(ca.200 C.E.)
Sextus Empiricus, the codifier of Greek Skepticism, lived in the last half of the Second Century and the first quarter of the Third Century C.E. He seems to have been a Greek, if his subtle handling of the Greek language is any indication, though we do not know where he was born or where he died. He knew Rome, Athens, and Alexandria with some intimacy, but we do not know where he taught.
He was head of the Skeptical School, probably in some great city, and he was succeeded as head of that school by Saturninus, a contemporary of Diogenes Laertius (who wrote about Sextus). He learned much from the empiricist skeptical doctor Menodotus of Nicomedia, who was born about fifty years before Sextus. Sextus himself was a medical doctor, as were Menodotus, his teacher, and Saturninus, his successor. We are not sure whether his Latin name "Empiricus" is a proper name or an appellation designating him as an "empirical" medical doctor (as against the "methodical" school). He criticized the empirical school of medicine for dogmatically denying that we can have knowledge of hidden causes and seemed, at least on this point, to go along with the methodical school, which refused to dogmatize about the impossibility of such knowledge. Whatever his affiliation, he was a central figure among the late Skeptical medical doctors, who terminated the history of Greek Skepticism.
Sextus, besides possessing a large fund of knowledge on medical matters, had a clear, plain prose style, an almost mechanically orderly mind, and a somewhat dry but gratifying sense of humor. He was a careful student of the history of Skepticism. Having worked scrupulously upon texts no longer available to us; and his codification is a careful and ambitious attempt to define and illustrate Greek Skepticism.
His extant works constitute the only lucid, complete and first hand summary of Greek Skepticism available to us. They are usually divided into two works, the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Hypotyposes) and the Against the Dogmatist (Adversus Mathematicos). The Hypotyposes seems to bea compilation of introductory lectures, explicit and simple in nature. It is divided into three books, the first of which defines the key terms of Skepticism, while the other two make use of these terms to attack dogmatism (especially the dogmatism of the Stoics). Noteworthy here is the attack on the validity of the syllogistic proof. Sextus tried to show that any syllogism is an example of a vicious circle, since the truth of the conclusion (for example, "Socrates is mortal") must already be known if the truth of the major premise ("All men are mortal") has been ascertained.
The Adversus Mathematicos contains 11 books, five of which use the method defined and exemplified in the Hypotyposes in order to refute "philosophers" (logicians, physicists, and ethicists), and six of which use that method to refute "scientists" (grammarians, rhetoricians, geometricians, arithmeticians, astronomers, and musicians).
The Key Terms
Skepsis, or Skepticism, is a term applied by Sextus to the oral teachings of Pyrrho and to the goals and methods implicit in those teachings. On the one hand, Skepticism is distinct from dogmatism (the metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus) because the Skeptic does not claim to have certain knowledge of hidden or "non evident" things, as the dogmatist does; on the other hand, Sextus held, Skepticism is distinct from the academic philosophy of men like Carneades and Clitomachus, because these men dogmatically asserted that 1) knowledge is impossible; 2) some beliefs are more probable than others; 3) a strong inclination can accompany some of our (more probable) beliefs; and 4) probability should be a guide to living. The Skeptic suspended judgment on the question of whether knowledge is impossible, refused to recognize any one belief as being more probable than any other, and consequently did not believe that a strong inclination or assent should accompany any of our beliefs. The Skeptic as against the dogmatist and the Academician, took arguments for and against non evident things as equally probable or improbable, no one being more or less worthy of assent than another. He was an open minded "inquirer."
The arche, or motivating force, behind Skepticism was the hope of attaining unperturbedness, ataraxia. Endless battles between dogmatists and passionate, stubborn adherence to, or disbelief in, a given doctrine had disturbed me for centuries and all this had been the case because there had been no publicly accessible criterion for deciding or proving who was right. Skepticism was one of the eudaemonistis philosophies of late antiquity, having as its ultimate goal (like Stoicism and Epicureanism), not pure theoretical knowledge, nor simply a disinterested negation of all claims to knowledge, but happiness, peace of mind in day-to-day activities.
Ataraxia, then, is the third and last stage of the doubting process, according to Sextus. The first stage is antithesis, the presenting of claims about the same non evident subject and putting these claims into opposition with each other, so that mutually contradictory claims appear equally probable or improbable. In this stage the tropoi, or "ways of arguing," are used. The second stage is the suspension of judgment (epoche), which follows the awareness of antithesis. Instead of assenting to, or denying, any one of the claims relative to the subject at hand, all those mutually inconsistent claims are put together and judgment is withheld on each and all of them. When epoche has been achieved, the last stage, unperturbedness then follows, as the shadow follows the body. When that is realized—as Sextus put it—"reason is such a trickster," peace is found.
Obviously the basic step in that process is the first, antithesis. To facilitate this step, the Skeptics from Aenesidemus through Agrippa to Sextus himself devised various tropes, or modes, of argument. The first ten tropes of Aenesidemus set in opposition to each other claims about external objects as well as claims about moral laws. Later Skeptics like Agrippa, set up further modes of argument, more drastic and far-reaching than the first ten.
Epoche has to do only with non evident, hidden things like the Stoics pneuma, the fiery world stuff, or ultimate good and evil. It has to do with claims that go behind or beyond the phenomena, beyond the appearances of our senses and feelings and everyday actions. Words like "substance," "essence," "soul," when applied to entities forever inaccessible to decisive observation or experience, are thought of as "indicative signs" (endeiktikon). But words or experiences, when treated merely as "commemorative" (ypomnestikon) of other experiences are untouched by the whole doubting process. This, is according to Sextus, is as it must be if we would continue to live and avoid paralysis in everyday life. This refusal to paralyze and destroy everyday life with doubt took two forms for Sextus. First of all, it made him an empiricist scientist (unlike the ancient "theoretical," or "logical," school of medicine, which involved theorizing on the hidden causes of diseases). As a physician he confined himself to observing symptoms, describing syndromes, and tentatively pointing out observed relationships among these symptoms and syndromes. He made strictly tentative descriptions and predictions, dealing only with commemorative signs.
Second, the refusal to doubt phenomena also took the form of what Sextus called the "doctrinal rule" of Skepticism. The rule stated that one must live in accordance with appearance, that is, in accordance with sense experiences, one’s physical needs, and the customs and laws of one’s country. Only by so living could the unperturbedness that was the arche of epistemological doubt be realized. But the Skeptic (as against the Academic, who reasoned by way of possibilities) did not give any strong assent to these appearances; he simply allowed them to carry him along, without being duped by the "proofs" that this "trickster reason" could, if given the chance, concoct.
In saying this, Sextus not only distinguished his doctrine from the probabilism of Carneades and from the various dogmatists thriving toward the end of the second century; but he reminded us that he was discussing a philosophy and a philosopher deeply interested in happiness in action, not simply in knowledge. Still, after observing this one must not forget that by far the larger part of the works of Sextus involved dialectic, philosophical argumentation, as well as definition. Unlike the non dialectical thought of Pyrrho the thought of Sextus was that of a lover of logic as well as of observation. In the writings of Sextus the epigrammatic moralism of Pyrrho and the scrupulous epistemology of Aenesidemus and the New Academy were brought together; and any discussion of Greek Skepticism as a whole is incomplete if it leaves out either of these two tendencies.
Philip P. Hallie from The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
| Last Updated: 10/19/22 |