Da Arte de Pirronizar

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how the relatively brief presentation of the argumentative way of the Pyrrhonists, included in the longest chapter of the Essais, “The Apology for Raymond Sebond”, can be understood as a fundamental part of Montaigne’s poetic and philosophical reinvention of ancient pyrrhonism. The stress laid there by Montaigne on such characteristics of the pyrrhonian attitude as self-irony, dialectical plasticity and absence of any kind of sectarism, is accordingly studied and considered in the broader context of his personal interpretation of ancient pyrrhonism, in many relevant aspects differing from the characterization of that philosophy as outlined by Sextus Empiricus.