The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism, by Casey Perin

Abstract

The origins of Pyrrhonian Scepticism are traced back to Pyrrho of Elis, a near contemporary of Alexander the Great, but its systematic development is due to Aenesidemus (first century BC) and has been transmitted to us by Sextus Empiricus, a second century AD physician and sceptic, in two works, the Outlines of Pyrrhonism ( PH ) and Against the Professors ( M ). According to the former, which sketches the salient features of the Sceptics’ method and mode of life, Scepticism consists in ‘an ability to oppose appearances to judgements in any way whatsoever, with the result that, because of the equipollence of the things and arguments thus opposed, we are brought first to suspension of judgement and then to tranquillity’ ( PH I. 8). In fact, the hope to attain tranquillity ( ataraxia ) is the originating cause of Scepticism: certain talented people who were disturbed by the contradictions in things and perplexed as to which alternatives they ought to assent to begun to enquire what, in the nature of things, is true and what is false in order to reach a rational decision and thus remove the cause of their disturbance (I. 12, 25–6). As it turned out, however, they found themselves amidst a controversy between impressions or positions of equal strength and, being unable to judge their truth or falsehood, they suspended assent or judgement ( epochê ). And when they did so, the tranquillity that they had deliberately pursued by trying to resolve disagreements concerning the objects of belief came to them much ‘as a shadow follows the body’ (I. 29). There appears to be a necessary link between the Sceptics’ epochê , suspension, and the tranquillity that ensues, which has been traditionally interpreted as causal necessity.