophisticated and diverse culture of epistemological reflection, which includes a number of innovative skeptical thinkers deserving study on their own merits. This chapter is meant to provide such a study, or perhaps more accurately, a prolegomena for such. After some initial groundlaying, I will discuss three leading Indian skeptics and situate them historically and conceptually within the network of competing schools that comprise classical Indian philosophy. They are Nāgārjuna (c. 150 CE), the founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Jayarāśi (c. 800), associated with the Indian materialist tradition, and Śrīharṣa (c. 1150), a thinker connected to the school of Nondual (Advaita) Vedānta.

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2  SKEPTICAL ELEMENTS OF THE PROTOPHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD The proto-philosophical period in Indian thought spans roughly from 700 BCE to100 CE. The most ancient body of literature in India is the Vedas (c. 1500 BCE for their earliest portions). Though they contain occasional moments of philosophical, and indeed skeptical, reflection,3 the Vedas are centrally concerned with the performance of sacrifice and the ritual culture that surrounds it. The seeds of classical Indian skepticism were laid at a time of departure from the Vedas, during the middle of the first millennium BCE, amid the tumult associated with the śramaṇa movement. This was a broad social development connected to the rise of urban centers and characterized by itinerancy, asceticism, and bold philosophical speculation. It was motivated by a search for the ultimate solutions to life’s problems and dissatisfaction with the religious orthodoxy embodied in the culture of Vedic sacrifice. A number of later traditions, including Buddhism, Jainism, and Upaniṣadic Hinduism,4 developed out of the śramaṇa milieu. Certain features of this period lent themselves to skeptical attitudes. Many of its thinkers express acute concern with our basic cognitive abilities and their limitations, arguing that whatever the ultimate reality is, it transcends our ordinary conceptual apparatus. This led naturally to deep strains of apophatic theorizing, often coupled with the view that meditative gnosis is the only access available to such higher realities. Two traditions we will consider below, Madhyamaka Buddhism and Nondual Vedānta, incorporate these ideas into a notion of “two truths,” the conventional and the ultimate. They do, however, unpack this concept in very different ways. Tied to such concerns with the limitations of our basic cognitive abilities was a further contention that the objects identified as the real, mediumsized dry goods of common experience tend to fall apart under scrutiny. For many Upaniṣadic thinkers who pave the way for Hinduism, this manifests as a skepticism about the reality of ordinary objects coupled with an affirmation of unqualified being itself (the locus classicus for this is the sixth book of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad). For Buddhists, this manifests in a variety of ways, including a reduction of macro-objects to sensation-instances that are said to be reified and conceptually constructed into the objects of ordinary experience.

3  CLASSICAL INDIAN EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE CENTRALITY OF PRAMĀṆAS The classical period of Indian philosophy begins soon after the start of the Common Era and lasts until roughly 1800 CE. On one side, the classical period is bracketed by the proto-philosophical period, and on the other side, by the modern period, which is centrally preoccupied by the confrontation with the West and by the problems of modernity more generally. (Even today, learned pandits carry the classical traditions onward, though it is an increasingly marginalized feature of Indian intellectual culture.) In the classical period, we find the coalescence of specific schools and

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sub-schools of thought that have their roots in the proto-philosophical period. A number of Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu schools of thought may be traced to various earlier cultural and religious movements, but they become distinctly philosophical in the classical period as they become explicitly concerned with both system-building and defending their holdings through dialectical engagement with rivals. Classical philosophers typically work within a school, developing their own innovations through commentaries or sub-commentaries on the foundational texts of their particular tradition. Another characteristic of the classical period, of great importance to this study, is the centrality of pramāṇas, “knowledge sources.” Epistemology in classical India largely consists in the identification and analysis of irreducible sources of knowledge (e.g., perception, inference, testimony). Competing schools and thinkers articulate different lists of fundamental pramāṇas as well as analyses of specific pramāṇas, and extensive debate over knowledge sources is a key feature of Indian philosophy.5 These knowledge sources are not only taken to be the cognitive resources by which we as individuals guide our lives. They are also the basis of philosophical argumentation. Illustrating that my belief or the holding of my school is supported by genuine pramāṇas places it on firm ground. Indeed, the early history of pramāṇa theory is intertwined with a robust culture of formal public debate,6 and some of the first systematic Indian treatments of epistemology are integrated with manuals on debate theory and dialectics. The very survival of a school typically depended on patronage, and the primary way to win support was public discourse and debate with rivals. A particular style of debate, the “purely destructive” mode (vitaṇḍā), was explicitly recognized in works on dialectics and appropriated by philosophical skeptics. One arguing in this mode disavows any personal thesis to defend and sets himself only to destroy other views. This method was controversial and an object of concern for realists, some of whom argued that it involves an inherent selfcontradiction of some kind or other.7 The skeptics we will study were acutely aware of this charge and defended themselves against it. In summation, pramāṇa discourse, as well as an allied culture of formal debate, provide the conceptual landscape for classical Indian epistemological reflection, and skeptical attacks on the possibility of knowledge presuppose this landscape.

4 NĀGĀRJUNA AND MADHYAMAKA BUDDHISM The first Indian skeptic we will consider is the founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Nāgārjuna (c. 150 CE). To understand Nāgārjuna’s project, we need to take note of some features of Buddhist thought traceable to the historical Buddha himself (Siddhārta Gautama, fifth century BCE). At the time he began his career as a philosophical and religious teacher, the Buddha was merely one participant in the śramaṇa movement. After years of self-abnegation and meditative practice, he became convinced that he found a solution to the fundamental problem of life, which he expressed within the Four Noble Truths: life is pervaded by suffering, we suffer because of our desires, we may uproot suffering by uprooting desire, and

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there is a way of life (the Eightfold Path) that allows us to do so. Expressing and developing this simple formula, the Buddha became one of the most influential thinkers in ancient India and, eventually, much of the Asian world. A few features of the Buddha’s approach to philosophy are relevant to this study. In short, it tends to be therapeutic, pragmatic, and anti-metaphysical. Philosophy is not meant to capture the right theory about the world, but rather to remove problematic misconceptions. The Buddha thus treats human beings’ natural tendency to schematize the world as an intellectual analogue of desire: an attempt to harness the world, a clinging of sorts, which perpetuates suffering. We may notice the way in which these elements of the Buddha’s thought lead him, and later Buddhist skeptics, to dismiss elaborate philosophical systematizing as a massive unwholesome distraction. Moreover, the Buddha is sensitive to the way in which our conceptual and linguistic frameworks dictate our experiences and understandings. This leads to a general antirealist sensibility. Finally, he problematizes the commonsense notion of the world as populated by enduring, self-standing macro-objects of common experience. These aspects of the Buddha’s teachings collectively set the stage for various tendencies in mature philosophical Buddhism, including empiricism, reductionism, idealism, and skepticism. And with the last, we may now consider Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna flourished while the classical period of Indian philosophy was taking shape and various systems of thought, Buddhist and otherwise, were being constructed.8 He opposed what is, from the Madhyamaka9 perspective, a common practice of philosophers: the enshrinement within philosophical argumentation of our pre-theoretical tendency to project a world of independent, self-standing objects. His philosophical opponents are those who espoused various sorts of realism, including Buddhist scholastics and Hindu realists like the Nyāya (“Logic”) and Vaiśeṣika (“Particularism”) schools. The central theme of Nāgārjuna’s most important work, The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (MMK), is emptiness (śūnyatā), the lack of intrinsic existence (svabhāva, “self-nature”), which, he argues, holds for all phenomena. The term svabhāva takes on various related meanings within Madhyamaka thought. Fundamentally, it refers to something whose existence is independent of other conditions or factors. 10 Emptiness, the denial of intrinsic existence, is taken by Nāgārjuna to be equivalent to dependent co-origination (pratītyasamutpāda), the inexorable interdependence of all phenomena.11 In short, Nāgārjuna argues that nothing has an ontologically stable identity independent of other phenomena. This interdependence is not merely causal, in the sense that we can never separate an entity’s existence from the rich network of conditions upon which it depends and which it in turn influences. More radically, it is conceptual: the nature of any particular thing under scrutiny is determined by the conventions, concerns, linguistic practices, etc. of those doing the scrutinizing. Any attempt to isolate a certain moment or node within the rich causal, conceptual, and linguistic networks that constitute life as experienced, while claiming that this node has a nature existing independently from such networks, is mere reification and projection. The notion of emptiness is thus not merely a report on our own cognitive limitations, that we have no cognitive access to what lies beneath the phenomena-as-

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experienced, as Locke speaks of substance in general or as Kant speaks of the thing in itself. Nor is it merely semantic, in that there are limits to the capacity of language to capture extra-linguistic reality. It is ultimately ontological. There is nothing there beneath the appearances. The notion of underlying, independently existing real entities that undergird the contents of phenomenal awareness is simply incoherent. We should underscore that this is not merely a kind of idealism, since there are no enduring, intrinsically existing minds that ground the world either. Subjects are as empty as the phenomena they experience.12 Nāgārjuna’s primary method to advance this point is argumentum ad absurdum: positing intrinsically existing entities leads to inescapable contradictions. He provides a wide array of arguments to the effect that various phenomena championed by philosophers (e.g., causation, motion, indwelling selves, substances that bear properties) lack svabhāva.13 One of his major lines of argumentation may be summarized as follows14: 1. x enters into relations with other nodes within causal, conceptual, and linguistic networks. 2. x possesses intrinsic existence (svabhāva). 3. If something possesses intrinsic existence, then its fundamental identity is isolated from the networks of conditions (causal, conceptual, linguistic) within which it is embedded. 4. If something’s fundamental identity is isolated from the networks of conditions (causal, conceptual, linguistic) within which it is embedded, then it does not enter into relations with other nodes of such networks. 5. Therefore, x does not enter into relations with other nodes of causal, conceptual, and linguistic networks. The contradiction between premise 1 and the conclusion leads to the rejection of premise 2. This lack of independent existence further entails that precisely discriminating some real entity, independent from the conditions within which it is embedded, is impossible.15 At best, we merely select certain features of the causal/ cognitive nexus as most relevant to our concerns. The fact that Nāgārjuna preserves premise 1 underscores the fact that, despite the claims of his opponents, he does not intend his imputation of emptiness to be nihilistic. In fact, he argues, it is the very opposite: emptiness is a condition for something’s being part of the common world of causal interaction.16 Nāgārjuna’s arguments in support of emptiness are meant to undermine realists’ attempts to gain purchase on a substantial external world and are thus skeptical in spirit. But they are not distinctively epistemological in form. In his Dispeller of Disputes (VV), however, Nāgārjuna takes direct aim at pramāṇa (knowledgesource) epistemology. The context of his attack is a response to Nyāya realists. Naiyāyikas (Nyāya philosophers), as far back as the original Nyāya-sūtras (c. 200 CE), have taken the Madhyamaka position to be a kind of skeptical nihilism that is guilty of the self-referential incoherence mentioned above. They take emptiness to mean insubstantiality and claim that the Buddhist must either accept that there

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are non-empty pramāṇas, which support his assertions, or give up the attempt to prove his point. Nāgārjuna’s response is twofold. First, he denies that he advances a robust thesis about the nature of a real external world, claiming “I have no thesis” (VV 29).17 Because of this, he claims to be innocent of the charge of self-contradiction. Second, and more aggressively, he turns the argument back on the realist, by arguing that the notion of pramāṇas as foundational sources of knowledge is unsustainable (31–51): If you hold that the various objects are established by pramāṇas, then again, you must explain how it is that the pramāṇas are themselves established (31).18 If the pramāṇas were established by other pramāṇas, then there would be an infinite regress. Then, neither the beginning, middle, nor end would be established (32). But if you think that the pramāṇas are established without need for other pramāṇas, then your position (that claims about an object’s existence or nature must be supported by appeal to pramāṇas) has been abandoned. There is inconsistency in this, and you must provide a specific reason for it. (33) So far, Nāgārjuna has presented two lemmas: an infinite regress of pramāṇas and the mere positing of pramāṇas without epistemic grounding, both of which are undesirable for the reasons he cites. Next, he presents a third lemma, beginning with the idea that the pramāṇas may be self-established. As opposed to being ungrounded, this option suggests that pramāṇas have the special power to provide epistemic support for themselves by dint of their own functioning. From our perspective, this option seems closest to a classical formulation of foundationalism: there are cognitive states that are both self-supporting and able to support other states. Nāgārjuna’s interlocutor suggests that this may be akin to the way that a fire not only illuminates various objects but also itself. After finding fault with the details of the fire analogy, Nāgārjuna argues: If the pramāṇas are self-established, then the objects of knowledge are also independent (of the pramāṇas). For self-establishment is independent of any other thing (40). If the pramāṇas are established independently of their objects, then they would be the pramāṇas of nothing at all. (41) If the pramāṇas were truly self-established, this would exclude us from accounting for the veracity of, for example, perception by appeal to the objects it normally reveals. Track-record arguments, familiar to reliabilist theories, would be off the table. The very notion of self-establishment would rule out such an appeal. Putting aside the practical question of how we could then discriminate legitimate knowledge sources from flawed imposters (perception vs. mere hallucination), Nāgārjuna highlights the way in which this approach would sever the intimate tie between knowledge sources and their proper objects. I would suggest that this argument may be placed within the family of arguments directed against “the given” and, more precisely, against strong versions of foundationalism. Nāgārjuna’s contention is that, if foundational cognitive states were truly walled off from the support of other inputs, this wall would be impassable in both directions. The

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very act of insulating these foundational cognitive states makes them impotent as sources of epistemic support for any particular domain of putative objects or truth claims. His argument may be understood in two distinct, but complementary ways. Epistemically, as we have seen, we would be unable to support the veracity of, for example, perception by appealing to its track record of success. I could no longer say that perception reliably provides me cognitive access to “this tree right here” as I point to a tree in my backyard. Conceptually, if self-establishment is taken as a kind of logical atomism, then the concept of perception could not include its capacity to provide cognitive access to a distinct domain of physical objects. In his auto-commentary, Nāgārjuna remarks: “If they are to be pramāṇas of something, they cannot be independent of their objects.” Given the way in which this lemma instantiates Nāgārjuna’s general attack on intrinsic existence, we now see a close connection between his critique of pramāṇa epistemology and his general philosophical project. The fourth and final lemma is acceptance of the interdependence of pramāṇas and their objects: If, conversely, you accept that “establishment of pramāṇas always occurs in reference to their proper objects,” there would be the establishment of what is already established. (42) If the realist opts for a more holistic approach to the establishment of pramāṇas, allowing the objects of knowledge to play a role, then, in the course of justifying his views, appeal to knowledge sources would merely serve the purpose of reiterating what he already accepts. The existence of knowledge sources is presupposed, as they are what provide cognitive access to their proper objects. The existence of objects of knowledge is also presupposed, as they are what we appeal to in order to establish the existence and nature of knowledge sources. In succeeding verses, Nāgārjuna argues that there is no way to escape this circularity in a way that salvages the realists’ project. They would have to hold that the objects of knowledge are established independently of the pramāṇas to use them as a non-circular ground for establishing the pramāṇas (43). But if this is the case, what need is there for appealing to pramāṇas in order to ground knowledge of the objects (44)? This strategy would, further, reverse the putative dependence relation between the sources and objects of knowledge (45). Proposing a complete circularity between them ends up establishing nothing (46). In conclusion, “the pramāṇas cannot be self-established, nor established by other pramāṇas, nor established by appeal to the objects of knowledge, nor established without reason” (51). And thus, they are unsuitable to play the foundational role assigned to them by the systembuilding realist philosophers. It is important to see that Nāgārjuna’s purpose here is not to refute commonplace epistemic practice, the use of perception, inference, testimony, and the like in navigating our daily lives (see Siderits 1980: 320). It is rather to refute the contention that the pramāṇas have the capacity to justify metaphysical realism.19 And this refutation, in consonance with traditional Buddhist attitudes, is meant to support a life aimed at enlightenment. The affirmation of emptiness, supported by

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skeptical argumentation, provides an ideative support for meditative praxis, meant to dislodge the tangled knots of reification and desire, and ultimately terminate in peace and freedom from suffering.20

5 JAYARĀŚI AND THE MATERIALIST TRADITION The materialist tradition (Lokāyata, Cārvāka) is a noteworthy exception to the typically ascetical flavor of classical Indian philosophy.21 Most of the original works of the materialists are unfortunately lost to us. We tend to find bits and pieces preserved by their rivals, who often represent them as interlocutors worthy of contemptuous dismissal. The materialists themselves dismissed the religious ambitions of other Indian schools (sometimes with quite humorous rhetoric), and their skepticism stems from their anti-religious and anti-speculative approach to the good life. There is no immortal soul. We have one life to live, and the best that life can offer is pleasure; all else is vanity. In a corresponding movement, personal experience is all that we can take seriously in matters of knowledge, while inference and testimony—the primary means to bolster claims about transcendent realities— are never sources of knowledge proper.22 Against inference, materialists note that it relies on a recognized connection between an inferential sign and that which is signified (e.g., between smoke and fire). But for this sign to underwrite knowledge of the signified, it must be known to be invariably and non-accidentally connected to it. How do we acquire this knowledge? Not by perception, as it operates upon particulars in the present moment. Nor by inference, as this would trigger an infinite regress. Nor testimony; since it too relies on a connection between sign and signified, it would mirror the problems of inference. Furthermore, we can never be sure that apparently secure inferential relata are not merely accidentally and “locally” connected. Our ability to know is limited in scope. We lack the resources to refute the possibility of unknown causal factors that would engender deviation at some time or place. Jayarāśi (c. 800 CE) is connected to the materialist tradition, though he seems willing to develop his own conclusions.23 One sign of his independence is that he takes the deep skeptical strand within materialism and expresses it across the board, attempting to refute leading analyses of knowledge and knowledge sources, including perception. He abandons the somewhat clumsy materialist formulation that “perception is the only legitimate knowledge source,” fraught with the potential for easy refutation, and devotes his work to a more sophisticated, skeptical vindication of ordinary life: “The philosophers’ technical categories being subverted, ordinary linguistic practices are appropriate, and should not be subject to critical examination” (my translation of text in Solomon 2010: 228). In the Tattvopaplavasiṁha (The Lion that Subverts all Philosophical Categories), his method is straightforward “destructive” argumentation. For any technical view put forth by a philosopher (typically analyses of the major knowledge sources or key metaphysical tenets), he tries to illustrate that it is either patently false or inadmissible given the interlocutors’ own set of truth commitments.

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By way of example, below is a summary of one his arguments against the analysis of testimony given by Nyāya: “testimony is an assertion by an authoritative speaker” (āpta-upadeśa śabdaḥ; Nyāya-sūtra 1.1.7), where “authoritative” is meant to convey a speaker’s own veridical cognition of some fact and an honest willingness to convey it to another. 1. Granting provisionally that there is a property, authoritativeness, possessed by some persons, it would underwrite the positive epistemic status of testimonial beliefs either by (a) its mere existence, devoid of any particular production of testimonial knowledge, or (b) its actual production of testimonial knowledge. 2. Option (a) cannot be the case, since authoritativeness cannot be a cause of positive epistemic status if it is causally unproductive. 3. Regarding (b), authoritativeness would have to produce knowledge either (c) by itself or (d) with the help of auxiliary causal factors.

(3a) Option (c) is not appropriate, as you (Nyāya) do not accept it. And in any case, it would contradict the experience of causal fluctuations that are attributed to the influence of auxiliary causal factors.



(3b) If you hold (d), then authoritativeness is neither necessary nor sufficient for the production of veridical testimonial cognition. Consider the statement “the boy has nava blankets” (the Sanskrit term nava could be understood to mean “new” or “nine”). Seeing a boy with a new blanket, an authoritative person may utter the above statement. Owing to auxiliary causal factors that beset the listener, however, his statement produces the false cognition “the boy has nine blankets.” Similarly, a person intent on deception may say “the boy has nine blankets,” but owing to auxiliary causal factors, his statement produces for a listener the true cognition “the boy has a new blanket.” 4. Therefore, the Nyāya analysis “testimony is an assertion by an authoritative speaker” fails.

This is but one example. But Jayarāśi’s contention is that such destructive argumentation is possible for any and every technical definition put forth by dogmatic philosophers.

6  ŚRĪHARṢA AND NONDUAL VEDĀNTA The final skeptic we will consider is Śrīharṣa (c. 1150), a thinker within the school of Advaita (“Nondual”) Vedānta, living roughly four centuries after Śaṅkarācārya, the figure who gave definitive form to the school and whose works serve as its systematic foundation.24 Vedānta is a Hindu school, or rather a large family of subschools, devoted to interpreting the Upaniṣadic scriptures as well as articulating a coherent, defensible metaphysics that makes sense of the Upaniṣadic view of the world. The Upaniṣads are heterogeneous and unsystematic in nature, but a common theme that emerges is that the various objects of ordinary experience are

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ontologically dependent upon and find their ultimate value as derivative of the fundamental ground of being, Brahman. Realizing Brahman—in large measure, realizing our own intimate relationship with it—is considered the key to achieving supreme felicity and liberation from the cycle of rebirth. The various sub-schools of Vedānta fall into two major (and hostile) camps, realism and nondualism, based on their interpretation of the nature of Brahman and the dependence relation between Brahman and the world. The realists affirm the existence of a mind-independent world but suggest that, without reflection upon Upaniṣadic teachings, we remain ignorant of the way in which it is sustained and pervaded by Brahman, which is understood as a God-like being. Nondual Vedānta is contrastingly a monist idealism. For the nondualists, Brahman is a homogeneous, unified, self-aware consciousness. The world of common experience, which presupposes multiplicity, is ultimately unreal, a persistent illusion, as is the notion of a creator God. The world is grounded in Brahman in the sense that everything, even illusion, is grounded in awareness. The difference between the two camps may also be understood in their interpretation of Brahman’s totality. The Upaniṣads hold that Brahman is everything. For realists, this means that Brahman undergirds, unifies, and makes coherent the multiplicity of real objects in the world; for nondualists, this means that the only real thing is homogeneous conscious awareness; all else is ultimately illusion.25 While it is outside the scope of this study, we should also note there are historical and conceptual continuities between Madhyamaka Buddhism and Nondual Vedānta in spite of the fact that the former is anti-Vedic and the latter is among the more orthodox of the Vedic Hindu traditions. This nondualist view is sometimes advanced through sophisticated epistemological arguments that combine a notion of cognitive sublation (bādha) with the selfillumination/justification of conscious awareness. A cognitive state is sublated when it is defeated or undermined by a contrary awareness (e.g., an illusion of a man in the distance is sublated by expert testimony that the thing in question is a tree stump). A key nondualist contention is that all contentful awareness is in principle capable of being sublated, but unqualified awareness simpliciter is not. This is because all sublation takes place within the domain of awareness. To put it slightly differently, while any particular cognitive presentation may be doubted, the fact of conscious awareness cannot. And such unqualified awareness is taken to be identical to Brahman, the ultimate ground of being.26 This argument provides a helpful way to conceptualize Śrīharṣa’s project in his dialectical masterpiece, the Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya (The Sweets of Refutation): while Descartes’s skepticism is the first half of a two-part movement that erodes conviction in the external world, pivots on the indubitability of conscious self-awareness, and rediscovers the world on more secure footing, Śrīharṣa simply stops at the end of the first movement. He seeks to undermine any positive, contentful cognition (belief, proposition, etc.), such that the only thing left standing is unqualified, homogeneous conscious awareness itself (again, equated with Brahman, the ground of being revealed in the Upaniṣads). As Phillips (1995: 88) puts it, he would “back into success” by refuting any view that asserts the reality of multiplicity. In support of this objective, Śrīharṣa argues against a wide variety of philosophical views, commitments, and theses (including, for example, a scathing attack on

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universals). Like Jayarāśi, he often sets the views of a philosopher or school against themselves, in support of his contention that that systematic realism cannot be maintained.27 He succinctly expresses this in the claim that “all technical analyses are untenable (sarvāṇi lakṣanāṇi anupapannāni)” (see Granoff 1978: 23, and Jha 1986: 82). Harkening back to our discussion of the purely destructive mode of debate (vitaṇḍā), Nicholson (2009: 94) suggests that it “achieves its most developed expression” in the work of Śrīharṣa, who contends that any understanding of reality, pre-theoretic or philosophical, which considers distinctness (bheda) real, collapses under philosophical scrutiny. Śrīharṣa explicitly states that the basic form of his arguments may be modified in order to attack against positions that he doesn’t directly address, and thus used as modes, so to speak, in the continued refutation of realism.28 We my recall that Indian realists contend that a complete denial of knowledge sources is impossible, as any thesis put forth (including the skeptical hypothesis) must derive its probative force from somewhere (see note 6). One way to express this contention is that one cannot engage in philosophical debate without at least tacitly accepting that there are knowledge sources that determine the legitimacy of argumentative moves and provide for the rules by which defeat and victory may be objectively recognized. This would, of course, undermine Śrīharṣa’s program from the start. Naturally, he tasks himself with deflecting this charge.29 In short, his response is as follows: it would be misleading for the realist to cast Śrīharṣa’s own position as starting from a denial of knowledge sources. He is, rather, uncommitted to the truth of their existence. All he claims to possess, and all that that is needed to debate their legitimacy, is an idea or notion of knowledge sources, and indeed, not prior knowledge of their existence. He need no investment in their reality or in a theory that ties them to an external world of causal conditions. Clearly, those who attack the legitimacy of knowledge sources (identified by Śrīharṣa as Mādhyamika Buddhists, Cārvāka materialists, and Advaita Vedāntins) participate in philosophical discussion and debate. This gives the lie to the notion that accepting knowledge sources is a prerequisite for dialectical engagement. And further, the realists themselves engage in vigorous, extensive debate with skeptics! Clearly they themselves do not in fact accept the rule that debate must require a preliminary acceptance of knowledge sources. How then, is the debate between the skeptics and the realists to be prosecuted? What undergirds what we take to be the standards of success and failure in debate? Śrīharṣa argues that it is simply a set of agreed-upon rules. This is the only thing that both sides must accept for debate to occur. And such rules are a matter of convention and nothing more; certainly they need not be objects of knowledge. Accepting those debate-governing conventions that have passed the test of time and seem to function effectively is the baseline requirement for two parties to engage in debate effectively. Śrīharṣa deftly supports this line of argumentation by reflection on our general epistemic condition: our action-guiding cognitive resources are as a rule usually far below the standards of ultima facie justified knowledge. All of us, realists included, must rely on cognitions that are themselves unverified and therefore, provisional, on pain of infinite regress. And relying on these, without any

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sense of deep conviction or pretense to knowledge, is all the skeptic needs to engage in debate and, indeed, to leverage his attack on knowledge itself.30

NOTES 1. This chapter was generously supported by a grant from Bridgewater State University’s Center for the Advancement of Research and Scholarship. I would also like to thank Diego Machuca and Baron Reed for helpful comments and suggestions. 2. See Frenkian (1957) and Flintoff (1980) for arguments that Pyrrho was indeed influenced by Indian philosophers. McEvilley (1982) identifies a number of remarkable similarities between dialectical tropes within Pyrrhonism and Madhyamaka Buddhist thought, though he ultimately remains dubious of Indian influence. For concise appraisals of the issue see Hankinson (1995: 58–64) and Bett (2000: 169–178). 3. The famous creation hymn (Nāsadīya sūkta) of the Ṛg Veda (10.129) contains a delightfully skeptical conclusion regarding the ultimate nature of the cosmos. 4. “Hinduism” is a problematic term for various reasons, including the fact that it refers to hundreds of philosophical and religious movements under a single heading. For our purposes, it refers to persons and traditions that accept the authority of the Vedas—if only nominally—along with allied texts, cultural norms, and practices. It primarily serves the purpose of distinguishing these groups from those which explicitly rejected the authority of the Vedic tradition, including Buddhists, Jainas, and Cārvāka materialists. By “Upaniṣadic Hinduism” I refer to an influential strain of Hindu thought that takes many of the motivations and concerns of the śramaṇa period and incorporates them into the Vedic ritual tradition, in the spirit of reformation and not outright rejection. 5. See Matilal (1986) and Mohanty (2000: 11–40) for introductions to pramāṇa theory. 6. See Solomon (1976: chs. 1–3) for evidence of the primacy of debate within a number of ancient Indian traditions of thought. Matilal (1998: 32) suggests that debate was “a preferred form of rationality” in classical India. See Matilal (1986: 80–93; 1998: 32–59) for further discussion. 7. Considerations of space prevent us from extensively considering responses to skepticism by Indian realists. This short aside will have to suffice: the selfcontradiction alleged may be couched in various ways, including self-referential incoherence and pragmatic self-contradiction. In simpler versions, dating at least to the earliest commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra, the realist argues that since views cannot be advanced without reliance upon knowledge sources, the skeptic’s position is abandoned in the very act of making his case. Likewise, one proffering an argument must have some objective or concern that he holds to be normatively binding. The skeptic must either admit this, betraying his skepticism, or be dismissed as a purposeless madman (see Matilal 1986: 87 and Ganeri 2001: 11). In more sophisticated versions, the realist argues that the very concept of falsehood is parasitical on truth and therefore doubt cannot be motivated without an acknowledged background of true cognition (see Dasti 2012). Other anti-skeptical arguments are pragmatic in tone: we appeal

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to knowledge sources (and engage in epistemological reflection upon them) because we want to be guided well in support of our goals in life. A priori skepticism would stultify us from the outset, undermining this very project (see Phillips 2012: 18–19). 8. Phillips (1995: 15) suggests that Nāgārjuna was a catalyst for the “professionalization within all Indian schools” of this time, as his dialectical attacks provoked them into “rethinking [their core positions] and tighter argumentation.” 9. The terms mādhyamika and madhyamaka refer to an individual or group devoted to the “middle way,” a term commonly used by Buddhists to describe the Buddhist lifestyle. It has come to be specifically identified with the tradition that traces itself to Nāgārjuna. In his earliest sermons, the Buddha characterizes his path as a middle way between excessive renunciation and excessive hedonism. Elsewhere, he describes his attitude toward the reality of the world as a middle way between the complete affirmation of being and its complete denial. Nagarjuna (MMK 15.7) directly cites the sermon where this latter notion is put forth, and, as Garfield (1990: 223) notes, this usage sets the stage for Nāgārjuna’s rejection of both metaphysical realism and nihilism in favor of the “middle way” of conventionalism. See Huntington (1989), Siderits (2007: 180–207), and Westerhoff (2009), for philosophically oriented introductions to the school. See Garfield (1995), Siderits and Katsura (2013), and Westerhoff (2010) for translation and commentary on the texts that are central to this study. 10. MMK 15.2 holds that svabhāva is unconstructed (akṛtrimaḥ) and not dependent on something else (nirapekṣaḥ paratra). See Westerhoff (2009: 19–52) for a study of the primary Mādhyamika understandings of svabhāva. A helpful characterization that Westerhoff borrows from Tibetan commentators on Nāgārjuna is that something possessing svabhāva would have to exist “from its own side” and thus independently of our conceptual engagement with it. Tillemans (2001: 9) argues that for Nāgārjuna, the two central aspects of svabhāva, “findability under analysis” (something like conceptual irreducibility) and causal independence, are mutually entailing. 11. Dependent co-origination was originally put forth by the Buddha as an account of the factors that collectively perpetuate a personality stream’s continued misconception and suffering, binding it to continued rebirth in saṁsāra. According to this notion, there is no original, fundamental cause of our existence, but a self-perpetuating cycle of mutually dependent causes. We should underscore that while Nāgārjuna’s usage is tied to the original notion, he clearly develops it according to his own philosophical understanding. 12. This is the primary concern of Chapter 8 of MMK. 13. Westerhoff (2009) catalogues a number of these arguments. 14. For examples of the reasoning captured in this argument, see MMK 13.4–6; 15.2; 20.17; 21.17; 22.22; 24.38. 15. MMK 18.10 therefore states: “Whatever comes into being dependent on another is not identical to that thing. Nor is it different from it” (translation by Garfield 1995: 252). This theme is developed in Chapter 10 of MMK. 16. MMK 1.10; 15.8–9; 24.7–20, 36.

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17. I will cite specific passages of this text by verse number. See Westerhoff (2010: 63–65) for a concise discussion of this enigmatic disavowal. 18. Translations are mine unless otherwise noted. I have used the Sanskrit manuscript of the Dispeller of Disputes by Yonezawa (2008). Note that derivations of the verbal roots sidh and sādh are used in this passage, conveying the notion of accomplishment or establishment. Here they convey a sense of epistemic establishment or proof. 19. On these grounds, Siderits (1988; 2003: 150–153) argues against using the label “skeptic” for Nāgārjuna and that he is better understood as an anti-realist devoted to undermining correspondence theories of truth and foundationalist epistemologies. Without disagreeing with his cogent analysis of Nāgārjuna’s motivations or antirealist sensibility, I would contest that the convention of calling Nāgārjuna a skeptic (e.g., Matilal 1986 passim) is appropriate, so long as it is understood within the context of his philosophical project. In defense of this, a few remarks are in order. I would suggest that the definition Siderits provides of a paradigmatic skeptic is too narrow. To paraphrase, he defines the skeptic as one who agrees with the realists that there is a theory that best captures reality, but denies that we are capable of achieving it. As an anti-realist conventionalist, Nāgārjuna would then reject the very realist pretentions that give rise to skepticism. But given Siderits’s definition one could even call into question whether Sextus Empiricus is a skeptic. By modus tollens, then, the definition must be too narrow. To elaborate: like Nāgārjuna, Sextus seeks to undermine confidence that an objective theory of reality is even possible as he repeatedly calls attention to the fact that particular phenomena are experienced in radically different ways according to the presuppositions and cognitive backgrounds of the subject. Anyone arguing in favor of her own perspective would do so from within it and thus still be part of the dispute (PH 1.112). Sextus further deploys argumentative tropes akin to those of Nāgārjuna (e.g., the two modes; PH 1.78–79) that are meant to undermine any standard by which the nature of the world may be definitely adjudicated. We may, therefore, speak of Nāgārjuna as a skeptic as we do of Sextus, insofar as he argues that pretentions to objective knowledge of a mindindependent reality are unjustifiable, fruitless, and incoherent. Knowledge of that sort is not possible. In this way, just as Sextus allows for individuals to adopt conductgoverning standards while disavowing opinions regarding the true nature of things (PH 1.21–24), Nāgārjuna would allow for a limited sort of appeal to “knowledge sources” for the needs of common life, while explicitly denying that he maintains any thesis about the real nature of the world (VV 29). I would conclude, therefore, that given the range of meanings associated with “skeptic,” it is not misleading, and is indeed, appropriate for Nāgārjuna, as long as it is understood in the context of his broader project. For a more developed comparison between Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonian skepticism, see Dreyfus and Garfield (2011). 20. Huntington (1989: 78–83) and Westerhoff (2009: 13) underscore the fact that in Madhyamaka thought theoretical reflection must be conjoined with contemplative practice. 21. The first chapter of the Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha, a medieval Indian doxography, is devoted to a reconstruction of the materialist view: see Agrawal (2002). For translations of Jayarāśi’s central work, see Franco (1994) and Solomon (2010). For article-length studies of Jayarāśi, see Balcerowicz (2011) and Mills (2015).

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22. While this is a common characterization of the materialist view, examining extant fragments of commentaries on the Cārvākasūtras (Sūtras on Materialism), Bhattacharya (2011) illustrates that some materialists are willing to allow inference to stand as a source of knowledge, so long as it is entirely grounded upon and derivative of perceptual experience. 23. See Balcerowicz (2011: sect. 1.4) for a succinct summary of available evidence regarding Jayarāśi’s relationship to the materialist school. 24. See Granoff (1978) and Phillips (1995) for influential studies of Śrīharṣa. See Jha (1986) for a translation of his central work. Ram-Prasad (2002) has a number of insightful essays on Śrīharṣa. See Potter (1981) for an introduction to early Advaita Vedānta. See Ganeri (2011: 127 n. 12), however, for a suggestion that the evidence for Śrīharṣa’s connection to the Nondualist school is weaker than often claimed. 25. The use of “ultimate” is important here. Classical Nondualism tends to speak of the objects of ordinary experience as conventionally real, but ultimately unreal. As opposed to a married bachelor, which is unequivocally false, the computer in my office is conventionally real, even if ultimately illusory. Nondualists therefore tend to use a third category (other than “real” or “unreal”) for objects that are merely conventionally or phenomenally real; they are “indeterminate” (anirvacanīya). See Ram-Prasad (2002) for a study of this notion, which deftly ties its development to Indian debates over epistemology and metaphysical realism. 26. Deutsch (1969: 15–26) provides a clear explication of this notion. Phillips (1995: 78–81) discusses its development in Śrīharṣa. For translation of the relevant passages, see Jha (1986: 25–57). 27. Given this project (and with noteworthy affinities to Nāgārjuna), a central target of Śrīharṣa’s attacks is the Nyāya school. Phillips (1995) illustrates the way in which Śrīharṣa’s criticisms were a primary catalyst for the rise of “New Nyāya,” which defends traditional Nyāya positions with increased analytic rigor and refinement. 28. See Jha (1986: 704). For Śrīharṣa’s explicit appeal to the legitimacy of vitaṇḍā, see Jha (1986: 30–31). Extended discussion of this feature of Śrīharṣa’s argument is not possible in this paper, but see Granoff (1978: 1–69) for an example and analysis of his method, applied to the analyses of knowledge provided by his interlocutors. 29. See Jha (1986: 3–24). Also see Granoff (1978: 71–83). 30. Considerations of space preclude discussion of Śrīharṣa’s use of Gettier-style counterexamples to undermine Nyāya definitions of knowledge. This would, of course, be a natural point of resonance with contemporary epistemology. For further discussion, see Matilal (1986: 135–137) and Ganeri (2011: 127–130).

REFERENCES Agrawal, Madan Mohan (trans.). 2002. The Sarva-Darśana-Saṃgraha of Mādhavācārya. Vrajajivan Indological Studies, Vol. 7. Delhi: Chaukhamba Sanskrit Pratishtan. Balcerowicz, Piotr. 2011. “Jayarāśi,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/ entries/jayaraasi/.

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Barnes, Jonathan and Julia Annas (ed.). 2000. Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bett, Richard. 2000. Pyrrho, his Antecedents and his Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bhattacharya, Ramkrishna. 2010. “Commentators on the Cārvākasūtra: A Critical Survey,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 38: 419–430. Dasti, Matthew R. 2012. “Parasitism and Disjunctivism in Nyāya Epistemology,” Philosophy East and West 62: 1–15. Deutsch, Eliot. 1969. Advaita Vedānta: A Philosophical Reconstruction. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Dreyfus, Gorges and Jay L. Garfield. 2011. “Madhyamaka and Classical Greek Skepticism.” In The Cowherds (ed.), Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy, 115–130. New York: Oxford University Press. Flintoff, Everard. 1980. “Pyrrho and India,” Phronesis 25: 88–108. Franco, Eli. 1994. Perception, Knowledge and Disbelief: A Study of Jayarasi’s Scepticism. 2nd ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Frenkian, Aram. 1957. “Sextus Empiricus and Indian Logic,” The Philosophical Quarterly (India) 30: 115–126. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2001. Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason. London and New York: Routledge. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2011. The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India 1450– 1700. New York: Oxford University Press. Garfield, Jay L. 1990. “Epoche and Śūnyatā: Skepticism East and West,” Philosophy East and West 40: 285–307. Garfield, Jay L. 1995. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. New York: Oxford University Press. Garfield, Jay L. and Graham Priest. 2003. “Nāgārjuna and the Limits of Thought,” Philosophy East and West 53: 1–21. Granoff, P. E. 1978. Philosophy and Argument in Late Vedānta: Śrī Harṣa’s Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Hankinson, Robert J. 1995. The Sceptics. London and New York: Routledge. Huntington, C. W. 1989. The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Mādhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Jha, Ganganatha (trans). 1986. The Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍanakhādya of Śrī-harṣa: An English Translation. 2 Vols. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1986. Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1988. The Character of Logic in India, edited by Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari. Albany. SUNY Press. McEvilley, Thomas. 1982. “Pyrrhonism and Madhyamika,” Philosophy East and West 32: 3–35. Mills, Ethan. 2015. “Jayarāśi’s Delightful Destruction of Epistemology,” Philosophy East and West 65: 498–541. Mohanty, J. N. 2000. Classical Indian Philosophy. Janham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

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Nicholson, Hugh. 2009. “The Shift from Agonistic to Non-agonistic Debate in Early Nyāya,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 38: 75–95. Phillips, Stephen H. 1995. Classical Indian Metaphysics: Refutations of Realism and the Emergence of “New Logic.” Chicago: Open Court. Phillips, Stephen H. 2012. Classical Indian Epistemology: The Knowledge Sources of the Nyāya School. New York and London: Routledge. Potter, Karl H. 1981. Advaita Vedānta up to Śaṁkara and His Pupils. The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. 3. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi. 2002. Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Siderits, Mark. 1988. “Nāgārjuna as Anti-realist,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 16: 311– 325. Siderits, Mark. 2003. Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing. Siderits, Mark. 2007. Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Siderits, Mark and Shoryu Katsura. 2013. Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: Mulamadhyamakakārikā. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Solomon, Esther A. 1976. Indian Dialectics. Vol. 1. Ahmedabad: B. J. Institute of Learning and Research. Solomon, Esther A. (trans.). 2010. Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa’s Tattvopaplavasiṃha, edited by Shuchita Mehta. Delhi: Parimal Publications. Tillemans, Tom J. F. 2001. “Trying to Be Fair to Mādhyamika Buddhism.” The Numata Yehan Lecture in Buddhism. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary. Westerhoff, Jan. 2009. Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Westerhoff, Jan. 2010. The Dispeller of Disputes: Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yonezawa, Yoshiyasu. 2008. “Vigrahavyāvartanī: Sanskrit Transliteration and Tibetan Translation,” Journal of Aritasan Institute of Buddhist Studies 31: 209–333.

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Introduction Medieval and Renaissance Skepticism DIEGO E. MACHUCA

It is at present widely acknowledged among historians of Western philosophy that the Renaissance was a key period for both the recovery of ancient skeptical texts and the revitalization of the Western skeptical tradition. There has been much less recognition that skeptical problems and arguments were discussed fairly extensively in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The limited awareness of the role of skepticism in medieval philosophy partially explains why historical scholarship on this topic is still scarce compared to that devoted to skepticism in ancient, Renaissance, or modern philosophy. The situation has started to change, though, particularly in the last few years.1 And fortunately so, since the widespread ignorance of the part played by skepticism during the Middle Ages has prevented most scholars from realizing that medieval discussions of various forms of epistemological skepticism must be taken into account in order to fully understand the history of Renaissance and modern skepticism. For instance, new light is shed on Descartes’s evil genius and deceiving god arguments, and their differences, when one becomes aware that the question of the possibility of divine deception and the question of the extent of this deception in comparison to that of the devil were topics of considerable discussion among medieval theologians and philosophers.2 Given this background, in Descartes’s time the mere reference to deception by an evil demon or by God vividly evoked in his interlocutors and readers a topic with a long and rich history of philosophico-theological debates. But leaving aside this instrumental value, medieval discussions of skepticism—particularly skepticism about our knowledge of the nature and existence of the external world—may be of intrinsic philosophical interest to, for example, those present-day epistemologists concerned with understanding and refuting skepticism. If we consider the influence of the two main ancient skeptical traditions on Western medieval thought, it must first be said that the role played by Pyrrhonism was minor in relation to other forms of skepticism and insignificant in comparison with the part it has had from the sixteenth century until the present day. Knowledge of Pyrrhonian skepticism was extremely limited in the Middle Ages because direct acquaintance with ancient Pyrrhonian texts was rare. Although three manuscripts

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of an early-fourteenth-century Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus’s Pyrrhonian Outlines, probably by Niccolò da Reggio (ca. 1280–1350), survive, this translation seems to have exerted no influence whatsoever.3 One of these manuscripts also contains a partial Latin translation of Sextus’s Adversus Mathematicos III–V, probably by the same author.4 Likewise, a manuscript remains that contain a fifteenth-century Latin translation, by Giovanni Lorenzi, of the first four books of the Adversus Mathematicos, but it does not appear to have had any circulation.5 It does seem, however, that in the fourteenth century there was some knowledge of Sextus, since it has been argued that, in Nicholas of Autrecourt’s treatment of the infinite regress argument, it is possible to identify certain Pyrrhonian elements (see Grellard 2007a). As for other philosophical traditions, it should be noted that Greek/Byzantine and Arabic scholars continued to read Pyrrhonian texts during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. For instance, in his Myriobiblon (Library), Photius, the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, offers a detailed and relatively extensive summary of Aenesidemus’s lost Pyrrhonian Discourses that is our main source for the latter’s own brand of Pyrrhonism. By contrast, Academic skepticism was well known in Western Europe during the Middle Ages especially through Augustine’s Contra academicos, but also through Cicero’s Academica, De natura deorum, and Tusculanae.6 In general, when medieval authors engaged with skepticism, they referred to the position of the “Academics.” For instance, in the thirteenth century, Academic skepticism figures in the works of Henry of Ghent (ca. 1217–1293) and John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308). While Henry mentions the Academics in his analysis of the ancient skeptical challenges to certain knowledge or cognition, Scotus does so in the attack he mounted against Henry’s theory of illumination: he argued that Henry’s arguments in favor of divine illumination led in the end to the position of the Academics. The debate between them revolved around the question whether human knowledge is possible and, if so, how. To put it in rather simplistic terms, they both agreed that humans can have knowledge, but while Henry put forward arguments to the effect that we are unable to attain certain knowledge without divine illumination, Scotus claimed that the natural use of our cognitive faculties is sufficient to attain such knowledge.7 Setting aside the transmission and influence of ancient skeptical arguments, it should be remarked that medieval philosophico-theological discussions gave rise to original skeptical arguments, the most important of which is that which appeals to the notion of a God who, being all-powerful, could easily deceive us. In its most radical form, this argument—versions of which were discussed by such figures as William of Ockham (ca. 1287–1347), Robert Holkot (ca. 1290–1349), Gregory of Rimini (ca. 1300–1358), Nicholas of Autrecourt (ca. 1299–1369), John Buridan (ca. 1300–1361), and Peter of Ailly (1351–1420)—targets all of our knowledge of the nature and the very existence of the external world, and even logical principles such as the principle of non-contradiction. Thus, as medieval philosophy scholars sometimes remark, it is a mistake to think that external world skepticism was first formulated by Descartes. However, it is also noted that medieval authors did not in fact draw the radical skeptical implications of their arguments concerning

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divine omnipotence, the reason being that, unlike Descartes, their project was not the examination of the reliability of our cognitive capacities in order to determine whether infallible or certain knowledge is possible. They were interested in exploring the implications of the theological thesis about God’s absolute power, but did not doubt that our cognitive capacities are reliable whenever nature follows its normal course.8 Unlike what happened before and after the Middle Ages, during this period there were no skeptics, with the probable exception of John of Salisbury (ca. 1120–1180), who was influenced by Cicero and considered himself an Academic skeptic. Salisbury sought to adapt the skeptical stance he found in Cicero to Christianity. According to him, by means of the sole use of reason, certain ancient philosophers came close to the divine mysteries, but failed to recognize that their rational capacity was a gift from God and even dared to rival Him. As a result, God punished them by concealing the truth from them, which accounts for the plurality of the philosophical sects and their entrenched disputes. Academic skepticism was the humble recognition that the truth is beyond our reach. Salisbury claimed, however, that even though only God has certain knowledge of all things, we have a natural desire for truth that cannot be vain because it is implanted in us by Him: truth exists and we can gradually approach it, but without ever being able to fully attain it. Salisbury was not therefore a radical skeptic advocating universal suspension of judgment or denying the possibility of all knowledge. Rather, embracing a form of probabilism, he took skepticism to be a stance of prudence and modesty that avoids rash judgments concerning all the issues that admit of no definite resolution, and that is compatible with the holding of reasonable and fallible beliefs that are formed through dialogue and debate and that can serve as both a guide to life and the foundation of natural science. Moreover, Salisbury took certain propositions to be immune from doubt and the basis of the critical and open-minded examination of truth: logical and mathematical propositions, those concerning immediate perceptions, and those concerning the foundations of faith.9 Even though a number of medieval thinkers adopted what might be regarded as a skeptical stance on specific issues, when skepticism was the topic of discussion, in most cases the aim was either to refute the skeptical argument being considered or, following a reductio ad absurdum strategy, to refute one’s opponent’s position by showing that it led to skepticism. With regard to the former aim, one could cite, for example, the various thirteenth-century strategies to refute the skeptical argument based on the illusion of the senses (see Grellard 2004). As for the latter aim, one could mention, in addition to Scotus’s attack on Henry’s theory of divine illumination referred to above, that Nicholas of Autrecourt argued that Bernard of Arezzo’s view on the intuitive cognition of non-existents had skeptical implications that were more absurd than those which followed from the Academics’ position, and that John Buridan, in turn, argued that Nicholas’s foundationalist anti-skeptical reply actually led to skepticism while his own fallibilist strategy did successfully answer the skeptical challenge.10 Bernard of Arezzo was a Franciscan whom Nicholas had met when they were both theology students in Paris and to whom he wrote nine letters, only two of which

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survive.11 According to these letters, Bernard held that, in those circumstances in which God intervenes in the normal course of nature, there may be an act of cognition even if its object does not exist. In Nicholas’s view, this meant that it is not possible to determine when our awareness of the existence of external objects is true or false, and hence that we can never be certain of their existence, for it is not possible to determine when the act of cognition is produced by a supernatural or a natural cause, that is, by God or by the perceived object itself. Bernard also claimed that we do not have direct intuitive cognition of our own mental acts. In response, Nicholas argued that, if one cannot be certain of the existence of those things of which one has a clear cognition (viz., external objects), neither can one be certain of the existence of those things of which one has a less clear cognition (viz., one’s own mental acts), and so one cannot be certain of one’s own existence as an intellect. Although he offered replies to different skeptical arguments—such as the argument from sensory illusion and the dream argument—Nicholas’s general reply to skepticism consisted in maintaining both (i) that there are evident basic beliefs, both perceptual and intellectual, on which the justification of other beliefs ultimately rest, and (ii) that “evidentness” (evidentia),12 which admits of no degrees, is not a necessary condition for knowledge, since there is also probable knowledge, that is, knowledge of that which cannot be demonstrated but can be defended by means of rational arguments—for example, inductive and causal knowledge is probable, not evident. Buridan’s own reply to skepticism about the external world consisted in distinguishing, pace Nicholas, between two degrees of evidentness that can ground knowledge: evidentness properly so called and natural or relative evidentness. The former type of evidentness, which commands our assent immediately, is that of the propositions that are true by virtue of the semantic relation between their terms (e.g., “Every horse is an animal”) or that exemplify the principle of non-contradiction. Natural evidentness is that of the propositions expressing that which appears to be the case and which cannot appear to be otherwise for any human reason—except for sophistical ones. This type of evidentness cannot properly be so called because the intellect may be deceived with regard to those naturally evident propositions owing to a supernatural cause, that is, when God intervenes in the normal course of nature, causing the appearance of an object that is not really present. Buridan therefore conceded the possibility of divine deception with regard to our knowledge of external objects, but argued that the skeptic placed an unreasonable demand for absolute evidentness—and hence for absolute certainty—on our knowledge of the world. For, even though naturally evident knowledge is fallible, it suffices for the principles and conclusions of natural science whenever nature follows its normal course. Just as one should bear in mind that there were (almost) no real skeptics during the Middle Ages, so too should one bear in mind that medieval refutations of skepticism were not produced in the context of a serious skeptical crisis, unlike what later occurred in the Renaissance and modern periods. Rather, at least a considerable number of medieval authors made a methodological use of skeptical arguments, which consisted in using such arguments either to undermine a given conception of knowledge that was then replaced by another one immune from the challenges posed

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by those arguments, or to distinguish between types of knowledge and to determine the kind of certainty proper to each one of them.13 Skepticism seems to have been a logical construction independent for the most part of the skeptical tradition, which explains why it was understood as a reservoir of arguments to the effect that knowledge is impossible (Grellard 2004: 113; 2007a: 328). The skeptic was a fictional character whose radical stance could teach us something about the nature and limits of human knowledge. The medieval conception of skepticism is thus analogous to the way in which skepticism is conceived of by most contemporary analytic epistemologists, who take for granted that there are not, and there cannot be, any real skeptics, and who therefore regard skeptical arguments as ingenious and enlightening heuristic devices. I noted at the outset that many historians of philosophy are still unaware that discussion of skeptical problems and arguments is well attested in Western medieval philosophy. Still less known is the fact that skepticism played a central part in philosophico-theological discussions in classical Islam—a period that ranges from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries CE—even though in the Islamic tradition there were no flesh-and-blood skeptics. Skepticism arose in a dialectical context in which incompatible views were defended concerning such subjects as the anthropomorphic nature of God, the nature of belief in Islam, and religious pluralism. Skepticism was conceived of as an attitude of perplexity and doubt in the face of conflicting and equipollent assertions, and was hence clearly distinguished from the attitude of disbelief. Even though the writings of Sextus and Cicero were not available in Arabic, Islamic scholars made use of concepts that remind us of Greek skeptical notions such as ἀπορία (aporia) and ἰσοσθένεια (equipollence). Given the significant role played by skepticism during Islam’s classical period, the present book includes a chapter on this topic that focuses primarily on al-Ghazālī (1058–1111), a philosopher and theologian of Sunni Islam. al-Ghazālī made use of skeptical arguments in order to show that philosophy is unable to attain any kind of true knowledge unless it is combined or supplemented with mystical insight, for God is the ultimate guarantor of truth. al-Ghazālī is an interesting figure for historians of modern Western philosophy due to the striking similarities between the skeptical arguments he formulated and those found in Descartes (e.g., the argument from sensory illusion or the dream argument) and Hume (the arguments against causation), as well as between his and Descartes’s autobiographical records of their skeptical crises, their rejection of traditional beliefs, and their quest for certain knowledge.14 As for the part that skepticism played in the Renaissance, it should first be mentioned that in 1562 Henri Estienne published a Latin translation of Sextus’s Pyrrhonian Outlines, and in 1569 Gentian Hervet published a Latin translation of Adversus Mathematicos and of Adversus Dogmaticos, which made widely available what we today know as Sextus’s corpus. It is safe to say that most historians of ideas accept at present that the Renaissance rediscovery of those Pyrrhonian texts exerted a strong influence on the European intellectual life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, playing a key role in shaping philosophical thought in particular. Richard Popkin was the first to maintain that the revival of Pyrrhonism

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triggered a “Pyrrhonian crisis.”15 According to Popkin, this crisis first arose in the religious sphere, and then spread to cover philosophy, the sciences, and the pseudosciences. In his view, the history of Renaissance and modern philosophy should to a large extent be construed as the history of the various strategies that Renaissance and modern thinkers devised to deal with that crisis. What is of note about the rediscovery and dissemination of Sextus’s writings is the fact that his Pyrrhonism was put into the service of very different, and sometimes incompatible, aims. Some scholars have argued that Popkin overstated the part played by Pyrrhonism in shaping Renaissance and modern thought (Ayers 2004; Perler 2004). However that may be, it seems incontestable that Pyrrhonism was one of the intellectual forces that molded Renaissance and modern philosophical discussions. This is to be explained, at least in part, by the fact that those philosophers who took an interest in Sextus found in his substantive surviving writings several sophisticated batteries of arguments that call into question the epistemic justification of our beliefs in a more systematic and compelling way than anything contained in the other available ancient sources. The Pyrrhonism expounded in the recovered Sextan writings will then become an integral part of Renaissance discussions of skepticism. Academic skepticism, already known from the works of Augustine and Cicero, will of course continue to be taken into consideration in such discussions, but now with the additional invaluable information on the Pyrrhonian brand of skepticism provided by Sextus’s works. In this second part of the book, the reader will find three chapters dealing with the most important figures of Renaissance skepticism, namely, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), Pierre Charron (1541–1603), and Francisco Sanchez (1550/51–1623). Unlike the medieval authors who engaged with skepticism (again, with the possible exception of John of Salisbury), Montaigne, Charron, and Sanchez were skeptics, even if of a mitigated stripe. As in medieval philosophy, skepticism was discussed by Renaissance skeptics in close connection with religious and theological matters. In fact, both Montaigne and Charron have been considered as fideists (Popkin 2003), embracing a type of skepticism according to which reason by itself is useless for the attainment of truth or the justification of our beliefs, faith being the only means to the acquisition of knowledge and certainty. Montaigne, whose Essays heavily rely and expand on Sextus’s works, is the central figure both in the dissemination of those recently recovered works and in the impact of Pyrrhonism on Renaissance and modern philosophy, to the extent that he may be considered the first non-ancient Pyrrhonist. His importance is seen, for example, in his being the first author to have translated Sextus’s technical skeptical terms into a modern language. Montaigne’s own form of Pyrrhonism presents some key differences from Sextus’s. For instance, he interpreted Pyrrhonism as a form of phenomenalism according to which our knowledge is restricted to appearances (understood narrowly as perceptual appearances), since objective reality is unknowable. Besides the fact that Sextus’s notion of appearance included both perceptual and intellectual appearances, the main problem with Montaigne’s view concerns, from an ancient Pyrrhonist’s point of view, his claim about the unknowability of reality, which would gain him the accusation of negative meta-dogmatism that Sextus leveled against neoAcademics, Cyrenaics, and Empirical doctors. In addition, Montaigne conceived of

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the skeptic as someone who is in a state of doubt, which is a state of uneasiness or discomfort, radically different from the state of undisturbedness that the ancient Pyrrhonist fortuitously attained by suspending judgment. Montaigne also associated the Pyrrhonian fourfold observance of everyday life with Catholic traditionalism as a way of avoiding adherence to the Reformation.16 Charron adopted a more positive stance on the epistemic value of reason than did Sextus and Montaigne. Unlike Sextus, he regarded suspension of judgment as the voluntary decision of the inquirer and also allowed the skeptic to have weak opinions, in line with what he took to be Academic skepticism. His own skeptical stance is closer to this form of skepticism than to Pyrrhonism, even though he did not in the end distinguish between them. Charron introduced a sharp distinction between the internal and the external spheres that may sometimes be in strong tension: the Charronian skeptic behaves in accordance with the social norms and confines his doubt to the private sphere, where the sole authority is reason, and preserves his intellectual autonomy from the external requirements by bringing everything under critical scrutiny.17 As for Sanchez—the author of That Nothing is Known—he seems to have been a skeptic of a Pyrrhonian stripe, although he has also been characterized as defending Academic skepticism—this latter understood either as the view that knowledge is impossible or as the view that less-than-certain knowledge is achievable but always revisable in the face of new evidence. Sanchez’s Pyrrhonism can be seen, for example, in his portrayal of his search for truth: though he has not yet found it, he keeps seeking it, and though he does not claim that the search for truth is doomed to failure, he cannot assure that it will ever be found. The target of his skeptical assault was the scholastic Aristotelianism of his day: following an ad hominem argumentative strategy, he claimed that, if either of the two dominant Aristotelian metaphysical views were true, then knowledge would be impossible. It should finally be noted that Sanchez, who was also a physician, seems to have been influenced by the skeptical approach to the practice of medicine adopted by ancient medical Empiricism, a school with close ties with Pyrrhonism.18

NOTES 1. See especially Perler (2006), Lagerlund (2010), Grellard (2013), and Denery, Ghosh and Zeeman (2014). 2. For medieval authors, while the devil’s deception is restricted to knowledge that originates in perception—i.e., to the realm of external material objects that act upon our senses—God is also able to act directly upon the intellect by creating a false proposition and inducing the intellect to assent to it. On this difference, see Gregory (1992c). 3. See Schmitt (1983: 227) and Porro (1994: 230–235). For a detailed analysis of these manuscripts, see Cavini (1977: 1–8) and Floridi (2002: 63–69). 4. See Cavini (1977: 4, 8–9) and Floridi (2002: 79–80). 5. See Schmitt (1976), Porro (1994: 236), and Floridi (2002: 80–84). 6. See Schmitt (1983: 227), Porro (1994: 242–251), and Grellard (2004: 114–115).

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7. On Henry’s position and Scotus’s attack on it, see especially Perler (2006: ch. 1). It should here be pointed out that a chapter devoted to this topic and to skepticism in the thirteenth century in general was commissioned, but its author never fulfilled his commitment and publication of the book could not be further delayed. 8. On the deceiving God argument in the Middle Ages, and some comparisons with Descartes’s, see, besides Henrik Lagerlund’s chapter in this book, Perler (2010a) and especially Tullio Gregory’s two seminal studies: Gregory (1992b,c). 9. On the skepticism of John of Salisbury, in addition to David Bloch’s chapter in this book, see Grellard (2007b, 2013). 10. On Nicholas of Autrecourt’s and John Buridan’s replies to skepticism, besides Christophe Grellard’s chapter in this book, see Zupko (1993), Thijssen (2000), Grellard (2007a, 2010), Karger (2010), and Klima (2010). 11. A critical edition and English translation of Nicholas’s extant correspondence is provided in de Rijk (1994). 12. I render the Latin evidentia as “evidentness” in lieu of “self-evidence” because the former translation has become a technical term in scholarship on medieval philosophy. 13. See especially Perler (2010b); cf. Grellard (2004: 128–129; 2007a: 342). Of course, whether an author considered it necessary to answer a given skeptical argument or merely made a methodological use of is not always easy to establish. 14. On al-Ghazālī, besides Paul Heck’s contribution to this book, see Halevi (2002) and Kukkonen (2010). On skepticism in classical Islam in general, see Heck (2014). On the comparison of al-Ghazālī with Descartes and Hume, see Menn (2003) and Moad (2009). 15. Popkin (1960) is the pioneering work on the impact of ancient skepticism (especially in its Pyrrhonian variety) on Renaissance and modern philosophy, covering the period from Erasmus to Descartes. Popkin (1979) extends the analysis to Spinoza, and Popkin (2003) reaches back to Savonarola and forward to Bayle. 16. On Montaigne’s skepticism, besides Gianni Paganini’s contribution, see e.g. Brahami (1997), Giocanti (2001), Popkin (2003: ch. 3), and Paganini (2008: ch. 1). 17. On Charron’s skepticism, besides Gianni Paganini’s contribution, see e.g. Popkin (2003: ch. 3) and Maia Neto (2014: ch. 2). 18. On Sanchez’s skepticism, besides Damian Caluori’s chapter, see Limbrick (1988), Popkin (2003: 38–43), Caluori (2007) and Paganini (2016).

REFERENCES Ayers, Michael. 2004. “Popkin’s Revised Scepticism,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12: 319–332. Brahami, Frédéric. 1997. Le scepticisme de Montaigne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Caluori, Damian. 2007. “The Skepticism of Francisco Sanchez,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 89: 30–46. Cavini, Walter. 1977. “Appunti sulla prima diffusione in Occidente delle opere di Sesto Empirico,” Medioevo 3: 1–20.

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Denery, Dallas, Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman (eds.). 2014. Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols. de Rijk, L. M. 1994. Nicholas of Autrecourt: His Correspondence with Master Giles and Bernard of Arezzo. Leiden: Brill. Floridi, Luciano. 2002. Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism. New York: Oxford University Press. Giocanti, Sylvia. 2001. Penser l’irrésolution: Montaigne, Pascal, La Mothe Le Vayer. Trois itinéraires sceptiques. Paris: Honoré Champion. Gregory, Tullio. 1992a. Mundana Sapientia: Forme di conoscenza nella cultura medievale. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Gregory, Tullio. 1992b. “La tromperie divine.” In Gregory 1992a, 389–399. (First published in 1982.) Gregory, Tullio. 1992c. “Dio ingannatore e genio maligno. Nota in margine alle Meditationes di Descartes.” In Gregory 1992a, 401–440. (First published in 1974.) Grellard, Christophe. 2004. “Comment peut-on se fier à l’expérience? Esquisse d’une typologie des réponses médiévales au problème sceptique,” Quaestio 4: 113–135. Grellard, Christophe. 2007a. “Scepticism, Demonstration and the Infinite Regress Argument (Nicholas of Autrecourt and John Buridan),” Vivarium 45: 328–342. Grellard, Christophe. 2007b. “Jean de Salisbury: un cas médiéval de scepticisme,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 54: 16–40. Grellard, Christophe. 2010. “Nicholas of Autrecourt’s Skepticism: The Ambivalence of Medieval Epistemology.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 119–143. Leiden: Brill. Grellard, Christophe. 2013. Jean de Salisbury et la renaissance médiévale du scepticisme. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Halevi, Leor. 2002. “The Theologian’s Doubts: Natural Philosophy and the Skeptical Games of Ghazālī,” Journal of the History of Ideas 63: 19–29. Heck, Paul. 2014. Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion. New York: Routledge. Karger, Elizabeth. 2010. “A Buridanian Response to a Fourtheenth Century Skeptical Argument and its Rebuttal by a New Argument in the Early Sixteenth Century.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 215–232. Leiden: Brill. Klima, Gyula. 2010. “The Anti-skepticism of John Buridan and Thomas Aquinas: Putting Skepticism in their Place Versus Stopping them in their Tracks.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 145–170. Leiden: Brill. Kukkonen, Taneli. 2010. “Al-Ghazālī’s Skepticism Revisited.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 29–59. Leiden: Brill. Lagerlund, Henrik (ed.). 2010. Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background. Leiden: Brill. Limbrick, Elaine. 1988. “Introduction.” In E. Limbrick and D. Thomson (eds.), Francisco Sanches: That Nothing is Known, 1–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Maia Neto, José. 2014. Academic Skepticism in Seventeenth-Century French Philosophy: The Charronian Legacy 1601–1662. Dordrecht: Springer. Menn, Stephen 2003. “The Discourse on the Method and the Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography.” In J. Miller and B. Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, 141–191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moad, Omar. 2009. “Comparing Phases of Skepticism in al-Ghazālī and Descartes: Some First Meditations on Deliverance from Error,” Philosophy East and West 59: 88–101. Paganini, Gianni. 2008. Skepsis: Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme. Paris: Vrin. Paganini, Gianni. 2016. “Sanches et Descartes. Subjectivité et connaissance réflexive au temps des sceptiques,” Bulletin de la Société internationale des amis de Montaigne 64: 173–185. Perler, Dominik. 2004. “Was There a ‘Pyrrhonian Crisis’ in Early Modern Philosophy? A Critical Notice of Richard H. Popkin,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 86: 209–220. Perler, Dominik. 2006. Zweifel und Gewissheit: Skeptische Debatten im Mittelalter. Frankfurt: Klostermann. Perler, Dominik. 2010a. “Could God Deceive Us? Skeptical Hypotheses in Late Medieval Epistemology.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 171–192. Leiden: Brill. Perler, Dominik. 2010b. “Skepticism.” In R. Pasnau (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, 384–396. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Popkin, Richard. 1960. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes. Assen: van Gorcum. Popkin, Richard. 1979. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza. Berkeley: University of California Press. Popkin, Richard. 2003. The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle. New York: Oxford University Press. Porro, Pascuale. 1994. “Il Sextus latinus e l’immagine dello scetticismo antico nel medioevo,” Elenchos 15: 229–253. Schmitt, Charles. 1976. “An Unstudied Fifteenth-century Latin Translation of Sextus Empiricus by Giovanni Lorenzi.” In C. H. Clough (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, 244–261. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Schmitt, Charles. 1983. “The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times.” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 226–251. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Thijssen, Johannes. 2000. “The Quest for Certain Knowledge in the Fourteenth Century: Nicholas of Autrecourt against the Academics.” In J. Sihvola (ed.), Ancient Scepticism and the Sceptical Tradition (Acta Philosophica Fennica 64), 199–223. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of Finland. Zupko, Jack. 1993. “Buridan on Skepticism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 31: 191–221.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Augustine and Skepticism STÉPHANE MARCHAND

1 INTRODUCTION Augustine (354–430 CE) was certainly not a skeptic. He nevertheless played a crucial role in the history of philosophical skepticism. Three main reasons place Augustine at a strategic point in relation to skepticism. First, he is the author of Against the Academics (Contra Academicos), a philosophical dialogue entirely devoted to the refutation of skepticism, where he discusses the arguments of the New Academy in order to go beyond skepticism. But, secondly, Augustine’s contribution to skepticism is not limited to this work, for he never ceased in considering skepticism a problem of the highest order. His conception of belief in the Christian faith can also be interpreted as a response to the skeptical contention that one should live without belief. Finally, through his reflections on the problem of skepticism, Augustine conceived of a new form of it: skepticism as a thought experiment of the inner self, which exhibits a metaphysical and epistemological strength that from Descartes onward has remained vibrant.1

2 THE CONTRA ACADEMICOS Augustine is a witness of great importance in the history of ancient skepticism under its Academic guise. First of all, his reading of Cicero played a crucial role in the education he received.2 Augustine was probably the most important reader of Cicero’s Academica in antiquity (Schmitt 1972: 29): he took the arguments put forward by Cicero in that book very seriously, to the point that he confessed having temporarily endorsed the skepticism of the New Academy in 383 CE, after giving up Manichaeism and before his conversion to Christianity (see Confessiones V x 19; cf. De beata vita 4).3 Therefore, for Augustine skepticism was not just a theoretical hypothesis, but a real (albeit false) philosophical alternative for those who are disappointed by how difficult it is to find the truth. Since he felt that skepticism was a genuine problem, he wrote an entire dialogue with the sole purpose of refuting it, the Contra Academicos, written in 386, just after his conversion to Christianity.

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Contra Academicos is presented as a dialogue in the style of Cicero and is composed of three books. The global aim of the work is to demonstrate, in countering skepticism, that certain knowledge is possible and that happiness cannot be attained without believing that it is possible to find the truth (C. Acad. I ii 5). At the end of the dialogue, Augustine distinguishes between the real intention of the Academics, who according to him were not true skeptics, and their arguments, which were genuinely skeptical. Augustine was convinced that the so-called skeptical Academy represented, in reality, an esoteric form of Platonism that used skepticism to hide its dogmatism during the Hellenistic period, when materialism was flourishing (see C. Acad. III xvii 37–xx 43; see also Letter 1).4 Therefore, when Augustine criticized the New Academy, he was not attacking the Academy as an institution (indeed, he shared their Platonist conviction that spirit is superior to matter). Rather, he was trying to inoculate against skepticism anyone who might be tempted to take it as a serious philosophical option. Because there were people who believed the Academy’s skeptical arguments to be valid, he considered it not only necessary to respond to those arguments, but to restore a genuine relationship to truth. Augustine’s line of argument in the Contra Academicos is somewhat tortuous.5 However, it is possible to distinguish between two levels of refutation: (i) an epistemological and (ii) a moral level.6 The epistemological level (i) is a direct response to the arguments presented in Cicero’s Academica. Augustine purported to prove that it was possible to offer a rational response to the New Academy. Among the numerous arguments, Augustine made use of analytic or a priori knowledge: even if one doubts a proposition, this doubt cannot remove the true knowledge that this proposition is either true or false (C. Acad. III ix 21). Similarly, every disjunctive proposition is necessarily true (C. Acad. III ix 23: the world is organized either by a divine providence or by a body, it either has a beginning or does not, etc.; see also III xiii 29). These arguments function as counterexamples, showing that it is easy to have access to certainty and, therefore, that there is no reason to despair of knowing the truth: Augustine’s contention against skepticism is that some things can be known.7 We can focus on a set of arguments that are similar to the dream argument in Descartes’s First Meditation: Therefore, I call the whole that contains and sustains us, whatever it is, the “world”—the whole, I say, that appears before my eyes, which I perceive to include the heavens and the earth (or the quasi-heavens and quasi-earth). If you say nothing seems to be so to me, I’ll never be in error. It is the man who recklessly approves what seems so to him who is in error. You do say that a falsehood can seem to be so to sentient beings. You don’t say that nothing seems to be so. Every ground for disputation, where you Academicians enjoy being the master, is completely taken away if it is true not only that we knew nothing, but also that nothing seems to be so to us. However, if you deny that what seems so

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to me is the world, then you’re making a fuss about a name, since I said I call this “world.” You’ll ask me: “Is what you see the world even if you’re asleep?” It has already been said that I call “world” whatever seems to me to be such. (C. Acad. III xi 24–25)8 Thus, whatever we might think about the existence of an external world (the knowledge of which is mediated by our senses and can actually be false), it remains indubitable that there is something in one’s mind (even if I am dreaming or suffering from a hallucination) that I can call “world” and about which I can form true knowledge. Admittedly, Cicero’s Academica (II 47–48) already planted the seeds of this argument. But Cicero glanced over that hypothesis without any clear formulation of a world composed only of inner states. Augustine’s own reflection on the Academic arguments produced a clearer formulation of the hypothesis of external world skepticism which will be a fundamental feature of modern skepticism.9 As for the moral level of refutation (ii) as Heil (1972: 109) has claimed, in Contra Academicos the core of the refutation is not epistemological. Augustine was aware that the truth and certainty he was looking for was not of the kind we find in mathematics or analytic knowledge (see C. Acad. II iii 9), but concerned instead knowledge of the soul and of God, the sole objects of worth for Augustine (see Soliloques I 7). Indeed, this skepticism is dangerous because it can discourage anyone from being on the path of the truth, i.e., on the path of God. Hence, the real danger of skepticism is moral, and it becomes essential to demonstrate that skepticism as a philosophy is essentially defective. This demonstration consists in showing that skepticism is not what it seems to be for Cicero, namely, an open-minded stance that earnestly seeks the truth (see, e.g., Acad. II iii 7), but rather a renunciation of truth and philosophy: “Therefore,” I continued, “don’t you know that up to now there is nothing I perceive to be certain? I’m prevented from searching for it by the arguments and debates of the Academicians. They somehow persuaded me of the plausibility—so as not to give up their word just yet—that man cannot find the truth. Accordingly, I had become lazy and utterly inactive, not daring to search for what the most ingenuous and learned men weren’t permitted to find. Unless, therefore, I first become as convinced that the truth can be found as the Academicians are convinced that it cannot, I shall not dare to search for it. I don’t have anything to defend.” (C. Acad. II ix 23) Here is the danger: by their arguments, the Academics deviate from the natural path that leads from the desire for truth to knowledge and then to God. And since the knowledge of God is the only means of achieving our natural desire to be happy, the moral refutation of skepticism consists of demonstrating that it cannot be considered a serious philosophical option to achieve happiness. Rather, for Augustine, the skeptics’ excessive prudence hides existential despair (the despair of truth, the desperatio veri: see Letter 1, 3; C. Acad. II i 1; Confessiones VI i 1). In fact,

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the skeptic is frightened by the possibility of error. By privileging the criterion of plausibility (as King translates the Latin probabile, which is itself a translation of the greek word πιθανόν), he is trying to avoid risk. But, as Augustine shows, this position cannot provide any quietude and does not prevent anyone from error: I seemed to see an entrance through which error would rush in upon those who felt safe. I think that a man is in error not only when he follows the false path, but also when he’s not following the true one. (C. Acad. III xv 34) Therefore, a person can avoid giving his assent, follow the criterion of what is probable—in sum, a person can act exactly as Carneades recommended—and still be wrong: being guided by the criterion of what is probable does not prevent anyone from sinning, and therefore can lead them to err from a moral point of view (C. Acad. III xvi 35–36). Rashness can be useful and necessary in order to allow an individual to believe something doubtful that will nevertheless lead to truth. Even if to doubt can prevent many of our errors, one cannot find the true path without having a belief.

3  HERMENEUTICS AGAINST SKEPTICISM If something skeptical remained in Augustine’s position, it should be sought in connection with his thoughts on the weakness of pure reason.10 Indeed, Augustine was an acute critic of the arrogance of philosophers, who claimed that it was possible to know everything through the use of reason alone. Against this claim Augustine insisted, in a skeptical manner, on the difficulty of finding any indubitable truth by itself through reason, at least on any theological or metaphysical level. Thus, Augustine tried to find an escape path between two excesses: an excessive rationalism that claims to know God by reason (as the Manicheans claimed: see De utilitate credendi I 2) and an excessive skepticism that will lead to the despair of truth. Augustine frequently agreed that it is reason—or intellect—whose function it is to understand the truth; but the problem is knowing whether such an understanding can begin with reason alone or must instead begin with belief and, more precisely, with faith. To introduce the necessity of faith (fides) as a condition for understanding, Augustine made frequent use of Isaiah 7.9: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Hence, Augustine’s position did not entail fideism in the sense that faith should replace reason, but rather stressed the necessity of believing in order to understand and know theological truths, according to the principle crede ut intelligas: you must believe to understand (see e.g., De libero arbitrio I 4). As Augustine said, “Faith prepares the ground for understanding” (De ut. cred. XVII 35)11; in the end, it is reason that understands, but reason needs to begin with some form of belief (Rist 2001: 27). Hence, to attain knowledge of the truths that really matter to Augustine, knowledge of God and of our soul, it is impossible to rely on pure reason; unlike formal knowledge, this kind of knowledge concerns objects that are hidden and requires one to begin with belief. Since there is no direct access to this knowledge,

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it is necessary to believe in some authority in order to be on the path of truth. This contention does not entail, as fideism does, the confusion between knowledge and faith, but rather the distinction between two epistemological processes: “We must hold what we understand as coming from reason, what we believe as coming from authority” (De ut. cred. XI 25).12 Actually, it seems that, in Augustine’s view, belief is necessary not only in theological or metaphysical matters, for almost all aspects of the human condition are determined by our confidence in propositions that we cannot verify through scrutiny; propositions about our relation to the world and to other men, even to our own history, rely on belief. Belief is a necessary feature of the human condition: without believing witnesses, we could know nothing of history or about the thoughts and feelings of another mind13: So it was, Lord, that you began little by little to work on my heart with your most gentle and merciful hand, and dispose it to reflect how innumerable were the things I believed and held to be true, though I had neither seen them nor been present when they happened. How many truths there were of this kind, such as events of world history, or facts about places and cities I had never seen; how many were the statements I believed on the testimony of friends, or physicians, or various other people; and, indeed, unless we did believe them we should be unable to do anything in this life. With what unshakable certainty, moreover, did I hold fast to the belief that I had been born of my particular parents, yet I could not have known this without believing what I had heard. (Conf. VI v 7; Boulding’s translation in Rotelle 1997) Augustine offers a rationalist approach to the problem of believing. To believe (credere) is not necessarily to be credulous. On the contrary, Augustine (again at De ut. cred. XI 25) stresses the difference between believing and having an opinion (opinari). To have an opinion consists of having a belief without the consciousness that it is a mere belief. To opine entails the ignorance of the difference between the things we can know (intelligere) and those we can only believe (credibilia); in sum, opinion is rash belief. But to believe is not wrong per se. We can have true belief, if we keep in mind that this very belief remains a mere belief, and if we have good reasons to believe. Hence, the quality of the belief depends on the awareness that belief is not certain knowledge and on the authority followed for believing. Thus, just as reason needs faith, so too does faith need reason. More precisely, faith is the belief in an authority that has—by rational means—been recognized as being reliable. In the end, this is the very reason that compels us to decide whether to believe or not: If, then, it is reasonable that faith precede reason with respect to certain great truths that cannot yet be grasped, however slight the reason is that persuades us to this, it undoubtedly also comes before faith. (Letter 120, 3; Teske’s translation in Ramsey 2004; see also De vera religione XXIV 45) This rationalistic approach to faith is based on reflection on the authority of the Bible as a holy book that defines what it is to believe. This view makes it possible to

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differentiate between Christian faith and credulity: if faith is not blind and irrational assent, it is necessary to have reasons to assent to facts that are, for the most part, unbelievable, such as the resurrection of Christ. For Augustine, the Bible gives an account of God’s manifestations in the world, which are signs to be interpreted. In this sense, the Bible is like a history book that requires the evaluation of the reliability of the witnesses and their idiosyncrasies, etc. Since there can be no direct knowledge of history, we have to rely on accounts and testimonies, and Augustine tries to offer some sort of method to acquire a rational approach to the Bible as God’s book, by defending its reliability and overall coherence, despite the fact that God has chosen different prophets who use a variety of styles and images to pass on the testimony of his actions on men. The Bible therefore contains, on the one hand, reasons to believe its contents, and on the other, truths enabling readers to understand once a method to read and to interpret it has been provided.14 Hence, there is a connection between Augustine’s reflection on belief and his thoughts on reading and hermeneutic theory, and this reflection shares some common features with the problem of skepticism, and more precisely with the problem of understanding someone else’s thought.15 This feature of Augustine’s thought has been related to the hermeneutic circle. Augustine’s reflection on belief shows that, in many things, understanding entails, firstly, making the hypothesis that there is something to understand (a kind of principle of charity, cf. De ut. cred. VI 13), and secondly, holding preliminary beliefs in order to be on the path of understanding (or a pre-understanding principle). This circle comes from Augustine himself (Conf. I i 1; De Trinitate XV ii 2) and is perhaps one of the most important theses of Augustinian thought (see, for instance, Pascal Pensées Laf. 919): we cannot seek God (or truth) without having already found him. Thus, neither the excessive rationalism of the Manicheans nor any skeptical reading of the Bible is able to understand the truth of Christianity, because both lack faith. Augustine conceived this circle through his thinking on the mysteries of the Bible and the search for a method to read and understand it against the skeptical objections. As he said in the Confessions, the Bible—and especially the Old Testament— appeared to him a weak and poor book in comparison with the sophisticated prose of Cicero (Conf. III vi 9). The comprehension of the full sense—or at least of a true sense—of the text supposes giving credit to its author and to his intention by way of some belief. This circle helps us to understand more precisely Augustine’s stance on faith: although he emphasized the fact that there are reasons to believe, his stance was not purely rationalistic. Faith and religious belief can be fed by reason and intellectual reflection on the meaning of the Bible and, more generally, on God’s manifestations in the world. But faith does not depend on the sole decision of the will. More precisely, the will itself is not the result of a purely individual decision, but presupposes the grace of God without which nobody can really find the path of truth. This feature takes on great significance given that Augustine was at that point involved in the debate with the Pelagians, who defended the possibility for men to save their souls by themselves. For this reason, even if it remains true that faith is

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conditioned by rational reasons, the very fact of believing relies on a movement that originates in God himself. Contrary to what the skeptic seems to believe, assent is not a completely voluntary act; rather, it is influenced by God’s love and concern for us.16

4  AUGUSTINE AND THE COGITO An overview of the relationship between Augustine and skepticism would be incomplete without a survey of Augustine’s texts that anticipate Descartes’s famous experience of the cogito. We saw that as early as the Contra Academicos, Augustine presented arguments that are similar to those employed by Descartes in his First Meditation, where he showed that some kinds of knowledge (such as mathematical knowledge) resist the dream argument. But Augustine also deployed some thought experiments that can be compared to Descartes’s discovery, in the Second Meditation (AT VII 25), of the indubitable truth of the proposition “ego sum, ego existo.” In opposition to skepticism, Augustine emphasized the certainty of the existence of the individual’s own thought as a fundamental experience. It is worth noting that this very experience is mentioned in the first dialogues (see De vita beata II 7, Soliloques II 1, De libero arbitrio II iii 7) and appears in later masterpieces like De Trinitate (e.g., XV xii 21) and De civitate dei (XI, 26). Putting aside the highly debated question of whether Descartes took his inspiration from Augustine,17 what is important is determining in what sense Augustine’s stance is connected to solipsism, which is nowadays deeply connected to skepticism. In the De civitate dei, the indubitable fact of the existence of the individual’s own thought takes the form of an anti-skeptical argument—the Academics cannot affirm that men are always mistaken because there is something indubitable: the very fact that one does exist, and that one does know that he exists—“for if I am mistaken, I exist” (si fallor, enim sum, XI 26).18 Accordingly, as in Descartes, doubt cannot be universal because something within the inner experience of my mind provides resistance to all skeptical scenarios. Yet, Augustine’s aim is not to use the skeptical hypothesis in order to reconstruct knowledge, for one can see that such a methodological doubt does not appear in Augustine. And, as we saw, as far as knowledge is concerned, he considered rather the necessity of relying on an external authority. Nevertheless, the discovery of the inner knowledge of the individual’s own existence as a mind is also fundamental in Augustine, not in the sense that it could have the function of a first principle, but rather in the sense that it reveals the distinctive nature of human thought. Not only does the inner knowledge discovered by Augustine offer a formal criterion of truth and an instance of an indubitable truth (cf. De Trinitate XV 21), but it also, and more fundamentally, gives us knowledge of the individual’s own substance: Now properly speaking a thing cannot in any way be said to be known while its substance is unknown. Therefore when mind knows itself it knows its substance, and when it is certain of itself it is certain of its substance. But it is certain of itself, as everything said above convincingly demonstrates. Nor is it in the least

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certain whether it is air or fire or any kind of body or anything appertaining to body. Therefore it is not any of these things. The whole point of its being commanded to know itself comes to this: it should be certain that it is none of the things about which it is uncertain, and it should be certain that it is that alone which alone it is certain that it is. . . . But if it were one of these things [sc. if mind were a material thing] it would think that thing differently from the others, not that is to say with a construct of the imagination as absent things are thought that have been contacted by one of the senses of the body, either actually themselves or something of the same kind; but with some inner, nonsimulated but true presence (nothing after all is more present to it than itself), in the same way as it thinks it is living and remembering and understanding and willing. It knows these things in itself, it does not form images of them as though it had touched them with the senses outside itself, as it touches any bodily things. If it refrains from affixing to itself any of these image-bound objects of its thoughts in such a way as to think it is that sort of thing, then whatever is left to it of itself, that alone is what it is. (De Trinitate X x 16; translation by Hill 1991) Thus, for Augustine, a special knowledge comes from the mind: the mind is present to itself in a totally different way from that in which other things can be present to it. Book X of the De Trinitate precisely demonstrates this distinctive characteristic: by knowing itself, the mind knows that it lives, that it exists—it knows itself entirely (De Trinitate X iv 6). In this work, references to similar skeptical arguments probably no longer refer to the skepticism of the New Academy; Augustine has extracted from this skepticism a new picture of skepticism as an inner experience,19 the experience of solipsism through which he discovered the peculiarity and the substance of an inner world. Hence, skepticism is not only something that any rational thinker should refute for the sake of argumentation; it has also become a gateway to a crucial feature of knowledge in Augustinian philosophy: interiority. Skeptical scenarios show that knowledge of external reality is not of the same character as knowledge of the inner self. But even in this context, this experience cannot be understood as a kind of solipsism that is an experience where one is alone (solus ipse) and where each thing can be reduced to a subjective representation. It is for this reason that Augustine perceives this experience revealed in the individual as the presence of the “interior master”—the presence of God in each of us—thanks to whom any propositional content can be recognized as a truth.20 The inner self has the privilege of being an image of God; accordingly, skeptical scenarios are an efficient means of going inside and finding an inner world. Skepticism remains a means (however, not the only means) of revealing the inner self and performing Augustine’s advice: “Do not go outside, come back into yourself. It is in the inner self that Truth dwells” (De vera religione XXXIX 72, translation by Hill in Ramsey 2005). Thus, even though Augustine was not a skeptic and devoted a part of his work to refuting skepticism, in reality it seems that skepticism played a significant role in the constitution of his philosophy. And despite the fact that skepticism entered

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Augustine’s work through his knowledge of the Academic skeptical tradition, the vivid discussion he entertained with this philosophical tradition gave rise to new skeptical problems and to new functions of and uses for skepticism.

NOTES 1. Augustine’s view of skepticism has also had an important influence on the medieval conception of Skepticism: see Grellard (2011; 2018) and Bouton-Touboulic (2013). 2. On Augustine’s life and education, see Marrou (1939) and Brown (2000). 3. Some scholars have doubted that Augustine earnestly espoused skepticism: see Alfaric (1918: 352–358), Testard (1958: 129), and Besnier (1993: 91). However, there is no doubt that Augustine considered skepticism a very serious problem. 4. That hypothesis is already mentioned by Sextus, PH I 234. For a critical approach to this hypothesis, see Lévy (1978). 5. For a precise analysis of the argumentation in Contra Academicos, see Mosher (1981), Kirwan (1983), and Curley (1997). 6. For this distinction, see Catapano (2006), who also provides useful references. 7. For an accurate analysis of the function of those analytic counterexamples in Augustine’s strategy, see Heil (1972: 108–111). 8. All translations of the Contra Academicos are taken from King (1995). 9. See Burnyeat (1982: 28). This paper has been recently challenged by scholars who denied that Augustine entertained the hypothesis of an external world skepticism: see Bolyard (2006). One can also consider that the medieval interpretations of Augustin’s treatment of skepticism were a crucial influence on the modern form of skepticism: see Grellard (2011: 18; 2018). 10. It is worth noting that Augustine was confronted by accusations of skepticism: see Contra litteras Petiliani III xxi 24. Cf. Bermon (2009). 11. For the De ut. cred., I follow the translation of Kearney in Ramsey (2005). 12. Quod intellegimus, debemus rationi: quod credimus auctoritati. Cf. also Revisions XIV 3. 13. Cf. De fide rerum quae non videntur II 4; De ut. cred. XII 26. 14. The definition of such a method is the goal of the second book of De Doctrina Christiana. 15. According to Stock (1996: 283), the reading theory building upon the experience of the Bible is an “adaptation of scepticism.” 16. For an accurate analysis of this point, see Koch (2013). 17. Descartes himself was forced to explain the differences between both arguments: see Bermon (2001: 9–15). The bibliography on the topic is extensive, see Gilson (1930), Gouhier (1978), Taylor (1989), Matthews (1992), Menn (1998), and Marion (2008: 87–98). 18. For an accurate explication of this argument, see Matthews (1972; 1992: 29–34). 19. Scholars question whether this new picture should be connected with the Plotinian treatment of skepticism that can be found in Plotinus’s Ennead V 3 [49].

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20. On this crucial doctrine, see the De Magistro and De Trinitate XII. An accurate explanation of the doctrine of illumination can be found in O’Daly (1987: 199–207).

REFERENCES Alfaric, Prosper. 1918. L’évolution intellectuelle de Saint Augustin: Du manichéisme au néoplatonisme. Paris: E. Nourry. Bermon, Emmanuel. 2001. Le cogito dans la pensée de saint Augustin. Histoire des doctrines de l’Antiquité classique. Paris: Vrin. Bermon, Emmanuel. 2009. “‘Contra academicos vel de academis’ (retract. I, 1): saint Augustin et les Academica de Cicéron,” Revue des études anciennes, 111: 75–93. Besnier, Bernard. 1993. “La Nouvelle Académie selon le point de vue de Philon de Larisse.” In B. Besnier (ed.), Scepticisme et exégèse: Hommage à Camille Pernot, 85–163. Fontenay-aux-Roses: ENS Fontenay/Saint-Cloud. Bouton-Touboulic Anne-Isabelle. 2013. “Scepticism (up to Descartes).” In K. Pollmann (ed.), The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, vol. 3, 1694–1697. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, Peter. 2000. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. London: Faber. Burnyeat, Myles. 1982. “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” Philosophical Review 90: 3–40. Catapano, Giovanni. 2006. “Quale scetticismo viene criticato da Agostino nel Contra Academicos?” Quaestio 6: 1–13. Curley, Augustine. 1997. Augustine’s Critique of Skepticism: A Study of Contra Academicos. New York: Peter Lang. Gilson, Étienne. 1930. Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien. Paris: Vrin. Gouhier, Henri. 1978. Cartésianisme et augustinisme au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Vrin. Grellard Christophe. 2011. “Academicus.” In I. Atucha, D. Calma, C. König-Pralong, and I. Zavattero (eds.), Mots Médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, 7–8. Porto: Fédération internationale des instituts d’études médiévales. Grellard Christophe. 2018. “Le scepticisme au Moyen Âge, de saint Augustin à Nicolas d’Autrécourt. Réception et transformation d’un problème philosophique.” Cahiers Philosophiques. Heil, John. 1972. “Augustine’s Attack on Skepticism: The Contra Academicos,” The Harvard Theological Review 65: 99–116. Hill, Edmund. 1991. Augustine: The Trinity. Volume I/5. New York: New City Press. King, Peter. 1995. Augustine: Against the Academicians and The Teacher. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Kirwan, Christopher. 1983. “Augustine against the Skeptics.” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 205–223. Berkeley: California University Press. Koch, Isabelle. 2013. “Représentation et assentiment dans la définition augustinienne de la croyance.” In L. Jaffro (ed.), Croit-on comme on veut? La controverse classique sur le rôle de la volonté dans l’assentiment, 47–62. Paris: Vrin. Lévy, Carlos. 1978. “Scepticisme et dogmatisme dans l’Académie: l’ésotérisme d’Arcésilas,” Revue des études latines 56: 335–348.

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Marion, Jean-Luc. 2008. Au lieu de soi: l’approche de Saint Augustin. Paris: PUF. Marrou, Henri-Irénée. 1939. Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique. Paris: De Broccard. Matthews, Gareth. 1972. “Si Fallor, Sum.” In G. Matthews (ed.), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays, 151–162. New York: Doubleday. Matthews, Gareth. 1992. Thought’s Ego in Augustine and Descartes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Menn, Stephen. 2002. Descartes and Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mosher, David L. 1981. “The Argument of St. Augustine’s Contra Academicos,” Augustinian Studies 12: 89–113. O’Daly, Gerard James Patrick. 1987. Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind. London: Duckworth. Ramsey, Boniface (ed.). 2004. Augustine: Letters 100–155, translated by R. Teske. Volume II/2. Hyde Park and New York: New City Press. Ramsey, Boniface (ed.). 2005. Augustine: On Christian Belief, translated by E. Hill, R. Kearney, M. Campbell, and B. Harbert. Volume I/8 of The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press. Rist, John. 2001. “Faith and Reason.” In N. Kretzmann and E. Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 26–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rotelle, John (ed.). 1997. The Confessions, translated by M. Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press. Schmitt, Charles Bernard. 1972. Cicero Scepticus: A Study of the Influence of the Academica in the Renaissance. The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Stock, Brian. 1996. Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Testard, Maurice. 1958. Saint Augustin et Cicéron : Cicéron dans la formation et dans l’œuvre de Saint Augustin. Paris: Études Augustiniennes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

John of Salisbury’s Skepticism DAVID BLOCH

1 INTRODUCTION “The Latin world has had nothing greater than Cicero!” (Orbis nil habuit maius Cicerone Latinus), said John of Salisbury (c. 1115/20–1180) in his Entheticus Maior (van Laarhoven 1987: 185). John spent most of his life as a diplomat and had only limited time for philosophical studies. However, he had studied no less than twelve years in Paris (1135/36–1147/48) with practically all the great masters, and he knew much about philosophy, theology, and literature. We may disagree with him concerning the evaluation of Cicero, but he was certainly qualified to make the claim. For the history of philosophy, John is also important as one of the first medieval thinkers who had access to most if not all of Aristotle’s works on logic. Thus, he had the resources and was naturally inclined to combine the philosophies of Cicero and Aristotle, a fact that contributed immensely to his views on skepticism.1 Thus, John was, for better and worse, a peculiar kind of skeptic: an Academic, Ciceronian skeptic, but (perhaps) not truly so. He set forth his views in two major works in particular: the Policraticus (on political theory) and the Metalogicon (on logic and education), both finished in or around 1159. The former relies primarily on examples and quotations from authoritative authors (although book 7 in particular contains important arguments), whereas the latter presents arguments in favor of the positions he adopts. I will focus on the Metalogicon.2 In this work, John makes the claim that the basic texts in education should be those that constitute Aristotle’s Organon (along with Porphyry’s Isagoge), and the Stagirite was certainly no skeptic but the founder of modern science and scientific theory and methodology. At first glance, then, John seems to be in danger of holding contradictory views. Furthermore, skepticism was not a common position in the twelfth century.3 In fact, John is apparently the only westerner of that century who claims to be a skeptic, although the Academic type of skepticism was well known in the first half of the century, in particular from Augustine’s Against the Academics (Contra Academicos).4 None of his teachers, who were practically all

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the great masters of his time, were skeptics, and John usually followed their lead in philosophical matters. But in the Metalogicon he seems to embrace skepticism contrary to almost all the science and philosophy of his time. I will argue that John’s desire to be both Ciceronian and Aristotelian makes him a rather fascinating kind of Aristotelian skeptic. Even if one is sometimes puzzled by the results of John’s efforts, he deserves our respect for taking such a controversial and independent stance based on arguments and for his willingness to take both Cicero and Aristotle seriously.

2  THE THREE KINDS OF ACADEMIC SKEPTICISM In book 4 of the Metalogicon, John distinguishes three kinds of Academic skeptics: The Academician is in doubt, and he dares not lay down what is true in each and every case. But this sect is divided into three groups. The adherents of the first group claim that they know nothing at all, and as a result of this extreme caution they have lost the right to be called philosophers. The adherents of the second group accept as knowledge only things that are necessary and known per se, that is, things that one cannot fail to know. The third kind comprises those of us who do not venture to state an opinion in cases that are doubtful to the wise man. (Metalogicon 4.31, Hall 1991: 168; all translations are mine)5 The first group comprises those who doubt everything, and John quickly dismisses them. It is, John says elsewhere, ridiculous and absolutely unphilosophical to doubt everything (Policraticus 7.2, Webb 1909: 96). The second group is surprising in this context; for without the further premise that they themselves do not think that “things that are necessary and known per se” are knowable (a premise that is not made explicit), its adherents are not really skeptics but rather philosophers who put too much trust in demonstrative science. John’s evaluation of the second group seems to reflect his own views on knowledge and science. John himself prefers the third kind of skepticism. The position is noteworthy for at least two characteristics. First, “holding opinions” is not as such wrong, but doing so rashly or without proper consideration is problematic. John himself often held opinions of his own (see below on the problem of genera and species). Second, in some cases you should hold opinions; it is only when even those who are best qualified have to give up that one should suspend judgment. This, stated in positive terms, would seem to mean that John’s kind of Academic skeptic has every right to state opinions if (1) he examines and considers the matter carefully beforehand, (2) he is suitably qualified to do so in the relevant area of knowledge, and (3) the subject matter allows one to hold qualified opinions. John does not state these requirements explicitly, but they are supported by the discussions in which he takes his own positions and by his use of Aristotle’s dialectical method in the Topics. I will illustrate both points in the following parts of this article. Probably the most famous of John’s discussions in which he voices and evaluates many arguments and opinions is the extended treatment of the genus-species

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problem in book 2, chapters 17 and 20 of the Metalogicon. This and many other subjects can be discussed with positive results, and skepticism is the best way of obtaining such results (Policraticus 1.prologus, ed. Keats-Rohan 1993: 25), but there are also many subjects where rational analysis and argument will provide nothing useful. In such matters, John says, the only acceptable tool is faith (fides).6 However, philosophically speaking, another turn in his development is equally interesting, namely, his Aristotelianism.

3  DIALECTIC AND ARISTOTLE’S TOPICS It has been argued, then, that John is a rather liberal skeptic. Opinions resulting from rational analysis and argument are in many cases not only permissible but even strongly recommendable. On the other hand, he strongly and consistently believes that one cannot know anything with absolute certainty (Metalogicon 1.prologus, ed. Hall 1991: 11; Policraticus 7.1, ed. Webb 1909: 93–95). Having learned from, and adjusted his teaching to, Cicero, what this kind of skeptic needs to do is to find the best possible source of rational and coherent argument, and John was fortunate. For the very best had recently become available in full. Parts of Aristotle’s Organon (i.e., his works on logic) had been known for some time, and Aristotle was known as the philosopher. However, it was only in the second quarter of the twelfth century that the texts of the Organon really entered the schools of Paris (Bloch 2012: 27–44), and John is one of the first to take advantage of these new sources of learning. Thus, his overall view naturally becomes the result of his combined reading of Cicero and Aristotle. Through Aristotle and later Aristotelian sources (Boethius in particular), the medievals had learned that there were at least two different kinds of knowledge and methods of obtaining knowledge: demonstration (demonstrative science) and dialectic. Aristotle’s Organon had been structured—albeit probably not by Aristotle himself—in part to reflect this division by including a treatise on deductions (Prior Analytics), which serves as a tool for both a treatise on demonstrative science (Posterior Analytics) and one on dialectic (Topics). But, according to Aristotle, the only real understanding comes from demonstrative science, whereas dialectic is equally rigid in the deductions but much less strict when it comes to the principles (i.e., the basic premises) of the deductive process. So, although the precise nature of the Posterior Analytics is a much disputed topic in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship, Aristotle’s views on knowledge, understanding, and science are nowadays usually gathered and deduced primarily from this text.7 But for John the most important text by far is the Topics. For whereas the former is concerned with the kinds of knowledge and understanding that are necessary and based upon clear and distinct principles that cannot be disputed (i.e., demonstrative science), the latter is concerned with what is probable and open to debate (i.e., dialectic). Consequently, when John learns from Cicero that “a mere human being” (homunculus) should be “striving for the probables” (probabilia sequens) (Tusculanae disputationes 1.9), he naturally seeks out the Aristotelian work concerned with probable arguments and knowledge. His introductory account of

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the Topics illustrates the importance that John assigns to that work, but it is also a somewhat surprising passage: The Topics comprises eight books, and each book brings more coherence and force to the subject than the preceding ones. The first gives a rough outline, so to speak, of the subject matter of the other books and establishes some fundamentals of logic as a whole. For it teaches what a deduction is; what a demonstration is, and from which sources it is established; what the principles of the arts are, and the principles of the faith that we gain from the arts; what the dialectical deduction is, and the contentious . . . . (Metalogicon 3.5, ed. Hall 1991: 120) Aristotle’s Topics is certainly the natural tool of a man with moderate skeptical views, and fittingly John also stresses the fact that Aristotle is particularly good at demolishing other people’s theses and arguments (Metalogicon 3.8, ed. Hall 1991: 125). But John’s account of the purpose and content of the Topics show that he believes it to be much more than just a useful tool for skeptics. It is rather a text on logic and how to gather knowledge in general to the extent possible. Aristotle’s Topics is traditionally divided into eight books. The first is introductory and establishes the fundamentals of dialectic, books 2–7 treat “accident,” “property,” “genus,” and “definition,” and book 8 is concerned with rules and procedures for dialectical debate. John’s use of the Topics goes far beyond logic and dialectic proper contributing, as it does, to the other kinds of knowledge as well. This comes out clearly in his careful exposition of the text, which takes up most of book 3 of the Metalogicon (3.5–10, ed. Hall 1991: 118–139). For instance, in the exposition of book 3 on accidents, he says: Since only “accident” admits of comparison, the third book [scil. of the Topics] explains the power inherent in “comparables” [scil. the value of understanding what may and may not be done in comparisons]. Pursuing the nature of accidents, it shows by general rules the reasons for choosing and avoiding, and among the things to be chosen, it shows which should be preferred over the others, and among the things to be avoided it shows which should be avoided more than the others. Consequently, it is evident how much this discipline benefits studies of natural science and ethics; for this part of the discipline is very effective in instances where one has to choose and avoid, and generally in every situation where comparison must be made. Clearly this book [scil. the Topics] has much to commend it, and earlier scholars were wrong to neglect it, as it is of outstanding utility, written in a pleasant style and extremely beneficial in the study of both ethics and natural science. (Metalogicon 3.6, ed. Hall 1991: 123) Two of the claims made in this passage are particularly important for understanding John’s position: (1) Aristotle’s Topics was, according to John, not highly regarded in the twelfth century and thus little used, and (2) the utility of the Topics is great even in matters of ethics and natural science. Claim (1) is probably somewhat exaggerated, but it is not completely wrong.8 We have no extant commentaries on Aristotle’s Topics from the twelfth century, and scholars were most often perfectly happy with Manlius Boethius’s (c. 480–524/25)

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version of the Topics. Thus, John was one of the very first thinkers to use the newly recovered Aristotelian text, and it provided a solid basis for his skepticism. Skepticism is, according to John, the right approach to things about which we can expect to learn something by our own faculties, but since extreme skepticism is unreasonable, we need a positive philosophy as well, which is provided by the dialectical approach of the Topics. Thus, John is in accordance with Cicero’s description of Carneades, who is described as a thinker who mastered both proof and demolishing proof (De oratore 2.38.161). Claim (2) is based on the view that both natural philosophy and ethics have basic principles that are by nature probable at most. Nature is defined by movement and ethics by action, neither of which allows the philosopher the luxury of certainty. Thus, there will be two possible responses: complete suspension of judgment or use of a method that is especially designed to treat such cases. This is the dialectical procedure that is described and analyzed in Aristotle’s Topics. In favor of this view, John perhaps appealed to the much discussed passage in the Topics, book 1, chapter 2, in which Aristotle can be construed as saying that dialectic is one of the most basic tools of all philosophical inquiries. Not only does it work on the basis of probable principles, but it is also the discipline that enables philosophers to examine the principles of other sciences. Ethics is particularly important in this context. John is apparently not much interested in natural science, even though the principles of nature are not necessary, in the Aristotelian tradition, but only probable like the principles of ethics. Aristotle himself used several examples from natural philosophy in his Posterior Analytics to illustrate demonstrative science, and other texts of the twelfth century clearly show that John’s contemporaries had the option of defending a demonstrative science of nature despite the apparent conflict between probable principles and a demonstration.9 However, John focuses on ethics, which he considers by far the most important discipline (Metalogicon 2.11, 2.13; ed. Hall 1991: 73, 74–76). Thus, like many of his contemporaries, John thought that ethics was the goal for which all the sciences were servants, as it were. This view he could have learned from Cicero himself or from some of his most esteemed teachers, most notably Peter Abelard (1079–1142),10 and a strongly “ethical” approach to logic is found in the Latin translations of Arabic scholars.11 The kind of philosophy that interested John most was the one that would eventually lead to practical results, and such results could, as Aristotle would also say (Nicomachean Ethics 1.3, 1094b: 12–27), never attain the degree of precision and necessity required for demonstrative science. Thus, it seems that John is led both by his regard for Cicero and by his intellectual inclinations to his mild Ciceronean-Aristotelian skepticism.

4  A SKEPTIC ON DEMONSTRATIVE SCIENCE Still, since John has such respect for Aristotle and his writings, and since he recognizes that Aristotle should be the foundation of all proper education, one would have expected him to take the full step and also embrace Aristotelian demonstration and demonstrative science. For he is well aware that Aristotelians consider them the

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crown jewel of the Philosopher’s theory of knowledge (Metalogicon 4.7, ed. Hall 1991: 145–146). However, he has, first, his own, very simple—and amusing—skeptical argument against demonstrative science: It was long thought that it was impossible to cut diamonds, since their matter did not yield to sharpened iron or sharpened steel. But when they were eventually cut using lead and goat’s blood, it became apparent that it was actually quite easy to do what had previously seemed impossible. (Metalogicon 3.9, ed. Hall 1991: 130)12 Demonstrative science is impossible, he claims, because we can never know for certain that we actually know what we think we know. The same argument applies to the more serious case of virgin births (Metalogicon 2.13, ed. Hall 1991: 75). In fact, this kind of argument could be countered—and was countered by Robert Grosseteste less than 100 years later—by reference to the Augustinean theory of divine illumination, a theory which twelfth-century thinkers including John knew well.13 Understanding and knowledge start by the passive reception of phenomena through the faculties given by nature, but in order to transform the phenomena into knowledge human beings need “internal light” (interior lux) provided by divine grace; without this human beings have no possibility of cognizing the real and universal truths. John would, however, embrace this description as one that illustrates his point: human beings have limited cognitive powers when left to themselves, and divine illumination does not really belong in a theory of demonstration, but in faith. Second, the state of demonstrative science in the twelfth century was somewhat unclear. Scholars and philosophers simply did not always know how to use it. John’s chapter on this issue is important: The science/knowledge (scientia) found in the Posterior Analytics is a subtle one and penetrable only for few intellects. There are evidently several reasons for this. First, the work contains the art of demonstration, and this art is more difficult than the other systems of argumentation. Second, this art has practically fallen into disuse as a result of the rarity of practitioners, since the mathematicians are the only ones to use demonstration, and they too barely use it; even among them, it is used almost exclusively by the geometers. However, this discipline is not one that is frequently cultivated among us either, except perhaps in the Iberian region and in the confines of Africa. For these people, for the sake of astronomy, practice geometry more than other people. The same is true of the Egyptians and quite a few of the Arabic peoples. In addition to these observations, the book in which the demonstrative discipline is transmitted is much more confused than the others, both because of the transpositions of words and letters and the out-dated examples that have been borrowed from different disciplines; and finally—which is not the author’s fault—the work has been so much distorted by scribal errors that it contains almost as many obstacles, as it contains chapters. And actually, it is good when there are no more obstacles than chapters. Thus, many blame the translator for the difficulty and claim that the work has not been correctly translated. (Metalogicon 4.6, ed. Hall 1991: 145)

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This rather exotic description shows that the main problems are the limited usefulness of demonstration and the difficulty of the Posterior Analytics. Demonstrative science is not completely invalidated; it is simply limited to mathematics. One would think that John will then comfortably discard any talk of demonstrative science as a valid method of inquiry, but surprisingly that is not the case.

5  THE METHODOLOGY OF JOHN OF SALISBURY’S SKEPTICISM In his only sustained chapter on demonstrative science, John writes: One must have prior knowledge of the principles, and from these one must gather the sequence of truths by coherent reasoning based on necessity; and one must progress by working very hard to place the argument on solid ground, so to speak, in order that the lack of necessity would not result in the appearance of a gap in the argument, a gap that would jeopardize the otherwise resulting demonstrative knowledge. Certainly, not every science/knowledge is demonstrative, but only those that are based on true, primary, and immediate principles. For just as not every deduction is a demonstration but every demonstration is a deduction, so also knowledge/science comprises the demonstrative but not conversely. (Metalogicon 4.8, ed. Hall 1991: 146) This remarkable passage is basically a general methodological description that can be systematized as follows: 1. When one strives to obtain some kind of knowledge, one must recognize the principles of the knowledge in question as carefully as possible. 2. Conclusions must ultimately be deduced from these principles. 3. The deductions must be necessary, that is, the conclusions must follow by necessity, every step of the argument must be clear, and there can be no exceptions. 4. Every effort must be made to ensure that there are no gaps in the argument. This means that every single step of the argument must be clear and convincing. The most surprising thing about this procedure is Step 4. Step 1 is a problem that Aristotle himself apparently never solved for demonstrative science, and whereas he would presumably accept that a number of scientific disciplines have strictly necessary and primary causal principles, John would not (except for mathematics). Steps 2 and 3 apply to both demonstration and dialectic, but Step 4 is purely dialectical. The knowledge produced by demonstrative science cannot be disputed, and thus there can be no reworking of the argument afterwards. If the argument is truly demonstrative, it is complete. But the skeptic part of John maintains that even the process of demonstrative science is never complete; there will always—or almost always—be more gaps to close.

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This leaves John with a quasi-demonstrative approach to knowledge. It maintains that necessity is essential in the deductions from principles to conclusions, and it also incorporates substantial dialectical elements that have been gathered from Aristotle’s Topics, not least the fact that the deductions and the arguments can—and must—always be tested further. Thus, John has combined methods that would not seem easily compatible. The reason might be that he believes that all knowledge is somehow connected: All things have a way of contributing to each other, so that one will become more proficient in any proposed branch of learning to the extent that he has mastered neighboring and related branches. (Metalogicon 3.5, ed. Hall 1991: 119; cf. Cf. Metalogicon 4.1, ed. Hall 1991: 140) Different sciences do not, according to John, have completely separate domains. Instead, each somehow contributes to one’s understanding of other sciences. A scholar needs to be able to use both demonstrative and dialectical methods, and supposedly “neighboring and related branches” will easily incorporate elements of both kinds. This further explains how John can say that the Topics also teaches demonstration (Metalogicon 3.5, ed. Hall 1991: 120, quoted above). The differences are simply reconcilable, according to John. For a skeptic, John is strangely obsessed with, and optimistic about, establishing the proper methods for actually obtaining knowledge.

6 CONCLUSION In some ways John is then perhaps the least skeptical of all the thinkers discussed in the present book. He himself sums up his views on how to obtain knowledge, and to what extent it is possible, as follows: Divine perfection is to know all things completely, angelic perfection is to avoid errors in all cases, and human perfection is to have a good perception of most things. (Metalogicon 3.3, ed. Hall 1991: 110) This by itself is hardly skepticism. At the very least, it is skepticism with a prominent Christian superstructure, and thus inherently a rather optimistic kind of skepticism. In particular, it still leaves room for the intervention of a God who provides the necessary principles in the Augustinean fashion. But still, if one combines the view that some subjects are in fact beyond human knowledge and that opinions should not in these matters be stated as facts with the view that, even when opinions can—and should—be stated, human beings can never have certain knowledge, one has a respectably skeptical stance. It is in this sense that John of Salisbury can be considered a skeptic.14

NOTES 1. For general and more thorough information about John of Salisbury’s life and works, see Liebeschütz (1950), Nederman (2005), and Bloch (2012).

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2. For analyses of the Policraticus and its use of examples, see von Moos (1988) and Grellard (2013). 3. For skepticism in the Middle Ages, see Perler (2006), Lagerlund (2010a), Grellard (2013), and the other articles in Part 2 of the present book. 4. On the lack of knowledge of Cicero’s Academica, see Rouse and Rouse (1978) and Grellard (2011). 5. Cf. Lagerlund (2010b: 10–11) and, in particular, Grellard (2013: 50–53). 6. Metalogicon 3.10, ed. Hall (1991: 138): “There are many things that do not admit of discussion, the ones that transcend human reason/argument and are consecrated only to faith.” Cf. Policraticus 7.1, 7.7, ed. Webb (1909: 95–99, 114–117). 7. See, e.g., Wians (1989) for a summary of the discussion. It is, however, uncertain whether John really knew this text, and he certainly did not know it well (see Bloch 2012). 8. See further Metalogicon 4.24 (ed. Hall 1991: 162). For the early tradition of Aristotle’s Topics, see Stump (1982) and Green-Pedersen (1984). 9. Texts and sources are described and analyzed in Bloch (2012: 27–82). 10. Cicero, Academica 1.9.34 (stating that Strato was no philosopher, because he did no work on ethics); Abelard, Collationes §§ 2, 67–69 (ed. Marenbon and Orlandi 2001: 82–86). 11. Al-Ghazali, Tractatus de Logica, Prooemium (ed. Lohr 1965: 241–242). It is, however, unlikely that John knew this particular text. 12. The story is actually much older and found in Pliny the Elder, Augustine, and Isidore, but lead is not mentioned by any of them. 13. See Policraticus 8.25 (ed. Webb 1909: 418–425). Cf. Entheticus Maior, ed. van Laarhoven 1987: verses 223–250, 273–278, 629–654, pp. 121, 123, 147–149. 14. I do not here have the space to discuss Grellard (2013), which is now undoubtedly the most important work on John of Salisbury’s skepticism. I merely note that the present article is much more focused on John’s Aristotelian inclinations, which I consider essential to our understanding of John’s skepticism. However, this approach to John’s work is at the expense of a number of important topics treated by Grellard.

REFERENCES Bloch, David. 2012. John of Salisbury on Aristotelian Science. Turnhout: Brepols. Green-Pedersen, Niels Jørgen 1984. The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages. The Commentaries on Aristotle’s and Boethius’ “Topics”. München and Wien: Philosophia Verlag. Grellard, Christophe. 2011. “La seconde acculturation chrétienne de Cicéron: la réception des Académiques du IXe au XIIe siècle,” Asterion 11. URL: http://asterion.revues. org/2350. Grellard, Christophe. 2013. Jean de Salisbury et la renaissance médiévale du scepticisme. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

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Hall, John B. (ed.). 1991. Ioannis Saresberiensis Metalogicon. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 98. Turnhout: Brepols. Keats-Rohan, K. S. B. (ed.). 1993. Ioannis Saresberiensis Policraticus I-IV. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 118. Turnhout: Brepols. Lagerlund, Henrik (ed.). 2010a. Rethinking the History of Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Lagerlund, Henrik. 2010b. “A History of Skepticism in the Middle Ages.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background, 1–28. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Liebeschütz, Hans 1950. Mediaeval Humanism in the Life and Writings of John of Salisbury, Studies of the Warburg Institute 17. London: University of London. Lohr, Charles H. 1965. “Logica Algazelis. Introduction and Critical Text,” Traditio 21: 223–290. Marenbon, John and Giovanni Orlandi (eds.). 2001. Peter Abelard: Collationes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nederman, Cary J. 2005. John of Salisbury, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 288. Tempe and Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Perler, Dominik 2006. Zweifel und Gewissheit. Skeptische Debatten im Mittelalter. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Rouse, Richard and Mary Rouse. 1978. “The Medieval Circulation of Cicero’s Posterior Academics and the De finibus bonorum et malorum.” In Malcolm B. Parkes and Andrew G. Wilson (eds.), Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker, 333–367. London: Scolar Press. Stump, Eleonore 1982. “Topics: Their Development and Absorption into Consequences.” In N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, and J. Pinborg (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600, 273–299. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Laarhoven, Jan (ed.). 1987. John of Salisbury’s Entheticus Maior and Minor, 3 vols. Leiden: Brill. von Moos, Peter 1988. Geschichte als Topik. Das rhetorische Exemplum von der Antike zur Neuzeit und die historiae im Policraticus Johanns von Salisbury. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. Webb, C. C. J. (ed.). 1909. Ioannis Saresberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Policratici sive De Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philosophorum Libri VIII. Recognovit et prolegomenis, apparatu critico, commentario, indicibus instruxit, 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wians, William. 1989. “Aristotle, Demonstration, and Teaching,” Ancient Philosophy 9: 245–252.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Skepticism in Classical Islam: The Case of Ghazali PAUL L. HECK

1 INTRODUCTION The question of skepticism in Islam invariably prompts mention of the name of Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 1111 CE, henceforth Ghazali), but it would be wrong to limit skepticism during Islam’s classical period (ninth to thirteenth centuries) to single—and apparently anomalous—cases. To be sure, skepticism did not coalesce into a distinct school (madhhab), although hints of a tendency in that direction exist in the literature of the ninth and tenth centuries. Also, the sources of ancient skepticism, notably Cicero and Sextus Empiricus, were not translated into Arabic, but Islam’s scholars were familiar with the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and John Philoponus, and writings such as these included material on sophistical strategies of argumentation. It is therefore best to speak of the phenomenon of skepticism in classical Islam as part of the overall scholastic dynamic where dogmatic assertions were always met with reservations and counterarguments, making contradiction a regular feature of the practice of the art of disputation. The fact that skepticism in Islam emerged in close relation to the process of defending beliefs may offer insight for the study of skepticism in other contexts. Are skeptical objections ever fully separable from contestation over belief? At the same time, Islam’s scholars used precise language to describe the skeptical outlook. Nevertheless, while skepticism existed largely within, rather than apart from, the arena of theological reasoning, it can also be said to have its own distinct features within that arena. To note some of the specific terminology used in relation to skepticism: “perplexity” (ḥayra), approximating aporia in ancient skepticism; “the equivalence of arguments” (takāfu’ al-adilla), approximating isostheneia in ancient skepticism; and “the inability to know is knowledge” (al-‘ajz ‘an al-idrāk idrāk), recalling learned ignorance—docta ignorantia—from the Latin West. As will be seen, it is this last concept (learned ignorance) that best describes Ghazali’s brand of skepticism. It is also worth noting that Islam’s scholars distinguished the terminology for skepticism from that used to designate atheism, which in this context does not mean

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denial of God’s existence but rather rejection of Islam’s revelation as a source of truth, a position that has been traced to only a handful of savants and satirists, dubbed as “freethinkers” (Stroumsa 1999). Islam’s scholars recognized that to say that one does not know (lā adrī) or is perplexed (mutaḥayyir) or doubtful (shākk) in the face of mutually opposing but equally compelling arguments on elusive theological issues is not the same as denying (inkār) or rejecting (juḥūd) the religion of Islam. Skepticism, then, had a place within, not apart from, the fold of Islam’s scholastic life. Indeed, the point in advancing doubts was to establish Islam’s beliefs on a firmer basis, and yet the process never failed to generate as much confusion as clarity. A number of problematic questions drove the dynamic of skepticism in classical Islam. For example, the Qur’an implies that God is corporeal in some fashion, describing God as having eyes, hands, a face, and as seated on his throne, suggesting spatial limitation. And prophetic sayings (hadiths) speak of God as beardless, with curly hair, and clothed in a green garment (Williams 2002). Such revealed texts stood in contradiction to the conclusions of discursive reasoning (both philosophical and theological, the two being deeply interwoven during this period) that sought to preserve the transcendent unity of God from anthropomorphist resemblance to his creation. In the end, faced with the contradiction that God has a body and that God does not have a body, one could only admit, “I do not know.” Indeed, according to the celebrated rationalist scholar of the ninth century, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869), those who adhered to God’s bodily self-description in scripture (anthropomorphism) over against the demands of rational discourse only encouraged doubts about Islam’s beliefs, ultimately casting suspicion on the legitimacy of its political mandate. His opponents, of course, made similar accusations against him for refusing to read divinely revealed texts in their literal sense. Were humans to question statements that God had clearly revealed about his corporeal features? A second factor driving the dynamic of skepticism, in addition to such contradiction-generating questions, was the very nature of belief in Islam. Was belief a matter of unquestioning faith—or was it knowledge, that is, compelling and comprehensible to the mind? The Qur’an, perhaps more so than other scripture, claims that its message amounts to knowledge (‘ilm), revealed by God to guide human beings to a favorable outcome on Judgment Day. This would eventually be understood in a scholastic sense—belief as rationally demonstrable—and thus raised questions about the status of the masses of believers without skill in scholastic argumentation by which to show that they actually had knowledge of what they professed. The issue was particularly troubling within the dominant school of theology, Ash‘arism, which held that in principle it is not enough for Muslims to accept their beliefs on hearsay (as handed down on the authority of others, a concept known as taqlīd) (Frank 1989). If the masses simply believed what scholars told them to believe, did that qualify as belief? In other words, if they could not offer rational argumentation for their beliefs, did it constitute genuine belief? However, the first step in the process was to doubt what one had come to believe by hearsay. Only after knocking down such “blind belief ” could one begin to know it through rational argumentation. In short, to be a true believer, one had to doubt. To others, the idea that doubt was essential to belief was absurd. In his critique of Ash‘arism,

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the great scholar of Andalusia, Ibn Ḥazm (d. 1054) mockingly noted that for that school, to be a believer, one had to be a skeptic! A third driver of skepticism was the existence of multiple sects (firaq, sing. firqa) and religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism, among others) within the Abode of Islam. All had their advocates who could defend their doctrines persuasively. Where did religious truth lie? The plurality of truth claims led diversely affiliated scholars to pursue skeptical strategies in their debates with one another, seeking to highlight contradiction (tanāquḍ or ta‘āruḍ) in their opponents’ arguments rather than common ground upon which all could agree. Such theological wrangling only suggested that mutually contradictory beliefs could be equally compelling, leading some to conclude that religious truth is unascertainable. The literary virtuoso of the eleventh century, Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, inspired by his own deep piety, mocks the craft of disputation (kalām, lit. speech), citing a number of cases of scholars who opted for religious skepticism as the logical outcome of theological debate (‘Abbās 1966; Van Ess 1968). More mystically inclined, al-Tawḥīdī is essentially implying that theological disputation is a waste of time that only produces a cacophony of contradictory claims, thereby putting religious truth itself in jeopardy. All of this made it seem that the practice of disputation only ended in the suspension of belief. Some therefore rejected it as a threat to Islam, opting for adherence to the literal wordings of scripture. Others, also rejecting it, looked to philosophy, not as a self-standing method to attain certain knowledge (although some did make such a claim) but as a means to clean up the theological morass in Islam. Surely, it was felt, all parties would accept what could be apodictically demonstrated, and Islam’s scholars, beginning from the ninth and tenth centuries, sought to formulate the claims of Islam in philosophical categories, a process that reached a zenith with al-Fārābī (d. 950) and Ibn Sinā (Avicenna, d. 1037) and also less clearly but no less significantly with al-‘Āmirī (d. 992) and al-Juwaynī (d. 1085). This, however, only led to new dilemmas. The idea that truth is to be established by philosophical method rather than by a message from God had the effect of downplaying scripture at least for the learned elite. The wordings of revelation— the gardens of paradise and fires of hell—were at best a distant imitation of the philosophical categories of ultimate happiness and ultimate wretchedness, at worst merely images useful for controlling the unlearned masses that had no hope of obtaining certain knowledge philosophically. But philosophical circles were also not free of taqlīd (Griffel 2005), the practice of accepting beliefs on the authority of others, the very issue that had encouraged use of the philosophical method in the first place! Just because Aristotle said something does not mean it is to be uncritically accepted. How was philosophy to be held to its own standards?

2  GHAZALI, PHILOSOPHICAL SKEPTICISM, AND THE TURN TO MYSTICAL SCHOLASTICISM Those conundrums all left their mark on the thought of Ghazali who is best remembered for the skeptical crisis he faced at the height of his teaching career. However, it is important to consider carefully the nature of his skepticism, which,

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generally speaking, involves reservations about the prevailing scholastic methodology of his day. Arguing on the basis of the heritage of scholastic philosophy, which he had mastered, Ghazali made use of a kind of skepticism to counter the claims of philosophers to have surer knowledge of God than prophets. In other words, he was not at all opposed to philosophical reasoning but rather used it to expose its own limits. Several studies in recent years underscore his debt to Avicenna (Frank 1994; Griffel 2009; Treiger 2012). However, it has also been shown that even in his most philosophical writings, likely addressed to his elite disciples, Ghazali remained sensitive to the doctrines of Islam: for example, God’s knowledge of particulars in addition to universal concepts, which philosophers were inclined to deny (Al-Akiti 2009). In the end, Ghazali is keen to show the limits of the philosophical method even if accepting it as path to certain knowledge. He departs from philosophers, as will be seen, in his claim that the philosophical method, if properly pursued, ends in the recognition that the philosophical method itself only begets ignorance of the reality of God and, in turn, of all things, which, after all, have their existence in God. In other words, the philosophical method alone is not enough to establish certain knowledge of the reality (or quiddity) of things (what they truly are rather than what they seem to be). How is one to know the true nature of things by the philosophical method if one must admit—by the very same method—ignorance of the reality (or quiddity) of their creator? The point is that knowledge of the reality of things requires knowledge of the reality of their creator, but philosophy has been shown unable to attain certain knowledge of the creator. Another method is needed, still philosophically sound but now, for Ghazali, enhanced by mystical insight. This features in the way he views syllogistic reasoning. In The Just Balance (al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm), he shows that Aristotle’s categories of logic are derivable from the Qur’an, establishing consistency between knowledge attained by syllogistic reasoning and knowledge revealed by God. However, while generally committed to Aristotle’s categories of logic, Ghazali has a tendency to conduct his argumentation on the basis of a mystically informed grasp of the spiritual realm as much as by syllogistic reasoning. This is not to say that such a pursuit of logic took hold in scholastic circles. The logic of Avicenna remained dominant. Rather, by grounding scholasticism in mystical insight, Ghazali was able to dull the challenge of philosophy. This, however, does not mean that Ghazali’s goal was a simple restoration of Islam’s revealed message to a place of prominence over philosophy. Ultimately, he sought to establish a sounder basis for knowledge of the realities of things, a task that in his view the philosophical method alone failed to accomplish. This is clear in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-Falāsifa), written not in condemnation of the philosophical method, but rather as a challenge to the supremacy of its claims to yield certain knowledge, as seen notably in its discussion of causality. There, Ghazali argues against philosophers who mistakenly assume a quasi-deist view of the world. His issue with them is not so much the idea of efficient causality, whereby things happen according to their own natures apart from direct intervention by God, but rather with their failure to see that such a claim belongs to the realm of possibility rather than necessity; efficient causality must therefore be qualified as custom, not as necessity. That is, any causal relation between things—fire making

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cotton burn—is not due to any necessity. It is simply a custom. Thus, while today cotton burns because fire is applied to it, tomorrow it might cool as a result. There is no necessary connection. That would be to limit God’s power over the way things work. This, of course, was Ghazali’s way of maintaining the sense of miracles, which would be impossible in a world run by efficient causality rather than by God. Indeed, as is his wont, Ghazali shows that the arguments of philosophers who argue for efficient causality fall short of their own method (Marmura 1989). The fact that philosophical arguments for efficient causality have their flaws is reason to doubt the philosophical method, casting suspicion on the sufficiency of syllogistic reasoning. Again, Ghazali is not dismissing philosophy. For him, it is necessary for the establishment of certainty. Rather, his point is that while necessary, alone it is not sufficient. Given its flaws, there needs to be a higher authority by which to adjudicate the claims of philosophy—a higher and thus meta-rational but not contradictory or anti-rational authority. For this reason, Ghazali turns to mystical insight, not to replace but rather in order to enhance—more precisely to adjudicate—knowledge claims reached by the philosophical method. In other words, he does not view mystical insight as foreign to scholasticism. But what does he mean by mystical insight? Ghazali was not claiming that individual mystical experience was a source of knowledge. (After all, a madman could claim such experience.) Rather, he sought to introduce mystical insight of a kind into the scholastic process in order to buttress what he saw as its methodological deficiencies. For this reason, we can speak of Ghazali’s system of thought as a mystical-philosophical scholasticism. Born toward the middle of the eleventh century in what is today northeastern Iran, Ghazali was a towering scholar in his own age, writing works in various disciplines, including philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and ethics. He was appointed in 1091 to the post of chief teacher at the Niẓāmiyya Madrasa in Baghdad, then the leading center of learning in the Abode of Islam, where upwards of 300 students at a time studied under his tutelage. According to his own testimony, Ghazali’s crisis began in 1095 at the height of his professorial career, when he came to the realization that he was no longer sure of his own scholarly convictions. Excusing himself on the pretext of making the pilgrimage to Mecca, he departed Baghdad and made his way first to Damascus, where he would spend the bulk of the next two years in contemplative retreat. From there, he would visit the holy sites in Jerusalem, Medina, and Mecca. By 1097, he was back in Baghdad, but he did not remain long. He would resume teaching, this time in Nishapur, where he had earlier studied under the direction of al-Juwaynī. He spent his last years there, consolidating his ideas, teaching them to disciples, and fending off accusations, only to return to his hometown of Tus not long before his death in the year 1111. It is in The Deliverer from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl) that Ghazali records his skeptical crisis, but what exactly is the nature of his skepticism? This question, which has not gone untreated (Halevi 2002; Kukkonen 2010; Garden 2013), can only be answered by looking at this quasi-autobiographical work (Menn 2003) in the context of his overall oeuvre. The Deliverer from Error opens with notice of the prevailing doctrinal confusion (iḍtirāb al-firaq) and divergence (ikhtilāf) in Islam, each sect claiming to be the saved sect. Ghazali clears the deck of such discordance,

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noting how it had always been his habit to inquire into the beliefs of the varied schools on his own, apart from the pronouncements of scholarly authorities. In this way he disassociates himself from taqlīd (i.e., belief on the authority of others), but he goes further, noting another source of skepticism, namely, the existence of other religions. His observation that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim youth are all raised according to family tradition—and tend not to leave it as adults—is meant to show that his pursuit of knowledge will start from original human nature prior to a person’s exposure to teachings handed down by parents and teachers (i.e., prior to taqlīd). Such traditional teachings are not necessarily wrong but cannot be counted as knowledge if received on the authority of others. Ghazali’s record of his own life thus reflects the key factors that encouraged doubts about a single religious truth in the Abode of Islam as outlined in the first section above. This skeptical posture leads him into crisis. He wants to know things as they really are, but having begun by rejecting traditional beliefs, he is unsure where to turn for sources of knowledge. He even doubts the senses. The sun looks small to the naked eye, the oar bent in the water, but the mind corrects such misperceptions. If not the senses, then, can he trust the mind and first principles that the mind says are necessarily true, such as the claim that ten is greater than three or that the same thing cannot be both true and false? If the senses err, perhaps the mind does, too. Just as the mind has to correct misperceptions of the senses, perhaps there is a meta-rational realm where even the conclusions of the mind are judged to be right or wrong. Dreaming, Ghazali explains, offers a concrete analogy for such a metarational realm; it does not operate contrary to the workings of the senses or the mind but offers evidence of a cognitive state above and beyond them. Ghazali, it should be noted, is not looking to dreaming to resolve his dilemma but introduces it only as evidence for the existence of a cognitive state comparable to mystical insight, setting the stage for him to reestablish the entire scholastic project on the basis of a combination of mystical insight and syllogistic reasoning. In the end, as he relates, he was healed of his skeptical disease, not as a result of a renewed confidence in first principles (on the basis of which he might build compelling arguments about the reality of things) but rather by a light (nūr) that God had cast into his breast. This light, it will be seen, can be taken as intuition of a kind that is at once meta-rational and the fruit of the philosophical method. What exactly was this light? It was not a personal or individual mystical experience. Ghazali was too committed to the scholastic project to rely on personal or individual experience, which he did not deny but did view as dangerous, since it offered grounds for individuals to claim to embody God. The light cast into his breast was, rather, a way of undertaking the scholastic project with mystical insight—that is, not seeing God (as in a personal or individual mystical experience) but seeing things in this world only insofar as they exist with God their creator. In other words, he discovered that rather than limiting himself to the philosophical method in the traditional sense (i.e., by trying to understand the causal nature of things and building from there to higher conclusions), he could amplify it by acquiring knowledge of things not solely in terms of what was rationally comprehensible but also from a meta-rational perspective. If the scholastic method begins with observation of things

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and ends with knowledge of their nature (or causality, e.g., the nature of fire being to cause things to burn), the mystical-philosophical approach involves seeing things— even the smallest of creatures such as a gnat—not simply as part of a rationally comprehensible order in which everything is known according to its nature, but rather first and foremost as part of God’s existence. The philosophical method, it turns out, is limited, only able to yield knowledge of things according to their nature, whereas mystical-philosophical scholasticism yields that and more, namely, knowledge of things as they exist with God—and thus as they truly are. Ghazali saw this as surer knowledge of the reality of things, following logically from his view that all things other than God only have existence in a metaphorical sense, that is, insofar as they receive it from God. In contrast, God alone has existence in reality. Thus, if God is the only thing with real existence, the surest knowledge of the reality of things comes not from inquiry into their nature per se but rather by seeing them insofar as they exist in the singular reality of God. He thus turned to Sufism, not for a personal mystical experience, but for a cognitive state of a meta-rational kind as referee for philosophical (rational) claims, just as the mind is referee for sense-based perceptions. One might argue whether Ghazali is talking about mysticism in a traditional sense of a direct and ineffable communion with God in which one might see God, but he is speaking of the meta-rational (what cannot be reached by syllogistic reasoning alone) and thus, at least in that sense, the mystical. However, since, as we will see, he reaches this conclusion (the limits of philosophy) by the scholastic method, he never departs from scholasticism but is, rather, driven to ground it anew not solely in the scholastic method in the traditional sense but in awareness (albeit indirect) of God as everywhere present, making it impossible to know things in their true reality (or quiddity) except insofar as they exist with God as the singular reality, as we will see. The rest of The Deliverer from Error is largely devoted to explaining the shortcomings of other approaches to knowledge. Theology (i.e., disputation), designed for the defense of the faith, has nothing to say to those who do not already believe; and its practitioners (ahl al-kalām), having left the bounds of apologetics for more obscure forms of speculation beyond their ken, fail to dispel the doubts that arise from differences in belief. Philosophy, for its part, has much to offer, but its leading figures (Ghazali singles out al-Fārābī and Ibn Sinā) are declared infidels, particularly for their rejection of three doctrines: bodily resurrection, God’s ignorance of particulars in addition to universal concepts, and the created status of the world, which they hold to have existed from eternity as a necessary effect of God’s eternal knowledge. They may or may not be right in these views, but their method is not sufficient to establish their claims as certain. Also, in general, Ghazali expresses concerns about the impact of philosophy on the masses of believers. The assumption that Islam is opposed to philosophy makes it seem that a believer has to choose between the life of the mind and obscurantist forms of Islam. As for those who claim to follow the instructions of the infallible imam (Ismā‘īlism, which makes the imam the infallible source of truth—in contrast to papal infallibility, which is limited to the preservation of inherited teachings), Ghazali sees them as the most illogical of all for their claim that the mind is not to be trusted since people invariably disagree, necessitating the existence of the infallible

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imam to resolve all disputes. He repeatedly charges them with perplexity (ḥayra), that is, with encouragement of obscurantist belief (and thus of skepticism) for their distrust of syllogistic reasoning, which, Ghazali asserts, can resolve disagreement among Muslims, obviating the need for the infallible imam, if people would only take the time to learn it properly! Finally, he comes to Sufism, which he sees as the method to attain certain knowledge. He speaks of it in close conjunction with demonstrative proof (burhān), that is, in terms of the philosophical method, but also as something meta-rational. His point is that knowledge can be reached apodictically but that certain knowledge of the reality of things is known only through taste (dhawq), by which he means mystical insight (based on spiritual consciousness, wijdān, rather than analogical reasoning, qiyās). In other words, metaphysical realities can be known of through syllogistic reasoning, but they can only be really known through a mystical seeing that takes place not with the physical eye but with the mind’s eye. This eye has the capacity to see metaphysical realities, thereby acquiring certain knowledge of them, but it needs a light by which to see them clearly, namely, the light that comes from the niche of prophecy (mishkāt al-nubūwa). Islam’s revealed message—prophecy— is thus the means to mystical insight into metaphysical realities, allowing for certain knowledge of the reality of things. In other words, mystical insight as a meta-rational phenomenon needs a grounding in a meta-rational source (revelation); those who draw from this source by frequent recollection of the names of God as revealed by prophecy will be able to cultivate the cognitive state that allows them not only to know of metaphysical realities with certainty but also to see (know) them directly as the prophets did. Ghazali is not suggesting that mystically minded scholars can become prophets, but rather that they can enjoy prophet-like knowledge by cultivating a life in conformity to that of Muhammad, especially his ritual activity. Here, Ghazali is influenced by Avicenna, speaking of prophecy not simply as a message from God, authenticated by a prophet’s performance of miracles, but as an internal cognitive state that all have the potential to cultivate, allowing them to acquire prophetic knowledge of the realities of things. And it’s also worth noting that Ghazali is not claiming that philosophers and prophets disagree. Quite the contrary! What he is saying is that philosophy, to be true to its own method, requires meta-philosophical adjudication if it hopes to establish its claims as certain. It is best to speak of Ghazali’s brand of skepticism as a kind of learned ignorance: the philosophical method, on its own terms, only yields ignorance of the reality of God. Ghazali states this clearly in The Highest Goal in Explaining the Most Beautiful Names of God (al-Maqṣad al-Asnā fī Sharḥ Asmā’ Allāh al-Ḥusnā). There, he shows that there is no way to reason to the infinite God by analogy to finite creatures (ex creaturis), making it impossible to acquire certain knowledge of God’s reality, both essence and attributes (powerful, knowledgeable, living, speaking, seeing, hearing, etc.), by the philosophical method in the traditional sense. The following passage captures the gist of his thinking: If you said: what is the endpoint of the knowledge of the knowers of God the Exalted [nihāyat maʿrifat al-ʿārifīn bi-llāh taʿālā]? We would say: the endpoint

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of the knowledge of the knowers is their inability to know [ʿajzuhum ʿan almaʿrifa]. Their knowledge in truth is that they do not know him; that it is completely impossible to know him; that it is impossible that anyone but God the Mighty and Majestic know God with true knowledge encompassing the essence [kunh] of the attributes of lordship [ṣifāt al-rubūbiyya]. If that is disclosed to them by demonstrable proof [inkishāf burhānī], as we noted, they would know it, that is, they would reach the endpoint that it is possible for creation [humanity] to know. This is what the great righteous one Abū Bakr, God be pleased with him, meant when he said: “The inability to grasp comprehension is a kind of comprehension.” (Ghazali 1971: 54) The last line of this passage, a quote attributed to one of the leading companions of Muhammad and his first caliphal successor, indicates that learned ignorance is not the end of knowledge but yields “a kind of comprehension.” This becomes, for Ghazali, a new point of departure for scholasticism. This point of departure is a monistic vision of existence, allowing for knowledge of the reality of things not simply according to their nature as determined by the philosophical method but as they exist with God. In short, learned ignorance teaches that God has no definition, no limit by which to be defined and therefore no opposite. Thus, while God is not the world, God is also not other than the world. In sum, Ghazali’s skepticism about the philosophical method—as demonstrated by the philosophical method— leads him to a monistic vision of existence that requires mystical insight alongside syllogistic reasoning as proper basis of the scholastic enterprise. Everything that exists is a light from God’s lights and a trace of God’s pre-eternal power, and just as one claims to see only the sun when beholding its rays stretching over mountains, similarly, one can say, “I know only God and I see only God” (Ghazali 1971: 59). This monistic vision of existence, curious byproduct of his philosophical skepticism, features across Ghazali’s oeuvre, notably in The Niche of Lights (Mishkāt al-Anwār) but also in a number of places across his magnum opus, The Revivification of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn). God is now in sight, at least for mystically minded scholars who see God as manifest without limit (via the light of the mind’s eye in conjunction with the light of revelation, just as the physical eye needs the sun to see). Again, mystical insight here is not personal experience. Indeed, it remains within the realm of scholasticism, enhancing its methodology with awareness of God’s unbounded existence, everywhere manifest in the effects of his actions. This yields certain knowledge of the reality of things, since it takes God’s existence as starting point. In turn, it begets a sound love for God, as seen in the following passage from The Revivification of the Religious Sciences: Those with strong insight [baṣīra] and endowment [minna] that is not weakened, when in a state of inner balance, see only God the Exalted, are not aware of anything but him, and know there is nothing in existence except God. His acts are a trace of his power [qudra] and are subject to him. They have no existence in reality [bi-l-ḥaqīqa] apart from him. Existence belongs to the One, the Truth. Through him is the existence of all his actions. Those in this state look at actions only to see in them the agent [God]. . . . The entire world is the composition of

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God the Exalted. Those who look at it as God’s action, are aware of it as God’s action, and love it as God’s action—look only at God, know only God, and love only God. (Ghazali 2003: vol. 2, 1680–1682, passim) It is worth noting that this idea of human love for God, which is dependent on Ghazali’s monistic vision of existence (itself the curious by-product of his skepticism) and the possibility it affords of meta-rational knowledge obtained through mystical insight in conjunction with syllogistic reasoning, does not imply any ontological likeness between creation and creator. The idea of such human-divine affinity did feature in some circles of Sufism, where spiritual masters claimed to reflect God’s existence in their very own human being. Rather, for Ghazali, human love for God—he is more ambiguous about the possibility (and criteria) of divine love of humans—is the fruit not of ontological affinity but of the knowledge (maʿrifa) of God’s unbounded existence that results from his system of mystical-philosophical scholasticism, as seen in the following passage from The Revivification of the Religious Sciences: All that exists in relation to the power of God the Exalted is like shade in relation to the tree, light in relation to the sun; all things are the traces of his power [āthār qudrathi], and the existence of all belongs to his existence [tābiʿ li-wujūdihi]. . . . Kindness from people can only be conceived metaphorically, for the one who is kind is God the Exalted [that is, God is the singular source of all qualities that are loved]. . . . My goodness! Who can deny that it is really possible to love God the Exalted [in a way other than simple obedience to his commands and prohibitions]? . . . Who denies that these descriptions are the descriptions of beauty, perfection, and goodness . . . and that they describe God? . . . The closeness of the slave [that is, the human] to his Lord the Mighty and Majestic is in terms of attributes [not in terms of physical closeness], attributes which he is commanded to follow and the characteristics of lordship: knowledge, righteousness, goodness, kindness, mercy, guidance, and so on, which he is commanded to emulate. . . . All regions of the realm [malakūt] of the heavens and the earth are the domain of the knower, who takes his place therein as he wishes. . . . Whoever has awareness [maʿrifa] of God the Praiseworthy will have disclosed to him the mysteries of the realm [mulk] of God, even a little, and upon this disclosure, he will be struck in his heart with joy that will almost make him fly. . . This is something comprehended only by taste [dhawq, the method of mystical-philosophical scholasticism]. (Ghazali 2003: vol. 2, 1658–1668, passim) Here, the call to scholarly emulation of God’s attributes shows the ethical climax of Ghazali’s thought. He had first sought to get the learned elite (i.e., philosophers) to admit their own ignorance of the reality of things, and that by their own method, compelling them, if truly learned, to turn to mystical insight—made possible by the light of prophecy—for certain knowledge of the reality of things. He now seeks to put them in the position of having to emulate the attributes of God (as known by revelation and not solely by the philosophical method) in the manner of the prophets—and to do so because that is what the philosophical method demands

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in the end! Thus, what began as skepticism of a kind ends with the claim that the philosophical method, when properly pursued, should convince the learned of the necessity of living like the prophets! In other words, the call to emulate God’s attributes is not simply a devotional matter. It actually serves as evidence that those who claim to have knowledge actually possess it. A scholar who does not live a prophetic ethics as modeled by Muhammad is therefore scholastically deficient—his claim to possess knowledge (especially but not only of God) is suspect. Of course, the emulation of God’s attributes that Ghazali has in mind does not transgress the ontological divide between creator and creation, as earlier noted. In The Highest Goal in Explaining the Most Beautiful Names of God, he shows how it is possible to identify with the attributes of God in appropriately scholastic fashion. Since God has made these attributes (or names) known by revelation to humanity, he must have intended them to be comprehensible to humans in some fashion. In other words, if humans are to identify with them, they have to be able to grasp their conceptual meaning beyond their literal wordings. Ghazali proceeds to explain in detail how this is to be done in the case of each of God’s revealed names. Indeed, for him, it is possible to identify even with the primary name of God—Allah—through a kind of theosis (ta’alluh), where one immerses one’s heart and aspiration wholly in God: not seeing other than God, not heeding other than God, not having hope in—or fear of—other than God. However, in line with his scholastic approach, which preserves the philosophical method while going beyond it, Ghazali turns to the philosophical categories of the day to explain the conceptual meaning of God’s names, thereby allowing human identification with them. In the end, human emulation of God’s names serves as ethical balance for the human soul, giving the rational faculty mastery over the soul’s lower appetitive and irascible faculties. In this way, Ghazali distinguishes between the way in which the names or attributes are applied to God and the way in which they are applied to humans, demonstrating the scholastic sense of emulating God’s names or attributes. For example, when explaining the divine name, “king” (malik), he begins by describing “king” as one who needs nothing where everything needs him. In this sense, the name applies exclusively to God. The human being cannot be king in this fashion but does have a kingdom in his heart and soul where his soldiers are his appetite, anger, and passion, and his subjects his tongue, eyes, hands, and all his bodily members. If he rules them and they do not rule him, he attains the rank of king in his world. Thus, Ghazali’s monistic vision of existence has resulted in a corresponding monistic vision of ethics whereby humans are able to imitate the attributes of God in a way that is both grounded in Islam’s revealed message and philosophically compelling. To conclude, it is now possible to understand the nature of Ghazali’s skeptical crisis and its resolution as described in The Deliverer from Error. His skepticism is skepticism about the knowledge that comes from the philosophical method. He is not against the philosophical method, but rather seeks to put it in its proper place. It may yield knowledge of the reality of things, but such knowledge is not supreme, existing only as fruit of a rationally comprehensible order in which the nature of things can be determined. Such knowledge requires adjudication by a meta-rational

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cognition, just as our sense perceptions need to be adjudicated by the mind. Thus, for certain knowledge of the reality of things, one must incorporate mystical insight into one’s scholastic inquiry. This mystical insight, the fruit of learned ignorance, is the light that Ghazali says God cast in his breast, allowing for the cultivation of a prophet-like knowledge—that is, certain knowledge—of the reality of things. He thus forges a close connection between skepticism and (a kind of) mysticism, both of which remain within the scholastic world to which he belonged. At the same time, he is led by his own scholastic commitments to raise questions, not of the efficacy of the philosophical method but of its sufficiency, leading him to doubts, albeit not outright rejection, of some of the philosopher’s conclusions that are at odds with Islam’s beliefs. It is worth noting that Ghazali’s skepticism does not come out of the blue but builds upon a history of doubt in Islam that questioned the claims of discursive reasoning (both theological and philosophical) to certain knowledge of the reality of God (Heck 2014). At the same time, he wrote at a time when such reasoning, particularly the legacy of Avicenna, was becoming more fully integrated into the scholarly life of Islam. Ghazali is thus faced with the challenge of both affirming the philosophical method but also putting it in its place, drawing upon a long heritage of skeptical stratagem to best philosophy at its own game. In sum, he made the philosophical method more palatable to Islam’s scholarly milieu by raising doubts about its supremacy. While helping to consolidate the place of Avicenna in the scholastic curriculum, he also established grounds for scholars to attack Avicenna (Shihadeh 2013) and arguably helped set the stage for doubts to be raised about the sufficiency of the logic of Aristotle as basis of knowledge (Ibrahim 2013).

REFERENCES ‘Abbās, Iḥsān 1966. “Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī wa-‘Ilm al-Kalām,” al-Abḥāth 19: 189–207. Al-Akiti, Afifi M. 2009. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Falsafa: Al-Ghazālī’s Maḍnūn, Tahāfut, and Maqāṣid, with Particular Attention to their Falsafī Treatments of God’s Knowledge of Temporal Events.” In Y. Tzvi Langermann (ed.), Avicenna and his Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, 51–100. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. Frank, Richard, M. 1989. “Knowledge and Taqlīd: The Foundations of Religious Beliefs in Classical Ash‘arism,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 109: 37–62. Frank, Richard, M. 1994. al-Ghazālī and the Ash‘arite School. Durham: Duke University Press. Garden, Kenneth. 2013. The First Islamic Reviver: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and his Revival of the Religious Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. al-Ghazālī. 1967. al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl, eds. Jamīl Salībā and Kāmil ‘Ayyād, 7th edition. Beirut: Dār al-Andalus. al-Ghazālī. 1971. al-Maqṣad al-Asnā fī Sharḥ Asmā’ Allāh al-Ḥusnā, ed. Fadlou A. Shehadi. Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq. al-Ghazālī. 1993. al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm, ed. Maḥmūd Bījū. Damascus: al-Maṭba‘a al-‘Ilmiyya. al-Ghazālī. 1997. Tahāfut al-Falāsifa, ed. and trans. Michael E. Marmura. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press.

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al-Ghazālī. 1998. Mishkāt al-Anwār, ed. and trans. David Buchman. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University. al-Ghazālī. 2003. Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn, 2 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Salām. Griffel, Frank. 2005. “Taqlīd of the Philosophers: al-Ghazālī’s Initial Accusations in his Tahāfut.” In S. Günther (ed.), Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, 273–296. Leiden: Brill. Griffel, Frank. 2009. Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halevi, Leor. 2002. “The Theologian’s Doubts: Natural Philosophy and the Skeptical Games of Ghazālī,” Journal of the History of Ideas 63: 19–29. Heck, Paul L. 2014. Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion. London: Routledge. Ibrahim, Bilal. 2013. “Fahr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Ibn al-Haytam and Aristotelian Science: Essentialism Versus Phenomenalism in Post-Classical Islamic Thought,” Oriens: 379–431. Kukkonen, Taneli. 2010. “Al-Ghazālī’s Skepticism Revisited.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 2–59. Leiden: Brill. Marmura, Michael E. 1989. “al-Ghazālī on Bodily Resurrection and Causality in the Tahāfut and the Iqtiṣād,” Aligarh Journal of Islamic Thought 2: 46–75. Menn, Stephen 2003. “The Discourse on the Method and the Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography.” In J. Miller and B. Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, 141–191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shihadeh, Ayman. 2013. “A post-Ghazālian Critic of Avicenna: Ibn Ghaylān al-Balkhī on the Materia Medica of the Canon of Medicine,” Journal of Islamic Studies 24: 135–174. Stroumsa, Sarah. 1999. Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rāwandī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, and their Impact on Islamic Thought. Leiden: Brill. Treiger, Alexander. 2012. Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought: Al-Ghazālī’s Theory of Mystical Cognition and its Avicennian Foundation. London: Routledge. Van Ess, Josef. 1968. “Skepticism in Islamic Religious Thought,” al-Abḥāth 21: 1–18. Williams, Wesley. 2002. “Aspects of the Creed of Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal: A Study of Anthropomorphism in Early Islamic Discourse,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34: 441–463.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Nicholas of Autrecourt and John Buridan on Skepticism CHRISTOPHE GRELLARD

1 INTRODUCTION After John Duns Scotus’s radical criticism of Henry of Ghent, the skeptical challenge becomes more and more central to medieval epistemology.1 The reduction of a theory to skepticism, by showing its skeptical consequences, is used as a kind of ad hominem argument (see Grellard 2011b). Moreover, the development of the argument of a deceiving god, in the Scotist and Ockhamist traditions, urges every philosopher and theologian to answer the skeptic.2 Hence, a kind of ideal skeptic, who absolutely denied the possibility of knowing anything with certainty, emerges as an unavoidable adversary. It becomes necessary for any epistemological system to justify the mere possibility of knowing. This kind of attitude to the skeptical challenge is key to understanding Nicholas of Autrecourt’s and John Buridan’s epistemologies. The two philosophers were colleagues at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris, during the 1330s.3 Both tried to refute skepticism, but their solutions are radically different and even opposed. Indeed, Autrecourt’s answer to skepticism can be labeled as foundationalist, whereas Buridan’s can be labeled as externalist. Moreover, Buridan seems to think that Autrecourt’s foundationalism may lead to a form of skepticism, and he partly targets him in his general criticism of skepticism. In this chapter, I will first examine Nicholas’s attempt to answer skepticism and its failure. Such a failure may explain why Nicholas has been usually considered to be skeptic by most historians of medieval philosophy. Then, I will turn to Buridan’s solution and clarify his relation to Autrecourt.

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2  NICHOLAS OF AUTRECOURT’S UNWILLING SKEPTICISM In a letter to the Franciscan friar, Bernard of Arezzo, Nicholas of Autrecourt explicitly claims that he wants to avoid any form of skepticism: And, as it seems to me, from your position there follow things that are more absurd than follow from the position of the Academics. And, therefore, in order to avoid such absurdities, I have upheld in disputations in the Aula of the Sorbonne that I am evidently certain of the objects of the five senses and of my own acts. (Autrecourt 1994: 55–57) Clearly, to answer skepticism means to preserve the cognitive value of external (viz., sensible) and internal perception. Therefore, Autrecourt’s solution will consist in using some kind of perception, along with some intellectual principles, as the foundations of our knowledge. But before examining his foundationalism, we have to individuate the kind of skepticism Autrecourt is targeting.

2a  The Invention of Modern Skepticism In the first letter to Bernard of Arezzo, Nicholas is involved in a controversy about the intuitive knowledge of a non-existent object. In the Scotist tradition to which Bernard belongs, God, by his absolute power, may destroy an object but preserve a clear perception of it in the spirit of a man (see Autrecourt 1994: 46–47).4 Nicholas tries to show how such a position leads to several skeptical absurdities. By this reductio ad absurdum, Autrecourt wants to disqualify Bernard’s epistemology. But he also builds a new picture of the skeptic, different in some respects from the skepticism inherited from Augustine. First, if it is logically possible for the act of cognition to exist without its object (since we can have a clear idea of an object that does not exist), we have to conclude that it is impossible to distinguish the true from the false, since truth consists in the correspondence between an object and an idea of it. Then, we cannot have evident knowledge of external objects (Autrecourt 1994: 46–47). To this first objection, Bernard replies by distinguishing between the natural and the supernatural order of knowledge. In the common course of nature, there is no knowledge of a non-existent object. As we shall see, Buridan defends a very similar view. So, if we add the clause “God is not intervening in the course of nature,” such an inference as “a whiteness is seen, therefore a whiteness exists” is evident. But Nicholas cannot accept such a reply since, according to him, we are unable to identify the cases in which God is intervening and those in which He is not (Autrecourt 1994: 50–51). It is therefore impossible to escape a general doubt about the existence of things outside the mind. The second step of the reduction to skepticism concerns our mental states. According to Bernard himself, we don’t have a direct knowledge of our mental states. Therefore, our perceptions of external things are clearer than the perception of our inner states. Against the Franciscan, Nicholas uses an a fortiori argument: if we can’t have an evident perception of external things (as has just

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been shown), a fortiori we can’t have an evident perception of things we perceive less clearly, as is the case with our mental states (Autrecourt 1994: 52–53). From this, Nicholas concludes that Bernard is a complete solipsist: he does not know whether external things exist, he does not know whether he himself exists as a body, and he does not know whether he has mental states, in such a way that he cannot say that he thinks or has an intellect: “Moreover you will not have certitude about your own mind either and thus you do not know whether it exists” (Autrecourt 1994: 54–55). This reductio ad absurdum clearly shows that, according to Autrecourt, radical skepticism is strongly linked to the extension of God’s absolute power. Indeed, such a power leads to a general doubt about the existence of the external world and to a strong form of solipsism. As Nicholas explains, Bernard’s position is much more absurd than the Academics’ (see the quotation at the beginning of Section 2). We probably reach here the first clear distinction between ancient and modern skepticism. Indeed, in Against the Academicians Augustine explained, in arguing against Carneades, that the Academics never dared to question the existence of the external world.5 For this reason, we may consider the problem of the external world (and the solipsism strongly connected to it) as a touchstone for distinguishing between ancient and modern skepticism, and such a touchstone explicitly appears for the first time in Autrecourt’s criticisms of Bernard of Arezzo.

2b  A Foundationalist Answer to Skepticism In order to avoid skepticism, Nicholas claims, we need to accept some self-evident basic beliefs as the foundation of all our knowledge. These beliefs are of two kinds: immediate perceptions and analytic propositions: The following are evident, properly speaking: sensible objects, and the acts which we experience in ourselves. These refer to what is incomplex. As regards what is complex, there are principles which are known from their terms, and conclusions depending on them. (Autrecourt 1971: 235) Propositional (or complex, in scholastic terms) evidentness includes the first principle, namely, the principle of non-contradiction,6 and every analytic proposition that can be used as a premise in an inference. The first principle plays the role of a general condition of possibility for every discursive truth, since on the one hand no truth can be contradictory, and on the other the first principle cannot be falsified by God’s absolute power. The first principle allows us to secure a first level of evidentness against the skeptics. The warrant of this first level can be extended to other propositions by a reduction to the first principle. To reduce means “to show the foundations” in such a way that the first principle functions as a sort of metaprinciple with regard to analytic propositions, whose main property is the inclusion of the predicate in the subject (see Autrecourt 1971: 102; Grellard 2005: 69). Since these propositions may be used in their turn as premises in a syllogism, every proof contains the first principle virtually, that is, can be reduced to it by a process of

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regress. Nevertheless, to warrant the transfer of evidentness from the principle to the conclusion, Nicholas introduces two principles for our inferences: P1: An inference is evident if and only if the signification of the consequent is included in, or identical to, the signification of the antecedent. P2: An inference is evident if and only if it is impossible that the antecedent and the contradictory of the consequent are true at the same time.7 On these two principles depend two rules of inference: R1: The inference “if a exists, then b exists” is not evident if and only if (1) “a” and “b” are two absolute terms; and (2) a is different from b. R2: The inference “if a exists, then b exists” is evident if and only if (1) “b” is a term relative to “a”; or (2) if “a” and “b” are two absolute terms, the signification of “b” is included in the signification of “a.” (see Autrecourt 1994: 64; Grellard 2005: 83–89) According to R2, we may conclude: “If a house exists, a wall exists,” or “If every animal is running, every man is running,” but according to R1 we have to exclude inferences such as: “If an accident exists, a substance exists,” or “If A is produced, something is producing A” (Autrecourt 1994: 181).8 Therefore, it clearly appears that, by warranting our knowledge against skepticism, Nicholas excludes from the realm of science a large part of the Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics. Such a philosophy, according to Nicholas, is at best only probable, as we shall see. The second kind of evidentness is perceptual evidence. In order to avoid the problems of the intuition of non-existent objects, Nicholas claims that a veridical perception demands a relationship of conformity between the mental act and the external thing. Such a relation must be necessary (habitudo necessaria) and occurs when the thing really exists in se and is perceived by the external senses. Such a perception is called a “complete appearance” (apparentia plena) (Autrecourt 1971: 108; see Perler 2006). Of course, the problem for Nicholas, if he really wants to answer the skeptic, is to explain how we may know when we have such an appearance and be sure that the external thing exists. Facing this objection, Nicholas answers on a twofold level. First, he claims that there is a qualitative difference between real and fictitious perceptions, that is, a difference of clarity such that the perception naturally compels the intellect to assent. Second, we have to assume as probable that everything that appears in a clear way is true. This probable assumption means that we may generally trust our senses and accept that our direct perceptions are usually true. With this assumption, I am allowed to use some clear perceptions to correct the other less clear perceptions. The complete appearances function as judgments that allow us to correct a posteriori some misleading perceptions. For example, if I see a broken stick in the water, I may touch it to correct my vision and confirm my judgment, “The stick is not broken.” Therefore, Nicholas thinks he may answer skepticism by developing a foundationalist theory of knowledge, where two kinds of principles, propositional and perceptual, may warrant the evidentness of some basic beliefs, and from which we may infer other beliefs. Nevertheless, in some respects, we may think that Nicholas has failed to reach his goal and is led to an unwilling form of skepticism.

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2c  Nicholas’s Failure to Avoid Skepticism Most scholars usually consider Nicholas as the best example of medieval skepticism, even if he himself claims not to be a skeptic.9 We may identify three reasons that explain why Autrecourt is often considered a skeptic: his probabilism, his attitude toward the truth of principles, and the limits of his defense of sensible perception. Let us consider briefly these three points. First, as we have seen, Nicholas sharply criticizes Aristotelian philosophy by claiming that it is at best only probable. Indeed, every philosophy that cannot satisfy the condition of evidentness can be only probable, that is, rationally grounded. For example, Nicholas thinks that his own atomistic physics is only probable, but more probable than Aristotelian natural philosophy, since it can give a better explanation of natural phenomena.10 A theory is more probable than another if one is more justified in assenting to it, that is, if one has more and better arguments for it. Autrecourt’s conception of what is probable is linked both with an evolving conception of knowledge conceived of as a quest for justification and with a conception of the history of philosophy as the refutation of previous systems.11 But the consequence is the weakening of the scholastic model of scientia as evident knowledge. Finally, the realm of science is strongly limited, and most of our knowledge is not science at all but only more or less justified opinions. For Nicholas, that is enough, but as we shall see in the case of Buridan, for most of the scholastics it is not acceptable. For example, Nicholas’s theory of knowledge leads him to exclude inductive knowledge from the realm of science. First, induction cannot be evident since causal connections are not. Indeed, a causal connection cannot satisfy R2, and our experience of causality gives us nothing more than a mere contiguity. Second, since we cannot enumerate all the possible causes, we can never exclude absolutely the possibility of counterexamples. Third, the notion of a cause does not guarantee the constant production of an effect. We are inclined to accept that similar causes produce similar effects because of a conjectural habit (habitus conjecturativus), that is, a natural disposition to generalize, but such a habit gives us no certitude (see Autrecourt 1994: 72; 1971: 119). The skeptical scope of Nicholas’s probabilism is reinforced by his attitude toward the principles. For Nicholas, as we have seen, all certitude comes from the first principle by reduction to it. At the same time, Nicholas claims that, despite its primacy, the first principle cannot warrant the truth of our other principles or of our conclusions. Such truths are only useless hypotheses. He first shows that we have an indirect proof of the truth of evident knowledge, by the following argument: Accordingly, I shall lay down as a first conclusion that, if the intellect can say of something “this is true,” there cannot coexist the opposite of what is known clearly and evidently. Hence, what is clear and evident to the intellect is true—a statement universally valid and convertible. This conclusion is proven for, when something is known to be true, if it were possible for its opposite to be true, it would follow that the intellect could be sure of nothing. But the opposite of this was maintained in our hypothesis. The reasoning is proven because we have no certitude concerning first principles of anything else knowable except because we know them clearly and evidently. (Autrecourt 1971: 116)12

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Second, he shows that there is no direct proof of the truth of a proposition. If we want to demonstrate the truth of p by the means of premises q and r, we have to show that q and r are either true or evident. To show the first point, we need other premises whose truth has to be demonstrated, etc., and we have an infinite regress. If we say that p is true because q and r are evident, we have a petitio principii. Hence, the combination of skeptical modes allows Nicholas to say that truth is only a hypothesis (Autrecourt 1971: 117). Therefore, there is a primacy of evidentness over truth. The first point is that we cannot prove the truth of our principles, but we should assume it as following from their evidentness. But, in the same way, we have no proof for this evidentness except an indirect one: we need to posit the first principle if we want to escape the infinite regress argument in our syllogisms. Undoubtedly, this is a strong concession to the skeptics. Third, and finally, the strongest concession to skepticism appears in Nicholas’s solution to the problem of perceptual illusions. Even if Nicholas’s probabilism is very close to a form of mild skepticism, Nicholas goes even further by acknowledging some limits to his answer to skepticism. As we explained, against the traditional skeptical arguments against perception, like the dream argument, Nicholas appeals to the clarity or self-evidence of complete and veridical perceptions. But we may ask: how are we able to discriminate complete and partial appearances and to explain the incompleteness of some appearances? Indeed, in situations involving dreams or illusions, we do think that we have a complete appearance, which often compels the will to assent to it as strongly as a complete appearance. The skeptical dream argument, for example, presupposes a qualitative identity between wakefulness and sleep. On this point, Nicholas is much more embarrassed. He admits that if our dreams, and more generally our illusions, were as clear as complete appearances, we could never make any distinction between them and reality, and we could not have any certitude at all. We would be reduced to complete skepticism or absolute relativism: It is evident that in sleep the appearance is not clear. For, no matter how vividly it appears to someone in sleep that he has seen a camp, the light of heaven, etc., nevertheless everyone experiences when awake that the appearance he gets through sight is clearer and different in kind, and so he is more attracted by this. For, if they were equally clear, he would have either to say nothing is certain for him or to admit that in both appearances what appears to be true is true. (Autrecourt 1971: 107) Of course, this is an important concession from Nicholas since the skeptical dream argument makes two assumptions: the qualitative identity of true and false appearances and a slippery-slope reasoning of the form, “If I am once deceived, I could always be deceived.” Nicholas tries to escape the problem by claiming that we have to assume as probable that every clear appearance is true, that is, that our sensations are usually correct, but, of course, a skeptic would never accept such an assumption.13 The attempt to give a foundationalist answer to skepticism seems to lead Nicholas of Autrecourt to a dead-end. His position involves too many concessions to a more or less strong form of skepticism, in such a way that he could not avoid

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the accusation to be himself a kind of skeptic. Such an accusation seems to appear in Buridan’s discussion of Nicholas’s epistemology.

3  JOHN BURIDAN’S ANTI-SKEPTICAL STRATEGY John Buridan confronts skepticism in several texts. In most of these texts, Nicholas of Autrecourt is one of his targets, but he is far from being the only one.14 Nevertheless, due to the radical gap between Autrecourt’s foundationalism and Buridan’s externalism, the latter clearly uses the process of reduction to skepticism in order to underline how foundationalism leads to skepticism. For Buridan, skepticism is mainly a problem for perceptual cognition, and he assumes that an externalist epistemology can sufficiently answer the skeptical challenge.

3a  Who Is Buridan’s Skeptic? In two questions of his commentaries on Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics, Buridan directly faces the skeptical challenge by asking: is it possible to know something with evidence?15 In both questions, the arguments quod non (i.e., the arguments against the thesis Buridan wants to defend) draw the portrait of the skeptic Buridan wants to refute. This skeptic mainly uses arguments against perception, which culminate with the hypothesis of divine deception. In the Questions on Metaphysics, Buridan introduces ten arguments against perception, most of which are linked to the relativity of perception. The last one relies on the possibility of illusion, which is grounded in God’s absolute power. He then introduces seven arguments against intellectual knowledge. The first four rely on the subordination of intellectual knowledge to perceptual knowledge. The fallibility of our perception contaminates intellectual knowledge. Next follows the argument of the Meno,16 the argument of the infinite regress, Nicholas’s rule of inference (R1) used to criticize causality, and a “Heraclitean argument” according to which there is no science of contingent and mutable things. The general structure of the arguments quod non is the same in the Questions on the Posterior Analytics. Buridan only adds two arguments against causality and an argument against induction that could be inspired by Autrecourt’s criticisms. Therefore, for Buridan, the skeptical challenge mainly pertains to perceptual knowledge and indirectly to intellectual knowledge. It is clear that, on this point, Autrecourt is not his target. It is highly implausible, contrary to De Rijk’s (1997) assumption, followed by Zupko (2003) and Klima (2009; 2010), that Autrecourt would be one of the theologizantes Buridan criticizes in his Summulae de demonstrationibus (Buridan 2001: 112–113). Indeed, Autrecourt never deals with the question of the deceiving God, except in his controversy with Bernard, when he uses Bernard’s own terms and theory to underline their skeptical consequences. For his part, Bernard seems very close to Franciscan theologians like Walter Chatton or John of Rodington. Then it is much more plausible that Buridan targets some aspects of the post-Scotist theology that gave an impulsion to the question of the deceiving god.17 On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Autrecourt’s criticisms of our knowledge of substance, along with his criticisms of induction and causality,

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are mixed with skeptical arguments, which would make it possible to reduce his epistemology to a form of skepticism. But the problem here is much more the question of the nature of our principles and of epistemic justification, and only secondarily, of skepticism.18 To sum up, Buridan’s skeptic is someone who endangers the possibility of knowing through perception and making inferences from perceptions. Buridan only partly targets Autrecourt, and the opposition between the two colleagues at the Arts Faculty rather concerns their respective conceptions of epistemic justification.

3b  Buridan’s Externalist Answer to Skepticism Buridan’s answer to skepticism first relies on a twofold distinction of evidentness, and second on the idea of a natural inclination to the truth. For Buridan, to avoid mere fallible opinion, the firmness of our assent must depend not only on subjective factors (like appearances and dialectical arguments) but also on an objective factor he calls evidentness (evidentia). This evidentness can be either absolutely infallible or relatively infallible.19 The first occurs when it can be falsified by no means, either natural or supernatural. Hence, such evidentness avoids the problem of divine deception. It is exemplified by the evidentness of mathematics and logic. In this case, it is almost impossible to refuse to assent to the proposition. For example, the principle of non-contradiction can be denied verbally (ore), but not sincerely (corde). The other kind of evidentness is only relatively evident (secundum quid or ex suppositione), since it depends on the supposition that we are in a strict natural context (the common course of nature), in which God by definition does not intervene to modify natural causality. This kind of evidentness is enough for natural science; that is, we do not need to be certain that just now our knowledge is preserved from divine deception, but only that, usually, God does not intervene, in such a way that natural science is true: In another way, we consider evidentness as relative or hypothetical (accipitur euidentia secundum quid siue ex suppositione). For example, we claimed before that we observe it in every being according to the common course of nature, and in this way it is evident for us that every fire is hot and that the heavens are moved, even if the contrary is possible by the power of God. Such evidentness is enough for the principles and conclusions of natural science. (Buridan 1518: Bk II, q. 1, f. 8vb–9ra) For Buridan, even if it is always theoretically possible that God may intervene in the common course of nature and temporarily suspend the causal laws He established, such a theoretical possibility is nevertheless practically insignificant. In other words, we may practice natural science as if God would never intervene, but keeping in mind that He could falsify our knowledge. The scientist can never be absolutely certain that his natural knowledge is entirely true, since some parameters could remain unknown, as exemplified by the possibility of divine intervention. This first level of the answer to skepticism is completed by a second one: the natural inclination of the intellect toward the truth. For Buridan it is as natural for

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the intellect to know the truth as for fire to burn or for wheat to fruit. There is a natural tendency, due to the biological constitution of these beings, to perform such an action. Generally speaking, for Buridan the natural power (potentia) of being, that is an ability to act, will produce its effect if there is no impediment. For example, a magnet attracts iron, and the body moves toward its proper place. The ideal action of the intellect is exemplified by the grasping of the first principles. Such a grasping cannot be erroneous, but there are of course impediments. Since the intellect is a power determined by many external factors, it is not a strictly natural power, but a habitual one, which depends on the repetition of the act. Therefore, it is possible for an intellectual power to be habituated to the contrary of its natural tendency. By custom, bad education or habits, or by the repetition of false perceptions, I can be trained to give my assent to the false. Therefore, the skeptic relies on this bad intellectual education to dismiss all our knowledge. But Buridan thinks we may correct a posteriori our defective knowledge by identifying the punctual causes of error. These punctual errors may not be a sufficient reason for rejecting our natural ability to grasp the truth. In other words, for Buridan, true knowledge is the rule and error the exception. Indeed, according to him, our knowledge depends on causal relations that could theoretically fail, but that succeed in most cases (see Grellard 2014). Usually, I do know the truth, and my knowledge does not fail. This natural inclination of the intellect toward the truth is the key to explain inductive inference. The problem consists in explaining how we can jump from a partial enumeration of singular cases to a general law subsuming each of these singulars. A complete enumeration is, of course, impossible. But, according to Buridan, if we have discovered, after careful examination, no counterexamples, we are allowed to add the clause et sic de singulis (“and so with each token”). This clause cannot rely on a principle of the uniformity of nature, otherwise we would have a petitio principii (the uniformity of nature warrants the inductive process but is itself known by induction). According to Buridan, we have to assume that the absence of any counterexamples is sufficient to claim that the process is reliable enough and depends on our natural inclination to the truth, even if it is theoretically possible that our inductive principle may be falsified. Of course, induction provides only a hypothetical or relative evidentness, but it is nevertheless evidentness.20 The way Buridan answers the skeptical challenge allows him to maintain a definition of science where evidentness (even of a weaker kind) and truth are still necessary conditions of knowledge in a strong sense (whereas Autrecourt dismissed truth as a mere hypothesis and evidentness as the ideal higher level of knowledge). Indeed, Buridan’s strategy against skepticism is to circumscribe it, to reduce it to a very exceptional case that very rarely occurs, in order to maintain the high standards of science. But could Buridan satisfy a skeptic with such an answer? Probably not. This answer relies on the assumption of some principles the skeptic cannot accept (e.g., error occurs rarely) and on the possibility of correcting our error a posteriori. But none of these two assumptions may satisfy the skeptic who asks for an a priori warrant for the truth of his belief.

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4 CONCLUSION What is the general teaching of this medieval debate on skepticism? Two conclusions may be drawn. First, from a philosophical point of view, the debate between Autrecourt and Buridan on the best way to avoid skepticism shows that it is impossible to give a satisfactory answer to the skeptical challenge. Either you accept the terms of the debate the skeptic calls for, or you try to bypass them by refusing the skeptical formulation of the problem of knowledge. The first solution is Nicholas’s choice and leads to a failure since in the end he has to acknowledge some cases where the skeptic cannot be refuted. The second solution is Buridan’s, but it cannot satisfy the skeptic since it does not fulfill his demand to meet a high standard of knowledge that could a priori warrant each instance of our knowledge. In this case, there is no real dialogue between the dogmatist and the skeptic. Second, from a historical point of view, the case of Nicholas of Autrecourt clearly shows that all the necessary conditions for the rise of modern skepticism are present in the fourteenth century. A mix of institutional and intellectual factors inhibited the development of such skepticism before the following centuries. From an institutional point of view, the condemnation of Autrecourt in 1346 (for reasons alien to skepticism) prevented any positive influence on late medieval philosophy. From an intellectual point of view, we may assume that Scotus’s radical criticisms of Henry of Ghent probably made it much more difficult to explicitly adopt a skeptical position. Nevertheless, the claim that the translation of Sextus’s writings was the only cause of the development of modern skepticism should be revised.

NOTES 1. See Perler (2006: 33–115). 2. On this point, see Lagerlund in this book, Gregory (1984), and Perler (2010). 3. Nicholas of Autrecourt was born around 1300 and died in 1369. Due to his condemnation in 1347, he left the philosophical stage and had little influence on late medieval Parisian philosophy. John Buridan was also born around 1300 and died between 1358 and 1361. Throughout his life, he was a teacher at the Arts Faculty, and he had a wide influence not only in Paris but also in Italy and Central Europe. On Autrecourt’s life, see Kaluza (1995); on Buridan’s, see Faral (1950). On Autrecourt’s skepticism, see Thijssen (2000) and Grellard (2010). On Buridan and skepticism, see Zupko (1993) and Klima (2010). 4. Bernard’s position is very close to Walter Chatton’s. On this point, see Kaluza (1991). 5. Augustine (1995, 74): “‘How do you know that the world exists,’ replies the Academician, ‘if the senses are deceptive?’ Your arguments were never able to disown the power of our senses to the extent of clearly establishing that nothing seems to be so to us. Nor have you ever ventured to try to do so.” 6. In some texts Nicholas seems to claim that the first principle includes both the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of identity. On this topic, see Grellard (2005: 69–70), also Krause (2009).

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7. On P1, see Autrecourt (1994: 64); on P2, see Autrecourt (1994: 60). P2 is very common among medieval logicians. P1 is less common and clearly aims to exclude material implications. For this reason, it can be said that it belongs to the prehistory of relevance logic. 8. On Autrecourt’s criticisms of the possibility of knowing a substance, see Robert (2006). 9. As I point out elsewhere (Grellard 2010), Autrecourt’s epistemology is very close to that proposed in the twelfth century by John of Salisbury, who explicitly claimed to be a skeptic (see Bloch’s chapter in this book and Grellard 2013a). We may assume that some historical changes forbade such a claim in the fourteenth century. A plausible explanation is the following: Scotus’s accusation that Henry of Ghent was a skeptic made it impossible for anyone to claim to be a skeptic because he took Henry’s skepticism to be a form of irrationality. 10. On Autrecourt’s atomism, see Grellard (2002; 2009). 11. See Autrecourt (1971: 41): “For although in my opinion they appear far more probable than what Aristotle said, yet, just as for a long time Aristotle’s statements seemed to be probable, though now perhaps their probability will be lessened, so someone will come along and undermine the probability of these statements of mine.” On Autrecourt’s probabilism, see Grellard (2005: 93–118). 12. The structure of the argument is not very clear, and seems to suffer from some logical flaws, but we can propose the following reconstruction (I would like to thank Baron Reed for improving my understanding of the argument): (1) Kp (assume) (2) not-p (assume for reductio) (3) Kp & not-p (conjunction introduction: 1, 2) (4) if Kp & not-p, then not-Kp (the knowledge of p excludes the truth of not-p) (5) not-(Kp & not-p) (modus tollens: 1, 4) (6) not-Kp or p (equivalent to 5) (7) p (disjunction elimination: 1, 6) (8) p (reductio ad absurdum: 2, 7) (9) if Kp, then p (conditional proof: 1, 8) 13. This failure to plainly answer to skepticism may partly explain why Autrecourt adopts a phenomenalist theory of perception in the second part of his treatise. See Grellard (2015a). 14. The claim that Buridan is mainly attacking Autrecourt’s so-called skepticism is found in Zupko (1993; 2003) and Klima (2009; 2010). This claim is not entirely false, as we shall see, but it should be formulated in a more cautious way. 15. Buridan (1518: Bk II, q. 1, f. 8rb): utrum de rebus sit nobis possibilis comprehensio veritatis? (Whether it is possible for us to grasp the truth about things?) and Buridan unpublished, Bk I, q. 2: utrum possibile sit nos aliquid scire? (Whether it is possible we know something scientifically?). 16. On the status of Meno’s argument in the Middle Ages, see Grellard (2011a). 17. See Lagerlund’s chapter in this book. 18. Buridan also seems to target Autrecourt on induction in the Questions on Ethics, Bk. VI, q. 11, but without any mention of the skeptical problem. See Grellard (2005: 270–271).

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19. I leave aside a third level, the moral evidence that is much closer to mere opinion. On this point, see Grellard (2013b; 2015 b). 20. On this topic, see Buridan (1518: II, q. 2, f. 9vb; unpublished: I, q. 19 & 20) Grellard (2005: 264–273), and Economos (2009).

REFERENCES Augustine of Hippo. 1995. Against the Academicians and The Teacher, translated by P. King. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett. Autrecourt, Nicholas of. 1971. The Universal Treatise, translated by L. Kennedy. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Autrecourt, Nicholas of. 1994. Nicholas of Autrecourt: His Correspondence with Master Giles and Bernard of Arezzo, critical edition and English translation by L. M. de Rijk. Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill. Buridan, John. 1518. Quaestiones in Metaphysicen Aristotelis. Paris: Josse Bade. Buridan, John. 2001. Summulae de demonstrationibus. Groningen and Haren: Ingenium. Buridan, John. Unpublished. Quaestiones super Posteriora analyticorum. Typescript by Hubert Hubien. De Rijk, Lambert Marie. 1997. “Foi chrétienne et savoir humain. La lutte de Buridan contre les theologizantes.” In A. Elamrani-Jama, A. Galonnier and A. De Libera (eds.), Langage et philosophie. Hommage à Jean Jolivet, 393–409. Paris: Vrin. Economos, Ariane. 2009. Intellectus and Induction: Three Aristotelian Commentators on the Cognition of First Principles, Including an Original Translation of John Buridan’s Quaestiones in duos Aristotelis libros Posteriorum Analyticorum. PhD Dissertation. New York: Fordham. Faral, Edmond. 1950. Jean Buridan, maître ès arts de l’université de Paris. Paris: Imprimerie nationale. Gregory, Tullio. 1984. “La tromperie divine.” In Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (eds.), Preuve et raisons logiques à l’université de Paris. Logique, ontologie et théologie au xive siècle, 187–195. Paris: Vrin. Grellard, Christophe. 2005. Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d’Autrécourt. Paris. Vrin. Grellard, Christophe. 2010. “Nicholas of Autrecourt’s Skepticism: The Ambivalence of Medieval Epistemology.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Medieval Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background, 119–142. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Grellard, Christophe. 2011a. “Peut-on connaître quelque chose de nouveau? Variations médiévales sur l’argument du Ménon,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 201: 37–66. Grellard, Christophe. 2011b. “Academicus.” In I. Atucha, D. Calma, C. König-Pralong, and I. Zavaterro (eds.), Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, 5–16. Turnhout: Brepols. Grellard, Christophe. 2013a. Jean de Salisbury et la renaissance médiévale du scepticisme. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Grellard, Christophe. 2013b. “L’âne et les petites vieilles: psychologie de l’action et logique de l’assentiment chez Jean Buridan.” In L. Jaffro (ed.), Croit-on comme on veut? Histoire d’une controverse, 79–101. Paris: Vrin.

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Grellard, Christophe. 2014. “How is it Possible to Believe Falsely? John Buridan, the vetula and the Psychology of Error.” In K. Gosh, D. Denery, R. Copeland, and N. Zeeman (eds.), Uncertain Knowledge: Interdisciplinary Conversations about Doubt and Scepticism in the Middle Ages, 91–113. Turnhout: Brepols. Grellard, Christophe. 2015a. “The Nature of Intentional Objects in Nicholas of Autrecourt’s Theory of Knowledge.” In G. Klima (ed.), Intentionality, Cognition and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy, 235–250. New York: Fordham University Press. Grellard, Christophe. 2015b. “Probabilisme et approximation du vrai au xive siècle (Jean Buridan, Nicole Oresme, Jean Gerson).” In J-Ph. Genet (ed.), La vérité. Vérité et crédibilité : construire la vérité dans le système de communication de l’Occident (xiiie– xviie siècle), 65–79. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Kaluza, Zénon. 1991. “Serbi un sasso il nome: une inscription de San Gimignano et la rencontre de Bernard d’Arezzo et Nicolas d’Autrécourt.” In B. Mojisch and O. Pluta (eds.), Historia philosophiae medii aevi. Festschrift für Kurt Flasch zu seinem 60 Geburstag, 437–466. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Grüner. Kaluza, Zénon. 1995. Nicolas d’Autrécourt, ami de la vérité. Paris: Imprimerie nationale. Klima, Gyula. 2009. John Buridan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klima, Gyula. 2010. “The Anti-Skepticism of John Buridan and Thomas Aquinas: Putting Skeptics in Their Place Versus Stopping Them in Their Tracks.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Medieval Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background, 145– 170. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Krause, Andrej. 2009. “Nikolaus von Autrecourt über das erste Prinzip und die Gewißheit von Sätzen,” Vivarium 47: 407–420. Lagerlund, Henrik (ed.). 2010. Rethinking the History of Medieval Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Perler, Dominik. 2006. “Relations nécessaires ou contingentes? Nicolas d’Autrécourt et la controverse sur la nature des relations cognitives.” In C. Grellard and S. Caroti (eds.), Nicolas d’Autrécourt et la Faculté des Arts de Paris (1317–1340), 85–111. Cesena: Stilgrad editrice. Perler, Dominik. 2010. “Does God Deceive Us? Skeptical Hypotheses in Late Medieval Epistemology.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Medieval Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background, 171–192. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Robert, Aurélien. 2006. “Jamais Aristote n’a eu de connaissance d’une substance: Nicolas d’Autrécourt en contexte.” In C. Grellard and S. Caroti (eds.), Nicolas d’Autrécourt et la Faculté des Arts de Paris (1317–1340), 111–51. Cesena: Stilgrad editrice. Thijssen, Hans. 2000. “The Quest for Certain Knowledge in the Fourteenth Century: Nicholas of Autrecourt against the Academics.” In J. Sihvola (ed.), Ancient Scepticism and the Sceptical Tradition (=Acta Philosophica Fennica 66), 199–223. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of Finland. Zupko, Jack. 1993. “Buridan on Skepticism.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 31: 191–221. Zupko, Jack. 2003. John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth Century Arts Master. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Divine Deception HENRIK LAGERLUND

1 INTRODUCTION Perhaps one of the most fascinating arguments that one encounters as a firstyear philosophy student is the argument for skepticism about the external world. Entertaining the tantalizing thought that the world as I know it might not exist or that I am stuck in the Matrix, but unable to take the red pill to find out what the world is really like, meets the fancy of many undergraduates. The argument itself is often presented using Descartes’s First Meditation, and the position the meditator finds herself in at the end of the meditation is captured well by Barry Stroud in The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. He writes: We are confined at best to what Descartes calls “ideas” of things around us, representations of things or states of affairs which, for all we know, might or might not have something corresponding to them in reality. We are in a sense imprisoned within those representations, at least with respect to our knowledge. Any attempt to go beyond them to try to tell whether the world really is as they represent it to be can yield only more representations. . . . This can seem to leave us in the position of finding a barrier between ourselves and the world around us. There would then be a veil of sensory experience or sensory objects which we could not penetrate but which would be no reliable guide to the world beyond the veil. If we were in such a position, I think it is quite clear that we could not know what is going on beyond the veil. . . . I have described Descartes’s sceptical conclusion as implying that we are permanently sealed off from a world we can never reach. (Stroud 1984: 32–33) Now, Descartes himself is not a skeptic, of course, since we are only in the first meditation and by the end of the third, when he has proved the existence of a benevolent God, he is in a position to claim that our ideas reach beyond the veil and hook up with things in the world. The arguments Descartes uses to cast doubt on our ideas of the external world are famous, but certainly the most spectacular is that of an evil demon deceiving us. Descartes uses a demon because he does not think God could deceive us; in fact, he thinks it goes against God’s nature to do so, and once the existence

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of an all-powerful God is established, there is no reason for the original doubt, and the methodological skepticism is overcome. Even though Descartes finds it problematic to think of God as a deceiver, it was in the early fourteenth century commonly thought that he could deceive human beings, and it generated similar worries about the existence or nature of the external world as it did for Descartes 300 years later. The late medieval debate about divine deception ranges from the early fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Descartes himself was most likely aware of it, particularly since he was reminded of it by Mersenne in his objections to the Meditations (AT VII 125; CSM I 89–90). It was a debate with very high stakes, which had an impact on all parts of philosophy and theology. It represented a new wave of skeptical thought that went well beyond anything in the earlier history of philosophy. In this chapter, I will look closer at the origin of the idea of God as a deceiver and the debates about skepticism that it led to. I will also outline some of the reasons why it never led philosophy to global skepticism.

2  A NEW MODAL THEORY In his very instructive article “Does God Deceive us?” Dominik Perler starts by looking at thirteenth-century views about God as a deceiver. Thomas Aquinas’s view was, for example, very similar to Descartes’s. Aquinas argued that you have to have a bad intention in order to deceive someone and that this is contrary to God’s nature or rather to his benevolence. Demons can deceive, of course, but their power is limited, and although they can pull tricks on our senses, they are not powerful enough to fiddle with our intellectual capacities. Aquinas developed a very particular view of perception according to which we can, despite possibly being deceived by demons, grasp the essences and gain knowledge (Perler 2010: 173–178). It is foremost through the metaphysical underpinnings of his theory of cognition that any skepticism due to deceiving demons is prevented. This metaphysics, as well as the metaphysics of modality, went through fundamental changes in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, which changed philosophy fundamentally, and as a result new epistemological problems also emerged (see Lagerlund 2010b). The starting point for a discussion of divine deception has to be a discussion of God’s omnipotence. The changes that took place in the fourteenth century began with the development of a new modal theory underlying a new conception of divine omnipotence. The background for these developments was, as so often, set by Aquinas. In Summa Theologiae I, q. 25, art. 3, he writes: God is said to be omnipotent, because he can do everything that is absolutely possible. . . . It must be said that something absolutely possible or impossible derives from the nature of the terms [in a proposition], in the way that something is possible if the predicate [term] is not repugnant to the subject [term], like in “Socrates is sitting.” Something is, however, impossible, because the predicate [term] is repugnant to the subject [term], like in “A human being is a donkey.”

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This view of modality takes as fundamental what is or what is not repugnant to the essence to which the subject term refers. It assumes the essence to be and then asks what is or is not repugnant to it. It is, for example, not repugnant to the existing essence of Socrates that he sits or stands, hence it is possible for Socrates to sit and the corresponding proposition: “Socrates is sitting” is possible. It is repugnant to the essence of Socrates, and indeed every other human being, that he be a donkey. Such a genus-species arrangement cannot occur. Likewise, it is not possible, that is, it is impossible, that Socrates is not rational, since it is repugnant to the essence of Socrates that he not be rational. He would simply not be what he is, namely, a human being, if that were the case. Hence, on Aquinas’s view of omnipotence, God can do anything that is absolutely possible, but he does not have the power to bring about something that is absolutely impossible. This view of possibility is obviously limited in the sense that it starts from what is actual. John Duns Scotus, who is mainly responsible for the radically new view of modality that emerged in the early fourteenth century, retains some of the terminology used by Aquinas. He even accepts that God’s omnipotence should be explained in terms of what is absolutely possible. He, however, changes the notion of what is absolutely possible. For him, it must instead be equated with what he calls “logical possibility” (possibile logicum). Scotus is the first to use this terminology (see Knuuttila 1993, 2012; Gelber 2004). Scotus explains logical possibility by a thought experiment. If we assume that neither God nor the world exists, but that the proposition “The world will be” exists in some intellect, then this proposition is possibly true, as is the proposition “The world is possible”; that is, they are logically possible or true (Scotus, Lectura I, d. 7, n. 32). This is also what he means when he modifies the so-called positio rule in obligations logic and explains what he means by contingency. He writes: I do not call something contingent because it is not always or necessarily the case, but because the opposite of it could be actual at the very moment when it occurs. (Ordinatio I, d. 2, p.1, q. 1–2, n. 86) What both these examples illustrate is that for Scotus possibility is not tied to, or have anything to do with, what actually exists. The subject term, to follow Aquinas’s example, is not assumed to pick out an actual being anymore, but it is instead assumed to range over all possible beings. Hence, what is possible might not ever be actual. The best way to understand this is in terms of possible worlds, even though it is a bit anachronistic to borrow terminology from the seventeenth century. On Scotus’s view, there are an infinite number of possible worlds or possible combinations of things. The actual world is merely one among these. On this view, a proposition like “Every human being is an animal” is not necessarily true, since there are possible worlds where there are no humans and hence the proposition is false there. Instead, it is contingent. Scotus thinks that a proposition like “God exists” is necessarily true, since God exists in all possible worlds. He is thus a necessary being, unlike humans, who are contingent beings. A proposition like “A Chimera exists” is impossible, because there is no possible world where Chimeras exist.

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As mentioned, Scotus continues to associate God’s omnipotence with absolute possibility, but on his view what is absolutely possible is a much larger class than what Aquinas had in mind. God’s omnipotence is associated with what is logically possible, and as a result God’s power has vastly increased since what he cannot do is now only what is logically impossible; for example, he cannot make Chimeras exist and he cannot make the principle of non-contradiction false, but otherwise his power has very few limitations. To fully see how medieval philosophers expanded this view, we must have a look at the famous distinction between God’s absolute power and his ordained power.

3  ABSOLUTE VERSUS ORDAINED POWER The way medieval philosophers, at least after William Ockham in the early fourteenth century, explained God’s power was through a distinction between his absolute and his ordained power. A representative example of how this distinction was used in the late fourteenth century can be found in Peter of Ailly’s Sentences commentary (for more about him see Oakley 1964). He explains: What God can do is understood in two ways. In one way, in accordance with his absolute power, and in another in accordance with his ordained power. It is not the case that there are two powers in God, one absolute and one ordained, but that God can do with his absolute power (absolute potest) what he simply and absolutely can do. And in this way we have to understand God’s absolute power. (Commentary on the Sentences I, q. 13, art. 1) The use of “absolute potest” above is, of course, a reference to the idea of absolute possibility as used by Aquinas and modified by Scotus to mean logical possibility. The notion of ordained power is explained in a twofold way by Ailly in the continuation of the passage just quoted: What God can do in accordance with his ordained power can be understood in two ways. In one way and strictly speaking, it is what God can do when he holds to what he ordained, which he wills eternally to be such and such, and then he can only do what he ordained to be the case. In another way, this can be understood more widely so that it means what God can do when he holds to the true law and the divine scripture. And as such it is possible to say that God can do with his ordained power what is absolutely possible but only as long as he does not take away some already ordained true law or sacred scripture. Once God had created the world in a certain way or, to follow the spirit of Scotus’s view, once God had chosen to make one possible world actual, he has committed himself to it and does not change his mind. This act of God’s will binds him, and whatever is in line with this initial choice or does not contradict it is within God’s ordained power, but he still can act contrary to this through his absolute power. This is a straightforward way of explaining miracles, for example, which are contrary to the normal causal interactions in the created world. When fire does not have any effect on the bush or the bodies of the children, God is intervening in the ordained

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order through his absolute power. From the way Ailly outlines the distinction, it follows a distinction between absolute or logical possibility and ordained or natural possibility. Natural possibility or necessity is what is possible or necessary given the actually created world, while logical possibility or necessity is what is possible or necessary over all possible worlds.

4  DIVINE DECEPTION It is this view of God’s power put in the particular context of the new modal theory that generates the skeptical hypothesis of divine deception. God is so powerful that the mere possibility of deception threatens to cast philosophy into global skepticism and undermine any knowledge of the external world. John Buridan, an important figure in this debate a generation before Ailly,1 puts it succinctly in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics: As is commonly said, the senses can be deluded, and it is certain that the species of sensible things can be preserved in the organs of sense in the absence of sensibles, as is mentioned in De somno et vigilia. And then we judge about what does not exist as if it existed, and so we err through the senses. And the difficulty is greatly augmented by the fact that we believe on faith that God can form sensible species in our senses without the sensible things themselves, and preserve them for a long time. In that case, we judge as if there were sensible things present. Furthermore, since God can do this and greater things, you do not know whether God intends to do this, and so you have no certitude and evidentness [regarding the question] whether there are men before you while you are awake or while you are asleep, since in your sleep God could make a sensible species as clear as—indeed, a hundred times clearer than—what sensible objects could produce. And so you would then judge formally that there are sensible objects before you, just as you do now. Therefore, since you know nothing about the will of God, you cannot be certain about anything. (Buridan, Quaestiones in Aristotelis Metaphysicam, II, q. 1, fol. 8rb-va) Buridan is very clear in his response to the skeptical argument that our intellects have the ability to correct for sensory illusion and that our senses are overall reliable. Under any natural circumstance we can thus trust our senses and realize when they are deceiving us, but in the case of divine deception this is obviously not possible, as he explains. If God deceives us, we have no way of knowing it, and hence we cannot be certain about anything. The kind of argument presented by Buridan swept over fourteenth-century philosophy and theology, and we find all major thinkers of the time commenting on it. Even though the doctrine of divine deception had the potential to cast medieval philosophy into complete skepticism, it did not do so. With only one exception, there were no skeptics in the fourteenth century, but it did force thinkers to change their views of the conditions under which we can achieve knowledge, and it also ultimately changed their view of knowledge.

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Ockham, Robert Holkot, and Adam Wodeham were all very influential philosophers and theologians before Buridan and Ailly in the early to midfourteenth century who all agreed that God could be deceiving us. Holkot writes in his Sentences commentary that God can deceive a rational creature, both in an immediate way, namely by himself, and in a mediate way, through good human beings and angels. (Commentary on the Sentences III, q. 1, BBB; see also Perler 2010: 179) Wodeham adds to this the following observation about the consequences of the doctrine of possible divine deception: “We cannot know of any external thing— more precisely, of any thing other than our own mind—that it exists” (Karger 2004: 229). There is hence no doubt that they were all aware of the implications of that doctrine. It has even been argued that Ockham’s famous doctrine that we can have intuitive cognition of things that do not exist is an attempt to get away from the implications of divine deception (see Karger 2004 and the response to this in Panaccio and Piché 2010), though it seems very unlikely that this was what it was intended for. The only thinker of the fourteenth century who ends up defending a kind of skepticism was Nicholas of Autrecourt.2 He develops his position in an attempt to refute the skeptical views of the otherwise unknown Bernard of Arezzo, an earlyfourteenth-century follower of Scotus. The issue at hand was whether we can have an intuitive cognition of non-existent things. Nicholas argues that Bernard’s position implies Academic skepticism since one can have intuitive cognitions without any object that they are about. If this were the case, it would therefore be impossible to be certain about the existence of external objects. Bernard responded to this objection by introducing the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power, and then claimed that there is no intuitive cognition of non-existent things without divine intervention. Nicholas then replies that, if we must qualify all our knowledge claims by saying “unless God is intervening,” then we can never be sure about anything, since we cannot know whether God is deceiving us or not. On this view, we cannot be certain about the existence of sensible things, he argues. In fact, he argues further that Bernard’s position implies what we now would call solipsism, and claims that Bernard cannot even be certain about the existence of his own mind. Based on these arguments against Bernard, Nicholas presents himself as an antiskeptic, but, as Grellard (2010) shows, his views actually imply a new form of skepticism. Nicholas proposes a kind of foundationalism as an answer to Bernard. The one thing that cannot be doubted in the face of divine deception, he argues, is the principle of non-contradiction, and hence anything based on it can be said to be certain. His position is somewhat similar to Leibniz’s in the sense that all certain knowledge is reducible to the principle of non-contradiction. All other knowledge is merely probable, according to Nicholas. This view was an anomaly in the fourteenth century, but it motivated powerful reactions and led ultimately to a reformulation of the concept of knowledge.

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5  ARGUMENTS AGAINST DIVINE DECEPTION As already mentioned, the doctrine of divine deception did not lead the fourteenth century into skepticism. One might ask, why? There are at least three reasons for this. First of all, some thinkers argued that divine deception is simply not possible, since it would contradict God’s benevolence. Second, although God can deceive, he will not do so because of a covenant between God and humankind laid down at the moment of creation. The third and the most philosophically interesting view consists in revising the concept of knowledge and relativizing the concept of evidence. Gregory of Rimini, another early-fourteenth-century philosopher, argued that God cannot be a deceiver since this would go against his benevolence. Gabriel Biel in the fifteenth century and Francisco Suárez in the sixteenth century defended a similar view. This seems to be the view that Descartes falls back on in the Meditations and the Objections and Replies (Rimini and Biel are mentioned by Mersenne). Rimini’s argument is that God cannot deceive, since it would imply saying or making someone believe something false. He writes: “God cannot say something false to someone, willing thereby that the person, to whom he says it, assents to what is said” (Lectura I, d. 42–44, q. 2; see Perler 2010: 182 for this quote). As Perler (2012: 183) analyzes Rimini’s position, he holds that God cannot say something false or make someone else say something false, if that means that what is said is said in a meaningful way, without irony, and in an assertive mode. Saying something false in this way amounts to lying, argues Rimini, and God cannot lie even given his absolute power. Rimini is thus limiting God’s omnipotence by saying that, given his benevolence, he cannot be a deceiver. A second reason for why divine deception did not have the implications for philosophy it could have had was the appeal to a contract or covenant between God and humankind. This was a very common view, particularly among certain theologians following Ockham, and all the main thinkers who were concerned with divine deception adhered to this view. We find it in Ockham, Holkot, Rimini, Ailly, and Biel. The notion of a covenant governs both the natural and the moral order established by God in the creation of the world. It takes its starting point in the idea that what is, is determined by God’s will, and whatever natural or moral laws there are, are also determined by an act of God’s will. These laws are hence not absolute but decided on or chosen by God. God had infinite possibilities from which to choose in creating this world, but he chose to establish this particular moral law and this particular causal order, which, of course, make them special and necessary in the relative or natural sense discussed above. As someone like Ailly understands the notion of a covenant, which we could already see indicated in the above discussion of ordained power, there are two covenants, corresponding to the two kinds of ordained power. The first covers the world in general and is made with all humans. The second is made with the church (see Courtenay 1971). According to the first covenant, God has promised to uphold his creation and all the laws that govern it. According to his absolute power, God could act in whatever way he wanted toward his creation: change it, deceive us, etc. However, according to his ordained power, he will not and instead he acts in

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accordance with the established laws. This view does not limit God’s omnipotence in any way, since God is not limited by the laws he has put down, but given the covenant he will abide by them. As humans, we can hence trust that God will not make changes and that he is not deceiving us. The doctrine of a covenant plays an important role in late medieval and early modern thought, but perhaps the most important aspect of the theory is that it did not allow divine deception to take hold of philosophy. The third way to deal with divine deception is philosophically the most interesting. Buridan is generally credited with coming up with this approach, but after him it was repeated by almost everyone well into the sixteenth century (see Karger 2010). I will here present the view as defended by Albert of Saxony, a slightly later contemporary of Buridan, and Ailly. It takes as its starting point the assumption that, in the face of possible divine deception, knowledge can no longer be assumed to be infallible. Given God’s omnipotence, as we saw Buridan explain above, we can no longer be certain of anything and hence, if we hold on to the idea that knowledge is infallible, we will have to accept skepticism. Buridan’s way out is to say that knowledge is fallible and that we must relativize the concept of evidence to the domain of inquiry we are concerned with. Albert of Saxony explains this very clearly. He writes: It must be noted that evidence is used in two ways, namely maximal and natural evidence. Maximal evidence is used for propositions in accordance with which the intellect by its nature cognizes with assent to the proposition, and cannot dissent from it. In this way, we say that the principle of non-contradiction is evident, and, similarly, it is by this evidence that it is evident that I know that I exist. Natural evidence, however, is such evidence that nothing opposite appears through human reasoning unless by sophistry. And in this way natural principles and conclusions are said to be evident. It must be noted that [such principles] are not strictly speaking evident, since the intellect that holds this to be evident can be deceived by a supernatural power.3 Albert goes on to explain that God may have changed the appearances so that Socrates who appears human to me is in fact a donkey or that fire is hot when it in fact is cold, and hence it is not maximally evident that “Socrates is a human being” or that “Fire is hot.” These are only naturally evident, which means that there is no natural counterevidence to them. It is true given that we are not being deceived by God. Ailly explains this distinction in a very similar way. He, however, couches it in terms of absolute versus conditional evidence. For the second he also uses secundum quid and ex suppositione. Natural evidence on Albert’s view is conditional in Ailly’s terminology, since it assumes that God is not deceiving us, that is, it puts God aside so to speak. He notes as well that whatever is absolutely evident is infallible (infallibilis), and the examples he gives are the principle of non-contradiction and that I know that I am alive. He also adds to this list truths like that one cannot be made cold by warmth (Sentences I, q. 1, art. 1, O, fol. 48r). Ailly also adds a distinction between what is conditionally evident and what is merely probable. Something is probable if it is possible to conclude the opposite, but if something is

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evident, on the other hand, then there is no counterargument to it, save, of course, divine deception (Sentences I, q. 3, art. 3 DD, col. 78r). Mainly through Ailly this concept of knowledge and the new account of evidence that followed from it had an enormous influence on later philosophy. We can see its influence well into the sixteenth century (see Karger 2012). It very elegantly shortcircuited the global skeptical threat of divine deception and, although it ultimately moved from a view of knowledge as infallible to a view of it as fallible, it allowed philosophy and natural science to develop without the threat of skepticism.

NOTES 1. On Buridan, see further Christophe Grellard’s chapter in this book. 2. On Autrecourt, see further Christophe Grellard’s chapter in this book. 3. Albert of Saxony, Quaestiones subtilissime super libros Posteriorum Analyticorum Aristotelis, I, q. 3, fol. 4rb–va, transcribed in Fitzgerald 2002: 348–349.

REFERENCES Ailly, Peter of. 1968. Quaestiones super libros sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine adjunctis. Frankfurt: Minerva. Aquinas, Thomas. 1952. Summa Theologiae, edited by P. Caramello. Turin and Rome: Marietti. Buridan, John. 1518. Quaestiones in Aristotelis Metaphysicam: Kommentar zur Aristotelischen Metaphysik. Paris. Courtenay, W. 1971. “Covenant and Causality in Pierre d’Ailly,” Speculum 46: 94–119. Descartes, René. 1984–1991. Oeuvres, edited by P. Tannery and Ch. Adam. Paris: Vrin. Descartes, René. 1984–1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duns Scotus, John. 1950. Ordinatio I, d. 1-2. Opera Omnia 2. Vatican City: Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis. Duns Scotus, John. 1960. Lectura I, prologus, d. 1-7. Opera Omnia 16. Vatican City: Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis. Duns Scotus, John. 2010. “A Buridanian Response to a Fourteenth Century Skeptical Argument and Its Rebuttal by a New Argument in the Early Sixteenth Century.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 215–232. Leiden: Brill. Fitzgerald, M. 2002. Albert of Saxony’s Twenty-Five Disputed Questions of Logic, Leiden: Brill Gelber, Hester. 2004. It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300–1350. Leiden: Brill. Grellard, Christophe. 2010. “Nicholas of Autrecourt’s Skepticism: The Ambivalence of Medieval Epistemology.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background 119–144. Leiden: Brill.

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Holkot, Robert. 1967. In quatuor libros Sententiarum quaestiones. Frankfurt: Minerva. First published in 1518. Karger, Elizabeth. 2004. “Ockham and Wodeham on Divine Deception as a Skeptical Hypothesis,” Vivarium 42: 225–236. Knuuttila, Simo. 1993. Modalities in Medieval Philosophy. London: Routledge. Knuuttila, Simo. 2012. “Modality.” In J. Marenbon (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, 312–341. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lagerlund, Henrik (ed.). 2010a. Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background. Leiden: Brill. Lagerlund, Henrik. 2010b. “Skeptical Issues in Commentaries on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics: John Buridan and Albert of Saxony.” In J. Marenbon (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, 193–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oakley, Francis. 1964. The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Panaccio, Claude and David Piché. 2010. “Ockham’s Reliabilism and the Intuition of NonExistents.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 97–118. Leiden: Brill. Perler, Dominik. 2010. “Does God Deceive Us? Skeptical Hypotheses in Late Medieval Epistemology.” In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, 171–192. Leiden: Brill. Rimini, Gregory of. 1979–1984. Lectura super primum et secundum Sententiarum, edited by A. D. Trapp and V. Marcolino. Berlin: de Gruyter. Stroud, Barry. 1984. The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Michel de Montaigne GIANNI PAGANINI

1  LIFE AND WORKS Michel de Montaigne was the first European intellectual to fully realize the strong impact of the rebirth of ancient Pyrrhonism on early modern philosophy. Widely known as a skeptical student of philosophy and as a painter of himself as well as of mankind, he used a new literary form, the essay, in which he tends to digress into anecdotes and personal meditations, according to his motto: “I am myself the matter of my book.” At the same time, the apparently loose form of the essay permitted him to adopt an approach of free doubt and inquisition toward any matter: the essayist is the modern incarnation of the “seeker” (zētētikos) or the “inquirer” (skeptikos) as it was depicted by ancient Pyrrhonism, some sort of “researcher” who practices the skeptical art of zētēsis (free research). Montaigne was born on February 28, 1533, in the Château de Montaigne, close to Bordeaux.1 His father, Pierre Eyquem, Seigneur of Montaigne, was a French Catholic soldier in Italy for a time and had also been the mayor of Bordeaux. His mother, Antoinette López de Villanueva, converted to Protestantism, whereas his maternal grandfather came from a wealthy Spanish-Jewish family who had converted to Catholicism. The oldest of eight surviving children, Montaigne had a brother and a sister who became Protestants. It is very probable that the presence of these different religious allegiances in the family history stimulated Montaigne to be open-minded with regard to problems of faith and pushed him to adopt an approach of wide religious toleration. To this effect, the experiences deriving from the fierce religious war in France between Catholics and Calvinists that raged during the sixteenth century also contributed in a strong way. Montaigne’s education followed a pedagogical plan sketched out by his father and refined by the latter’s humanist friends. The objective was for Latin to become his first language, as it in fact was. He also learned Greek, though without becoming as fluent in it as in Latin. Around the year 1539, Montaigne was sent to study at a prestigious boarding school in Bordeaux, the Collège de Guyenne, then under the direction of the greatest Latin scholar of the era, George Buchanan. Afterward, the young Montaigne studied law in Toulouse; then, he entered a career in the local legal system, becoming a counselor of the Court des Aides of Périgueux and, in 1557, counselor of the Parlement in Bordeaux. From 1561 to 1563, he was a

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courtier at the court of King Charles IX, obtaining the highest honor of the French nobility, the collar of the Order of St. Michael. During this period at the Parlement in Bordeaux, he became very close friends with the humanist poet Étienne de la Boétie, by whose death in 1563 he was deeply affected. It has been argued that after losing in Étienne his best conversation partner, Montaigne sought for a different interlocutor who could take the place of the dead friend. It was thus that he started writing the Essais (Essays) as his means of communication and expression: this time he would aim not at a friend but at a reader. In 1565, Montaigne married Françoise de la Cassaigne, basically under pressure from his family, who encouraged him to accomplish marriage as a sort of social duty. The couple had six daughters, though only the second-born, Léonor, survived childhood. Following the recommendation of his father, Montaigne started to work on the first translation of Raymond Sebond’s Theologia naturalis, which he published a year after his father’s death in 1568. Then he inherited the family’s estate, the Château de Montaigne, to which he moved back in 1570, thus becoming the Lord of Montaigne. Another literary accomplishment was Montaigne’s posthumous edition of his friend Boétie’s works, among which Discours de la servitude volontaire was prominent. In 1571, Montaigne retired from public life to the tower of his castle, where he almost totally isolated himself. Locked up in his library, he had several Greek maxims (some of skeptical intonation) sculpted on the beams of the ceiling and finally began to work on his Essays. During the Wars of Religion, being still a Roman Catholic, he acted as a moderating authority and obtained the esteem of both the Catholic King Henry III and the Protestant Henry of Navarre (Henry IV). From 1580 to 1581, he traveled in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, partly in search of a cure for the painful kidney stones from which he was suffering. To this effect, he established himself at Bagni di Lucca, a place famous for the healing power of its waters. During this travel Montaigne kept a fascinating Journal, which was published only posthumously, in 1774. While traveling through Rome in 1581, he experienced the strong pressure of the Inquisition. Actually, he was detained in order to have the text of his Essays examined by Sisto Fabri who served as Master of the Sacred Palace under Pope Gregory XIII. After Fabri’s close scrutiny, the Essays were returned to its author on March 20, 1581. The main objections concerned references to the pagan notion of “fortuna” and praise for the emperor Julian the Apostate and some heretical poets. Eventually, the author was released with a strong recommendation to make some emendations to the text (which he followed only partly). Being elected mayor of Bordeaux, Montaigne returned to France and took up office. He was reelected in 1583 and served until 1585, again trying to moderate between Catholics and Protestants. In 1586, he left his castle for two years, because of the plague that had broken out and the Wars of Religion that were raging. Montaigne continued to extend, revise, and oversee the publication of the Essays. The first two books were published in 1580 and included 94 chapters. The earliest were short, impersonal, more akin to a collection of anecdotes with

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brief conclusions. The following chapters were deeply influenced by the Stoic ideal of resisting the ills of life by means of reason and will. However, the chapters of 1574–1575 already show a stronger discontent with Stoical solutions, until the chapter that is the longest by far, the Apology for Raymond Sebond, results in a strong attack on Stoicism, and more generally on any sort of dogmatism, both philosophical and theological. In this chapter, Montaigne drew heavily upon Greek skepticism, especially that of Pyrrho of Elis as presented in the works of Sextus Empiricus and in the detailed Life of Pyrrho contained in the philosophical biographies of Diogenes Laertius. In 1588, Montaigne supervised the fifth edition of the Essays, the first to contain the thirteen substantial chapters of Book III. He also met the writer Marie de Gournay, who became his literary executrix. He attended the Estates-General in Blois, where Henry III had Henri de Guise (the Catholic leader of the League and the instigator of the revolt against the king) assassinated. After King Henry III’s murder (1589), Montaigne helped to keep the city of Bordeaux loyal to the Huguenot Henry of Navarre, who would go on to become King Henry IV.2 Montaigne died of quinsy at the age of fifty-nine, on September 13, 1592, at the Château de Montaigne. Remaining in possession of all his other faculties, he requested mass and died during the celebration of that mass. Since 1588 Montaigne had not written new books or chapters of his Essays; however, he kept adding a thousand passages that reveal a bolder and bolder awareness of his independent thought. Deeply considering the harsh experience of religious wars, he sharpened his views on the state of religion in France, blaming both Catholics and Protestants for their fanatical and intolerant behavior. He became extremely conscious of the necessity of man’s moral autonomy; thus, he criticized any conception of morality that would rely on external authorities, such as religion and law. Furthermore, Montaigne wrote indignantly against the cruelty and hypocrisy of the civil wars, condemning torture and inquisition as means that do not fit any sense of humanity; finally, he developed his plan to portray himself as a way to penetrate the universal human form. His rejection of the Stoical rigor became sharper in the late Essays, whereas his view of death changed completely. At the twilight of his life, he considered death as the end, and not the goal, of the entire existence.

2  THE INTRODUCTION OF SKEPTICISM INTO MODERNITY As we have already said, Montaigne introduced the genuine Pyrrhonian philosophy into early modern philosophy by giving it wide circulation. Before him it was mostly a topic of study for philologists or was used to give support to apologists. The immediate background of Montaigne’s position was the revival of skepticism caused by the recovery of the works of Sextus in Renaissance European culture.3 The rediscovery, the publication, and finally the Latin translation of Sextus’s works allowed Montaigne two great achievements that influenced the aftermath of the skeptical trend during the seventeenth century. First of all, by reading Sextus’s

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Pyrrhoniae Hyptyposes, Montaigne became able to grasp the profound originality of Pyrrhonism in comparison not only to the other ancient philosophies, but also to its “false friends,” such as Academic skepticism. Secondly, by having access to Pyrrhonian sources, Montaigne could appreciate the full philosophical substance of skepticism and grasp its principal aims, epokhē and ataraxia (suspension of judgment and imperturbability or peace of mind). Even though he realized the possible religious utility of skepticism as an introduction to naked faith, nevertheless he avoided identifying it with a pure apologetic instrument, as was the case in the Renaissance interpretations. Pyrrhonism was the last ancient philosophy rediscovered by humanists, a resurrection that occurred nearly at the end of the Renaissance. While Academic sources—mainly Cicero’s Academica and the polemical work by Augustine, Contra Academicos—were available during the Western Middle Ages, the few manuscripts of Sextus’s works that were still extant in European libraries apparently passed unnoticed before the sixteenth century. In early humanism, Florence and Rome were the main centers of the renascent interest in those works. Giovanni Pico (1463–1494) used it for his polemic against the astrologers (Disputationes adversus asrologiam divinatricem) while his nephew, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533), was the first to make extensive use of Sextus’s philosophical works in order to support his own fideistic apologia for Christianity. In his Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium (1520), Gianfrancesco Pico presented Pyrrhonian skepticism as the best preparation to religion, which was completely alien to the true ancient sources (cf. Cao 2007). His main target was to demolish the “pagan” dogmatism of the Aristotelians and the other philosophical schools, not in order to achieve the sheer suspension of judgment like a true Pyrrhonist, but in order to reach the superior and transcendent certitude of religion. The heavy recourse to the Pyrrhonian tropes (amply displayed and paraphrased from Sextus’s Hypotyposes) was in Pico closely connected to the idea that Christian revelation would be better set up on the ruins of philosophical reason. According to Pico, it is up to skepticism to display its corrosive effect on the body of all dogmatic philosophies, so as to open the way to the transcendent authority of religion and church. From then on an understood alliance was consolidated in European culture between skepticism and apologetics. In the seventeenth century, this typically modern blending of skepticism and strong religious belief took the name of “Christian Pyrrhonism,” finding a fervent supporter in Blaise Pascal in the second part of the century, and a more controversial representative in Pierre Bayle, at the end of the century. In the same vein one can read the long invective contained in Henricus Cornelius Agrippa’s De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum (1530), which blatantly counterpoised the ignorance of simple believers with the pride of knowledge displayed by dogmatists, which was considered by Agrippa as a “veritable plague” to be fled. Apart from the circulation of manuscripts, which became significant at the end of the fifteenth century, a wider first-hand knowledge of Sextus’s work was first made possible thanks to the printing of Henri Estienne’s Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes (1562) and Gentian Hervet’s Adversus mathematicos (1569) Latin translations. Another primary source for Pyrrho’s life and doctrines was available in an edition of Diogenes

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Laertius’s Lives of philosophers (1570) but one had to wait until 1621 to have the editio princeps of Sextus’s Greek text printed (cf. Floridi 2002). The importance of this hard philological work should not be underestimated; yet, it was not just an episode inside the studia humanitatis tradition. Once rediscovered, ancient skepticism was immediately exposed to a subtle enterprise of reinterpretation, in which fidelity to the original meanings was the least of concerns. We will give just two conspicuous examples to show that even the first editions provided the occasion for free reinterpretations. The first editors, the Catholic Gentian Hervet and the Calvinist Henri Estienne, were both worried about giving to the modern reader the right key to understand the works they had edited and translated. In their respective prefaces, the two humanists highlighted the antidogmatic character of Sextus’s arguments, even while emphasizing the religious utility that could possibly derive from skepticism. Of course, their theologies were different and the religious advantages were accordingly different, too. The Huguenot Estienne presented the usefulness of skeptical teaching in terms of moral reform and the improvement of knowledge, whereas the Counter-Reformist Hervet presented Sextus’s tropes and his devastating attack on reason as a confirmation of his own objections to Protestant positions, which he had interpreted as a fresh example of renewed dogmatism. It is with Montaigne’s reappraisal that ancient skepticism in general comes to be appreciated anew in its own original features and as a true philosophical point of view, not only as an apologetic weapon. It is nearly impossible to underestimate Montaigne’s importance as an expounder of this “new” skepticism. Besides drawing on a whole new corpus of Pyrrhonian texts, he clearly marked the difference between the real “skeptics”—namely, the Pyrrhonians—on the one side, and on the other both “dogmatists” and negative dogmatists—these latter being neo-Academics who positively and conclusively affirmed the impossibility of knowing, instead of merely the need to suspend judgment. Furthermore, the author of the Essays rethought and popularized fundamental notions such as phenomenon, criterion, epochē, equipollence between contrary arguments (isostheneia), ataraxia or apathy, vicious circle (diallelos), and “infinite regress.” For the first time, Montaigne translated the entire Pyrrhonian technical terminology into a modern language and, what is more, redirected the ancient notions to suit modern needs. With this reworking, Pyrrhonian skepticism passed from the register of philology (or, in certain cases, apologetics) to that of philosophy.

3  PHENOMENA AND APPEARANCES In order to achieve this result, that is, to reinstate skepticism as one of the major trends of early modern philosophy, the first step had to be to resurrect the basic notion of phenomenon, which was at the very heart of Pyrrhonian philosophy. In reality, Montaigne never used the word “phenomenon,” which was perceived at the time as a Greek word and not accepted either as a Latin or a French term until the age of Descartes and Leibniz (the latter was the first to use this word extensively both in his Latin and in his French writings). If not the word, however, the meaning

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was already present in Montaigne. Instead of the term “phenomenon,” Montaigne usually spoke of “appearance” (apparence), which is a calque of the Latin apparentia (plural) used by Henri Estienne in his translation and commentary of Sextus’s Hypotyposes. In Estienne’s work apparentia and phainomena are strictly equivalent.4 This is not the only influence of Estienne’s philological work on Montaigne’s vocabulary. Another, no less important, concerns the notion of phantasia, which Estienne considered as equivalent to phenomenon. Estienne’s Latin interpretation actually renders phantasia as “persuasionem et coactam passionem” (“assent and involuntary affection”), which largely overlaps the definition of phenomenon. The two influences (the one regarding phainomenon, the other connected to phantasia) tightly intertwine. In a crucial passage of the Apology for Raymond Sebond (in fact, a synthesis of PH I 72–78), Montaigne explains what a phenomenon is by appealing to the appearance, at the same time connecting it closely to the notion of fantasie (in French), which means to him “imagination,” or more precisely “sensitive representation.”5 Both choices are not merely lexical; in reality, they deeply characterize Montaigne’s understanding of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Montaigne adopts an epistemologically weak version of phantasia or fantasie, which is no longer a phantasia katalēptikē (the apprehensive representation that, according to the Stoics, can provide a sure criterion for distinguishing between false and reliable representations of reality). Montaigne’s skeptical fantasie is not able to fulfill this function, and that situation clears the way for the study of the subjective states of the mind in themselves and disconnected from reality. These subjective states of the mind are now rather connected to the organic equipment of the senses and are relative to circumstances, conditions, locations, frequency or rarity, habits, etc. In the Apology Montaigne closely follows the famous Ten Modes of Aenesidemus that had been expounded by Sextus. However, unlike the relativistic readings that betrayed the authentic skeptical meaning of these tropes,6 the author of the Essays really grasps their original content, which was calling into question the paradigm of normality on which Aristotelian epistemology was founded. According to Aristotle and the Aristotelians, any man, put in a “normal” situation, with senses and intellect well-tuned according to nature, is able to get an adequate and true representation of external reality. The traffic of species, which come from the object to the subject bearing forms, is supposed to provide a reliable bridge between representation and what is represented. On the contrary, in the Essays not only are species (both sensible and intelligible) banished7—the words species and espèce literally disappear from Montaigne’s lexicon—but the entire complex Aristotelian psychology, which is the basis of his fundamentally realistic theory of knowledge, is abandoned. In a crucial passage of the Apology, Montaigne compares dreaming and being awake, being sober and being drunk, youth and old age, jaundiced and correct perception, health and illness (Montaigne 1999: 595 ff.). Far from being a sheer rhetorical device, this comparison plays an important role in Montaigne’s argumentation. The real meaning of these comparisons consists in showing that, from the epistemological or ontological points of view, normal and abnormal representations are on the same foot: despite all of their differences, they are all simply phenomena or appearances mediated by the internal constitution of the subject, the particular nature of the

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medium, the complex of circumstances in which both the subject and the object are placed. There is neither direct nor privileged access to reality in itself. Considering their causes and features, “normal” and “abnormal” representations depend on the same natural processes that produce both. Unlike the Aristotelian species, skeptic’s “images” or fantasies are not copies that contain the same forms as their patterns, but just indirect, remote, and complicated effects of distant causes. Starting from these principles, Montaigne can now include all subjective states within the skeptical category of phenomena or appearances. In this light one should read his apparently paradoxical claim: “We are always with some sickness” (Montaigne 1999: 569). For him, to perceive an object always means to be in a subjective state that reflects the quality of the subject rather than the nature of reality itself; or, better, any state of mind reflects a peculiar mixture of both. When perceiving a thing, says Montaigne, we accommodate it to ourselves, transforming the thing according to the self. This process of assimilation is at the same time a process of falsification that prevents us from judging what the thing is in and of itself: Now, because our state accommodates things and turns them according to itself, we do not know what the actual things are any more; as nothing comes to us but falsified and altered by our senses. (Montaigne 1999: 600; cf. 562, 587, 592, 599, 603) In reality, the person “who judges by appearances judges on the basis of something different from the thing itself ” (Montaigne 1999: 601), relying on phenomena that belong to the subject and its states—and not strictly to the object. These appearances or phenomena are not part of the object, not even in a formal sense. As a consequence, for a Pyrrhonist such as Montaigne is at least in the Apology, perceptions and any sort of mental representations are not warranted either epistemologically or ontologically, as was the case in the Aristotelian model of “normal knowledge.”

4  MONTAIGNE’S INNOVATIONS: SKEPTICISM AS PHENOMENALISM AND PHILOSOPHY OF DOUBT Montaigne’s interpretation had a strong impact in leading early modern philosophers to seeing Pyrrhonian skepticism as a sort of phenomenalism.8 The foundations of this reading can be summarized in two points. (a) The main scene of skepticism becomes the dichotomy between appearance and reality. The first is knowable. The second—which includes both formal essences and real substances—is unknowable.9 (b) About reality we know only the way in which the external object perceptually appears. “Phenomenon” and “perception” become synonymous expressions in Montaigne and in his followers, whereas, according to Sextus, there was also a kind of phenomena that were disclosed only to the intellect; they did not have sensible features but were rather like noumena (intelligible objects). Nowadays, we might wonder whether Montaigne’s interpretation is philologically and exegetically correct, in comparison with the ancient Pyrrhonian sources. We might also ask whether this kind of dichotomy between appearance and reality does not end up

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reinstating some sort of negative dogmatism, proclaiming that the latter is impossible to know and imagining a mysterious metaphysical substructure behind phenomena. This would be an outcome absolutely at odds with the sheer anti-dogmatic effort displayed by Pyrrhonists. Our judgment, however, must be changed when we place ourselves in the perspective either of Rezeptionsgeschichte or of Wirkungsgeschichte. Both of them include the history of misunderstandings and unfaithful traditions, sometimes much more than the sheer history of faithful transmission. Very often the former results in sterile repetitions, whereas the latter produces interesting novelties. In this connection, it is historically true that Montaigne’s phenomenalistic version of ancient skepticism became the prevailing reading in early modern philosophy and deeply influenced the entire epistemological debate. The adoption of the skeptical pattern based on this phenomenalistic approach permitted Montaigne to break the link between reality and appearances and to narrow all of our knowledge to the latter. The clearest statement of this break can be read in the so-called Socrates’s portrait dilemma: how can we be certain that the portrait is a picture of Socrates if we only have access to his representation, namely, to appearances (phenomena), and not to the original model? The Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion is tightly connected to this new scenario, which is the coherent result of abandoning the Aristotelian notion of species (the bearer of the form) as a link between reality and its sensible or intellectual representation. Since appearance and reality are now split, it is necessary to appeal to a “third” term (the criterion) that could guarantee the relation between the two. However, this criterion should in turn require a new one, so raising a sort of infinite regress in the search for further criteria that can guarantee the previous ones. The attempts made in order to stop this aporia fall into two possible traps: the diallelos, or vicious circle, and the dogmatic pretense to allegedly objective and uncontroversial evidence. In reality, both of these aporias result in the impossibility of overcoming the basic dilemma of the criterion (Montaigne 1999: 600–601). Besides these epistemological considerations, which brought all the strength of Pyrrhonian skepticism into the European culture, already weakened by the crisis of Aristotelian scholasticism, the Apology for Raymond Sebond also contains the critical examination of a wide range of dogmatic conceptions belonging to the special fields of metaphysics, theology, politics,10 morals, and even religion.11 Criticism of perceptual representations, contradictions between philosophical schools on their great topics of knowledge (God, soul, immortality, ontological foundations of reality, laws of nature, the divide between the so-called wild peoples and the civilized ones, etc.): all these are the themes of Montaigne’s skepticism, which rejuvenates old Pyrrhonian topics in close contact with modern problems, thus marking the beginning of a rather lively version of the “life without dogmatic beliefs.” Montaigne elaborates also a new concept of belief, emphasizing its emotional and practical character12 and giving prominence in the field of religion to that particular instinct from above that is divine grace. This was also for him the way to distinguish between “true” religion, which is mysterious and supernatural, ultimately an indisputable gift coming from God, and the real religions, which are purely human since they are historical and sociological phenomena. Unlike the former (transcendent revelation),

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these latter (historical phenomena) can be fully submitted to critical analysis, and this close examination takes in Montaigne the form of tough disenchantment. In spite of his overtures to grace and supernatural revelation,13 the author of the Essays present in other chapters a realistic depiction of the all-too-human forms taken by religions when they are transformed into blind belief, absurd superstition, intolerant fanaticism, or simply traditional conformism. Another major novelty brought about by Montaigne concerns his transforming a philosophy based on epochē and ataraxia into a philosophy of doubt. In the Greek tradition, ataraxia or peace of mind flowed from suspension of judgment—namely, from epochē—rather than from knowledge and judgment about things. Montaigne maintains the basic avowal of ignorance concerning moral laws, no matter whether they are conceived as natural laws or as prescriptions connected to the particular settlement of every society. However, he eventually ends up by making doubt, instead of epochē and ataraxia, the climax of skeptical approach. This is not without consequences for the entire conception of Pyrrhonism, all the more so since doubt is perceived by Montaigne as a state of restlessness and discomfort rather than of calm and moderation of emotions.14 In this connection, Montaigne’s position is defined by a double move: first, he identifies skepticism with the activity of doubting; second, he stresses the discomfort involved in the attitude of doubting. Thus, skepticism and doubt become co-extensional and synonymous, which was not the case in the ancient sources. Once again, the contribution made by Estienne’s translation to this shift is considerable. Following Cicero, Estienne rendered the Greek verb aporein, with its multiple meanings, with the much more univocal Latin verb dubitare (cf. Mates 1996: 30). Under this influence, Montaigne is the first modern writer to stick to the idea that the main activity of the skeptic should be doubting, in the exact meaning that this term takes in the theory of knowledge: an activity fundamentally concerning thoughts whose truth one evaluates. The main activity of the modern skeptic turns out to be a mental exercise, whereas the ancient Pyrrhonist does a discursive practice: the former brings up doubts in his mind, the latter utters opposite statements, balancing each other until he reaches isosthenia. In the Greek Pyrrhonian tradition, doubting or wondering was not the main activity of the inquirer. In fact, the ancient skeptic used to compare conflicting propositions, so as to show that they were no more (ou mallon) asserted than denied. The proper stance of the Pyrrhonist was the suspension of judgment, rather than a fluctuating state of mind, like incertitude and hesitation. After Montaigne and under his influence, these mental and psychological aspects of skepticism, which are represented mostly by the activity of doubting, decidedly prevailed over the original Pyrrhonian linguistic formulations, and it contributed to render extremely problematic the ideal of living comfortably following appearances, according to the original Pyrrhonian project. This relation of synonymy established by Montaigne between the activity of doubting and skepticism is found especially in a crucial passage of the Apology, where the primacy of doubt overlaps a wider panoply of ancient formulations. At first, the author correctly mentions all of the main phonai (phrases) typical of Pyrrhonism, showing how they intertwine, converging into epochē (Montaigne

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1999: 505). However, when he needs afterwards to narrow the outlook and focus on a few main points, Montaigne drastically reduces the wider range of skeptical prescriptions, limiting them to two basic propositions: he stresses the formula of Socratic ignorance (J’ignore), which actually is neither properly Pyrrhonian nor exclusively skeptical, and he puts forward the very activity of doubting (Je doubte) as the main activity of skepticism. “I doubt” becomes thus the true motto of the skeptic (Montaigne 1999: 527). Needless to say, both formulas betray the genuine meaning of epochē, since they imply a state of mind quite different from the mere suspension of judgment. “I ignore” and “I doubt” substitute the balanced neutrality of the suspension of judgment with either a dogmatic denial (“I do not know”) or a statement of wavering perplexity (“I doubt”). Despite this true misunderstanding of the original skeptical approach, Montaigne’s interpretation had a strong impact on his posterity and deeply influenced seventeenth-century presentations of Pyrrhonism. It is only in the second edition of the Essays that Montaigne reformulates his approach to skepticism as a kind of interrogation (Que sçay-je?, i.e., “What do I know?”) rather than of a positive or negative assertion.15 He thus intends to avoid the danger of falling into the logical inconsistency represented by the liar paradox, according to which a proposition like “I do not know anything” or “I doubt everything” should apply to itself, with the paradoxical and unacceptable result of being at the same time true and false.

5  THE SKEPTICAL SELF Montaigne has constantly been celebrated as the first inventor of the modern self, or as the father of modern subjectivity. Self-knowledge and self-control play a great role in the Essays, indeed. Montaigne studied himself more than any other subject; he was convinced that the attempt to depict the most faithful portrait of an individual life could lead also to a better knowledge of humanity (Montaigne 1999: 379, 665, 806). He clearly stated this very conviction: “Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate. Authors communicate themselves to the people by some peculiar and strange mark; I am the first to do that by my universal being, as Michel de Montaigne, and not as a grammarian or a poet or a lawyer” (Montaigne 1999: 805). Self-study was for him a school of human nature. This is also the reason why he shared with Socrates full allegiance to the Delphic precept: “Know thyself ” (Montaigne 1999: 1001). This is in accordance with the notion of a phenomenon as an internal state of mind, to which the subject has direct access. Furthermore, even when he seems to look at others, in reality it is just to better understand himself: “I tell the others, but I do that in order to recount more myself ”; “I watch my life in that of the others” (Montaigne 1999: 1076). Montaigne was in a good position to develop this art of self-portrayal. Self-study led him to practice the art of self-description. Nearly all of the Essays practice this kind of technique, in style as well as content. Furthermore, the portrait must follow the variability, the contingency of its subject; thus, the topic of the essay changes as the subject changes, according to its multiplicity and variability (Montaigne 1999: 378, 805, 818, 964, 1095). The closing of the Apology argues that man cannot

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have firm knowledge of being, because he is rather a creature of flux, according to the Heraclitean interpretation of the skeptical diatribe; therefore, man cannot participate in full being, which must be stable. Thus, the only real being that does not become is God. The very conclusion of the Apology is against Stoicism, considered as the supreme form of dogmatism, inasmuch as it holds that man can achieve by himself the highest degree of wisdom and natural perfection. According to Montaigne, it is rather the reverse: God alone can rescue man from the perpetual flux of becoming and raise him above humanity (Montaigne 1999: 601–603). The depiction of the self is evident and extremely enlivened in the Essays. For all the appreciation that deserves, we must nevertheless distinguish between, on the one hand, the artistic practice of subjectivity, of which Montaigne is a master, reaching absolutely outstanding results, and on the other the philosophical theory of the subject, for which he still lacks the main conceptual premises and in which he is not really interested. No trace of a proper philosophical theory of the subject can be found in the Essays, despite all his concern about knowledge of his internal and external states. In this regard, the Pyrrhonian model turned out to be more an obstacle than a real help to any theoretical formulation of subjectivity: the more it helped him to an experimental description of the self, the less it contributed to elaborating a theory of the subject. It is true that, according to Montaigne, the “sacramental formula” of the skeptics is epechō (“I suspend [judgment]”), which is a first-person point of view. In reality, this does not imply that Pyrrhonism relies on a deep reflection on the role of the subject. Actually, Pyrrhonism can be defined more as an impersonal philosophy than as a first-person view. Thus, skeptical phenomena are usually described by Sextus using the impersonal form of phainetai, that is, “it seems,” “it appears.” Even though phenomena are connected in practice to the peculiarities of the perceiving subject, from the theoretical point of view there is no need to make explicit the role played by this perceiver; or rather, the perceiver is put at the same level as the perceived and the natural medium that connect each other. Even in Aenesidemus’s Ten Modes, in which the common topic is the relation connecting subject and object, the tone of the treatment is openly naturalistic and very far from any hint of the primacy of the human subject. This latter is mostly considered as a piece of nature plunged into a material world. The knowledge process itself is explained as a “combination” of strongly naturalistic elements (sense organs, humors, particles, and membranes). If we have a look at the psychological section of Montaigne’s Apology, we can immediately realize that the approach of this modern skeptic is also extremely objectivistic. He examines the main different schools of philosophical psychology, showing their hopeless clash, according to the skeptical method of diaphonia (disagreement). Treating this topic is like being in the middle of the “Babel tower” (Montaigne 1999: 553). In his extensive doxology, Montaigne depicts the subject and the soul as parts of nature. Far from grounding the esprit’s prerogative, centrality, and activity in a theory of the autonomy of the soul, Montaigne draws especially on Stoic and Epicurean crude materialism, while considering Platonism, with its complex doctrine of the psychē, to be a fairy tale and poetic philosophy. About Aristotle, he thinks that he was intentionally obscure with regard to his psychology,

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willing to hide his attitude toward the thesis of the intellect’s mortality (Montaigne 1999: 552). At the end of this harsh examination of all the psychological theories, the intellect itself is described as “an instable, dangerous, and daring instrument” (“un outil vagabond, dangereux et temeraire”), upon which one should not rely too much. It would be better to assign to it “the tightest possible constraints” (“les barrieres le plus contraintes qu’on peut”) (Montaigne 1999: 559),16 so as to control its extreme fickleness. The full awareness of man’s mutability, inconstancy, and inconsistency was another cause that prevented Montaigne from outlining a strong doctrine of subjectivity. It was up to Descartes to resume from Montaigne the new characterization of skepticism and, at the same time, to overcome the aporias in which the author of the Essays remained trapped.17

NOTES 1. On Montaigne’s life, see Frame (1965). 2. On Montaigne’s political involvements, see Desan (2006). 3. Popkin (2003) is still a useful work about modern skepticism. For a more in-depth and up-to-date analysis, see Paganini (2003; 2008b). On Renaissance skepticism in general, see Popkin and Maia Neto (2004) and Paganini and Maia Neto (2008). For a wider look at recent research on early modern skepticism, see Moreau (2001), Charles and Bernier (2005), and Maia Neto, Paganini, and Laursen (2009). 4. For this interpretation of Montaigne’s skepticism and its drawing on Estienne’s translation of Sextus, see Paganini (2008b: 15–60). On the difference with Sanches’s case, cf. Paganini (2004). For example, when translating Sextus’s main chapter about epochē’s limitations (“Whether skeptics reject phenomena,” PH I 19–20), Estienne felt it necessary to interpolate the text to explain better the sense of the Greek word phainomena. To this aim, he used all the variations on the verb “to appear” in the lexicon. In the next chapter (PH I 21–23), Sextus established an equivalence between the phenomenon—Estienne’s apparentia—and the phantasia. 5. As was first pointed out by Dumont (1972: 44–45), the entire long passage from the Apology for Raimond Sebond (Essays, II, 12) is a brilliant paraphrase of Sextus Empiricus’s text. Cf. Montaigne (1999: 600–601). 6. The reasons why skepticism is not relativism have been correctly illustrated by Annas and Barnes (1985: 96–98, 144): instead of suspending judgment, relativism leads to the affirmation that the object is neither this nor that, or more precisely, it is one thing when it stands in one relation, another when it is in another relation. 7. For a sharp criticism of the Aristotelian pattern of knowledge by similarity, which is at the basis of the notion of species, see Montaigne (1999: 601). 8. For this impact, especially on Hobbes, see Paganini (2003: 3–35). 9. In some famous passages, Montaigne contrasts the perception of the quality of a thing (often varying among subjects) with the thing itself (Montaigne 1999: 587). In other places, he contrasts observable qualities with the essence of the object, which is unknowable (Montaigne 1999: 598–599). Sometimes Montaigne attributes “l’ignorance de la vraye essence de telles choses” to the lack of faculties apt to grasp the “hidden” properties of things (Montaigne 1999: 590).

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10. On Montaigne’s skeptical political thought, see Laursen (1992). 11. On this last topic, see Panichi (2010: 45–96, 119–152). 12. This aspect is at the heart of the recent French interpretation: see Brahami (2001: 167–234); Giocanti (2001: 91–140). 13. See, for example, the end of the Apology, where the absolute transcendence of the divine is openly proclaimed (Montaigne 1999: 601–604; cf. 927–928). On these topics, see Carraud and Marion (2004), Desan (2008). 14. To characterize modern skepticism, most scholars have focused on the abandonment of the conception of happiness as ataraxia. This is an important feature in itself, but it is secondary compared to what we are dealing with here. For more details, see Paganini (2008a: 166–169). 15. Montaigne (1999: 527): “Cette fantasie est plus seurement conceüe par interrogation: Que sçai-je? comme je la porte à la devise d’une balance.” Clearly, it is an allusion to the medal Montaigne had made to engrave with this symbol, and, at the same time, a reference to the skeptical theme of the equal balance of two opposite assertions, or isostheneia. 16. On the problems raised by Montaigne’s naturalism, see Gontier (1998). 17. On Montaigne’s influence, besides the classical study by Brunschvicg (1942), see Marchi (1995), Melehy (1997), Gessmann (1997), Paganini (2008b: ch. 1), Panichi (2009), Hartle (2013), and Panichi and Spallanzani (2013).

REFERENCES Annas Julia and Jonathan Barnes. 1985. The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brahami, Frédéric. 2001. Le travail du scepticisme: Montaigne, Bayle, Hume. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Brunschvicg, Léon. 1942. Descartes et Pascal lecteurs de Montaigne. Neuchâtel: La Baconnière. Cao, Gian Mario. 2007. Scepticism and Orthodoxy: Gianfrancesco Pico as a Reader of Sextus Empiricus. Pisa and Roma: Fabrizio Serra Editore. Carraud, Vincent and Jean-Luc Marion (eds.). 2004. Montaigne: scepticisme, métaphysique, théologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Charles, Sébastien and Marc André Bernier (eds). 2005. Scepticisme et modernité. SaintÉtienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne. Desan, Philippe (ed.). 2006. Montaigne politique. Paris: Honoré Champion. Desan, Philippe. 2008. Montaigne: Les formes du monde et de l’esprit. Paris: PUPS. Desan, Philippe (ed.). 2008. Montaigne et la théologie: “Dieu à nostre commerce de société”. Genève: Droz. Dumont, Jean-Paul. 1972. Le Scepticisme et le phénomène: Essai sur la signification et les origines du pyrrhonisme. Paris: Vrin. Eva, Luiz. 2004. Montaigne contra a Vaidade: Um estudio sobre o ceticismo na Apologia de Raimond Sebond. São Paulo: Humanitas.

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Faye, Emmanuel. 1998. Philosophie et perfection de l’homme: De la Renaissance à Descartes. Paris: Vrin. Floridi, Luciano. 2002. Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frame, Donald. 1965. M. Montaigne: A Biography. London: Hamilton. Gessmann, Martin. 1997. Montaigne und die Moderne. Zu den philosophischen Grundlagen einer Epochenwende. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Giocanti, Sylvia. 2001. Penser l’irrésolution: Montaigne, Pascal, La Mothe Le Vayer. Trois itinéraires sceptiques. Paris: Honoré Champion. Gontier, Thierry. 1998. De l’homme à l’animal (Montaigne et Descartes). Paris: Vrin. Green, Felicity. 2012. Montaigne and the Life of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hartle, Ann. 2013. Montaigne and the Origins of Modern Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Laursen, John Christian. 1992. The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant. Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill. Maia Neto, José R., Gianni Paganini, and John Christian Laursen (eds.). 2009. Skepticism in the Modern Age: Building on the Work of Richard Popkin. Leiden: Brill. Marchi, Dudley. 1995. Montaigne Among the Moderns: Receptions of the Essais. Providence: Berghahn. Mates, Benson. 1996. The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism. New York: Oxford University Press. Melehy, Hassan. 1997. Writing Cogito: Montaigne, Descartes, and the Institution of the Modern Subject. New York: State University of New York Press. Montaigne, Michel de. 1999. Essais, edited by P. Villey. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Moreau, Pierre-François (ed.). 2001. Le scepticisme au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Albin Michel. Paganini, Gianni. 2003. “Hobbes Among Ancient and Modern Sceptics: Phenomena and Bodies.” In G. Paganini (ed.), The Return of Scepticism: From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle, 3–35. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer. Paganini, Gianni. 2004. “Montaigne, Sanches et la connaissance par phénomènes. Les usages modernes d’un paradigme ancien.” In V. Carraud and Jean-Luc Marion (eds.), Montaigne: scepticisme, métaphysique, théologie, 107–136. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Paganini, Gianni. 2008a. “The Quarrel over Ancient and Modern Scepticism: Some Reflections on Descartes and His Context.” In J. Popkin (ed.), The Legacies of Richard Popkin, 173–194. Dordrecht: Springer. Paganini, Gianni. 2008b. Skepsis: Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme. 2nd edition, 2017. Paris: Vrin. Paganini, Gianni and José R. Maia Neto. 2008. Renaissance Scepticisms. Dordrecht: Springer. Panichi, Nicola. 2004. I vincoli del disinganno. Per una nuova interpretazione di Montaigne. Firenze: Olschki. Panichi, Nicola. 2010. Montaigne. Roma: Carocci.

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Panichi, Nicola (ed.). 2009. Montaigne et les philosophes, Montaigne Studies 21. Panichi, Nicola and Maria Franca Spallanzani. 2013. Montaigne and Descartes: A Philosophical Genealogy. Special issue of Montaigne Studies 25. Popkin, Richard. 2003. The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Popkin, Richard and José R. Maia Neto (eds.). 2004. Skepticism in Renaissance and PostRenaissance Thought. New Interpretations. Amherst: Humanity Books. Sève, Bernard. 2008. Montaigne: Des règles pour l’esprit. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Pierre Charron GIANNI PAGANINI

1  LIFE AND WORKS Pierre Charron was born in Paris in 1541, one of the twenty-five children of a bookseller. After studying law, he took his degrees in Montpellier (1571) and afterward practiced as an advocate, for a few years, before deciding to study theology, still in Montpellier, where he resided from 1565 to 1566 and again from 1570 to 1571. He then entered the church and soon was a popular priest, rising to become a canon. He moved to the southwest of France, invited by Arnaud de Pontac, Bishop of Bazas. He was appointed priest in ordinary to Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henry IV of Navarre. In about 1588, Charron decided to become a monk, but, being rejected by both the Carthusians and the Celestines, he returned to his old profession. He delivered a course of sermons in Angers, and the next year he moved to Bordeaux where he formed a famous friendship with Michel de Motaigne. On July 2, 1586, Montaigne presented him with a copy of Catechism by Bernardino Ochino (the famous Italian monk who fled his native country and religion to adopt Protestant ideas), with the annotation liber prohibitus (“forbidden book”). According to La Rochemaillet, Charron, residing in Bordeaux from 1589 to 1593, had many opportunities to visit Montaigne during the last four years of the latter’s life. On Montaigne’s death, in 1592, Charron was requested in the will to bear the Montaigne arms.1 In many circumstances of his life and during his activity as a preacher, Charron got involved in the events of the French religious wars, first in the struggles between the Catholic League and the Huguenots, and afterwards in the difficult procedures aiming to enforce the Edict of Toleration (Nantes Edict). Indeed, Charron directly experienced the fierce troubles provoked by religious intolerance: in Montpellier he was imprisoned and taken hostage by the Protestants (1565–1566). In 1588, in Angers, he was reached by the news of the assassination of the leader of the League, the Duke of Guise, by order of King Henry III, against whom he had rebelled. In the Discours chrestien, qu’il n’est permis au subjet pour quelque cause et raison que ce soit, de se liguer, bander et rebeller contre son Roy (written in 1588 and published in 1606), Charron remembers to have been caught then by a “strong fit of anger

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and disdain,” but to have been quickly “cooled,” definitely abandoning his previous attachment to the League. This Discours contains a complete refutation of the ideas held by the monarchomachs, preaching instead absolute fidelity to the sovereign, even when he is “bad.” Charron spent from 1594 to 1600 under the protection of Antoine Hérbrard de Saint-Sulpice, Bishop of Cahors, who appointed him grand vicar and theological canon. In 1595, he was chosen deputy to the general assembly of the clergy, for which he became chief secretary. For the occasion he preached also in the church of Saint Eustache, one of the most populous parish churches in Paris. In 1601, Charron published in Bordeaux his main work, De la Sagesse, a system of moral philosophy that develops some ideas from Montaigne, realizing a peculiar synthesis of skeptical wisdom and a strong Stoic sense of human autonomy. In this work, Charron also connected Montaigne’s skepticism to the anti-rational strand in Christianity, underlining the narrow limits that constrain human knowledge in theological matters. He worked afterwards on a new revised edition but died suddenly of a stroke on November 16, 1603. This new edition appeared in 1603, just after the author’s death. It contains numerous changes in comparison with the first one; in particular, Charron modified the plan of Book I: he added six chapters and modified several passages that were considered scandalous by theologians.2 Despite these changes, the work was condemned by the Faculty of Theology in Paris (1603) and was after included in the Index of Forbidden Books (1605). De la Sagesse was also attacked by the Jesuit François Garasse (1585–1631), who described Charron as an atheist; yet the work was defended by Duverger de Hauranne, the abbot of Saint Cyran, one of the leading personalities within the Jansenist movement. A summary and defense of the book, written shortly before his death, appeared in 1606 (Traicté de Sagesse). In 1604, Charron’s friend Michel de la Rochemaillet prefixed a “Life” to an edition of De la sagesse, which depicts Charron as an amiable man of good character. His complete works, with this contribution by de la Rochemaillet, were published in 1635.

2  SKEPTICISM AND THE RISE OF MODERN SUBJECTIVITY In his treatise De la Sagesse, Charron tried to summarize and rearrange Montaigne’s thought, bringing forth that handbook of wisdom that was already implicit in the Essays but still needed to be explicitly and systematically expounded.3 In so doing, Charron made of De la Sagesse a cornerstone for the new culture of the honnête homme that spread all over the seventeenth century, influencing both the skepticallibertine milieux and Cartesian morals. In Charron’s book various philosophical trends converge and cooperate: the Stoic reevaluation of the autonomy of virtue goes together with an argument against superstition and subordination of morality to faith. At the same time, the drive to an entirely mundane preud’homie (“human wisdom”) appears to be full of Epicurean suggestions and contains daring references to an unscrupulous political prudence.

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From the point of view of the history of skepticism, Charron’s work is a landmark that separates modern forms from the ancient ones. De la Sagesse uncovers a new face of skepticism, which had deep impact on the common image of this movement during the seventeenth century and after. In Charron’s work, the skeptical sage is not only an active and important character, but, what is more, also is someone who breaks away from the classical Pyrrhonian pattern as well as from its more recent reenacting in Montaigne’s Essays. As regards the ancient pattern, the attainment of epochē was basically the result of a process of “detachment from the self,” the fruit of an “accentuated passivity” of sensations and thoughts, “a paralysis of reason by itself,” as Myles Burnyeat has put it (1983: 133). According to Jonathan Barnes, epochē was a pathos, some sort of passivity or passion, that happened to inquirers (skeptikoi) at the end of their investigations. In other words, for the ancient Pyrrhonians, even the suspension of judgment was less a voluntary effort than the product of a causal sequence impacting on them (the sequence included: investigation (zētēsis)—disagreement (diaphōnia)—equipollence (isostheneia)—and finally suspension of judgment (epochē) (Barnes 1983: 7)). Nearly the same can be said about Montaigne, except that this latter added a sense of pessimism and human frailty that was unknown to the ancient skeptics. When one reads Montaigne, it seems that skepticism inflicts a heavy blow not only to human arrogance, but also to the value of the intellect and the senses themselves. Not by chance, reason is defined in the Essays as “an instrument of lead and wax, which one can lengthen, bend, and adapt to any direction and extent” (Montaigne 1999: II xii 565). From this point of view, Charron’s skepticism is quite different. First of all, the author of De la Sagesse does not hesitate to stress the strength of reason, emphasizing at the same time the positive feature of skeptical examination. It is true that reason, and mostly skeptical reason, does not have “jurisdiction” on all subject matters: for example, Charron proclaims that skepticism makes no metaphysical claims and that it relies on revelation in theological matters. Nevertheless, in the mundane domain of “human wisdom,” reason preserves its complete right “to judge about everything” and to “restrain assent” when faced with inadequate reasons (Charron 1986: 399). In his own field, the sage shows full “universality of spirit”; he is not narrowed by the “municipal law” (1986: 406) that rules closed systems of beliefs, whether these beliefs be the elementary, sociological beliefs of the village or the more sophisticated beliefs of nations, philosophical schools, religions (i.e., actual religious rites and behaviors), and churches. For the first time in the modern age, Charron’s skeptical sage is someone who fights against an entire corpus of beliefs, someone who decides to doubt and seeks for arguments to this effect. This is the main Charronian achievement: epochē or suspension of judgment becomes now a vigorous and voluntary liberating move from a system of beliefs rather than an imponderable point of balance between different opinions, as it was before in the ancient idea of equipollence. Far from being the passive effect produced by the unresolved diaphōnia of appearances that are simply registered by the observer, Charron’s art of doubting requires a conscious and voluntary decision from the subject. Skepticism demands a whole set of epistemic virtues that preserve the wise from precipitancy, prejudices, and

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mistakes. Modern skepticism, as it is reworked by the author of De la Sagesse, needs a discipline of the intellect and its judgments. After Charron, the modern skeptic is someone who wants to cast into doubt almost everything whereas the ancient Pyrrhonian was cast in doubt by different phenomena. With this work, one can see the author initiate the typical modern attitude of negative suspicion against any belief whose sole justification is habit, authority, or tradition. From passive, skepticism becomes active; it is no longer the position of an impartial observer but the pose of a conscious protagonist who does not want to be enslaved to prejudices or opinions devoid of any rational justification.4 This is also the reason why Charron’s philosophy, probably more than Montaigne’s, and certainly more than ancient Pyrrhonism, is one of the birthplaces of modern subjectivity (cf. Paganini 2008). One major contribution to this achievement is the sharp separation between externality and interiority in the attitude of the sage. Whereas external appearances can be given up to social conformity, so that the skeptic would not challenge laws, common opinions, and public offices, interiority, that is, private judgment, becomes in Charron the domain of free “jurisdiction” that acknowledges no authority but reason. The external sphere is the field in which particularity and municipality rule, whereas the internal becomes the reign of “universality of spirit.” The “free spirit” or the esprit fort, to which Charron recognizes the right to judge about everything, is the antecedent of the modern intellectual to whom the right to criticize established values and conventions is attributed, without any other commitment, except to reason and morality. All these innovations, along with the clear influence of Stoicism, converge in Charron’s philosophy into the discovery of man’s autonomy: autonomy that means firstly selfgovernment according to the lead of reason, and secondly disentanglement toward any external, traditional, social, and political constraint. This profound split between internality and externality runs along the line dividing the private and the public spheres. After Charron, modern skepticism develops in the sage’s interior region, while actions are confined to exterior conformism. This is a major innovation in comparison to the ancient Greek sources that ignored this dramatic divide. In a much clearer way in Charron than before in Montaigne, this radical split is not only a matter of personal reservation; indeed, it stretches to the extremes of simulation and dissimulation. Faced with the constraints imposed by external requirements, the modern Charronian sage feels free to recur to pretense and reticence in order to keep his own interiority safe and free. We should not understand this attitude as a kind of overt rebellion; on the contrary, the skeptic does not shirk his own duties and responsibilities, in line with the Pyrrhonian precept that recommends following the rules, customs, and laws of one’s country. Nevertheless, and despite this apparent conformism, the modern skeptic becomes the bearer of a new sense of intellectual emancipation that was unknown to the ancients. Actually, the relationship between the sage and society has completely changed with respect to antiquity. The moderns are confronted with schools of thought, political and religious bodies of beliefs that are organized, and compelling systems requiring from the subject the performance of precise behaviors, but also requiring him to take sides in the course of the ideological struggles that tear the commonwealth, the church,

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and their institutions. Thus, the modern skeptic has to experience the strength and the coercion of ideological systems that were almost unknown to antiquity. In order to face this new and troubling situation, the modern skeptical sage, according to Charron, should adopt a cold and detached conception of acting that is tightly connected to the distinction between the external and the internal. The skeptic must give to the institutions just the minimum of his external commitment, the minimum that is absolutely necessary for the needs of praxis and for the functioning of the social body. By contrast, he ought to preserve for the internal and individual sphere his intimate beliefs. The modern skeptic can feel free to criticize in his internal sphere the common wisdom and the values of the city, which were not cast into doubt by the ancient skeptic. The main target of the criticism of the latter were not so much the beliefs and the rites of the city, but only the moral and political theories elaborated by the dogmatic philosophers (cf. Charron 1986: 411–415). Furthermore, and despite all of Charron’s caution in keeping different fields and their respective prerogatives sharply separated, one must admit that with this modern skeptical scrutiny the foundations for an uncompromised assent to the public institutions are at least implicitly undermined. The least one can say is that, in comparison to those of ordinary people, the skeptic’s choices become more pragmatic and independent of any partisan dogmatism. Even though he conforms to the beliefs and rules that are in force and displays his profession of conformity, whenever he can withdraw into “the forum of consciousness,” the skeptical sage refuses to abdicate the freedom of his own judgment; his external obedience is completely disentangled from any internal orthodoxy. According to Charron, abiding by a law does not necessarily involve the duty of considering it true, right, or rational. All this has an evident impact on the holding of the skeptic’s beliefs. By practicing the skeptical scrutiny of any dogma, including those that constitute morals and politics, the sage is now able to denounce the “mystical ground” of laws and customs: “mystical” in the sense of being obscure, mysterious, and ultimately arbitrary or unjustified. Echoing one of Montaigne’s famous statements, Charron declares that “laws and customs keep their credit not because they are right and good, but for being laws and customs: this is the ground of their authority” (1986: 498).5 This sentence overtly expresses skepticism regarding the official motivations that are given to support ethics and politics. This split between the internal and the external can sometimes result in a plain contradiction, as Charron himself recognizes: “enjoying his own right to judge and examine everything, it will often happen to the sage that his judgment and his hand, the spirit and the body contradict themselves, and he will act outside in one way and judge inside in another way” (1986: 393). This is the effect of the new protagonist pose that the sage takes, at least in his internal sphere, toward the whole body of public opinions. Whereas the ancient Pyrrhonians usually stressed the perfect conformity of the skeptic to the customs and beliefs that make up not only ordinary life but also political life, Charron emphasizes the complete autonomy of the sage, who conceives himself as an independent subject, even while seeking refuge in the sphere of private consciousness. We can understand now why the value of isostheneia is no longer central in this new perspective. By challenging the cautious advice of “general indifference,”

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Charron sticks much more to the rational basis of skepticism. He declares that “the search for truth” is the real and explicit aim of any skeptical investigation, and that its instrument (outil) is reason. This free use of reason, which is not only allowed but also recommended by skepticism, becomes the new standard for the conception of being truly human. Human dignity is now based on using reason in order to “judge” about everything: The real prerogative of humans, their proper and more natural practice, their worthier activity, is that of judging. Why are humans beings that speak, reason, and intend? Because perhaps they have minds in order to build castles in the air or to fill to bursting with silliness and trifles, like most people? Who ever had eyes for darkness? Certainly, humans are made to see, to understand, to judge all things to such a point that they are called the guardian, supervisor, controller of nature, world, God’s works. To deprive them of this right is the same as willing them not to be anymore humans but beasts. (Charron 1986: 389–390) This recourse to the prerogative of judging is all the more crucial, since humans are immerged in that condition of uncertainty that the skeptical crisis has revealed. This situation of doubt demands from the sage the most attentive practice of rational discernment: Since there is only one truth among a thousand lies and of a thousand opinions about the same subject only one is the true one, why shouldn’t I investigate which one is best, the most reasonable, good, useful, and convenient using reason? Is it possible that among so many laws, habits, beliefs, different and opposite customs, only those we practice are the good ones? (Charron 1986: 387) Charron’s conclusion is univocal: “The sage will judge everything. Nothing will escape him that he lays on the table and on the scale to investigate” (Charron 1986: 392). It is essential to notice that this kind of “judging” is neither dogmatic nor Pyrrhonian. As to the former, Charron explains that the sage does not “judge” in the sense of “establishing, affirming, determining,” but in the sense of a continuous quest that has no end (“to examine, evaluate, weigh and balance reasons on one side and on the other, and thus search for truth”). As to the latter, Charron admits that the sage can opine (contrary to the Pyrrhonian injunction against neo-Academics), even though “without any determination, decision, affirmation.” This is a kind of having “weak” opinions, according to Academic probabilism (Charron 1986: 386–387). It must be added, however, that this right of doubting and judging, which is at the heart of Charron’s active interpretation of skepticism, is not the business of everyone but just of those who are well equipped for it, namely, “spirits well born, strong, and vigorous” (“esprits bien nez, forts et vigoureux”). These peculiarities depend on the prerogative of reason, and do not derive from any privilege of nobility. According to Charron, an esprit fort is someone who is capable of using reason and conducting his own life according to this kind of rational examination, which is the basic procedure of skepticism. The Charronian sage is well aware that social, political, and religious institutions rely on passivity, and yet that they are absolutely necessary for ordinary

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people. What is more, Charron is overly pessimistic about the possibility that most people could act according to his ideal of self-determination. The large majority is made of “not too well talented men”; these latter strongly support the character that laws and conventions impose upon them. Unlike ancient skepticism, which did not explicitly make any difference between various kinds of persons, modern skepticism, as it was shaped by Charron in the wake of Montaigne, is intrinsically hierarchical. Charron divides human beings according to intellectual capacity and correlates with this their ability to suspend judgment, not giving their assent to what is doubtful or simply plausible. Most people are on the lowest degree of this tripartite hierarchy (“weak spirits, of low and little ability, born to obey, to serve, and to be conducted”); in the middle are “pedants,” who are perfect models of the “dogmatist”; on top are the few who “would rather doubt and suspend their judgment” than enter the rush of dogmatic and unjustified affirmations. This tripartite classification of spirits was already present in Montaigne, but it is only with Charron that it enters as a constituent point into the construction of a skeptical anthropology (Charron 1986: 291–292).6 On the whole, it can be said that the main aim of Charron’s skepticism is no longer the Pyrrhonian ataraxia. The importance of this rather passive value is superseded now by the exercise of a triad made up of much more active practices: “judging of everything” (juger de tout), “retaining the assent” (sursoir la determination), keeping “the universality of spirit” (universalité d’esprit) (Charron 1986: 406). Even though he still draws on Montaigne for illustration of the details in which this practice of doubting ultimately consists,7 it is only in Charron that this practice takes the form of an emancipatory program supported by a deliberate education and exercise of the spirit.8

3  CHARRON’S SKEPTICISM COMES BACK FROM PYRRHONISM TO NEO-ACADEMICISM Since the theory and praxis of epochē are largely common to the two main skeptical traditions, Pyrrhonism and neo-Academic philosophy, Charron feels authorized to draw on both of them. He often puts Pyrrhonism and Academicism on the same level (Charron 1986: 405), equating the ataraxia of the former to the “neutrality and indifference” of the latter (Charron 1986: 410). In so doing, he inaugurates the typical modern koinē of skepticism, which is some sort of eclecticism in the art of doubting. Blending together these two trends, Charron goes much further than Montaigne, who had rather stressed the novelty of Pyrrhonism and rejected probabilism. The author of De la Sagesse opens the way to considering both traditions as belonging nearly to the same body of philosophy, which meant, for some “dogmatic” opponents of skepticism like Descartes, rejecting Pyrrhonism and Academicism altogether, and for some sympathizers of skepticism like Hume, allowing them to shift from the one form to the other, always keeping allegiance to the skeptical approach.

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From the strictly epistemological point of view, Charron does not take up the precise characterization of Pyrrhonism that was contained in Montaigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond. This marks a major shift in his own description of skepticism, which turns out to follow in the wake of the neo-Academic revival that preceded Montaigne’s turn toward Sextus’s texts. Among the neo-Academic features that are recognizable in De la Sagesse,9 there is first the emphasis on the ideal of intellectual integrity, which comes from Cicero (Acad. II. 7–9), and the insistence on the necessity of studying and neutralizing the internal and the external causes of any strong attachment to uncertain, false, and precipitant opinions. “Retaining the assent” (surseance) is the first condition for keeping the freedom of one’s spirit (Charron 1986: 404). Avoiding precipitancy and error ends up being more important than attaining truth: whereas this latter usually is extremely difficult to reach, the former always stays within our range. The second major Academic influence on Charron consists in an overt profession of Socratic ignorance. The device of the wise man, which figures in the frontispiece of De la Sagesse, is the famous Socratic motto “je ne sais” (“I do not know”). The affirmation of akatalēpsia was blamed by Pyrrhonians as an example of negative dogmatism. By contrast, it is taken up by Charron, despite all of its logical inconsistencies (one could object that at least the sage knows one thing, that he knows nothing). Nor is the author of De la Sagesse interested in Montaigne’s reform of skepticism, which had transformed the profession of ignorance into an interrogation (“que sçais-je?”). Charron seems inclined to give to his sage a stable intellectual and moral position (which is made of intellectual integrity, rejection of errors, refusal to hasten his judgments, emendation of prejudices, etc.). To this effect, he does not like the kind of Pyrrhonian irresolution that was practiced by his master Montaigne. The assured position of the neo-Academic sage seems to him steadier than the passive and indifferent pose typical of the Pyrrhonian philosopher.10 The third Academic feature is the emphasis put on the value of self-knowledge. Moving in the wake of his beloved predecessors, Socrates and Montaigne, the author of De la Sagesse gives a systematic form to what in the Essays was much more a matter of practice than of theory. In Charron, self-observation and selfinquisition develop in a true anthropological doctrine, without losing all of his skeptical approach: in reality, this whole corpus of knowledge that starts from the self and ends with humanity is basically aimed at fighting dogmatic presumption and ignorance; skeptical anthropology is mainly a doctrine about the moral and epistemic limits of anyone’s self (Charron 1986: 28, 33, 37, 44–46, 376). Finally, the fourth positive influence of the Academic tradition on Charron makes him more open than Montaigne to Carneades’s notion of probability as a guide to the complex world of opinions, most of all practical opinions.11 In this regard, Charron clearly breaks off from both Sextus, who denied any significant difference in opinions concerning probability, and Montaigne, who saw in probabilism a challenge not only to Pyrrhonian indifferentism but also to his Catholic traditionalism. By contrast, Charron thought that there was a way of taking a doctrine as probable that was compatible with a true skeptical approach, provided that one adopted Carneades’s and Cicero’s point of view.

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4  THE SKEPTICAL IMPACT ON MORALS AND RELIGION The consequences for morals and religion of this new conception of wisdom, in which skeptical themes play a crucial role along with a Stoic inheritance, are extremely important. The comparison with Montaigne is still useful in order to appreciate the novelty of Charron’s position. Whereas the former blended the Pyrrhonian fourfold rule of life with modern Catholic traditionalism, which prevented him from adhering to the Reformation, Charron, even while remaining apparently faithful to his religious confession, used skepticism to go beyond the limits of Montaigne’s cautious conformism, even in the field of morals and religion. As to the former (morals), Charron took up the Platonic and Stoic topic of the “inborn seeds,”12 willing to emphasize the autonomy of morals from any external constraints, such as those of religions and laws. The origin of this topic is still classic, coming basically from Cicero and Seneca; however, Charron’s reinterpretation is new in that he stresses its possible polemical meaning, which is now clearly directed against the overwhelming burden of religious eternal norms (see Kambouchner 2008; Gaiu 2010). This is a radical turn in comparison to the traditional ethics that relied on a transcendent foundation and not on a “natural” tendency of man, appealing much more to the threat of natural rewards and the promise of supernatural punishments than to the intrinsic value of virtue.13 In contrast with an entire millennial religious tradition, Charron wants men to be good even “without hell and paradise” (1986: 464). Nor do original sin and theological grace have any importance in the philosophical ethics of De la Sagesse, even though the author will be compelled in the second edition to mitigate his views, adding (in Book III, Ch. III) a paragraph about “grace as a perfection of nature,” which would be taken up again in the Traicté de sagesse with the title: “warning about the necessity of the divine grace” (1986: 846–847; cf. Faye 1998: 270–271). However, and despite this softening of the original thesis, it is still true that in the first version of De la Sagesse, human wisdom (preud’homie) is considered by the author as antecedent and independent with regard to religion. Charron continually emphasizes the difference between “probity” on the one side and “piety” on the other, claiming that “religion is posterior, a special and particular virtue, distinguished from the other virtues” (1986: 464).14 At the same time, the traditional conception of wisdom related to metaphysics and speculative theology is completely abandoned, whereas the emphasis is put on its practical and humanistic import. Charron stresses the narrow borders of human reason: while restraining philosophy to what lies within the natural reach of the human mind, he polemically reacts to the excessive pretensions of the metaphysicians who aim at delivering the first principles and causes. The object that is naturally adequate to human reason is not knowledge of essences or substances, or dogmatic physics, but human morals and life (Charron 1986: 25–32). In the expanded preface to the second edition of De la Sagesse, Charron explicitly distinguishes between divine wisdom and human wisdom, leaving to the theologians the former and adopting the latter as his own subject. In so doing, he appeals to his qualification as a philosopher and not as a theologian. It is on

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religion that this skeptical-stoical sort of wisdom had the greatest and the most influential impact. In principle, true religion and true wisdom should converge, since—says Charron—when someone is really a sage, he “acts according to God, according to himself, to law, to nature” (1986: 424). In reality, when one examines religions in their historical and actual substance, leaving out of consideration the supernatural pretensions that they unanimously claim, rightly or wrongly, it is easy to recognize that all of them counterpoise true wisdom. Consequently, one basic distinction that De la Sagesse draws is that between “true piety” and “superstition.” The superstitious man is dominated by fear and makes God to be like men, thereby running into “blasphemy.” He reduces the relation with the divinity into a utilitarian trade, some sort of “trafficking” in which the expectation of rewards and the fear of punishments end up being more important than reason and virtue. Noticing how much superstition is natural among men, Charron draws from Montaigne a whole web of considerations that develop, in the text of De la Sagesse, into a true philosophical anthropology of religious behaviors (see Kogel 1972: 90–104). In Book II Ch. V, Charron opposes “vraye pieté” to actual religions: these latter, however various and strange, have many features in common, such as sacrifices, humiliation of the spirit, credulity, multiplication of miracles, and some sort of illusory reversal in the human relations to the divinity. While aiming at propitiating gods, these religions end by annihilating human nature. “What overturning of sense, when one thinks to appease the divinity by inhumanity, to gain divine goodness by our affliction, to please his justice by cruelty?” (1986: 449). Even though Charron would like to carry out “true wisdom and true piety,” joining them and “blending together,” it is still true that, even in the most favorable hypothesis of a mutual concord, one should keep them sharply distinguished: “[I want it to be so] that each of them subsists and stands alone, without the help of the other, and acts by its own strength” (Charron 1986: 466). Wisdom must be “already born in you, with you, planted by nature”; by contrast, religion cannot but be “posterior,” “learnt” through revelation and instruction. In the relation between religion and wisdom, the latter comes first and is the cause of the former, not the reverse (1986: 466–467). Because of his official commitments in ecclesiastical institutions as a preacher and a teacher,15 Charron had the opportunity to write many theological works, some of which preceded De la Sagesse. The first was Les trois vérités contre les athées, idolatres et juifs (1593), an apologetic treatise aimed at demonstrating the existence of God and the truth of Christian religion. It is interesting to see how these apologetic aims developed in such a way as to connect with skeptical themes that would be treated at a later point in De la Sagesse. The main points in common with this latter work concern the polemic against superstition and the adherence to the themes of negative theology, on the basis of the idea that “God is impossible to know” (1635: II 12). Combining the skeptical thesis about the inadequacy of human knowledge with the theses of mystical and apophatic theology grounded on God’s ineffability, Charron goes so far as to write statements that only seldom could be found in any apologetic work. The “Discourse on God’s knowledge” is particularly explicit, stating that “every divinity, which is proven and established by reason, is a false divinity, not a true one,” since “there is no passage from the

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finite to the infinite” (1635: II 13). In this same Discourse, Charron declares every theological representation to be absolutely relative and therefore devoid of any effective content. After describing with mystical overtones the soul that rises “abstracting itself from everything” and “merging into a vague and infinite void,” Charron concludes that every “image” or representation of the divinity is “always false, that is faulty and defective,” even though man cannot but try to fabricate one. Despite the tone filled with compunction, the ultimate result is a strong skepticism about the value of any discourse about God. Charron states so: “The last and highest degree to which everyone can rise and reach by the extreme effort of his imagination is for him his own God” (1635: II 19–20). In reality, every definition, every positive statement about God is at the same time some sort of restriction of the infinite, which is unacceptable. This apophatic method (according to which we can say of God what he is not but not what he really is) also serves Charron’s strategy against atheism because he sustains that even a negation of God, being as dogmatic as the affirmation, would intend to set a limit to divine nature; therefore, atheism also falls into the defect of restricting the infinite to the finite. Like the dogmatic theologian, the atheist is guilty of an “abuse,” since both try to submit the infinite to the limits of finite human reason (1635: II 13). This propensity of Charron toward negative theology, as opposed to “dogmatic” theology, is strongly emphasized in the Discours chrestiens (1601). In this work, he appeals to the label of “learnt ignorance” and declares that his work aims at arousing “admiration” rather than offering “knowledge” about God. Religious discourse should be simply a way of “honoring” God (“without any affirmation, determination, prescription”), and not an effort to describe Him (1635: I 12–13). When it is applied to theological discourse, skepticism encourages some sort of transvaluation of the attributes of God. In the wake of this tendency, Charron does not just emphasize the absolute transcendence of the divinity; he even goes much further than supporting the traditional distinction between ordained and absolute power in God, stating that He can do everything that is not contrary to Himself, that is, to being and truth (1635: I 23). The most daring statement by Charron in this direction is that, even though we cannot “conceive goodness, wisdom, power except in a human way,” nevertheless one should remove all the bounds from these notions, going as far as to imagine a kind of “superwisdom” (sursagesse) in God (1635: I 8).

NOTES 1. The main source for Charron’s life is still La Rochemaillet in Charron (1635), reprinted in Desan (2009: 273–286). 2. A bibliography of Charron’s works can be found in Charron (1960: 147–151) and in Dini and Taranto (1987: 419–435). 3. Referring to his sources in general, Charron claims that his work is the product of his readings; however, he says, “the form and the order are mine” (1986: 34). 4. On this peculiar feature of Charron’s skepticism, see Popkin (1954; 2003: 57–63, 68–70, 100–107) and Paganini (1991: 201–214).

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5. This is an echo of a famous passage by Montaigne (1999: III xiii 1072). 6. See Montaigne (1999: II xvii 657). For this tripartition, see Paganini (1987). 7. See e.g. Charron (1986: 406–411) for the considerations on barbarism, universality of nature, variety of religions, etc. 8. Another important source of this emancipatory program can be traced to the secularization of some ideas related to the movement of “free spirit” or “libertinism,” typical of the sixteenth century and condemned by John Calvin. From this heritage probably comes—even though from far—the continuous hints made by Charron to the Pauline motto “spiritualis omnia iudicat et a nemine iudicatur” (1 Cor. 2: 15), by which he tries to legitimate his appeal to freedom of judgment and universality of spirit (Charron 1986: 41, 389). 9. For the emphasis on neo-Academic features in Charron’s work, see José Maia Neto’s interpretation (Maia Neto 2003, 2014). 10. It is significant that, when it is a matter of describing the grounds of epochē, Charron recurs much more often to neo-Academic formulations that to the truly Pyrrhonian ones (Charron 1986: 399–400). Also when characterizing the result of epochē, Charron emphasizes active more than passive features of the spirit (see Charron 1986: 404). 11. On the issue of whether Carneades’s stance is a sort of probabilism, see Harald Thorsrud’s contribution in Part One of this book. 12. On this crucial topic, see Horowitz (1971; 1974; 1998). 13. For the novelty represented by Charron in this field, see Gregory (1986: 71–113), translated in Gregory (2000: 115–155). 14. For the originality of Charron’s notion of “wisdom,” see Rice (1958: 178–207) and Abel (1987: 187–208). 15. On this activity, see Belin (1995: 7–205).

REFERENCES Abel, Günher. 1978. Stoizismus und Neuzeit. Berlin: De Gruyter. Barnes, Jonathan. 1983. “The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist,” Elenchos 4: 5–43. Belin, Christian. 1995. L’Oeuvre de Pierre Charron (1541–1603): littérature et théologie de Montaigne à Port-Royal. Paris: Honoré Champion. Burnyeat, Myles. 1983. “Can the Skeptic Live His Skepticism?” In M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 117–148. Berkeley: University of California Press. Charron, Pierre. 1593. Les trois vérités contre les athées, idolatres, juifs, mahumétans, hérétiques, schismatiques par Charron. Bordeaux: S. Millanges. Charron, Pierre. 1601. Discours chrestiens. Seconde partie. Bordeaux: S. Millanges. Charron, Pierre. 1635. Toutes les Œuvres de Pierre Charron…. Paris: Jacques Villery. (Reprinted in 2 vols. Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1970.) Charron, Pierre. 1986. De la sagesse. Paris: Fayard. Desan, Philippe (ed.). 2009. Pierre Charron. Special issue of Corpus 55. Dini, Vittorio and Domenico Taranto (eds). 1987. La saggezza moderna. Temi e problemi dell’opera di Pierre Charron. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.

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Faye, Emmanuel. 1998. Philosophie et perfection de l’homme. De la Renaissance à Descartes. Paris: Vrin. Gaiu, Claudiu. 2010. La Prudence de l’homme d’esprit. L’éthique de Pierre Charron. Bucuresti: Zeta Books. Gregory, Tullio. 1986. Etica e religione nella critica libertina. Napoli: Guida. Gregory, Tullio. 2000. Genèse de la raison classique de Charron à Descartes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Horowitz, Maryanne. 1971. “Pierre Charron’s View of the Source of Wisdom,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 9: 443–457. Horowitz, Maryanne. 1974. “Natural Law as Foundation for an Autonomous Ethics: Pierre Charron’s De la Sagesse,” Studies in the Renaissance 21: 204–227. Horowitz, Maryanne. 1998. Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kambouchner, Denis. 2008. “Descartes et Charron: prud’homie, générosité, charité,” Corpus 55: 193–208. Kogel, Renée. 1972. Pierre Charron. Genève: Droz. Maia Neto, José. 2003. “Charron’s Epoché and Descartes’ Cogito: The Sceptical Base of Descartes’ Refutation of Scepticism.” In G. Paganini (ed.), The Return of Scepticism: From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle, 81–131. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer. Maia Neto, José. 2014. Academic Skepticism in Seventeenth-Century French Philosophy: The Charronian Legacy 1601–1662. Dordrecht: Springer. Montaigne, Michel de. 1999. Les Essais, edited by Pierre Villey. Paris: PUF. Paganini, Gianni. 1987. “‘Sages,’ ‘spirituels,’ ‘esprits forts.’ Filosofia dell’ ‘esprit’ e tipologia umana nell’opera di Pierre Charron.” In V. Dini and D. Taranto (eds.), La saggezza moderna. Temi e problemi dell’opera di Pierre Charron, 113–156. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane. Paganini, Gianni. 1991. Scepsi moderna. Interpretazioni dello scetticismo da Charron a Hume. Cosenza: Busento. Paganini, Gianni. 2008. Skepsis: Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme. 2nd edition, 2017. Paris: Vrin. Popkin, Richard. 1954. “Charron and Descartes: the Fruits of Systematic Doubt,” Journal of Philosophy 51: 831–837. Popkin, Richard. 2003. The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rice, Eugene. 1958. The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Francisco Sanchez: A Renaissance Pyrrhonist against Aristotelian Dogmatism DAMIAN CALUORI

1 INTRODUCTION Francisco Sanchez (1550/51–1623) was a well-known skeptic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His one skeptical work, That Nothing is Known (Quod nihil scitur), first published in 1581, was widely read and went to four editions.1 Pierre Bayle praised him in his Dictionnaire historique et critique as “a great Pyrrhonist” (Bayle 1740: vol. IV, 133), and Gabriel Naudé recommended in 1644 that Sanchez’s skeptical work should be part of every learned library—next to that of Sextus Empiricus (see Jolly 1990).2 Even as late as 1702, Leibniz declared in a letter to the French mathematician and physicist Pierre de Varignon that he had often thought a reply to Sanchez would be a very useful thing indeed (Gerhardt 1859: 94–95). After this, Sanchez’s influence waned. He no longer seems to have been discussed much in the eighteenth century. In what follows, I will first discuss what kind of skepticism Sanchez adhered to: whether he was an Academic or a Pyrrhonian skeptic. Then I will consider Sanchez’s critique of the scholastic Aristotelians, the dogmatists of his day. Finally, I will ask where Sanchez stands in relation to modern Cartesian skepticism and whether his skepticism is purely theoretical or whether it also has implications for the practical affairs of life.

2  SANCHEZ, THE PYRRHONIST There is a traditional view of skepticism—a view found, for example, in Hegel’s influential Lectures on the History of Philosophy—according to which the skeptic

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claims that nothing can be known or that nothing can be known for certain (Hegel 1979: 253). Sometimes this version of skepticism is called “dogmatic” skepticism since it dogmatically claims that nothing can be known (or that nothing can be known for certain). Already in antiquity, Academic skepticism was sometimes interpreted in this way.3 Thus, Sextus Empiricus criticizes Academic skepticism for asserting that nothing can be known and considers this a mark distinguishing Academic from Pyrrhonian skepticism: while the Academic skeptic dogmatically states that nothing can be known, the Pyrrhonist continues his search (PH I 3, 226).4 It is easy to see how the title of Sanchez’s work, That Nothing is Known, can be understood as defending a dogmatic skepticism. In order to counter this misunderstanding right from the start, Sanchez begins his work with the following words: “Not even this do I know, that I know nothing. I suspect, however, that neither I nor anyone else knows anything”5 (QNS 1, LT 172).6 Further elaborating on this, Sanchez denies that he can prove the truth of the claim that he knows nothing. This incapability of proving his ignorance, he thinks, confirms his suspicion that he does not know that he knows nothing. If, however, he had proof of his total ignorance, then he would know that he knew nothing. He could then assert that he knew nothing. Pursuing this hypothetical alternative a little further, Sanchez has an imaginary opponent state: “If you know how to prove that you know nothing, the contrary follows, namely, that you already know something” (QNS 1, LT 172). Sanchez, not being a dogmatic skeptic, can easily reply that he knows of no such proof and since he has no such proof, he does not commit himself to any claim to knowledge. Rather, like an ancient Pyrrhonist, Sanchez does not know that nothing can be known. He is just not aware of any knowledge that has so far been established. Thus, it seems to me that Sanchez’s own words rule out an interpretation such as that of Richard Popkin who states in his History of Scepticism: “Sanchez’s totally negative conclusion is not the position of Pyrrhonian skepticism, the suspense of judgment as to whether anything can be known, but rather the more full-fledged negative dogmatism of the Academics” (Popkin 2003: 41). That Sanchez was not a skeptic of the sort Popkin believes him to be does not as such imply that he was a Pyrrhonian skeptic. There seems to be at least one further possibility. Elaine Limbrick, for example, shares Popkin’s view that Sanchez was an Academic skeptic. Yet she understands Academic skepticism as advocating, not a negative dogmatism, but “a system of methodological doubt which would free the human mind of the fetters of the past and enable the skeptical enquirer to reestablish knowledge on a firmer empirical basis” (Limbrick 1988: 88). According to her interpretation, the knowledge that Sanchez seeks to establish is not firm or certain knowledge (and thus not the sort of knowledge that the dogmatists believe themselves to have achieved). Rather, it is revisable knowledge based on the best evidence we have. Should new evidence show that our knowledge is inadequate— and it is perfectly conceivable that such new evidence can be found—our knowledge should be revised. Sanchez’s skepticism becomes, according to this interpretation, a methodical skepticism in the sense that, although we assume that knowledge is achievable, we never assume it to be definitely achieved but always continue to question and test it. In allowing for revisable knowledge, Sanchez’s skepticism would

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be distinct from the radical Pyrrhonian skepticism that doubts that knowledge is achievable at all. If this interpretation is correct, Sanchez becomes, thus understood, a profoundly modern thinker. What makes this view nevertheless Academic, in Limbrick’s interpretation, is the idea that we base our knowledge claims on the Academic notion of what is persuasive or probable (probabile): we are justified in believing ourselves to know something if we have better reasons to believe it than not to believe it.7 On the basis of this justification, the skeptic of this ilk believes that the truth of her beliefs is more likely (probabilius) than their falsehood. Thus, while a skeptic of this sort does not commit herself to any firm or certain knowledge, she nevertheless believes that it is possible to achieve knowledge in the sense of a set or system of justified beliefs that remains open to reform. While this is doubtless a picture attractive to us moderns, it seems to me that we have no good reason to attribute it to Sanchez.8 Let us first consider two pieces of evidence adduced by Limbrick (1988: 78) for her claim that Sanchez was an Academic skeptic: he signs off a letter to the famous Renaissance mathematician Clavius with “Carneades philosophus,” using the name of one of the most famous Academics; and in his commentary on Galen’s De pulsibus ad tyrones, he claims to withhold judgment “Academicorum more.” For this to count as evidence for a Sanchezian Academic skepticism, we would have to assume that Renaissance philosophers clearly distinguished between Pyrrhonian and Academic skepticism. However, as Charles Schmitt (1972: 7, 14) has shown and as the studies of Emmanuel Naya (2009: 24) have confirmed, they often used the words “skeptic,” “Academic,” and “Pyrrhonian” more or less synonymously. Thus, these two pieces of evidence show only that Sanchez considered himself a skeptic. Yet they do not show that he considered himself an Academic, as opposed to Pyrrhonian, skeptic. In That Nothing is Known Sanchez uses the term “persuasive” or “probable” (probabile) only three times. As I have argued elsewhere (Caluori 2007: 34–36), he nowhere uses it unambiguously in the epistemic sense relevant to Limbrick’s interpretation. Moreover, if Sanchez wanted to establish a science based on the notion of what is persuasive or probable, we would expect him to explain this notion and how it forms the foundation for his new science. Yet none of this can be found in his writings. So it seems to me that we have no good reason to believe that the notion of the probabile played a key role in Sanchez’s skepticism. Finally, we may be inclined to believe that Sanchez is about to establish a foundation for a new (revisable) science because he refers four times to a method of knowing (methodus sciendi) as if he was dealing with it in another book.9 At the end of That Nothing is Known, for example, he states: If you know anything, teach me. For I shall be very grateful to you. In the meantime, I prepare myself for the examination of things and I shall put forward in another book whether anything is known and [if anything is known] how, a book in which I shall expound, as far as human frailty allows, the method of knowing. Farewell. (QNS 245, LT 290)

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No such book is extant nor do we have any evidence that Sanchez ever wrote it. It is thus impossible to prove that such a book would (or would not) have contained a method of knowing that would allow us to build a new and revisable science. The best information we possess about Sanchez’s project is contained in the passage just quoted. But here Sanchez does not commit himself to the view that anything can be known. His promised exposition of the (or a) method of knowing presupposes the settling of the question of whether anything can be known. For if nothing can be known, developing a method of knowing is quite pointless. This passage tells us, however, that Sanchez is not giving up his pursuit of truth. He promises to continue his search for it by preparing himself for the examination of things. In the same vein, he states in the address to the reader: Yet I will not at all promise you the truth because I am ignorant of it—as of everything else. Nevertheless, I will pursue it with all my power and you for your part shall pursue it. . . . Yet do not expect ever to capture it. . . . Let the chase suffice for you, as it does for me. For this is my aim and my end—an end you too must aim for. (QNS xiii, LT 170) Now compare this passage to how Diogenes Laertius describes the Pyrrhonists: “All these were called Pyrrhonists after the name of their master, but also . . . seekers because they were ever seeking the truth; skeptics [i.e. inquirers] because they were always looking for a solution and never finding one” (DL IX 69–70). Sanchez’s description of his search for the truth is clearly modeled on the basis of what he knows about ancient Pyrrhonism.10 Sanchez is seeking the truth without ever having found it, and while he does not claim that it is impossible to find the truth, he is not certain that it will ever be found and cautions expectations accordingly.

3  AGAINST ARISTOTELIAN DOGMATISTS Aristotelians dominated Western universities throughout the sixteenth century (see Schmitt 1983). In fact, as Charles Lohr has shown, the number of Latin commentaries on Aristotle composed between 1500 and 1650 “exceeds that of the entire millennium from Boethius to Pomponazzi” (1974: 228). Aristotelianism was not, of course, a unified school or doctrine at the time (nor at any other), and there were many different strands, schools, and traditions.11 For our purposes, however, it will be sufficient to consider the epistemological consequences of two competing metaphysical views that were popular among the Aristotelians of Sanchez’s time12: first, the nominalist view in the tradition of Ockham. Nominalists claim that only particulars (as opposed to universals such as species) possess real existence; second, the realist so-called species theory that goes back to Thomas Aquinas and regained popularity with the revival of Thomism in the sixteenth century.13 Sanchez argues against them separately. His conclusion, however, is in both cases the same: if the corresponding metaphysical view is true, nothing can be known. Before discussing these two views, the following should be noted: when Aristotelians talked about knowledge (scientia), they had in mind scientific

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knowledge—the sort of knowledge Aristotle discusses in his Analytica Posteriora. Accordingly, Sanchez’s target is scientific and not ordinary knowledge. I will come back below to the relation of these two kinds of knowledge and what this means for Sanchez as a skeptic. Let us now look at Sanchez’s critique of the knowledge claims of the nominalists. In order to show some of the difficulties into which nominalists run, Sanchez adopts, for the sake of argument, a nominalist position. He states: Do you expect even further proof of our ignorance? I will provide it. You have already seen the difficulties with species. But you will concede that there is no knowledge of particulars as they are infinite. But there are no species—or, in any case, they belong only to the imagination. (QNS 80, LT 212–213) Sanchez uses a problem (aporia) already stated in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and turns it into a skeptical argument: we can have scientific knowledge (scientia) only of universals. But there are no universals. Therefore, there is no scientific knowledge (see Met. 999a: 24–b3).14 Now, a nominalist may be unimpressed by this argument because she does not deny the existence of universals tout court but only the real existence of universals. So she would reply to Sanchez that there are universals, namely, species, but that these species have no real existence. Instead, they exist only as mental entities. To which Sanchez replies: You will say that you are not studying particulars, as they are not objects of scientific knowledge (scientia), but rather universals such as human being, horse, and so on. This is indeed the case and I have already said it before: your knowledge is knowledge, not of real human beings, but of a fiction that you invent. Hence, you know nothing. (QNS 46, LT 196)15 According to the nominalist position understood thus, universals are mental entities with no real existence. But if we understand them in this way, then according to this argument, mental entities, rather than really existing things, become the objects of knowledge. But if so, then we are incapable of acquiring any knowledge about things in the external world. Nothing is known if the nominalists are right.16 Now, in order to avoid the conclusion that species are purely mental (and perhaps even fictitious) entities, we may want to give up nominalism and claim that species are in some way part of extramental reality. The so-called species theory was perhaps the most sophisticated version of this view in the sixteenth century. According to Aquinas, with whom the species theory originates, all our knowledge derives from the senses. Yet even though all sensory objects are particulars, we are capable of arriving at the cognition of universals—and this in roughly the following way. When I see a particular human being, the sensible part of my soul receives through my eyes an impression of this particular human being. What the soul thus receives is a sensible form. Now my active intellect abstracts the universal form (i.e., the intelligible species) from the sensible form. As a result of this process of abstraction, the soul possesses an intelligible species, which is the essence of the object: in our example the essence human being.17 What is crucial for our purpose is the view that the species (the universal) is not simply a representation of the

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external object: it is not an internal object somehow representing the essence of the external object. Rather, it is formally identical with it. This makes it possible for the intellect (or so defenders of this view claimed) to grasp the essence of the external object itself. In this way, the species theory is a realist theory and distinct from the nominalist view considered above. Sanchez’s first argument against the species theory is a classic Pyrrhonist attack on the reliability of the senses (through which all knowledge is acquired according to the Aristotelians). When examining the reliability of sense perception, Sanchez quite reasonably assumes that, in order to have normal sense perception (i.e., sense perception presenting the things the way they are), certain criteria must be fulfilled. One of them concerns the medium through which we perceive the object. For depending on the medium, things appear differently to us. So the medium must be such as to allow for normal sense perception. But how can the mind be certain that the medium is such as to allow for normal sense perception? Well, certain criteria will need to be fulfilled so that the medium is such as to allow for normal sense perception. How does the mind know that these criteria are fulfilled? Sanchez sums up: “There is no conclusion, only endless doubt” (QNS 172, LT 254). Even if we assume for the sake of argument that sense perception works properly and that we possess normal sense perception, Sanchez sees further problems with the species theory. I will restrict the discussion to one of them. Defenders of the species theory claim that all knowledge is based on sense perception. What our senses perceive, however, are only accidental features of particulars—not their essence. Accordingly, the sensible form must exclusively consist of accidental features. But if this is the case, the essence cannot get abstracted from the sensible form. For the essence is neither part of the sensible form nor can it be inferred from a thing’s accidental features: The whole thing would be bearable, if we had images from the senses of all things we wish to know. Yet the contrary is the case: we do not possess images of the most important things but only of accidental features which do not, as they say, contribute anything to the essence of a thing. But the essence is the source of true knowledge; and accidental features are the most useless of all things. (QNS 127, LT 237) Sanchez here assumes that species are only images of extramental objects and implicitly denies that species are formally identical with the objects whose species they are.18 Now, even if the species theorist rejects this representationalist interpretation, the main argument still stands. The active intellect is incapable of deriving the essence of a thing from sensible forms. For sensible forms, being the only material from which the active intellect can abstract intelligible forms, exclusively consist of accidental features. And no matter how many accidents of a thing we are aware of, by no process of abstraction can an essence be distilled out of them. Hence, Sanchez concludes, if the species theory is true, we will not be capable of cognizing essences. And since essences, according to the Aristotelians, are the only objects of scientific knowledge of the world, nothing can be known if the realists are right.

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I have only discussed two of the arguments Sanchez presents against the dominant Aristotelian positions of his day. But I hope Sanchez’s strategy has become clear. He shows that both nominalists and realists fail to ground their knowledge claims within their own respective dogmatic frameworks. In his arguments, Sanchez only uses premises either granted by his opponents or derived from claims granted by them. Thus, in line with both forms of ancient skepticism, he commits himself neither to nominalism nor to realism nor to any other dogmatic framework.

4  SANCHEZ AND CARTESIAN SKEPTICISM In a classic paper, Myles Burnyeat shows in what ways Cartesian and ancient skepticism are distinct. Ancient skeptics doubted that we possess knowledge about the world as it really is. No ancient philosopher, however—and thus no ancient skeptic—knows “the problem of proving in a general way the existence of an external world” (Burnyeat 1982: 19). Descartes’s hyperbolic doubt is more radical in that it presents, by means of the evil demon, precisely this problem. As Burnyeat shows, this radicalization of skepticism leads to its refutation by means of the cogito. Moreover, Burnyeat follows Bernard Williams (1978) in arguing that Descartes’s project is one of pure enquiry. Ancient skepticism, by contrast, is a way of life and thus an eminently practical affair. Sextus tells us that suspension of judgment leads to tranquility and thus to a sort of life that appears desirable. Hence, the ancient skeptic offers what his dogmatic opponents promise but cannot deliver: a good and happy life. Cartesian skepticism, on the other hand, is purely theoretical. Descartes does not show us a way to a good and happy life achievable through skepticism. Burnyeat thinks that these two points (i.e., doubting the existence of the external world and seeing skepticism as a purely theoretical affair) are related. Ancient skepticism did not question, Burnyeat claims, that one can walk around in the world “because it was in fact entirely serious about carrying skepticism into the practical affairs of life” (Burnyeat 1982: 40). Descartes, by contrast, is in a position to question the existence of the external world because his skepticism is methodical and divorced from practical concerns. We have seen in Section 3 that the sort of knowledge whose attainability Sanchez doubts is scientific knowledge (scientia). So it may seem that his skepticism is also of a purely theoretical kind, detached from one’s life. But Sanchez’s doubt is not methodical and not part of a larger project of pure enquiry. It rather is a genuinely skeptical doubt as I hope to have shown in Section 2. What is more: Sanchez was a medical practitioner at the Hôtel Dieu, the hospital of Toulouse, and, later in his life, became a professor at the faculty of medicine at the town’s university. So we need an account of Sanchez’s attitude toward practical issues. Since his doubt was not methodical, we have to ask how he could be a practitioner and teacher of medicine. For we may be inclined to assume that these activities presuppose the acknowledgment of a body of scientific knowledge. The answer to this question can be found if we heed the fact that Sanchez’s skepticism was influenced by the ancient medical school of empiricism (see Caluori

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2007).19 Ancient empiricists practice medicine, but they do so without reference to any theoretical framework (see Frede 1987). They reject medical theories, the use of formal inference, and the postulation of entities that (according to their dogmatic opponents) can be grasped only by reason. Instead, they rely on experience for their practice. A medical empiricist acquires experience in relying on what she herself perceives, on the carefully checked reports of other people, and on the transition from cases she is familiar with to cases that are similar to them. In keeping with their skeptical attitude, they do not believe themselves, however, to possess a rational justification for their procedures. Rather, it appears to them that, if they proceed in this way, they can practice medicine quite successfully. Moreover, the procedures they use seem to them to be the same as those that people use in their ordinary lives. Ordinary people live their lives without relying on theories and without the postulation of the existence of abstract entities. Sanchez makes very similar claims. Like the ancient empiricists, Sanchez does not doubt that ordinary people possess experiences and lead their lives on the basis of them. For example, he does not doubt that the farmer can distinguish his donkey from the neighbor’s ox (QNS 171, LT 254). And like the ancient empiricists he doubts the existence of theoretical entities: “For who could understand non-existent things? Thence come Democritus’s atoms, Plato’s Forms, Pythagoras’s numbers, and Aristotle’s universals. . . . In this way they [i.e. the dogmatists] entrap the unwary, claiming to have discovered unknown things and the secrets of Nature” (QNS vii, LT 168). In another passage he states: “Much experience, then, makes a person both learned and wise. This is why old people are more learned, at least in terms of experience, and thus better adapted to the conduct of human affairs than the young” (QNS 225, LT 281). We trust experts in such fields as agriculture, navigation, commerce, and medicine because of their experience. Experience appears to be a tremendously successful guide to the conduct of human affairs. Sanchez was well acquainted with ancient empiricism. One main source for this view is Galen—in the sixteenth century the medical authority par excellence. Galen’s work includes a number of treatises and passages discussing medical empiricism.20 It is true that Renaissance Galenism was rather dogmatic (Gilbert 1960; Schmitt 1985). But this does not exclude the possibility that a Renaissance skeptic could find in Galen a view opposed to dogmatic Galenism—a view that would allow him not only to live a skeptical life but also to practice and teach medicine without believing in the truth of any dogmatic theory.21 It seems to me that Sanchez was such a Renaissance skeptic, a skeptic living a skeptical life and practicing and teaching medicine in a non-dogmatic way. Sanchez thus shares with the ancient Pyrrhonists the view that a skeptic can live his skepticism and even practice an art without committing himself to any theory. Given the practical side of his skepticism, it is perhaps also unsurprising that he does not doubt the existence of the external world, the world we live and act in. However, there is one crucial difference between Sanchez and ancient Pyrrhonism. Sanchez nowhere promises that his skepticism may lead to tranquility or happiness. His view on human life is less hopeful, and he often complains about the misery of human life and laments about our epistemic situation. What motivates him

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nevertheless to pursue his theoretical enquiries is not the hope of tranquility but rather the desire to understand.

NOTES 1. Lyon 1581, Frankfurt 1618, Toulouse 1636, and Rotterdam 1649. 2. Also Delassus, Sanchez’s first biographer and editor of the Toulouse edition of That Nothing is Known, calls Sanchez a Pyrrhonist. See Limbrick (1988: 68 n. 6). 3. This interpretation has since been refuted, as far as the major Academic skeptics of the Hellenistic period are concerned. See Frede (1997). 4. See also Photius, Bibl. 212, 169b. Another influential source for this view was Augustine, who was widely read in the Renaissance. See Augustine, C. Acad. 2.11. 5. A very similar statement is attributed to Arcesilaus by Cicero at Acad. I 12, 45. 6. When quoting Sanchez, I refer to the paragraph number of the latest critical edition of the Latin text by Howald, Caluori, and Mariev (2007) and to the page number of the English translation by Thomson in Limbrick and Thomson (1988). All translations are my own. 7. It should be noted that Limbrick’s understanding of Academic skepticism is compatible only with the Metrodorian-Philonian line and stands in contrast to the classical skepticism of Clitomachus and Carneades. For more details, see Frede (1997) and Brittain (2001). 8. I discuss this in detail in Caluori (2007). 9. In addition to the passage quoted below, see QNS 26 (margin), 215 (margin), and 221 (LT 278). The edition and translation of Limbrick and Thomson does not render Sanchez’s marginal notes. 10. As far as his sources are concerned, we do not know whether Sanchez knew Sextus’s writings, but he explicitly refers to Diogenes Laertius and to Plutarch’s works Adversus Colotem and Lucullus (see Sanchez’s marginal notes to QNS 24, 34, 130, and 164). In addition, Sanchez knew Galen, for which see below. 11. For the variety of Renaissance Aristotelianisms, see Kristeller (1974: 30–49) and Schmitt (1983: 10–33). 12. In this part, I follow Howald, Caluori, and Mariev (2007: cxxiv–cxlviii). 13. For the renewed interest in Thomas Aquinas in the sixteenth century, see Spruit (1995: 93–158). 14. In Aristotle it is, of course, an aporia to be resolved. 15. Sanchez’s argument goes back to Duns Scotus (Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, lib. 7, Quaest. 13). 16. Sanchez also argues against an alternative modification of the original argument a nominalist could present. For she could claim that there is knowledge of particulars. For a discussion of Sanchez’s argument against this, see Howald, Caluori, and Mariev (2007: cxxxii–cxxxvi). 17. For more details on Aquinas’s theory, see Kretzmann (1993: 138–146).

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18. This argument had already been developed by Petrus Johannis Olivi and William Crathorn in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. See Perler (2003). 19. Ancient empiricism was related to Pyrrhonism. See James Allen’s chapter in Part I of this book. 20. See Galen’s On the Sects for Beginners; On Medical Experience; An Outline of Empiricism (all in Frede 1985); and On Therapeutic Method (in Hankinson 1991). 21. For textual parallels between Sanchez and Galen on empiricism, see Caluori (2007).

REFERENCES Bayle, Pierre. 1740. Dictionnaire Historique et Critique. Amsterdam: P. Brunel. Brittain, Charles. 2001. Philo of Larissa: The Last of the Academic Sceptics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1982. “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” The Philosophical Review 91: 3–40. Caluori, Damian. 2007. “The Skepticism of Francisco Sanchez,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 89: 30–46. Floridi, Luciano. 2002. Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frede, Michael (ed.). 1985. Galen: Three Treatises on the Nature of Science. Indianapolis: Hackett. Frede, Michael (ed.). 1987. “The Ancient Empiricists.” In his Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 243–260. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frede, Michael (ed.). 1997. “The Sceptic’s Two Kinds of Assent.” In M. Burnyeat and M. Frede (eds.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy, 127–151. Indianapolis: Hackett. Gerhardt, Carl Immanuel. 1859. Leibnizens Mathematische Schriften, vol. 4. Halle: Verlag H. W. Schmidt. Gilbert, Neal. 1960. Renaissance Concepts of Method. New York and London: Columbia University Press. Hankinson, R. J. (ed.). 1991. Galen on the Therapeutic Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hegel, G. W. F. 1979. Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Philosophie. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Auf der Grundlage der Werke von 1832–1845. Neu edierte Ausgabe. Redaktion Eva Moldenhauer und Karl Markus Michel, Band 19. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Howald, Kaspar, Damian Caluori, and Sergei Mariev (eds.). 2007. Franciscus Sanchez. Quod nihil scitur. Dass nichts gewusst wird. Introduction, Latin text, and German Translation. Hamburg: Meiner Verlag. Jolly, Claude (ed.). 1990. Gabriel Naudé: Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque. Reproduction de l’édition de 1644. Paris: Alain Baudry et Cie. Kretzmann, Norman. 1993. “Philosophy of Mind.” In N. Kretzmann and E. Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, 128–159. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. 1974. Humanismus und Renaissance I: Die antiken und mittelalterlichen Quellen. Munich: Fink.

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Limbrick, Elaine and Douglas Thomson (eds.). 1988. Francisco Sanches: That Nothing is Known. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Limbrick, Elaine. 1988. “Introduction.” In E. Limbrick and D. Thomson (eds.), Francisco Sanches: That Nothing is Known, 1–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lohr, Charles. 1974. “Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries: Authors A-B,” Studies in the Renaissance 21: 228–289. Naya, Emmanuel. 2009. “Renaissance Pyrrhonism: A Relative Phenomenon.” In G. Paganini and J. R. M. Neto (eds.), Renaissance Skepticisms, 13–32. Dordrecht: Springer. Perler, Dominik. 2003. “Wie ist globaler Zweifel möglich? Zu den Voraussetzungen des frühneuzeitlichen Aussenwelt-Skeptizismus,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 57: 481–512. Popkin, Richard. 2003. The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmitt, Charles. 1972. Cicero Scepticus: A Study of the Academica in the Renaissance. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schmitt, Charles. 1983. Aristotle and the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schmitt, Charles. 1985. “Aristotle among the Physicians.” In A. Wear, R. K. French, and I. M. Lonie (eds.), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, 1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spruit, Leen. 1995. Species Intelligibilis. From Perception to Knowledge. Vol. 2: Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism, and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy. Leiden: Brill. Williams, Bernard. 1978. Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry. London: Penguin Books.

PART THREE

Modern Skepticism

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Introduction Modern Skepticism BARON REED The beginning of the second great flowering in the skeptical tradition coincides with two of the major transformations in European history. First, the development of a globalized economy brought the exchange across vast distances of not only material goods but also people and ideas. Many Europeans reacted with the sort of selfinterested chauvinism that has always tended to shape human interactions, but the most perceptive recognized the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual challenges posed by these very different forms of human life. Michel de Montaigne, for example, was prompted by his encounter with a group of Tupinambá people, who had traveled from Brazil to France, to reconceive what it means to be barbaric or civilized and, a century later, Pierre Bayle punctured the almost universally accepted notion that an atheistic society couldn’t be moral by pointing to the ancient civilization of China.1 The increasingly close contact with the wider world served as an implicit critique of European beliefs, values, and customs. Second, the Reformation—together with the resistance it provoked—led to a profound change in the way moral and intellectual authority functioned in society. Religious disagreements became far more widespread, and it was no longer possible to simply treat unorthodox ideas as impermissible heresies. These disagreements also became deeper from an epistemological point of view, as Catholics and Protestants no longer shared a commitment to the same way of thinking about how these differences could be resolved. These theological conflicts, along with the rise of a new way of engaging in natural philosophy, prompted a widespread concern with intellectual methodology: what are the proper sources of human knowledge? Martin Luther, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and John Locke, among many others, gave widely diverging answers to the question. The ancient skeptical texts were among the intellectual resources mustered to come to terms with these transformations.2 Arguments drawn from the ancient skeptics, particularly those having to do with the problem of the criterion—that is, determining which criterion is the correct one to resolve a disagreement and to judge what is true—were used by both sides in the Reformation dispute, and they also shaped the development of epistemology in early modern philosophy.3 More broadly, a skeptical outlook became a prominent thread in European culture, visible not only in the essays of Montaigne and the philosophical writings of Descartes but also, for example, in the plays of Shakespeare and the fiction of Cervantes.4 Modern skepticism is often thought to differ from ancient skepticism in a number of ways. Some scholars have argued that modern skepticism targets

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knowledge, while the ancients directed their arguments against belief. This picture is perhaps best exemplified in Bernard Williams’s characterization of Descartes’s methodological use of doubt as a crucial first step in a project of “Pure Enquiry,” intended to culminate in “a systematic vindication of knowledge” (1978: 20).5 Before beginning that project, Descartes adopts a “provisional moral code,” so that he will not be indecisive in his actions while his judgments are in doubt.6 He then advances skeptical arguments, “not copying the sceptics, who doubt only for the sake of doubting and pretend to be always undecided,” but only “to reach certainty” (CSM I 125; AT VI 29).7 Because these skeptical considerations are being raised only when they will not threaten the ordinary course of life, and because Descartes thinks he has a decisive response to them, the doubts he is willing to entertain can become as radical as he likes.8 What had been a way of life in the ancient world was now merely an intellectual problem to be solved. Something like this attitude, though in a more pessimistic form, is also visible in some of Hume’s remarks about skepticism. In his famous characterization of Berkeley’s arguments as skeptical, he says that this can be seen from the fact “that they admit of no answer and produce no conviction. Their only effect is to cause that momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion, which is the result of skepticism” (Hume EHU XII 122 n. 1). So, far from having any relevance to our behavior, Hume instead holds that “the great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life” (EHU XII 126). To rid himself of his “philosophical melancholy and delirium,” he says, I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour’s amusement, I wou’d return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. (T 1.4.7 9) Although there is an element of truth in this picture, it leaves out much of what is most interesting in modern skepticism. It overlooks the way in which Descartes is concerned not only to build a body of certain knowledge but also to reform the minds of those who follow his method.9 Descartes would not have recognized a clear distinction between the theoretical and the practical, as he thought the experience of certainty itself would have a profoundly transformative effect upon those who follow his course of meditation. The evil demon hypothesis is designed to position his readers precisely so that the first-hand experience of certainty will have the greatest impact. For this reason, the meditator doesn’t simply note the possibility that he is being deceived; rather, he “will suppose” or “pretend” that this is actually happening, so that “the weight of preconceived opinion is counterbalanced” (CSM II 15; AT VII 22). This picture also ignores Hume’s efforts to articulate a way of proceeding in philosophy despite his skeptical worries. They are not abandoned, as idle and practically irrelevant; rather, he says, “A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction” (T 1.4.7 14). We would do well, he thinks, to adopt “a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy,” which brings with

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it “a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner” (EHU XII 129). Skepticism, understood in this way, is not subverted by “the occupations of common life” but rather ought to be inextricably bound up with them. And, finally, this picture misses the wonderful variety of skeptical arguments and perspectives found in other modern philosophers. Although many of them were deeply influenced by the Academics and the Pyrrhonists, there turned out to be no single way of being a modern skeptic. Modern skepticism did not comprise a way of life as Pyrrhonism did; there was no modern Sextus, laying out a common goal and a shared sense of what the implications of the skeptical arguments might be.10 What we have instead is an endlessly fascinating, many-sided dispute by philosophers who were intrigued, worried, and sometimes delighted by human cognitive limitations. This part of the book, then, reflects the full diversity of purpose and perspective in modern skepticism, including essays on both famous and less well-known philosophers of the modern era. If ancient and modern skepticism cannot be distinguished from each other in virtue of their scope or their practical relevance, perhaps the best way to understand their differences is to look at the changing circumstances in which modern skepticism developed. We have already seen two vastly important transformations—the move toward a fully globalized world and the Reformation—but it is also worth noting another broad difference from the ancient world. Skepticism changed in the modern period, in large part, because dogmatism changed. With the rise of the major monotheistic religions, different dogmatic worldviews came to be incompatible rivals with each other. Within Christianity, in particular, salvation was thought to depend on having the correct theological beliefs. This had enormous implications not only for the individual believer but also for the shape of society at large. The consequences of dying outside the faith were terrible enough, Augustine thought, to motivate the use of coercion in matters of religion, which could be justified by Jesus’s use of the parable of the banquet, in which the master of a house tells his servant, “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23). Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary on Augustine’s view is the most direct attempt to push back against this sort of aggressively intolerant dogmatism.11 Bayle also used skeptical arguments to reconsider, in broader terms, the relation between religion and morality. Where we should be able to expect perfection in the moral order, given the nature of God, we find instead depravity and suffering. And where we should be able to expect virtue in the actions of the faithful, and vice in the behavior of the faithless, we instead find virtuous atheists and vicious Christians. Bayle concludes that “it is a mistake to believe that the moral practice of a religion corresponds to the doctrines of its confession of faith.”12 Skeptical arguments were also brought to bear on religion through a consideration of “superstition,” usually in the guise of the ancient pagan religions. One of the chief difficulties in grasping the nature of modern skepticism is that much of this work is intentionally ambiguous. Philosophers, with varying degrees of sincerity, articulated criticism of the irrational nature of paganism and “idolatry,” before remarking that this sort of criticism of course did not apply to “the true religion” (Bayle

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1965: 401). Where skeptical arguments do make contact with Christianity, Bayle says that “one learns of the excellence of faith” and “of the necessity of mistrusting reason and of having recourse to grace” (1965: 435). This apparent move toward fideism can be found in other early modern thinkers as well, including François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Pierre-Daniel Huet, and Johann Georg Hamann.13 Scholars are divided on how to understand Bayle’s attitude toward religion, with some taking the fideist remarks at face value and others arguing that those are intended to deflect unwelcome attention from “libertines” and freethinkers.14 Contemporaries of the early modern skeptics tended to view their fideism with suspicion; as one of them remarked, “That Method of attacking, when one seems to defend, is not new.”15 As the grip of orthodoxy relaxed later in the modern period, the need for a fideistic shield began to lessen.16 Hume’s criticisms of superstition, for example, are less ambiguous than Bayle’s, though even Hume couches some of his arguments in the form of an imagined dialogue set in ancient Athens.17 At the beginning of the early modern period, orthodoxy in religion was intimately bound up with orthodoxy in philosophy.18 Skeptical arguments proved to be a useful tool for undermining the latter as well as the former. Both Gassendi and Descartes used skepticism as a way of circumventing the well-entrenched Aristotelian Scholasticism, though Gassendi had a greater sympathy for skepticism in its own right.19 The usual Scholastic practice was to recount what had been said by earlier philosophers on a particular question before presenting one’s own view. Raising skeptical concerns from the outset allowed Descartes to avoid being needlessly involved in a thousand controversial matters before getting to a fundamentally new way of doing philosophy. For this reason, he begins the Meditations by attacking the Scholastics’ empiricist assumption that “whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses” (CSM II 12; AT VII 18). In doing so, he was able to set aside the entire Scholastic tradition while also posing an epistemological challenge for any potential rival view: if only the Cartesian theory can overcome skepticism, then Cartesianism must be the best of all philosophies. Other philosophers, of course, did not think that Descartes was ultimately successful in meeting this challenge. Gassendi, Huet, Foucher, and Bayle all used skeptical arguments to attack various aspects of Cartesianism.20 Skeptical considerations played a crucial role in modern philosophy, not only negatively by shaping criticism of Scholasticism, but also positively through the development of a new account of perception. Reflection on the Ten Modes of Pyrrhonism convinced many modern philosophers that material objects were not really as they seemed to our senses. Sensible qualities like colors and odors were thought to be mental items that represented objects without resembling them, while other qualities we could perceive, like motion and spatial extension, existed just as they appeared to us. This view, espoused by Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, Locke, and others, proved to be unstable. As Bayle noted, “If the objects of our senses appear colored, hot, cold, odoriferous, and yet they are not so, why can they not appear extended and shaped, in rest and in motion, though they are not so?”21 In this way, the modern account of perception, which Reid called the “common theory of ideas,”22 gave rise both to a physics that fruitfully narrowed its focus to the qualities

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that most easily permit mathematical description and to the philosophical problem of skepticism about the external world. Berkeley and Reid tried to solve that problem by denying, in different ways, that perception is deceptive; where Berkeley rejected the distinction between our ideas and the objects they are purportedly of, Reid argued that we should abandon the theory of ideas altogether and take ourselves to have a direct awareness of mind-independent objects.23 Kant, by contrast, was willing to grant that our perceptions may not give us an unproblematic access to the nature of mind-independent objects as they are in themselves, but he also argued that our awareness of ourselves as determined in time is possible only if we are aware of something relatively permanent in our perceptual experiences, which can serve as a frame of reference for the temporal order of those experiences.24 Skepticism had a significant impact, not only on the work of philosophers who tried to refute it, but also on the development of some of the major philosophical systems of the modern period. Spinoza followed Descartes in placing God at the center of his epistemology, though not by invoking a divine guarantee for our cognitive faculties; rather, the certainty of which we are capable arises only in the relatively rare cases when our ideas can be properly deduced from God’s essence.25 Hume’s efforts at systematic philosophy turn toward naturalism as the only possible way of moving forward, in light of the unanswered skeptical challenges he has raised. Both aspects of his philosophy, the skepticism and the naturalism, manifest his inheritance from ancient skepticism.26 Both Hegel and Nietzsche also took skeptical modes of thought to be essential to philosophical theorizing; where Hegel thought skepticism was itself an integral part of rationality, it is for Nietzsche bound up with the “revaluation of all values.”27 Skepticism continued to be of central importance in the twentieth century. Bertrand Russell, early in his career, attempted to solve the problem of the external world by showing how everyday objects, like trees and books, are logically constructed out of sense-data. Our knowledge of the former is supposed to be secured in virtue of our unproblematic knowledge of the latter.28 Although G. E. Moore also incorporated sense-data into his epistemology, he did not regard that as necessary for a refutation of skepticism. His famous “proof of an external world” presented the skeptical challenge in the starkest possible terms: either you reject the possibility of any sort of knowledge in light of your inability to tell whether you are dreaming, or you acknowledge that you know you have hands and know you are awake. No philosophical argument sufficient to establish the skeptical conclusion could be more certain than your knowledge that you have hands, Moore contends, and so we can confidently reject skepticism.29 Ludwig Wittgenstein thinks that Moore’s way of dealing with the skeptic is implausible because it is unnatural— Moore’s proof fails because he has taken the skeptic’s doubts seriously. But doubts can be raised only in the scope of a “language-game,” where some things are taken for granted. If doubting one thing means accepting another, though, it is impossible for the sort of general skepticism Descartes raises to get a grip on us.30 As should be clear from the rich variety of ways in which it has been defended and rejected, used as an instrument and embraced as an end, skepticism is one of the most important facets of intellectual life in the modern period. Its influence

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can be traced in both the rise of secularism and in some of the religious reactions to rationalist critique. Skeptical arguments have played a role in the development of modern science, and skepticism has profoundly shaped every branch of philosophy, from epistemology and metaphysics to ethics and political philosophy. Encompassing everything from Descartes’s evil demon to Hume’s “just reasoner,” modern skepticism provides an indispensable framework for understanding the past several centuries and the world we inhabit today.

NOTES 1. See “Of Cannibals” in Montaigne (1958); for Bayle’s view of classical Chinese philosophy, see Israel (2006: 644 and 2007: 7–8). See also Hazard (2013: ch. 1). 2. Cicero’s Academica was published with a commentary by Omer Talon in 1547; see Schmitt (1972: 81). Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism were printed by Henri Estienne in 1562; see Popkin (2003: 18). Popkin (2003: 6) also notes that Savonarola encouraged the production of a Latin edition of Sextus’s works in 1494 while in the midst of his disagreement with the Pope, though Sextus did not become widely known until Estienne’s publication of the Outlines. More generally, Popkin (1960, 1979, 1980, and 2003) argues that the revival of skepticism in the early modern period is largely due to the rediscovery of Sextus. See Maia Neto’s chapter on Popkin in this book for an account of the profound impact his work has had on the study of modern skepticism. See Maia Neto (1997 and 2014) and Michael Hickson’s chapter on Huet and Foucher in this book for an argument that the influence of Academic skepticism was greater than has been generally recognized. 3. On the uses of the criterion argument in religious disagreement, see Popkin (2003), ch. 1, 4. Descartes says, in the Second Replies, that he has “reheated this cabbage,” namely, the arguments of the ancient skeptics; see Descartes (CSM II 94). See Fine (2000) on the relation between Descartes’s presentation of skepticism and ancient skepticism. Arnauld famously raised the problem of the “Cartesian Circle,” which is an instance of the problem of the criterion, in the Fourth Objections to Descartes’s Meditations (CSM II 150; AT VII 214). 4. See, e.g., Bell (2002) and Rescher (1993) on Shakespeare and Cervantes, respectively. 5. Cf. Williams (1986: 118). See also Gaukroger (1995: 310–321): “Epistemological doubt questions whether one’s beliefs amount to knowledge, whereas doxastic doubt questions whether one is entitled to hold the beliefs one has” (311). Gaukroger takes doxastic doubt to be a distinctive feature of Pyrrhonism (311), while epistemological doubt is “something new” in Montaigne’s work (315) and characteristic of Cartesian skepticism. See Fine (2000: 195–196) for a survey of others who draw this sort of contrast between ancient and modern skepticism and for a critical response to it. 6. Discourse on the Method, Part Three (CSM I 122; AT VI 22). In the Meditations, he begins the project only after he has arranged for himself “a clear stretch of free time” (CSM II 12; AT VII 18). 7. Diderot expresses a similar thought in his article on the “Pyrrhonic or Skeptical Philosophy” in the Encyclopédie: “Doubt is the first step toward science or truth” (1965: 294). (This passage was censored in the original version.)

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8. Descartes describes the doubts as “exaggerated” (CSM II 61; AT VII 89), “very slight and, so to speak, metaphysical” (CSM II 25; AT VII 36), and ones that “no sane person” would ever have (CSM II 11; AT VII 16). 9. See Rorty (1986) and Hatfield (1986), who both emphasize the “meditational” aspect of Descartes’s work. 10. It is important to keep in mind that ancient skepticism, taken as a whole, was not a single way of life. The revival of Pyrrhonism occurred precisely because there was widespread disagreement in the Academy over the legacy of Carneades and the best way of conducting inquiry; see Brittain’s introduction to Cicero (2006). One of the unstated aims of Sextus’s Outlines may well be to create a consensus about skepticism that did not already exist. 11. See Bayle (2005), Robinson (1931: 72), and John Christian Laursen’s chapter on Bayle in this book. For the intersection of skepticism and political thought in the early modern period more generally, see Laursen and Paganini (2015). 12. “Jupiter,” remark D, in the Historical and Critical Dictionary (1965: 109). Cf. “David,” where Bayle recounts the morally questionable exploits of David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1965: 45), and asks, “is it not better to consider the interests of morality rather than the glory of a particular person?” (1965: 63). For Bayle’s reflections on the problem of evil, see “Manichaeans,” “Paulicians,” and the “Third Clarification” in the Dictionary (1965: 144–153, 166–193, and 399–408). For Bayle’s consideration of atheism, see his Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet (2000) and the “First Clarification” in the Dictionary (1965: 399–408). See also Laursen’s article on Bayle in this book. As in other ways, Hume pushed to a further extreme an attitude found in Bayle—in this case, the extrication of morality from religion; as Don Garrett (2015: 309) notes, Hume’s “account of the basis of morality makes no substantive appeal to religion.” An earlier manifestation of this impulse can be found in the work of Pierre Charron; see Gianni Paganini’s chapter on Charron in Part II of this book. 13. See the chapters in this book by Sylvia Giocanti on La Mothe Le Vayer, by Hickson on Huet, and by Gwen Griffith-Dickson on Hamann. 14. See van der Lugt (2016: 37) for an overview of this dispute in scholarship on Bayle. 15. Durand (1730: 19). Durand says that it was employed by Carneades and Cicero, among others, and he hints that Bayle may also be a practitioner of the method. Cf. Allen (1964: 11), who says that, according to Voetius—the orthodox Dutch theologian who pushed the University of Utrecht to condemn Descartes’s work— “One of their cleverer tricks is to attack an atheist, fully expound his Lucianic remarks, and then, after a tepid confrontation, depart, ‘leaving certain subtle curiosities in the midst of things.’” 16. It should be noted, however, that the skeptical undermining of reason in defense of religion continued to find adherents in later thinkers, including Hamann and Kierkegaard. See Griffith-Dickson’s chapter on Hamann in this book and “Hume and Kierkegaard” in Popkin (1980: 227–236). Popkin (1980: 236) says that Kierkegaard’s religious outlook was significantly influenced by Hume via Hamann’s reflections on Hume’s chapter on Miracles (EHU X). 17. EHU XI 104110. According to Garrett, “Hume saw his age as a battleground between what he called ‘philosophy,’ on the one hand, and ‘superstition,’ on the other” (1997: 7).

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18. Stillman Drake (2001) argues that Galileo’s troubles with the Inquisition were caused by conflict with Aristotelian philosophers, rather than with theologians. See also Voetius’s dispute with Descartes over the challenge Cartesianism poses to “the traditional philosophy”; Descartes recounts this conflict in the “Letter to Father Dinet” (CSM II 393–397; AT VII 596–603). 19. See especially Gassendi’s first published work, Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos, Maia Neto (2014: ch. 3), and Antonia LoLordo’s chapter on Gassendi in this book. On Descartes, see Rorty (1986), Hatfield (1986), and David Cunning’s chapter in this book. 20. See Watson (1987), LoLordo’s chapter in this book on Gassendi, Hickson’s chapter on Huet and Foucher, and Laursen’s chapter on Bayle. See also Bayle’s entry on “Pyrrho,” remark B, in the Dictionary (1965: 194–199). 21. See “Pyrrho,” remark B, in the Dictionary (1965: 197). Bayle attributes the argument to Foucher (fn. 11). See also Watson (1987) and Reed (2015). 22. See Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man II.14 (1872: 298). 23. See Margaret Atherton’s chapter on Berkeley and René Van Woudenberg’s chapter on Reid, both in this book. See also Van Cleve (2015: ch. 3) on Reid’s rejection of the “way of ideas.” 24. See Georges Dicker’s chapter on Kant in this book. 25. See Alison Peterman’s chapter on Spinoza in this book. 26. See Donald Baxter’s chapter in this book for an account of how Hume adapted the sort of passive acquiescence found in Pyrrhonism to his own system. See Garrett (2015: ch. 7) for an interpretation of Hume as embodying a mitigated form of skepticism. This mitigated skepticism, which Hume calls “academical” (EHU XII 129), may derive to some extent from the ancient Academics, given his use of probability as a guide to belief. See Harald Thorsrud’s chapter on Carneades in Part I of this book for an account of how probability may have functioned in a mitigated Academic skepticism. 27. See Dietmar Heidemann’s chapter on Hegel and Andreas Urs Sommer’s chapter on Nietzsche, both in this book. See also Berry (2011) on Nietzsche’s relation to Pyrrhonism. 28. See Peter Graham’s chapter on Russell in this book. 29. See Annalisa Coliva’s chapter on Moore in this book. See also Reed (2015: 74–75). 30. See Michael Williams’s chapter on Wittgenstein in this book. See Sluga (2004) for an interpretation that takes Wittgenstein to be sympathetic in some ways to Pyrrhonism.

REFERENCES Allen, Don Cameron. 1964. Doubt’s Boundless Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. Bayle, Pierre. 1965. Historical and Critical Dictionary, translated by R. Popkin. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Bayle, Pierre. 2000. Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet, edited by R. Bartlett. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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Bayle, Pierre. 2005. A Philosophical Commentary on the Words “Compel Them to Come In, That My House May Be Full,” edited by J. Kilcullen and C. Kukathas. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Bell, Millicent. 2002. Shakespeare’s Tragic Skepticism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Berry, Jessica. 2011. Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cicero. 2006. On Academic Scepticism, translated by C. Brittain. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. II, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, René. 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. I, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diderot, Denis, et al. 1965. Encyclopedia, translated by N. Hoyt and T. Cassirer. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Drake, Stillman. 2001. Galileo: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Durand, Denis. 1730. The Life of Lucilio Vanini, Burnt for Atheism at Thoulouse. London: W. Meadows. Fine, Gail. 2000. “Descartes and Ancient Skepticism: Reheated Cabbage?” Philosophical Review 109: 195–234. Garrett, Don. 1997. Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garrett, Don. 2015. Hume. London: Routledge. Gaukroger, Stephen. 1995. Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hatfield, Gary. 1986. “The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises.” In A. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, 45–79. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hazard, Paul. 2013. The Crisis of the European Mind, translated by J. May. New York: New York Review Books. Hume, David. 1975. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hume, David. 2000. A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by D. Norton and M. Norton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Israel, Jonathan. 2006. Enlightenment Contested. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Israel, Jonathan. 2007. “Admiration of China and Classical Chinese Thought in the Radical Enlightenment (1685-1740),” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 4: 1–25. Laursen, John Christian, and Gianni Paganini (eds.). 2015. Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Maia Neto, José R. 1997. “Academic Skepticism in Early Modern Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58: 199–220. Maia Neto, José R. 2014. Academic Skepticism in Seventeenth-Century French Philosophy: The Charronian Legacy 1601–1662. Dordrecht: Springer. Montaigne, Michel de. 1958. The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated by D. Frame. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Popkin, Richard. 1960. The History of Scepticism: From Erasmus to Descartes. Assen: Van Gorcum. Popkin, Richard. 1979. The History of Scepticism: From Erasmus to Spinoza. Berkeley: University of California Press. Popkin, Richard. 1980. The High Road to Pyrrhonism. Papers collected by R. Watson and J. Force. San Diego: Austin Hill. Popkin, Richard. 2003. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reed, Baron. 2015. “Skepticism and Perception.” In M. Matthen (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception, 66–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reid, Thomas. 1872. The Works of Thomas Reid, edited by W. Hamilton. Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart. Rescher, Nicholas. 1993. “Quixotic Scepticism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 30: 183–184. Robinson, Howard. 1931. Bayle the Sceptic. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. 1986. “The Structure of Descartes’ Meditations.” In A. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, 1–20. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Schmitt, Charles. 1972. Cicero Scepticus. The Hague: Nijhoff. Sluga, Hans. 2004. “Wittgenstein and Pyrrhonism.” In W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Pyrrhonian Skepticism, 99–117. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Cleve, James. 2015. Problems from Reid. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van der Lugt, Mara. 2016. Bayle, Jurieu, and the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watson, Richard. 1987. The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. Williams, Bernard. 1978. Descartes: The Project of Pure Understanding. London: Routledge. Williams, Michael. 1986. “Descartes and the Metaphysics of Doubt.” In A. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, 117–139. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

CHAPTER TWENTY

François de La Mothe Le Vayer1 SYLVIA GIOCANTI

1 INTRODUCTION François de La Mothe Le Vayer (1588–1672) was no doubt a skeptic, since he explicitly claimed to belong to the skeptical philosophical tradition (both Pyrrhonian and Academic) and made frequent use of the adjective “skeptical” in the title of many of his opuscules.2 It is nonetheless legitimate to ask: in what respect was he skeptical? Indeed, the reception of his oeuvre as “libertine”3 raises doubts about the sincerity of his participation in the skeptical philosophy, and particularly about the sincerity of his adherence to fideism, thanks to which skepticism could, despite the uncertainty of reason, prepare for the Christian faith. On the hypothesis that skeptical argumentation is nothing but a rhetorical tool designed to dissimulate subversive theses, skepticism would be only a cover for his libertinage. But in either case (fideism or libertinage), the skepticism of La Mothe Le Vayer would not exist in itself and by itself, but merely as a means to other ends. Thus, to wonder in what respect La Mothe Le Vayer may be skeptical is at the same time to reflect upon the possibility of the autonomy of skepticism within philosophy, as a way of thought that could have value in itself, despite the fact that it needs to feed on dogmatism either to combat it or to serve it.4 In other words, one can recognize with Pascal that “nothing fortifies Pyrrhonism more than that there are some who are not Pyrrhonian,” without thereby subscribing to what he adds immediately afterward: “If all were so, they would be wrong” (Pascal 1962: frag. 33). Reading La Mothe Le Vayer invites us to pose anew the question of the value of skepticism, independently of its polemical anchorage. In Section 2, I will show that reason, which La Mothe Le Vayer reduces to opinion (δόξα), is sanitized in its intellectual activity by the practice of paradox, substituted for the practice of equipollence (ἰσοσθένεια). In Section 3, I will argue that this critical activity introduces a novel relationship between skepticism and orthodoxy, which explains why La Mothe Le Vayer may be considered both a libertine and a skeptic, to the extent that his discourse is used to enjoy the transgression of norms.

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In Section 4, I will claim that the artifices employed to transgress the norms are not however offered as recipes that work mechanically, but rather as expedients that are skeptically utilized in order to calm the soul.

2  THE SKEPTICAL DISORDER OF REASONS La Mothe Le Vayer seems to run counter to the idea peculiar to the Enlightenment that skepticism is intellectually untenable, that doubt can only be provisional and is to be surpassed by knowledge, since he builds up his skepticism on the basis of the insurmountable irresolution of reason. Even if it turned out that La Mothe Le Vayer utilized the skeptical argumentation to dissimulate the audacity of his thought, it would still be clear that his skepticism cannot be entirely feigned, since his philosophy rests upon one of the characteristics of modern skepticism, namely: the observation of the irregularity of the way in which each person reasons (La Mothe Le Vayer [LMLV] 1970e: 744), which is nothing but the effect of the irregularity of reason itself. La Mothe Le Vayer radicalizes Montaigne’s view of the malleability of reason (Essays II, 12, 565),5 for he claims that, as a “shameless courtesan who, hidden under the mask of appearance, shamefully abandons herself to every sort of candidate” (LMLV 1970g: 262), reason is incapable of providing rules. To make a skeptical use of reason consists in using it in accordance with what it is, namely, “a multipurpose toy” (un jouet à toutes mains) (1970g: 262). One must bang reasons together as in a game of balls, not in order to ridicule reason in its dogmatic use—as is the case in Montaigne—but in order to exhibit its inherent uncertainty. Within the context of this “Saturnalia of opinion,” in which everyone amuses himself by changing his mind, the disorder of reasons is a real spectacle, or even a “rhapsody.”6 In this game, the discursive discontinuity is irreducible, since the game is not unified, as in Montaigne, by the project of portraying oneself as gradually constructing the subject’s identity by means of a public reflection on oneself. The author’s position cannot be determined—and in this it is clearly skeptical—for the aim of the text cannot be related to the coherence of his thought, since his ideas remain uncertain. Thus, one would be tempted to say regarding La Mothe Le Vayer what Bayle reports about Carneades in the article of his Dictionary devoted to the latter: [Clitomachus] was never able to discover what were the opinions [sentiments] that Carneades approved of. That was not the result of the obscurity of his expressions, but of the skepticism of this philosopher. He did not find anything certain, he successively held and refuted the same doctrines: that is why one could not discern whether he approved of any of them. (Remark O) In a similar way, La Mothe Le Vayer’s skeptical argumentation does not let the author’s point of view show through, because it is fleetingly discernible, blurred by other points of view adopted successively, before a final retraction. Does his skepticism really make him incapable of making up his mind one way or the other? Or does he avoid explicitly saying what he thinks, out of prudence, like the libertines of his time (on whom see Cavaillé 2002 and Gouverneur 2005)?

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La Mothe Le Vayer may well employ skepticism to protect himself from the accusation of impiety or atheism, thus eluding religious persecution. He will nonetheless remain someone who is both committed to skepticism and a strong spirit (esprit fort), insofar as his disavowing what he writes is coherently based on the discredit of reason, and a fortiori on the discredit of the rationalism that reigns in Cartesianism. Indeed, to accuse reason of poisoning the mind at the very moment in which Cartesianism prevails does not have the same significance as in Montaigne’s time (see Giocanti 2013). Being skeptical for La Mothe Le Vayer is to take the opposing view to Descartes’s most famous claims expressing the confidence one must accord to reason, as the guarantee of the progressive acquisition of all the perfections that man is capable of. It is against the Cartesians that La Mothe Le Vayer writes his Little Skeptical Treatise on This Common Way of Speaking “To Lack Common Sense” (LMLV 1970g), where he declares that reason (or common sense) is not the thing best shared in the world, that reason is not a source of order and the construction of knowledge, but of the dissolution and corruption of the mind in fantasy and madness. In order to find a remedy for rational obstinacy, this plague of the soul that keeps reappearing in reaction to the spontaneous disorder of reasons, the skeptic suggests ceaselessly counterbalancing the claims of reason by means of the practice of equipollence, henceforth conceived of as the practice of paradox that purifies the mind. This means that so-called reason, which acts as good sense or common sense, is on the side of δόξα, and that for the skeptic it is therefore necessary to apply oneself to struggling against it, systematically taking the opposing view to what is affirmed. The claim of independence and the quest for verisimilitude peculiar to the skeptical Academy are thus reused in the context of a combat, deemed equally Herculean, both against the overly strong adherence to dominant opinions and against the fervor of beliefs.7

3  THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF SKEPTICISM IN LIBERTINAGE By the adoption of this rebellious attitude toward the common way, and hence toward the authority of tradition—of everything that is handed down by moral, intellectual, and religious customs—the skepticism of La Mothe Le Vayer clearly differs from that of Montaigne. It is by such an attitude that his skepticism leads La Mothe Le Vayer to libertinage, in a challenge to orthodoxy that constitutes skepticism’s natural development.

3a  The Libertine Practice of Paradox Substituted for the Skeptical Practice of Equipollence The affirmation of reason’s helplessness to hold on firmly and definitively to wellfounded certainties goes hand in hand with the affirmation of its power to challenge unfounded certainties. It is this power that La Mothe Le Vayer deploys when calling into question the attitude of respect toward laws and customs and the authority of tradition in general.

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Such is the main difference between Montaigne and La Mothe Le Vayer in their redeployment of the Tenth Mode of Aenesidemus as preserved by Sextus Empiricus, and particularly in the practical consequences that they both draw from it. Montaigne, favorable to anything that can contribute to preventing reason from ranting, concludes his Essays by stressing the value of the aptitude for falling in with the common model.8 It is never a matter of struggling against the obstinacy of those who strive to remain in the defeated paths of the common way, but rather of using the model of animality and simplicity to correct the excesses of speculative reason. By contrast, for La Mothe Le Vayer the skeptic has the distinctive feature of taking account of opinions other than those handed down by δόξα, that is to say, by the religious and moral orthodoxy. Qua strong spirit who is against the vulgarity of common sense, the skeptic opposes to it a contrary opinion, not in order to readjust such vulgarity with the aim of disciplining himself, but in order to grant full license to his thought, making it take, like the goat, “the isolated paths.” The practice of paradox, substituted for the practice of equipollence, does not therefore have the function of neutralizing opinions via the equipollence of arguments, as is the case in ancient Pyrrhonism or in Montaigne’s skepticism. Its function is rather to promote the reverse of ordinary opinion, for “the healthiest opinions are perhaps—supposing that we possess some health in this respect—the most paradoxical” (LMLV 1970g: 271).9 Thus, whenever La Mothe Le Vayer compares pagan rites (which in his time have become extraordinary and illicit) with Christian rites (customary and licit), he does so in favor of the former, if only because the latter are considered without regard for their differences in a way that makes them lose their exclusiveness. Because of this, it is not only completely questionable, as Maia Neto (1995: 126) has remarked, to claim that La Mothe Le Vayer is the representative of a Christian Pyrrhonism, but it is also possible to advance the view that he covertly devotes himself to contesting the validity of Christianity, despite the fideist remarks that, as Popkin (1995: 137) has noted, permeate all of his works.

3b  A Singular Conjunction between Skeptical Fideism and Libertine Disrespect of the Common Way Such claims of obedience to Christianity do not actually have any credibility. But the reason is not only that, having abandoned every rational criterion, it is not possible to place Christianity beyond the scope of doubt. This argument is too weak to call into question the sincerity of La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism, for, as Popkin (1995: 142–143) has argued, given that one could raise the suspicion of hypocrisy against any skeptic whatsoever, there is no more reason for suspecting La Mothe Le Vayer than any other skeptic. However, as Paganini (2008: 93–94, 99) has rightly remarked, in the second part of On the Virtue of Pagans devoted to “Pyrrho and the skeptical sect” (1970f: 194–196), La Mothe Le Vayer himself denies any faith implicit in Pyrrho and condemns him to damnation on the grounds that, unlike the other pagan philosophers, this leader of the skeptical school has placed doubt at the heart of his philosophy. On this specific point, La Mothe Le Vayer adopts the same position as Bayle, according to which “faith does not accept the Academic spirit: it wants that

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we deny, or that we affirm” (Historical and Critical Dictionary, art. “Chrysippus,” remark G).10 Religion requires an invariability that is impossible to attain without grace and that is incompatible with doubt. Now, in La Mothe Le Vayer’s skeptical anthropology, doubt is inevitable on account of the human inconstancy that is the spontaneous manifestation of the unbelief of the mind (see especially LMLV 1970d: 605). One should then conclude that skepticism leads to irreligion, and not, as Popkin believes, that it constitutes an excellent preparation for Christianity. Admittedly, La Mothe Le Vayer explicitly makes this latter claim when he presents his skepticism throughout his work. But one may wonder—taking as an indication of an attitude of dissimulation the abovementioned text on Pyrrho—if the link he establishes between skepticism and preparation for faith is sincere, if the skeptical position itself is not merely a posture that makes it possible to attack religion in an indirect way. La Mothe Le Vayer would then be neither skeptical nor Christian, but libertine. But one will retort that La Mothe Le Vayer strives to make an exception for his own form of skepticism insofar as it is “circumcised,” that is, purified because Christianized. The question is then once again: what is the credibility of this pious exception? There is a criterion that makes it possible to resolve the dispute about the credibility of La Mothe Le Vayer’s fideism in comparison with that of Montaigne, and a fortiori that of Pascal: whether one finds in him an attitude of respect toward the authority of tradition, an injunction to obey the laws and customs of one’s country. The skepticism of La Mothe Le Vayer is, in a manner quite singular in the skeptical tradition, inseparable from a monolithic criticism of customs, which are denounced as tyrannical.11 It is from this criticism that results a disrespectful treatment of religious authority. For instance, in the dialogue On Divinity, La Mothe Le Vayer defends, in the tradition of Bacon, atheism’s superiority over superstition. And this is not in favor of the Christian religion, since he adds on the same page (LMLV 1988e: 339), following Charron, that “all religions are foreign and horrible to common sense,”12 which seems to warrant the equation of all religions with the phenomenon of superstition (see Paganini 2008: 81). In this text, Christianity does not therefore seem to be an exception nor to be susceptible, as orthodoxy requires, of being in agreement with common sense, which is nonetheless fundamental in the adherence to Christianity as a preamble to faith (Maia Neto 1995: 131–132). Certainly, the claims against religion are caught in the skeptical equipollence, which, as already noted, is transformed in La Mothe Le Vayer into the practice of paradox. The reason for such a transformation is to better display the other side of the orthodox position, with a subversive aim, since by valuing the reverse of the opinion one produces a disproportion between the orthodox theses (weakened because agreed) and the heterodox ones (whose critical impact is much more striking). La Mothe Le Vayer takes pleasure in the criticism of opinions received with reverence and systematically devalues the attitude of submission that is inseparable from devotion and piety. He praises in blasphemous terms what he calls “La Divine Sceptique,” that is, the divine skeptical philosophy, in that it leads, following the “decalogue” (i.e., the Ten Modes) of “Divine Sextus” (LMLV 1988c: 83), to the ecstatic rapture of the mind of the character of Télamon, suddenly converted to beatitude by means of doubt (LMLV 1988d: 301–302).

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What is at issue here is not a lack of differentiation between religions that are distinct (viz., the pagan and the Christian), but rather a competition between the Christian religion and skepticism in favor of the latter. For several times La Mothe Le Vayer cedes exclusively to the skeptical philosophy the merits and satisfactions normally provided by the Christian religion (see LMLV 1988b: 61–62).13 His skepticism, insofar as it accomplishes the desire to free oneself from the rules that are authoritative, becomes an enterprise of subversion of values, an enterprise that is incompatible not only with Christian apologetics (skeptical fideism), but with a sincere profession of faith, by which he tells us one must not be duped.14 But how could one be, since far from making a virtue of obedience to the laws and customs of his country, La Mothe Le Vayer lays down a challenge to the tyrannical authority of the latter, in the context of his skeptical escapades whose unpredictable and capricious character he defends?

3c  The Skeptical Subversion of Norms as a Condition of the Libertine’s Enjoyment Contrary to what Popkin (1995: 138) maintains, La Mothe Le Vayer is not an “insipid Montaigne.” Rather, he would be a “scandalous Montaigne,” who realizes the libertine (deviant) potentialities of skepticism, by means of an unprecedented redeployment of its content, out of reach from what he calls, in the same terms as Charron (1986: 261), “the universal contagion” or “spiritual contamination” of the crowd (LMLV 1988e: 303). Even if obedience to the Christian tradition may have a value for the herd, it is not convenient to respect it in one’s heart, but rather to contest its validity and to conform to it only to “keep up appearances,” the function of religion being “to offer a rational explanation of moral phenomena” (LMLV 1988e: 330–331). The flexibility required in La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism, qua ethical virtue that makes it possible to adapt to the diversity of phenomena (LMLV 1988f: 365), does not therefore have the same sense as in Montaigne, who praises the sociability of a “soul of diverse stages that knows both to tense up and to dismantle itself ” (Essays III, 3, 821). The flexibility of the soul in La Mothe Le Vayer is conceived of in the context of “skeptical wisdom”—which is opposed to divine wisdom—and is defined as “wandering prudence” that “is proud of changing at any moment and of turning the sail according to the wind” (1970e: 735). To be flexible means, then, to gently accommodate oneself to all the customs introduced by mores (LMLV 1988d: 273), which also means to try one’s hand at all practices, including the most debauched, after having freed oneself from every scruple. It is not a matter, as in Montaigne, of accepting one’s natural irresolution and displaying a plasticity of both mind and body in the face of social constraints that require one to adapt oneself. It is rather a matter of freeing oneself from these constraints, of enjoying the transgression of the established order, and of spreading a perfume of scandal, initiating oneself without shame into those practices that are judged to be the most extravagant and the most shameful, on the pretext that one finds examples of them in nature (see LMLV 1988c and 1997).15

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La Mothe Le Vayer relates then the enjoyment promised by the skeptical discourse to a diversification of mores that contravenes that which is licit. He thus extends doubt to cultural norms—not only to their intrinsic value but also to the respect that is due to them—whereas in Montaigne doubt bore only on the natural limits. By so doing, not only does he subvert social norms and incite the transgression of their prohibitions, but he also establishes the transgression of social conformism as a condition of personal flourishing. The game of reason—“shameless courtesan who, hidden under the mask of appearance, shamefully abandons herself to every sort of candidate”—in which La Mothe Le Vayer indulges proves then to be more audacious than that of the “crooked, lame and wiggling” (Essays II, 12, 565) reason of Montaigne (and this despite the image associated with sexual relations with cripples at Essays III, 11), to the extent that it accomplishes skepticism in libertinage. If it is always a matter of learning how to use reason according to itself, of acquiring “the self-sufficiency to know how to circumvent it,” as Montaigne said (Essays II, 12, 565), it is remarkable that the attitude of intellectual disobedience, related to a moral anti-conformism, supposes a sophisticated and even cunning use of reason. It is now necessary to clarify in what respect La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism, in its strictly discursive dimension, consists in according ethical and therapeutic virtues to a sophistical use of reason.

4  THE THERAPEUTIC VIRTUES OF THE SKEPTICAL DISCOURSE Contrary to the point of view of apologists who take the sole aim of libertine discourse to be justifying a life of debauchery motivated by the passions alone, La Mothe Le Vayer’s skeptical point of view on mores shows the pleasure one finds in transgressing the proprieties within discourse above all else. This linguistic enjoyment rests upon a “poietic” (productive) conception of reason: reason is a protean faculty that molds its discourses in a hundred different ways, following its imaginative representations, as the potter models his work.16 Reason so conceived is not a faculty that naturally leads us to knowledge of the truth, but an instrument that has “more than one trick up its sleeve” as regards fantasizing and artifice, so as to “smoke out the mind.” And the first to be interested in this conjuring, in the moral domain, is the skeptic himself, who deploys his ingenuity to deceive himself (LMLV 1970c: 534). For him, to actualize the mind’s potentialities, following a penchant that leads us to lying, means to employ artifice (LMLV 1970i: 538). Like every man, the skeptic is a “philomyth” animal, that is, a lover of fables (LMLV 1970c: 539). In this respect, it should be noted that the Dialogues Made in Imitation of the Ancients are presented as fables (LMLV 1988a: 14). Unlike the other men, the skeptic dares prefer lying over truth (LMLV 1970b: 478–479) and allows himself to practice a fabulating art in the hope of experiencing pleasure or at least of overcoming anxiety. The human condition is, according to La Mothe Le Vayer, so calamitous that, without this potion of error and ignorance that nature makes us drink at birth, no

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one would resist the temptation to commit suicide (LMLV 1970b: 393, 409). But this observation of human misery, apparently very Augustinian, is not an invitation to search for the truth, without which we could not live at rest. For in La Mothe Le Vayer the restriction of the skeptical investigation to what is verisimilar has no other function than to guarantee the possibility of recanting. To abide by what is verisimilar does not mean to confine oneself to an adequate vision of what is true, but to adopt a point of view that would always make it possible to adopt another one that is more joyful (LMLV 1970g: 268). This is why, following an orientation diametrically opposed to that of Pascal, La Mothe Le Vayer authorizes us to lie to ourselves, trying to approach in the mode of mockery that which would afflict us if we looked at it close up. To laugh with Democritus at the miserable condition of man transfigures this condition in a way that may prove to be “salutary” for the mind’s health, for its rest. Thus, far from fighting lying and error, as did Montaigne (who values telling the truth as sincerity that authenticates his own discourse), La Mothe Le Vayer incites us to deceive ourselves and to develop the artifices that make it possible. Admittedly, Montaigne too makes use of diversion and of the powers of fantasizing of the mind (Essays III, 4), taking advantage of a deceptive reason that indistinctively tells the truth and lies (Essays II, 12, 565). But he does not go so far as to claim that reason must be employed to deceive ourselves insofar as it has more grace in lying than in telling the truth, as La Mothe Le Vayer (1970g: 262) maintains. In this respect, La Mothe Le Vayer’s skeptical ethics is not similar to the libertine naturalism of Vanini or Charron.17 Artifice is at the heart of the devices used with therapeutic aims, in order to cure the soul of the grief that often has no attributable cause, human life appearing as a chronic illness in the eyes of a mind that is compared to a “debauched stomach” (LMLV 1970c: 530). This is why it does not suffice, as in the Pyrrhonian tradition, to get rid of dogmatic opinions in order to, through the suspension of assent, recover from the quartan fever that accompanies melancholy and attain the state of undisturbedness (ἀταραξία). This purge of opinions that had such a beneficial effect on Henri Estienne, the translator of Sextus, would leave the desolate mind of someone like La Mothe Le Vayer without something to occupy itself. Such a purge would abandon him to the vacuity of other thoughts, which could turn out to be just as corrosive, since the mind is capable of turning honey into venom, of converting pleasure into sadness, under the influence of its representations. It is then the creative freedom of fantasy, productive of reasonings likened to ingenious fables, that becomes the only possible source of consolation in the context of the irrational (because imaginative) working of the mind. Because the notions of good and evil are psychological, that is to say, relative to the mind that examines them, this fantastical treatment of the emotions—within which one learns to content oneself with imaginary objects—seems more suitable than their rationalist treatment. Hence, the discourses apparently borrowed from the Stoic and Epicurean traditions are often less taken over by La Mothe Le Vayer than skeptically distorted. One can thus provide part of a reply to the question posed at the outset of this chapter: La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism enjoys a certain autonomy within

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philosophy, if only because it claims to have come up with remedies capable of relieving the misfortunes of the human soul—specific remedies that draw on the inventive potentialities of the mind. In this regard, Paganini (2008: 77) is right in insisting on the “positive potentialities” of La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism. The development of the Tenth Mode as expounded in Sextus represents the opportunity to divert the mind from its grief, to extract it from the upsetting disparity of its reasonings, so as to make it admire the diversity of the world (even of the worlds) through the spectacle of the ἀνωμαλία (irregularity) of phenomena, thus arousing enthusiasm. When he manages to delight in the wonders of nature or of human societies, La Mothe Le Vayer does not hide the pleasure he experiences in opening his mind to a multitude of ways of thinking, far from common prejudices (Paganini 2008: 70). But this way of looking at things results from an effort of diversion. La Mothe Le Vayer’s skeptic is also a bilious spirit, who suffers from a wandering freedom that leads him to take a disenchanted and pessimistic view of men (whose obstinacy and injustice are everywhere criticized), of himself (who does not tolerate the disparity of his reasonings and his moods), of the world (the stage where the pitfalls of fortune are performed), and of human life (which he finds it difficult not to curse). La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism has then both positive and negative potentialities. And one should not be surprised: insofar as things are such as we represent them, they are also at the mercy of these representations.18 According to an image that La Mothe Le Vayer borrows from Montaigne (Essays II, 12, 581), each thing is like a pot with two handles, which one can take by either the right or the left (LMLV 1670: 43). From a logical point of view, that refers to the structure of equipollence, and from an empirical point of view, that refers to the combination of pleasure and displeasure in all things. It follows that, despite the therapeutic use of reason (which is likened to the imagination) in La Mothe Le Vayer’s skeptical discourse, ἀταραξία, which remains the pursued aim, is not within easy reach and is by no means guaranteed by the adoption of the skeptical stance, nor by the reading of texts written from the skeptical perspective. The skeptic, more than any other philosopher, admits that his thought is subject to conditions he does not control and that it is always possible for him to succumb to the irrationality of the working of his mind. He therefore accepts that he is not able to really enjoy the rest associated with the adoption of a given position. Because of this, La Mothe Le Vayer’s writings stand out by an awkward mode of enunciation, which nonetheless manages, more or less constantly, to put to the test the intellectual, moral, and religious orthodoxy of his time. This certainly provokes perplexity in the reader. Thus, even if it frees us from the troubles caused by opinion, leading us to libertinage, La Mothe Le Vayer’s skepticism remains a genuine, non-feigned skepticism. It is so not because it leads to ἀταραξία, but paradoxically (with respect to the Pyrrhonian tradition) because it expresses, by means of its manner of exposition, an intellectual and moral discomfort that reveals a way of thinking that takes no position, a discomfort that affects both the author and the reader.

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NOTES 1. This chapter has been translated from the French by Diego Machuca. 2. These opuscules include On the Skeptical Philosophy, The Skeptical Banquet, Academic Homilies, Discourse to Show that the Doubts of the Skeptical Philosophy Are of Great Use in the Sciences, Skeptical Discourse on Music, Little Skeptical Treatise on This Common Way of Speaking “To Lack Common Sense,” Skeptical Problems, Skeptical Doubt, and Skeptical Soliloquies. 3. One did not have to wait until the twentieth century (Pintard 1983), for Pierre Bayle attests to this reception in the article “Le Vayer” of his Historical and Critical Dictionary (Bayle 1740) when he writes: “One suspects that he did not have any religion” (Remark B). 4. In La Mothe Le Vayer (1970g: 269–270), Samson, a “perfect figure of the skeptical philosophy,” after having killed the lion, feeds on the honey he finds in its mouth. The skeptic, then, feeds on the dogmatism he combats. But he is at the service of dogmatism when he takes up a discourse in line with the apostolic message of Saint Paul (LMLV 1988e: 308). 5. I cite Montaigne’s Essays by book, chapter, and page number in the standard VilleySaulnier edition (Montaigne 1992). 6. On the “Saturnalia of opinion,” see La Mothe Le Vayer (1988d: 365); and on rhapsody, see the “Author’s Letter” in La Mothe Le Vayer (1988a: 201). 7. The claim of independence of the skeptical Academy (Acad. II 8) and the importance of verisimilitude in the conduct of life are pointed out by La Mothe Le Vayer in his general presentation of Pyrrhonism (1970f: 192–194) and taken over on his own account especially in La Mothe Le Vayer (1970g: 268). He explicitly refers to the Herculean effort made by Carneades to combat the tendency to judge rashly (Acad. II 108) in La Mothe Le Vayer (1970h: 326). 8. Essays III, 13, 1116: “The most beautiful lives are, in my opinion, those that fall in with the common and human model, with order, but also without miracle and without extravagance.” Cf. Essays II, 12, 558–559: “All the extravagant ways anger me. … And there is no beast to which blinders are more justly to be given to keep its vision submissive and restrained in front of its steps, and to guard it from wandering here and there.” 9. In the “Author’s Letter” in La Mothe Le Vayer (1988a: 14), he announces that in this work one will find nearly nothing but paradoxes. 10. For a more general comparison between Bayle and La Mothe Le Vayer, see Giocanti (2004: 243–263). 11. In the “Author’s Letter” in La Mothe Le Vayer (1988a: 14–15), he denounces “the tyrannical authority of time, and of the customs that the [opinions of the laypeople] have established.” Unlike Montaigne (Essays III, 13, 1080), he does not praise the metamorphic power of custom, which is compared to the beverage of Circe. La Mothe Le Vayer regards one’s flexibility toward custom as an escape from the authority of the dominant customs. 12. In relation to this reference to common sense, it should be noted that, although in On Divinity La Mothe Le Vayer takes common sense as a criterion of evaluation in order to attack religion, he criticizes common sense itself in La Mothe Le

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Vayer (1970g). On his ambiguous attitude toward common sense, see Giocanti (1996: 27–51). 13. In La Mothe Le Vayer (1970g: 265), the skeptical philosophy is presented, adapting an Augustinian slogan, as “the sole port of salvation for a mind that loves calm.” 14. In La Mothe Le Vayer (1970h: 328) one reads: “That he [the reader] not believe me unchanged by the opinions I may have, or pretend to have.” 15. As Cavaillé (1995: 135 n.320) remarks, this naturalistic argumentation, used for instance in La Mothe Le Vayer (1988c: 102–103) in favor of incest, might find its source of inspiration in Vanini (1616: 326–327). 16. On the mind as “another Proteus,” see La Mothe La Vayer (1970d: 666); and on the mind as “potter,” see La Mothe Le Vayer (1970i: 504). 17. See Gouverneur (2005: 276–290) on “fabulation as imaginary evasion” in La Mothe Le Vayer, “far from Charron’s naturalism.” 18. “Man is the measure of all things, which become such as he represents them to himself ” (LMLV 1970c: 530).

REFERENCES Bayle, Pierre. 1740. Dictionnaire historique et critique. 4 vols. Amsterdam: P. Brunel et al. Cavaillé, Jean-Pierre. 2002. Dis/simulations. Cesare Vanini, François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé, Louis Machon, Torquato Acetto. Religion, morale et politique au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Champion. Charron, Pierre. 1986. De la sagesse. Paris: Fayard. Giocanti, Sylvia. 1996. “La perte du sens commun dans l’œuvre de La Mothe Le Vayer.” In A. McKenna and P. F. Moreau (eds.), Libertinage et philosophie au XVIIe siècle, 27–51. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne. Giocanti, Sylvia. 2001. Penser l’irrésolution. Montaigne, Pascal, La Mothe Le Vayer. Trois itinéraires sceptiques. Paris: Champion. Giocanti, Sylvia. 2004. “Bayle et La Mothe Le Vayer.” In A. McKenna and G. Paganini (eds.), Pierre Bayle dans la République des Lettres, Philosophie, religion, critique, 243– 263. Paris: Champion. Giocanti, Sylvia. 2010. “Le scepticisme instrument de transgression du licite. Le cas de La Mothe Le Vayer.” In A. McKenna and P. F. Moreau (ed.), Le libertinage est-il une catégorie philosophique?, 83–100. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de SaintEtienne. Giocanti, Sylvia. 2013. “La Mothe Le Vayer: un anti-cartésien?” In D. Kolesnik-Antoine (ed.), Qu’est-ce qu’être cartésien?, 77–94. Lyon: ENS Editions. Gouverneur, Sophie. 2005. Prudence et subversion libertine. La critique de la raison d’Etat chez François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé et Samuel Sorbière. Paris: Champion La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1670. Soliloques sceptiques. Paris: Billaine. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970a. Œuvres, 2 vols. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. (This edition corresponds to the edition of Louis Billaine [Paris, 1669] as it was republished by Michel Groell [Dresde, 1756].)

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La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970b. “Opuscules ou Petits Traités.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. I, 316–492. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, “Prose Chagrine.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. I, 505–542. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970d. “Discours ou homilies académiques.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. I, 572–681. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970e. “La promenade en neuf dialogues.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. I, 690–758. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970f. “De la vertu des payens.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. II, 119–219. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970g. “Petit traité sceptique sur cette commune façon de penser ‘n’avoir pas le sens commun’.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. II, 251–272. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970h. “Doute sceptique.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. II, 306–328. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1970i. “Petits traités en forme de Lettres écrites à diverses personnes studieuses.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Œuvres, vol. II, 341–749. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1988a. Dialogues faits à l’imitation des Anciens. Paris: Fayard. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1988b. “De la philosophie sceptique.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Dialogues faits à l’imitation des Anciens, 17–62. Paris: Fayard. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1988c. “Le Banquet sceptique.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Dialogues faits à l’imitation des Anciens, 63–113. Paris: Fayard. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1988d. “De l’ignorance louable.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Dialogues faits à l’imitation des Anciens, 209–302. Paris: Fayard. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1988e. “De la divinité.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Dialogues faits à l’imitation des Anciens, 303–352. Paris: Fayard. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1988f. “De l’opiniâtreté.” In François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Dialogues faits à l’imitation des Anciens, 353–386. Paris: Fayard. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1997. L’Hexameron rustique. Paris: Zanzibar. Maia Neto, José. 1995. The Christianization of Pyrrhonism. Scepticism and faith in Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Shestov. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Montaigne, Michel de. 1992. Essais. Paris: PUF. Paganini, Gianni. 2008. Skepsis. Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme: Montaigne, Le Vayer, Campanella, Hobbes, Descartes, Bayle. Paris: Vrin. Paganini, Gianni, Miguel Benitez, and James Dybikowski. (eds.). 2002. Scepticism, Clandestinity and Free-Thinking. Paris: Champion. Pascal, Blaise. 1962. Pensées, ed. Lafuma. Paris: Du Seuil. Pintard, René. 1983. Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Génève: Slatkine. (First published in 1943.) Popkin, Richard. 1995. Histoire du scepticisme d’Erasme à Spinoza. Paris: PUF. Vanini, Giulio Cesare. 1616. Les Arcanes admirables de la Nature, Reine et Déesse des mortels. Paris: Adrien Périer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Gassendi on Skepticism ANTONIA LOLORDO

1 INTRODUCTION In note B of his Dictionary article on Pyrrho, Pierre Bayle remarked that before Gassendi, one hardly knew the name of Sextus Empiricus in our schools. The methods he had proposed so subtly for bringing about suspense of judgment were not less known than the Terra Australis, when Gassendi gave us an abridgement of it, which opened our eyes. . . . Now no good philosopher any longer doubts that the skeptics were right to maintain that the qualities of bodies that strike our senses are only appearances. (Popkin 1991: 197) This is—to put it charitably—an exaggeration.1 However, Gassendi did do a great deal to make skepticism better known. One factor was his use of skeptical techniques to attack rival systems, as in his Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos and his Objections and Counter-Objections to Descartes’s Meditations (jointly, the Disquisitio Metaphysica). Another is the detailed account of ancient skepticism provided in his magnum opus, the posthumous Syntagma Philosophicum.2 In the Exercitationes, his first work, Gassendi portrays himself as a skeptic. But by the time of the Syntagma, he disavows that label, counting himself instead among those who hold that some truth can be found and that “a certain middle way between the skeptics . . . and the dogmatists should be followed” (1.79b). This via media is sometimes called “mitigated skepticism” or “constructive skepticism,” following Popkin 1979, but the term should not mislead us. The via media of the Syntagma is not a form of skepticism at all, but an epistemology that insists on three things. First, the scope of our knowledge is limited: it cannot reach all the way to the innermost nature of things. Second, knowledge does not require absolute certainty but only probability or verisimilitude. And third, knowledge does not require a justification that is accessible to the knower. When there is no real disagreement, some things count as knowledge without any such justification. Gassendi’s interest in ancient skepticism is epistemological and methodological. He is aware that skepticism originally had an ethical dimension. But this is not something he cares much about. His long discussion of ancient skepticism in the

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Syntagma concludes with the brief remark that “how the skeptics have attained their end—ataraxia, an imperturbable state of mind—by this withholding of assent can be passed over at this point” (1.76b).3 Nowhere else in his work, as far as I know, does the ethical function of suspension of judgment receive any real discussion.4

2  GASSENDI’S HISTORY OF SKEPTICISM Gassendi was familiar with the Pyrrhonian tradition from early on. One of his earliest surviving letters explains that in his youth, his “mind was not yet . . . thoroughly Pyrrhonist” but that “only one thing, experience, was lacking to make [him] an imitator of Sextus Empiricus” (to Henri du Faur de Pibrac, April 8, 1621: 6.1b). The sources he mentions are Cicero, Charron, and Montaigne. In the Preface to his first published work, the 1624 Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos,5 Gassendi explains that although he studied the views of all the various sects of philosophers, “none of them ever pleased [him] like the akatalepsia praised by the Academics and Pyrrhoneans” (3.99). Thus, he explains, During the six years I devoted to the task of teaching philosophy, especially Aristotelean philosophy, at the University of Aix, I always made sure that my students would be able to defend Aristotle properly. But as an appendix to the course I also taught the claims that totally undercut Aristotelean dogmas. . . . In this way my students . . . saw that no proposition or opinion is so thoroughly accepted or plausible that its contrary cannot be shown to be equally probable or even more probable. (3.100) Most of the sources he lists are modern: Juan Luis Vives, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Petrus Ramus, Charron again (3.99), and Cicero (3.100).6 But it’s clear, especially in Book II, that by this point Gassendi was also familiar with two important ancient sources: Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Book IX of Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers, the Life of Pyrrho. In both the Exercitationes and the Syntagma, Gassendi’s presentation of the Ten Modes of suspension of judgment follows Outlines of Pyrrhonism closely.7 In the Syntagma—where Gassendi is unusually careful (by seventeenth-century standards) about citing his sources—he also refers to the Life of Pyrrho repeatedly. But he cites a number of other ancient sources as well: Sextus’s Against the Logicians and Against the Grammarians; Cicero, especially his Academica; Augustine’s Contra Academicos; Seneca’s Letters; and many others. The Syntagma’s Logic begins with a history of logic that is designed to make the need for Gassendi’s own system clear. Because the goal of logic is the truth, Gassendi centers his history around disagreements over the criterion of truth. Much of this history deals with the philosophers who deny the existence of a criterion and insist that nothing is known (1.69b). Gassendi emphasizes that the criterion in question is supposed to be one “which is subject to no falsity and which thus gives rise to certain and infallible knowledge” (1.70a). This is parasitic on the way the skeptics’ opponents think of the criterion. If Descartes or the Aristotelians, for instance, set

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a very high bar for knowledge—absolute certainty—then the skeptic need only cast doubt on our ability to achieve absolute certainty. One surprising feature of Gassendi’s history of skepticism is the sheer number of people it includes. The obvious suspects are there: Pyrrho and his followers, and those “who [Sextus] Empiricus thought hardly differed from the Skeptics, namely the Academics” (1.72b).8 But it also includes Democritus, Empedocles, Euripides, Heraclitus, Hippocrates, Homer, Philo, Socrates, Xenophanes, Zeno of Elea, and more. One reason Gassendi includes such a dizzying list of figures is that he is always concerned to emphasize the diversity of non-Aristotelian traditions. But a second, more important one is that he has simply taken over much of the list from the Life of Pyrrho (1.70a–1.71b) and Against the Logicians (1.71b–1.72b).

3  THE TEN MODES Gassendi’s skeptical arguments rely heavily on the Ten Modes. In the Exercitationes, he uses familiar examples to show that “the judgments of different men concerning the things that are perceived by the senses are very different” (3.197b) and hence that “men do not know the inner natures of things” (3.203a). In the Syntagma, he explains that “one and the same thing can appear in different ways to different animals and different men, and even to one and the same man according to his various senses and his various affections (which are the first four Modes)” (1.84a). Moreover, Gassendi argues, this disagreement cannot be resolved. Consider an example. The same wine tastes sweet to some men and bitter to others (3.198a ff). How can we decide whose taste constitutes the standard? We cannot say that the way wine tastes to a healthy man is the way it really is, because healthy men disagree. We cannot say that the way wine tastes to most people is the way it really is, because there’s no clear majority verdict and no reason a mere majority should constitute the standard. And so on (3.198ff). If one considers such cases, Gassendi thinks, one will find oneself withholding assent from any opinion about the wine’s inner nature. This, Gassendi makes clear, is compatible with continuing to assent to the appearances: When [the skeptics] say that nothing can be known with certainty or that no Criterion exists, they are not talking about what things appear to be and what is manifested through the senses . . . but about what things are in themselves. (1.70a) For: If it is asked whether snow is white, honey sweet, fire hot, [the skeptics] will respond that it appears so to them, and they do not say that their vision perceives another color than white in snow or that their tongue perceives another taste than sweet in honey or that their hand perceives another quality than heat in fire. But because these are only external adjuncts and things that strike the senses, if it’s asked whether the things themselves, secundum se and from their innermost nature, are really the way they appear to be . . . this is what they will stick at. (1.13b)

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The disagreement between various men about the taste of wine is not a dispute over the contents of their minds. Gassendian appearances are far closer to what the ancient skeptics had in mind than to Cartesian knowledge of one’s own subjective mental states. Knowledge of the appearances includes not only claims like the claim that I am now seated rather than standing or that wine appears sweet to me, but also mathematical knowledge: Whatever certainty and evidentness there is in the discipline of mathematics, it pertains to appearances and in no way to the true causes or inner natures of things. However, I add that through mathematics, I can become more certain that, for example, the earth is round. For this can be apparent through the eclipses of the moon and the variation in the height of the poles. But why is the earth round? What is its true nature? . . . Why does it rest motionless in the centre, or if it moves, what power moves it?9 As soon as you go beyond those things which are apparent and fall under sense and experience, to inquire into things further within, both the discipline of mathematics and all other disciplines are surrounded entirely by darkness. (3.209a) Moreover, the appearances include not only what is apparent to us now but also what may become apparent later. For even in the Exercitationes Gassendi is willing to allow that we can infer to things beyond the appearances. Such inferences will not get us all the way to the true natures of things: If you say that the intellect can infer from the things that happen in experience or appear to the senses to other, much more hidden things, I will reply that nevertheless, it can proceed no farther by reasoning than to things which may again be experienced or things of which some appearance can be exhibited. But what we deny is that we can penetrate all the way to the inner natures of things. (3.207a–b) However, although Gassendi allows more knowledge than one might initially suspect, the knowledge he allows is still far more limited than Aristotelian scientia. It differs in two other ways as well.10 It lacks the absolute certainty characteristic of Aristotelian scientia, as Gassendi explains in an attempt to avoid the charge of self-refutation. The kind of knowledge the skeptic claims to have is not entirely certain or evident and does not derive from some Aristotelian cause or demonstration. But nevertheless, it does not lack its own certainty and evidentness, and hence probability, that relies on very apparent inferences and reasons that can restrain the intellect from assenting to the proposition that there is Aristotelian knowledge. So use the word “opinion” or any other term you like, this doesn’t really matter. For we say “to have an opinion” and “to know” indifferently, as the manner of speech of the vulgar shows. And if you attend properly, scientia and opinion can be considered synonyms. And one can say “certain scientia” and “certain opinion” as well as “weak [imbecillam] scientia,” and “weak opinion.” (3.206a)11 The certainty in question here is simultaneously psychological and epistemological.

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Finally, the justificatory structure of Gassendian probability differs from that of Aristotelian scientia or, for that matter, Cartesian clear and distinct perception. Gassendian knowledge need not be deduced from first principles, and it need not derive from a source whose epistemic bona fides we have established. It is enough, as we’ll see below, if there is no actual disagreement to provide a reason for doubt.

4  THE AGRIPPAN TRILEMMA Gassendi does recognize the existence of skeptical tropes beyond the Ten Modes. Near the end of his history of skepticism, he remarks: When Pyrrhonism was revived, some other Modes were added, but it is more than enough to recount the three principal ones. The first is what can be called regressus in infinitum, where what has been put forward to confirm something is said to require confirmation by another thing, and that again by another, so that no way out can be found. The second is diallelus . . . where it is shown that someone who is giving a proof asserts one thing in order to establish a second, and asserts the second in order to establish the first. . . . The last is hypothetical, or from supposition, where, after something has been supposed, someone asserts that he is permitted to make the contrary supposition. (1.75b) Using these modes again allows the skeptics to say that there is no criterion (1.75b). Gassendi’s interest in the Agrippan trilemma is slight in comparison to his interest in the Ten Modes. This fact requires some explanation. It’s easy to see why the Ten Modes are dominant in the Exercitationes, which attacks knowledge conceived of as Aristotelian scientia: “certain and evident cognition of some thing that comes from knowledge of a necessary cause or a demonstration” (3.192b).12 For since it is established that all of our knowledge either is sensation or proceeds from the senses, it also seems to be established that we cannot make a judgment about anything unless the senses have first given testimony of it. (3.192b) Thus, if Gassendi can eliminate the beliefs about the natures of things that are derived from the senses, he has destroyed the foundation of Aristotelian scientia. One might expect the Agrippan trilemma to play a greater role in Gassendi’s objections to Descartes. However, it does not. To see why, let’s look at three different strands in these objections. The first strand concerns Descartes’s use of skepticism. Gassendi argues, at some length, that Descartes misunderstands two crucial distinctions: the distinction between the inner natures of things and their appearances, and the distinction between the actions of life and the inquiry into truth. Failure to recognize these distinctions leads Descartes to apply skeptical techniques where they are not appropriate. Gassendi explains that the skeptics rejected indifference entirely where the actions of everyday life are concerned: But for the investigation of truth, they drew a further distinction . . . between ta phainomena, “the things which appear to the senses,” like the heat of fire,

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the sweetness of honey, and others; and ta noumena, “the things which are understood by the mind,” like . . . internal and proximate natures and causes, and the properties of those same things. And then, although they considered the latter kind of things uncertain, they still allowed the first kind except when their state of mind made it pleasant to take on the insolence of the dogmatics. (3.286a) This is consistent with Gassendi’s treatment of skepticism in the Exercitationes. But it does not amount to much as a critique of Descartes. Here it seems that Gassendi has simply misunderstood the purpose of Cartesian skepticism.13 A second line of objection, which concerns Descartes’s reliance on clear and distinct perception, is more interesting. Gassendi expresses the familiar worry that Descartes has argued in a circle by using clear and distinct perception to argue that God exists and then using God’s existence to argue that whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true. But he also worries about whether clear and distinct perception can serve as the criterion, posing a dilemma for Descartes. On the one hand, if clear and distinct perception is picked out by its psychological aspect alone, there will be conflicting clear and distinct perceptions. Different men—all of whom are honest, all of whom have thought about the matter carefully—perceive different, incompatible things with clarity and distinctness (3.315a). Moreover, Gassendi continues, he himself has clearly and distinctly perceived different, incompatible things at different times. As a youth, for instance, he clearly and distinctly perceived that two lines continually approaching each other more closely must meet. Later he learned about asymptotes and came to perceive, with equal clarity and distinctness, that they need not meet (3.314b). Hence, clear and distinct perception cannot serve as the criterion of truth. Descartes would object, of course, that not all of these conflicting perceptions are genuinely clear and distinct (AT 7.361). Gassendi is somewhat impatient with this response, replying that “the fact that men go to meet death for the sake of some opinion seems to be a perspicuous argument that they perceive it clearly and distinctly” (3.317a). But impatience aside, this leads to the other horn of the dilemma. If we build truth into the nature of clear and distinct perception, then we open up a gap between genuine clear and distinct perception and merely apparent clear and distinct perception. And once this gap is open, we cannot use clear and distinct perception as the criterion. Thus, nothing as sophisticated as the Agrippan trilemma is needed. Another reason for Gassendi to de-emphasize the Agrippan trilemma emerges when we look at the third line of objection: that the First Meditation skeptical hypotheses simply fail to produce doubt. For the fact that we make mistakes in certain circumstances does not threaten the knowledge we have in other circumstances: When we examine a nearby tower and touch it, we are certain that it is square, even though when we were further from it we had reason . . . to doubt whether it was square or round or some other figure. . . . In the same way, the sense of pain which still appears to be in a foot or hand after the limbs have been amputated can sometimes deceive . . . but those who are whole are so certain that they feel pain in the foot or hand which they see pricked that they cannot doubt it.

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In the same way, because while we live we are alternately awake and asleep, we may be deceived through a dream . . . but nevertheless we are not always asleep and when we are really awake we cannot doubt whether we are awake or asleep. (3.388a–b) The dream example is the most interesting one. Gassendi grants that we are sometimes deceived in dreams and that we sometimes believe we are awake when we are really dreaming. Nevertheless, he insists, when we are actually awake, we know that we are awake, and the falsity of beliefs acquired in dreams does not affect the status of beliefs acquired when awake. Our knowledge that we are awake, when we are awake, is not mere supposition and does not require further proof: it is simply obvious to all men. Gassendi returns to the Agrippan trilemma in the Syntagma, where he makes essentially the same point: The three modes added to the ten pertain to the general form of arguing and objecting. But . . .whenever someone objects that there . . . is no criterion . . . because anyone who says that there is does so either without a demonstration or with one, but that either way, etc., it can be said, first, that we have some demonstration. Although it’s not an Aristotelian demonstration or a demonstration which requires a precise investigation of some previous sign or criterion or the like, it’s the sort of demonstration that men who are prudent, intelligent, and furnished with good sense will generally accept as a proper reason and which cannot be contradicted except out of sheer contrariety [contradicendi animo]. For it seems that we should stand firm on this and not become frightened of being drawn into an infinite regress or circularity. (1.85b) He goes on to explain that demonstration . . . is not necessary when things are so evident that they just need to be proposed. Such things include not only particular things which appear to the senses and are approved by experience, but also general propositions against which no objections can be brought, such as . . . if equals are taken from equals, the remainders are equal . . . And although it is countered that someone who simply makes a declaration and does not prove it should not be believed, and that the opposite can be asserted hypothetically and claimed as true by anyone . . . wishing to maintain the other side, it is clear that this can indeed be done in doubtful matters, where neither experience nor some convincing and reasonable argument comes to our support, but it cannot be done without folly in other cases. (1.86a) The key difference between this and the way Gassendi treats the Ten Modes is that in the Ten Modes we start from actual disagreement about particular facts. But in the examples of the Agrippan trilemma Gassendi is considering here, actual disagreement plays no role. No one is actually denying that if equals are taken from equals, the remainders are equal. And hence, Gassendi thinks, there is no reason to start looking for proof in the first place. A similar point is made in the Disquisitio

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Metaphysica, where Gassendi argues that Descartes’s skeptical hypotheses fail to raise genuine doubt in cases where “the thing always appears in the same way, as the sun always appears round and shining, or as the crossing of two straight lines always creates two right angles or angles equal to two right angles” (3.279b).

5  GASSENDI’S VIA MEDIA By the time of the Syntagma, Gassendi thinks of skepticism as nothing more than a useful check on the pretensions of the sciences. Explaining the need for a via media between the skeptics and the dogmatists, he writes that the dogmatists do not really know all the things they suppose they know, and they do not have an appropriate criterion for judging those things. However, it does not seem that all the things which are thrown into dispute by the skeptics are so unknown that we cannot have some criterion for judging them. And because the majority of the things which the dogmatists suppose they know are really unknown, too often in physics the occasion arises for declaring that we are fortunate when we arrive not at what is true but at what is probable. (1.79b) This claim is itself, of course, merely probable (1.79b). Gassendi’s ultimate view is that there are two criteria of truth. First, the senses, which serve as the criterion for the appearances. Since even the skeptics allow knowledge of the appearances, Gassendi does not spend much time on this. The more interesting criterion is reason, by which we can know the “hidden” truth that is “lurking under the appearances” (1.80b). How exactly this works depends on why the truth in question is hidden. Here, again following Sextus, he distinguishes three categories of hidden truths. Some things are only circumstantially hidden (1.69a), and these can be known by memory. When we see smoke but no fire, we form the belief that there is a temporarily hidden fire because we remember smoke being produced by fire and nothing else. A second category of things are “entirely hidden, so that they can in no way fall under the scope of the understanding” (1.68b). These things cannot be known by any criterion. The third category contains things that are hidden by nature. These are things that cannot be evident per seipsas but can come to be known through “indicative signs,” to use the term of Sextus, who rejected their use (1.68b). Gassendi gives a number of examples. Motion signifies the void, because we observe motion and infer that it can exist only if there is empty space for moving bodies to move into (1.81a). Certain actions that could not be performed without a soul signify the existence of a soul (1.82b). The fact that iron is attracted by a magnet signifies a power in the magnet (1.82b). The orderliness of the universe signifies that God exists and created the universe (1.82b). Refraction signifies that light is a body (1.82a). And sweat signifies that there are pores in the skin (1.68b). Gassendi’s use of indicative signs is an important point of difference from the ancient skeptical tradition, and marks a clear way in which he is not a skeptic by the time of the Syntagma. The last example—the pores in the skin—is particularly

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interesting in this connection because pores belonged to the third category of hidden things before the invention of the microscope, and now belong to the first category. Gassendi gives other examples of this as well. We used to infer that mites have feet from the way they move, but now we can see their feet. We used to infer that the Milky Way is made up of stars, and can now see the individual stars that compose it with a telescope (1.82a). Such examples, Gassendi argues, confirm the legitimacy of inferences from indicative signs. And for all we know, many of the things which are now hidden from us and which we until now perceive only by understanding will one day, by some instrument thought up by our descendants, also become things that are perceived by the senses. (1.82a) At this point, Gassendi’s via media may seem closer to dogmatism than skepticism. I think this is right. However, he insists that there’s a big difference between claiming to know the existence of things and claiming to know their nature. We know that there is a soul and a God and a power in the magnet because we know there must be some cause of the things we perceive. What we do not—and cannot—know are the nature of the soul, of God, and of the magnet’s power (1.82b). We know that there is some cause without knowing what the cause is like in itself. This difference is crucial in Gassendi’s explanation of how to escape the Ten Modes: It seems that one and the same thing can appear in different ways to different animals and different men, and even to one and the same man according to his various senses and his various affections. . . . But although so many various Phantasiae or appearances are created, nevertheless it’s clear that there is in the thing or object some general cause which suffices for all the things which are manifest. And so, to whatever extent the effects are not like each other, nevertheless there are two things which are certain and can be proven. . . . One is that there is a cause in the thing itself, or the object, and the other is that there is a different disposition in the faculties that encounter it. (1.84a) Consider the action of the sun, which melts wax but hardens clay. We know that there is something in the sun that enables it to cause both the melting of the wax and the hardening of the clay. And we know that there is some difference between the wax and the clay that explains why the sun melts the first but hardens the second. But we can only characterize these features of the sun, the wax, and the clay relationally. Gassendi’s claim that we can know appearances but not inner natures, then, is the claim that we can know the relational properties of things but not the intrinsic properties that ground them.

NOTES 1. See Popkin (1979: chapter 2) and Floridi (2002). See also the chapters on Montaigne and Charron in this book. 2. I cite all Gassendi’s works by book, page, and (where relevant) column number in Gassendi (1964). The Syntagma occupies all of volumes 1 and 2.

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3. All translations are my own, but I have benefited greatly from consulting translations by Craig Brush (Gassendi 1972), whose Selected Writings contains a great deal of material about skepticism; Bernard Rochot (Gassendi 1959; Gassendi 1962); and Sylvie Taussig (Gassendi 2004). 4. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no real discussion of the skeptics in the Syntagma’s Ethics 1.1, “Quae felicitatem faciunt, meditanda.” (There’s a brief mention later, at 2.696b.) 5. Book I was published in 1624. Book II was written around the same time but not published until after Gassendi’s death. 6. All these authors are mentioned in various places in the body as well. For details, see Bernard Rochot’s extremely useful footnotes in Gassendi (1959). 7. See Exercitationes 2.6.2, 3.192b ff and, in the Syntagma, Logic 2.3, 1.72b ff. 8. This genealogy doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on the difference between Pyrrhonian and Academic skepticism, but Gassendi is aware of it. He notes, for instance, that “when Carneades founded what is called the Third Academy . . . he revived the criterion . . . not for the true but only for the probable [verisimile]” (1.72b). And in the Preface to the Syntagma, he tells us that he will follow Sextus’s taxonomy, dividing the Greeks into three categories: the Dogmatics; Arcesilaus and the Acataleptics, so called “because they reckon that all things are akatalepsa, incomprehensible”; and Pyrrho and the Skeptics (1.13b). 9. Gassendi was in fact a committed Copernican. In the preface to the Exercitationes, he says that in Book IV, “rest will be brought to the fixed stars and the sun: but motion will be given to the earth, as if it’s one of the planets” (3.102, no columns). See LoLordo (2014) for more on this. 10. These are also ways in which it differs from Cartesian clear and distinct perception. 11. In later works, Gassendi remains concerned to show how the charge of selfrefutation is avoided. But he makes clear that the skeptic need not be claiming to have a different form of knowledge than the form she is attacking. Rather, he can make skeptical suggestions without claiming any kind of knowledge at all. Gassendi’s explanation here follows Sextus: if someone objects that the skeptic refutes himself by claiming that nothing is known, the skeptic “responds that while phrases or propositions of this sort deny others, they also deny themselves, like medications which are taken into the body to purge the humors and expel themselves along with them” (1.76b). 12. Gassendi restricts himself to Aristotelian scientia for several reasons. As we’ve already seen, he wants to allow knowledge of the appearances and to avoid selfrefutation. But he also wants to exclude matters of faith—something which is grounded in both genuine personal conviction and in pragmatic considerations. 13. It also seems that he has misunderstood the Pyrrhonian notion of ta phainomena, since in Sextus appearances need not be “things that appear to the senses” but can be intellectual as well as perceptual.

REFERENCES Descartes, René. 1996. Oeuvres de Descartes. 11 volumes, edited by C. Adam and P. Tannery. Paris: Vrin.

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Floridi, Luciano. 2002. Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism. New York: Oxford University Press. Gassendi, Pierre. 1959. Dissertations en forme de paradoxes contre les Aristotéliciens (Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos) Livres I et II, edited and translated by Bernard Rochot. Paris: J. Vrin. Gassendi, Pierre. 1962. Recherches métaphysiques; ou, Doutes et instances contre la Métaphysique de R. Descartes et ses réponses (Disquisitio metaphysica; seu, Dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii Metaphysicam et responsa), edited and translated by B. Rochot. Paris: Vrin. Gassendi, Pierre. 1964. Petri Gassendi Opera Omnia in sex tomos divisa. 6 volumes. Lyon: Laurent Anisson and Jean-Baptiste Devenet, 1658. Reprinted in facsimile with an introduction by T. Gregory. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Friedrich Frohmann. Gassendi, Pierre. 1972. The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, edited and translated by C. G. Brush. New York: Johnson Reprint. Gassendi, Pierre. 2004. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Lettres latines. 2 volumes, translated by S. Taussig. Turnhout: Brepols. LoLordo, Antonia. 2014. “Copernicus, Epicurus, Galileo, and Gassendi,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 51: 82–88. Popkin, Richard. 1979. The History of Scepticism: From Erasmus to Descartes. Berkeley: University of California Press. Popkin, Richard (ed.). 1991. Pierre Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Descartes and the Force of Skepticism DAVID CUNNING

1 INTRODUCTION In Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes (1596–1650) considers a number of skeptical arguments with the aim of locating beliefs that are immune from all doubt whatsoever. He writes: Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last. . . . So, for the purposes of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each of them at least some reason for doubt. (First Meditation, AT VII 17–18, CSM II 12)1 Descartes does not propose to abandon all of the beliefs that the skeptical arguments call into question. He will recover those that he can demonstrate to follow from new and improved grounds. This chapter will treat the skeptical arguments that Descartes unveils in the First Meditation and their eventual relation to the goal of securing results that are “stable and likely to last.” Section 2 considers both the argument from occasional sensory deception and the dream argument. Section 3 treats Descartes’s refrain that the main purpose of the skeptical arguments is to help us to detach from our senses and then recognize the truth of non-sensory (or what we today might call a priori) philosophical axioms. Section 4 highlights that in the final analysis Descartes is not just skeptical about the veridicality of waking perceptions; he thinks that there are transparent non-sensory philosophical axioms that entail that the senses hardly provide an accurate representation of reality at all. Section 5 is a discussion of the hyperbolic doubt that appears in the latter half of the First Meditation and a discussion of how Descartes thought he had the resources to overcome it.

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2  SKEPTICISM AND THE SENSES The initial skeptical arguments of the First Meditation call into question our beliefs about the everyday sensible objects that we presume to surround us. Descartes begins: Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once. (AT VII 18, CSM II 12) Here he is appealing to a common experience in which a person has a sensory experience of an object but subsequently concludes that the experience was misleading or deceptive. As Descartes rehashes the argument later in the Sixth Meditation: Sometimes towers which had looked round from a distance appeared square from close up; and enormous statues standing on their pediments did not seem large when observed from the ground. In these and countless other such cases, I found that the judgments of the external senses were mistaken. (AT VII 76, CSM II 53) The initial conclusion that Descartes draws from this argument from occasional sensory deception is that we should never put our complete trust in any of our beliefs about the bodies that surround us. Descartes retreats from this far-reaching conclusion immediately, however, just as most of us would do if we were working through the argument along with him. Presumably, the reason that we would ever call into question a belief about a distant tower or any other non-ideally situated object is that we have had conflicting observations of the object in more optimal circumstances—in circumstances that we fully trust. If so, the definitive conclusion that our senses in some cases mislead us presupposes that they sometimes (and indeed often) do not. Descartes continues: Yet although the senses occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which are very small or in the distance, there are many other beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible, even though they are derived from the senses—for example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on. Again, how could it be denied that these hands or this whole body are mine? Unless perhaps I were to liken myself to madmen, whose brains are so damaged by persistent vapours of melancholia that they firmly maintain they are kings when they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple when they are naked, or that their heads are made of earthenware, or that they are pumpkins, or made of glass. But such people are insane, and I would be thought equally mad if I took anything from them as a model for myself. (AT VII 18–19, CSM II 12–13) This seems to be the right thing to say in response to the contention that all of our sense-based beliefs are suspect if our senses sometimes mislead us: the way that we tell that such a belief is misleading is by relying on sensory perceptions that we trust—sensory perceptions “about which doubt is quite impossible.”

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We tend to think that our beliefs about objects in our immediate vicinity are unimpeachable, but Descartes actually thinks that our confidence is unfounded even here. He continues the Meditation by remarking that we sometimes have dreams that are so vivid that, while we are having them, we cannot differentiate them from waking experiences. After making clear that he is not a madman, he writes: A brilliant piece of reasoning! As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences while asleep as madmen do when awake— indeed sometimes even more probable ones. How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events—that I am here in my dressing gown, sitting by the fire—when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! (AT VII 19, CSM II13) Presumably most of us have had the experience of thinking that a dream was real, and we might have even had the experience of asking ourselves at a given moment whether or not we are in a dream and then concluding that we are not, but then we wake up. Descartes continues: Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. (AT VII 19, CSM II 13) Here Descartes focuses on the vividness of dream experiences to secure the result that sometimes they are just as real-seeming as experiences that we have while awake. If so, then for any belief that we take ourselves to have formed in ideal viewing conditions, that belief might have for its evidence a perception that is not reflective of how things are. Descartes would appear to have found himself again at the conclusion that “it is prudent never to trust [the senses] completely.” As he did in the case of the argument from occasional sensory deception, Descartes quickly puts the reins on the conclusion that he will draw from the dream argument. We may not be able to tell the difference between waking experience and dreaming, he supposes, but for any sensory perception that we have there must exist the basic elements that are necessary for sensory perception to occur at all: Suppose then that I am dreaming, and that these particulars—that my eyes are open, that I am moving my head and stretching out my hands—are not true. Perhaps, indeed, I do not even have such hands or such a body at all. Nonetheless, it must surely be admitted that the visions which come in sleep are like paintings, which must have been fashioned in the likeness of things that are real, and hence that at least these general kinds of things—eyes, head, hands and the body as a whole—are things which are not imaginary but are real and exist. For even when painters try to create sirens and satyrs with the most extraordinary bodies, they cannot give them natures which are new in all respects; they simply jumble up the

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limbs of different animals. Or if perhaps they manage to think up something so new that nothing remotely similar has ever been seen before—something which is therefore completely fictitious and unreal—at least the colours used in the composition must be real. (AT VII 19–20, CSM II 13) So presumably there exist hands and faces, or at the very least things like size and shape. We might be wrong to trust any particular sensory perception, but at least we can trust that generally speaking the external world contains items that are familiar.2 Descartes does not say where it is that he is getting the assumption that we could not have sensory perceptions unless there existed basic elements out of which those perceptions are fashioned. The assumption certainly has not been demonstrated at this point in the Meditations, but one thing to note for now is that Descartes allows a number of unexamined assumptions in the First Meditation. This is to be expected, actually. The anticipated outcome of working through the skeptical arguments is that we will once and for all locate claims that are immune from any possible doubt, but that means that we are not in possession of any such claims for use in the skeptical arguments themselves (see also Curley 1978: 50–51; Larmore 2014: 55–59). One of Descartes’s objectors (Pierre Bourdin) raised this concern to Descartes explicitly— how he can trust the premises of the skeptical arguments of the First Meditation if those arguments are meant to finally locate beliefs that are completely certain and if his beliefs are otherwise unexamined (Seventh Objections and Replies; AT VII 527–530, CSM II 358–361). Descartes’s response to the concern is dismissive: he points out that in the construction of a building, the tools that are used to remove the prior dwelling and any rubble do not need to be of the same quality as the materials that compose the new foundation (AT VII 538, CSM II 367; AT VII 544, CSM II 371; AT VII 542, CSM II 370). He adds that in the First Meditation he was “not yet concerned with establishing any truths” (AT VII 523, CSM II 355) and that “there is nothing at all that I asserted ‘with confidence’ in the First Meditation: it is full of doubt throughout” (AT VII 474, CSM II 319). As we have already seen, Descartes allows a number of unexamined assumptions in the First Meditation: for example, that what we know we know through the senses; and that the distinction between waking perceptions and dreams is a distinction between perceptions that are veridical and perceptions that are not.3 Now he is allowing the assumption that we could not have sensory perceptions at all unless there existed basic elements that constitute them. The first result of the Meditations that is worth its salt is “I am, I exist” (AT VII 25, CSM II 17), and the First Meditation skeptical arguments do a lot of work to help us to arrive at it.4 As we shall see, they help us to recognize the transparency and perspicuity of claims that are not known through the senses.

3  SKEPTICISM ABOUT THE A PRIORI The dream argument supposes that waking experience provides an accurate representation of reality, that dream experience does not, and that we are in possession of no clear sign to distinguish the two. What is striking is that in the final analysis Descartes holds that the external world is not as we know it through

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the senses, but is a plenum that contains no sensory qualities—no color, no sound, no taste, no light. Below we will consider his arguments for the view that sensory qualities are not literally in physical objects—not in anything like the way that we experience them—but first we must consider his methodological assumption that non-sensory axioms are the appropriate sort of premise for a philosophical demonstration. In Section 4, we will see how he attempts to appeal to such axioms to generate the result that the external world is not as we sense it. Descartes holds that, upon reflection, the clearest and most obvious results are not known through the senses. In contrast to the level of certainty that is afforded to the senses in the early moments of the First Meditation, Descartes in fact thinks that we have another cognitive faculty to which the senses pale in comparison. He writes: It is clear that we do not have [perfect] certainty in cases where our perception is even the slightest bit obscure or confused; for such obscurity, whatever its degree, is quite sufficient to make us have doubts in such cases. Again, we do not have the required kind of certainty with regard to matters which we perceive solely by means of the senses, however clear such perception may be. . . . Accordingly, if there is any certainty to be had, the only remaining alternative is that it occurs in the clear perceptions of the intellect and nowhere else. (Second Replies, AT VII 145, CSM II 105–106) Descartes then provides a list of the sorts of truth that he thinks are undeniable upon reflection—so long as we are sufficiently detached from the senses. He says: Now some of these perceptions are so transparently clear and at the same time so simple that we cannot ever think of them without believing them to be true. The fact that I exist so long as I am thinking, or that what is done cannot be undone, are examples of truths in respect of which we possess this kind of certainty. (Second Replies, AT VII 145, CSM II 106) The following are examples of [common notions or axioms]: It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time; What is done cannot be undone; He who thinks cannot but exist while he thinks; and countless others. It would not be easy to draw up a list of all of them; but nonetheless we cannot fail to know them when the occasion for thinking about them arises, provided that we are not blinded by preconceived opinions. (Principles I 49, AT VIIIA 24, CSM I 209) Descartes thinks that there are axioms that are the most perspicuous that the human mind can ever confront, and he calls them alternately “primary notions” or “common notions or axioms.” Given how clear and obvious they are, they are preferable to claims or contentions that are much less perspicuous, or to contentions that the axioms entail are false. Still, we can fail to register the force of a primary notion if we think too much in terms of sensory pictures and images and are not practiced at thinking abstractly (Principles I 73, AT VIIIA 37, CSM I 220), or if we are wedded to opinions that entail that the primary notion is implausible or false (Principles I 72, AT VIIIA 36, CSM I 219–220). Descartes is contending with just such a meditator at the start of the First Meditation, someone who has not yet examined his opinions and who is committed to views like that what is known best

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is known through the senses. The skeptical arguments are then meant to help us to recognize that the senses are not the only game in town: In the First Meditation reasons are provided which give us possible grounds for doubt about all things, especially material things. . . . Although the usefulness of such extensive doubt is not apparent at first sight, its greatest benefit lies in freeing us from all our preconceived opinions, and providing the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses. (“Synopsis of the following six Meditations,” AT VII 12, CSM II 9)5 If we detach from our senses and become able to recognize the clarity and force of the deliverances of the intellect, we