Scepticism and ethics

Abstract

Ancient Greek scepticism has an inherently practical character; in this respect it is unlike some of its modern counterparts, but typical of ancient Greek philosophy. This practical aspect is explicit in the Pyrrhonist tradition, all of whose leading members emphasized the tranquility ( ataraxia ) the sceptical outlook supposedly engendered, by contrast with the mental turmoil associated with a dogmatic outlook. But it is apparent in the Academic tradition as well. Both Arcesilaus and Carneades are reported to have offered means by which it would be possible, consistently with sceptical suspension of judgement, to engage in choice and action of a recognizably human type; and in both cases these strategies are described as capable of generating happiness ( eudaimonia - Sextus, M 7.158, 184), which ancient Greek ethics generally took to be the mark of a well-lived human life. The Greek sceptics, therefore, have their eye on the question whether and how scepticism can be lived ; and so one can speak, in a broad sense, of an ethical dimension that is always in the background in Greek scepticism, whatever the topic under discussion at any given time. However, it is also true that the topics discussed by the sceptics are sometimes themselves ethical. That is, they have to do, precisely, with how to live one’s life; they concern such matters as the good and the bad, justice, or the goal ( telos ) of human life. In what follows, I focus mostly on the treatment of these issues in Sextus Empiricus, for whom our evidence, here as elsewhere, is by far the best.