Sextus Empiricus Research Articles

Contra os Gramáticos de Sexto Empírico: tradução anotada, terceira parte (M 1. 169-247)

Resumo: Traducao anotada de parte (M 1. 169-247) do tratado Contra os Gramaticos do filosofo cetico pirronico Sexto Empirico (sec. II d.C.). Nesta passagem, o filosofo da continuidade ao ataque contra a parte tecnica da gramatica, abordando o tratamento gramatical da ortografia, helenismo e etimologia e advogando, contra o criterio tecnico dos gramaticos, pelo criterio pratico do uso comum. O espaco que ele destina a argumentos que, muito provavelmente, sao de origem epicurista, e nao cetica, e consideravel. Isso poderia sugerir que sua fonte principal fosse uma obra de ataque a doutrina gramatical, nos moldes daquelas ligadas a tradicao epicurista de polemica contra disciplinas que teriam a pretensao de se antepor a filosofia. As notas da traducao buscam esclarecer questoes subjacentes ao argumento sextiano, justificar nossas escolhas tradutorias e disponibilizar informacoes que viabilizem tracar paralelos entre a passagem em questao e outras obras do autor ou do periodo.

Early Buddhism and Incommensurability

Early Buddhism and Incommensurability Christopher I. Beckwith (bio) Charles Goodman (henceforth G)'s Response to the thoughtful paper by Adrian Kuzminski ("Early Buddhism Reconsidered") in this volume is actually devoted mainly to my book Greek Buddha (2015). Half a century ago, Thomas Kuhn famously coined the term incommensurability to refer to the inability or unwillingness of many scholars in a given field to understand substantially new ("revolutionary") work. He describes their reactions against it and their attempts to suppress or discredit it. The reason for their response is that new discoveries advance science by challenging and displacing old beliefs and practices. Kuhn accurately describes G's Response. When I wrote Greek Buddha, I assumed that the potential readership would be people interested in a major topic of intellectual history that has been neglected for a long time, people who are able and willing to think about an alternative to the problematic received views. In general, that has proved to be the case. Kuzminski, the author of an excellent book on later Pyrrhonism (especially Sextus Empiricus) and later Buddhism (especially Nāgārjuna), states in his paper that my book makes a significant contribution toward solving the problems it addresses. Unfortunately, by contrast, G takes selected bits out of their contexts in my book, puts them into new contexts of his own making, and then deconstructs his own creations. Thus at the very beginning of his Response, G gives a story that he has written himself, but attributes it to me, saying: "The second, more elaborate narrative summarizes the views stated or clearly implied by Christopher Beckwith in his book Greek Buddha." However, I do not say or imply anything like it, as may be revealed by even a cursory reading of the relevant sections of the book, including my explicit conclusion on that particular topic on page 121. G's basic argument throughout is that the truth about ancient Buddhism (i.e., actual "Early Buddhism") is already known from the portrayal of antiquity in texts of late Normative Buddhism, which are centuries younger [End Page 1009] than the dated sources for Early Buddhism and represent a radically different system. But unless Normative Buddhism, including its modern form, preserves the exact words of the Buddha, it has changed, like all religions. Normative Buddhism is first attested in around the first century C.E., half a millennium after the Buddha. Normative Buddhist texts portray something drastically different from the dated, contemporaneous Early Buddhist testimonies—the hard data on that form of Buddhism. Several long sections of Greek Buddha analyze, in great detail, the account of Early Buddhist sects in Megasthenes (fl. 305–304 b.c.e.) and the religious content of the early third century b.c.e. Major Inscriptions of Devānāṃpriya Priyadarśi. (In my book, I establish which inscriptions were not inscribed by the Mauryas but by a much later ruler of the Normative Buddhist period named Aśoka.) These sources show that Normative Buddhism—a radically changed belief system compared to attested Early Buddhism—developed under the Sakas and Kushans. G says not a word about my book's in-depth coverage of this. As far as I know, Greek Buddha is the first monograph devoted to carefully examining, studying, and thinking about the dated Early Buddhist inscriptions and manuscript data with the goal of discovering what Early Buddhism was really like. Throughout his Response, G's authorities are undated late Normative Buddhist texts. These texts are filled with marvels recounted in the traditional-modern Buddhist "frame tale" based on the late canonical literature of early Normative Buddhism (which is unattested until some 500 years after the Buddha), the magical fantasies that fill the hagiographical literature of medieval Buddhism (mostly a millennium or more later than the Buddha), and the modern "popular" misinterpretation of Buddhism that non-devotional Buddhologists have been fighting against for at least a century. Normative Buddhism certainly deserves study for its own sake. However, my book has nothing to do with the late Normative Buddhist stories about Early Buddhism except to note that it is not based on them and does not discuss them. The limited time and space available to me for...

Self-Completing Skepticism

In his 1802 article for the Critical Journal of Philosophy, “Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy,” Hegel attempts to articulate a form of skepticism that is “at one with every true philosophy.” Focusing on the priority that Hegel gives to ancient skepticism over its modern counterpart, Michael Forster and other commentators suggest that it is Pyrrhonism that Hegel views as one with philosophy. Since Hegel calls attention to the persistence of dogmatism even in the work of Sextus Empiricus, however, I argue that it is only a sublated form of Pyrrhonism, what in the Phenomenology of Spirit he calls “self-completing skepticism,” that Hegel takes to be part of genuine philosophical cognition. In this way, I hope to show that the insight that motivates Hegel’s engagement with skepticism in the 1802 essay comes to inform the philosophical itinerary of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

Reply to Charles Goodman

Reply to Charles Goodman Adrian Kuzminski (bio) I am grateful for Prof. Goodman's comments. Let me try to respond briefly. He asks me to explain how we can recognize "the pragmata as they are, while refraining from judgments about them." In my reading of Sextus Empiricus, what he calls "appearances" are what we perceive immediately and involuntarily, that is, the thoughts and sensations that are present to us as we actually experience them. Visually, these are shapes and colors and tones; audibly, they are sounds of varying intensity and quality; and so on for the other senses. Similarly, our thoughts—imaginings and memories—are all immediately and involuntarily present as we have them. (If you think of your mother, you cannot but help have a "mental image" of her, and not someone else.) These various shapes, colors, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts recur in our experience (we recognize, over and over again, the same shapes, colors, sounds, tastes, touches, smells, and thoughts). But we experience them in varying combinations with one another, and these combinations are subject to change. The sound we recognize as Middle C on the piano may be sharp and staccato, or soft and sustained. We can hear it in conjunction with other notes in, say, a major or minor cord, or in one or another musical phrase, etc. In each of these different contexts Middle C will be recognizable, but it will have a different meaning, each one conditioned by the varying sounds accompanying it. And, of course, if the sound of Middle C is combined with non-musical sounds, or with various sights, thoughts, etc., its range of meanings will be even greater. Appearances always come to us in one or another such combination, and it is these combinations I believe Sextus understood to be pragmata, or what we can call facts in ordinary English. Recurring thoughts and sensations packaged into changing facts are how we experience them. So far so good in Pyrrhonian terms. The trouble arises when we signify or interpret our experiences. We do this, they tell us, by using one kind of fact to signify another. Sextus gives the examples of interpreting a scar as signifying an earlier wound, or interpreting visible smoke as a sign of a fire not visible to us. As long as we can cash-in or verify our significations, we are fine. This empirical approach is the basis of Pyrrhonian science. The difficulty comes when we cannot verify our significations. This occurs most commonly, Sextus tells us, when we presume that there is some kind of independently existing entity behind or beyond what we actually [End Page 1007] experience, and we use some term to signify it, such as God, or Soul, or Nature, or Substance, or History, or Race, or Justice, or Good, or Evil, and so on. Our ability to propose signs for things non-evident makes it easy for us to imagine that they exist, have certain characteristics, etc. The Pyrrhonists don't deny the existence of such entities, but suspend judgment and refuse to speculate about them. This leads, they claim, to peace of mind, or liberation from the conflicts and anxieties associated with disputing non-evident things. Goodman speaks of the "superimposition of concepts onto our experience" as the "mental process" by which our judgments are made. The Pyrrhonists, however, have no concepts, nor any need of them. A concept is itself something non-evident, something separate presumed to determine some of experience. For Pyrrhonists, our ability to use verifiable significations is all that is necessary. The (dogmatic) idea that we need concepts derives from the assumption that our appearances are in themselves unreliable, chaotic, illusory, etc. We need concepts, in this view (best exemplified by Kant), to impose order and stabilize our experience. But for the Pyrrhonists appearances (packaged as pragmata) are already reliable in themselves for most practical purposes, even though they are subject to change, so there is no need to impose a conceptual order upon them, and much harm in doing so. As a test, Goodman asks me to explain the type-token distinction, particularly how it is that the sentence "Home, sweet home," has...

Роль скептичної очевидності в Першій і Другій «Медитаціях». Стаття друга. Certitudo

The author argues that according to Sextus Empiricus, (a) the "sensual" nature of the phenomenon is a metaphorical notion, since it is indistinguishably extended both to sensuality and thinking; (b) the phenomenon manifest itself with irresistible force of impact, through a wide range of passive states of mind; (c) the impact of phenomena is always mediated by our ego, because all skeptic expressions are strongly correlated with the first person singular. The article proves that Descartes could not refute the “excess” of skeptical doubt and make an immanent critique of skepticism without borrowing the aforementioned statements of Sextus. Such borrowing (1) has created a common ground for discussion between Descartes and skeptics; (2) made it possible for the meditator to give persuasiveness to careful observation of his own internal experience. Descartes' search for certainty in "Meditations" is entirely based on [а] evidence of "phenomena", "states of mind", "passions"; [b] refusal to agree with the "non-evident" proclaimed by Sextus Empiricus.

Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus- focused on analysis of PH and M -

Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus- focused on analysis of PH and M -

Дискуссия о наличии догмы в учении Секста Эмпирика

Дискуссия о наличии догмы в учении Секста Эмпирика

Contest and Indifference: Two Models of Open-Minded Inquiry

While open-mindedness as an intellectual trait has been recognized for centuries, Western philosophers have not explicitly endorsed it as a virtue until recently. This acknowledgment has been roughly coincident with the rise of virtue epistemology. As with any virtue, it is important to inform contemporary discussion of open-mindedness with reflection on sources from the history of philosophy. Here I do just this. After reviewing two major accounts of open-mindedness, which I dub "Contest" and "Indifference," I explore some ideas pertinent to the subject in four philosophers spanning eighteen centuries: Sextus Empiricus, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Paul Feyerabend. Despite their varying concerns and terminology, their contributions may valuably inform current reflection on the virtue of open-mindedness, whether construed in terms of the Contest or Indifference account.

Le Logos d’Empédocle : Reconstruction d’une lecture stoïcienne

Abstract Both Hippolytus of Rome and Sextus Empiricus attribute a concept of λόγος to Empedocles, relying on fragments that seem to have nothing to do with this claim. This article aims to show how the identification and clarification of their common Stoic source helps us to understand these texts better, and to reconstruct an interpretation of Empedocles’ epistemology that has not attracted critical attention so far.

Again on Sextus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence

AbstractThis paper engages with Svavar Svavarsson’s recent essay, “Sextus Empiricus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence,” arguing against both (

Some notes on sextus empiricus’ method of approaching the téchnai

We aim to show how Sextus Empiricus develops his attack on the technai in Against the Professors (M I-VI). First of all, we will outline the concept of stoicheion (plural: stoicheia ) in Aristotle, for we think that the wide use of the concept by the Hellenistic Philosophers addresses itself to Aristotle’s employment of it. Thus, Sextus Empiricus approaches the technai through a paradigm internal to their own systematization, from their “elements” ( stoicheia ). Secondly, we will take into consideration Sextus’ approach to grammar, and we link this discussion on grammar to the other technai. Finally, we aim to identify the political and pedagogical consequences of Sextus’ approach.

The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus by Gail Fine

Reviewed by: The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus by Gail Fine David Ebrey Gail Fine. The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv + 399. Cloth, £55.00. In the first half of this book, Gail Fine provides a renewed defense of her reading of Meno's famous paradox; in the second, she provides novel accounts of how Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and Sextus Empiricus responded to the paradox. For reasons of space, I focus on the first half, where Fine defends the same basic account of Meno's paradox she put forward in her influential "Inquiry in the Meno" (1992). The book goes further, considering and dismissing several alternatives not considered there and arguing at length against recent accounts in the secondary literature, especially those of Dominic Scott and David Charles. According to Fine, Meno's paradox rests on Meno misunderstanding what Socrates means by "not knowing at all." On her reading, Meno takes this to refer to a cognitive blank, then raises a problem for inquiring in a cognitive blank; Socrates does not think of "not knowing at all" as a cognitive blank, and so responds that it is possible not to know at all and still have true beliefs that allow one to inquire. Is Fine right that Meno's paradox rests on misunderstanding "not knowing at all" as a cognitive blank? While this is a key point in the book, the only evidence Fine cites (71) is that, shortly before the paradox, when Meno accuses Socrates of being like a torpedo fish, Meno says that he can "no longer say [eipein] at all what it [virtue] is" (80b4). But this seems to point to Meno's inability to provide an acceptable answer to "what is virtue?"—not to his thinking he is in a cognitive blank about virtue. If someone reports that she cannot say what time the train leaves, she may still have views, but think that they are insufficiently justified to say. In fact, Socrates suggests earlier in the dialogue that one should only say what virtue is if one knows what it is. At the beginning of the dialogue Meno asks Socrates to "say" (eipein) whether virtue is teachable (70a). Socrates claims that Gorgias has given Meno the habit of expecting fearless and magnificent answers, as is reasonable from those who know (70b–c). But Socrates claims that people in Athens would laugh at the idea of answering Meno's question because they are so far from knowing whether virtue is teachable that they do not even know what it is (70c–71b). It is only after Meno suggests that he may have learned from Gorgias what virtue is that Socrates asks Meno to say (eipein) what it is (71d). Meno alludes to this earlier conversation in his torpedo fish objection, when, having been refuted, he reports that he no longer can say what virtue is. Meno points to two different problems in his statement of the paradox. Fine treats it as clear that the first is a "targeting objection": how can you specify the thing you are inquiring into. She translates the sentence in question as "[f]or what sort of thing, from among those you don't know, will you put forward as the thing you're inquiring into?" (80d6–7). As translated, it is not clear that Meno is pointing to a targeting problem; one would like an argument for thinking this. But it is also not clear that this is the best way to translate the sentence. "What sort of thing" (poion) can be governed by the participle, "put forward," without being governed by the main verb, "inquire" (see Smyth, 2643). If read this way, Socrates is saying "[f]or what sort of thing, from among those you don't know, will you put forward when you inquire?" Up until this point, Socrates's and Meno's inquiries have involved putting forward proposed answers to the "what is it?" question. One could interpret Meno's question as pointing to a problem with putting forward such an answer, [End Page 537] rather than with specifying...

Роль скептичної очевидності в Першій і Другій Медитаціях. Стаття перша. Сумнів за Декартом і Секстом Емпіриком

The first article of the cycle “The role of skeptical evidence in the First and Second ‘Meditations’” compares the Cartesian and Sextus Empiricus’ concepts of doubt in, respectively, “Metaphysical meditations” and “Outlines of Pyrrhonism”. The article starts with the current state of the problem “Descartes and skepticism” and admits the existence of consensus about Cartesian perception of skeptical tradition: Cartesius (1) was influenced by all skeptical movements, known in his time, and (2) created a generalized notion that contains elements of both Academic and Pyrrhonian origin. This consensus is the source of many contemporary studies on how different skeptical doctrines influenced certain parts of Cartesian philosophy. This article attempts to analyze possible Descartes’ use of Sextus Empiricus’ notion of phenomenon. Sextus clearly states in “Outlines of Pyrrhonism” that one cannot doubt phenomenon as something perceived directly. The article proves that (a) Sextus’ thesis about the “sensory” nature of phenomenon is metaphorical, so far as it includes (without distinction) both sensuality and the experience of thinking; (b) the phenomenon is realized through a wide range of passive states of mind that all have irresistible force of influence; (c) the impact of phenomena is always mediated by our self, because all skeptical phrases are strictly correlated with the first person singular. Some researchers distinguish Sextus’ isostenia, as one of such insurmountable states, from Cartesian doubt at the First Meditation, which is allegedly based on a purely volitional decision. The article proved that this argument is artificial, since Descartes’ volitional decision is caused by initial inability to take the dubious as if it were certain. Thus, Cartesian approach can be considered a specific kind of isostenia. Such parallelism is a reason to assume a key role of Sextus’ understanding of insurmountable power of phenomena in Cartesian anti-sceptical argumentation. This assumption will be tested in the following articles of the cycle.

Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism in the Middle Ages

This paper examines the authorship and reception of the medieval translation of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism. It is shown that its traditional ascription to Niccolò da Reggio (born ca. 1280) cannot be maintained, because the translation must have circulated already in the late 1270s. Its author is difficult to identify: the closest stylistic parallels are found with the anonymous translator of Aristotle’s De partibus animalium. With Alvaro of Oviedo († ca. 1282) and the otherwise unknown Johannes de Peretis two early readers can be named. Though a copy was accessible in Viterbo at this time and another copy possibly travelled around in Italy in the 1320s, no philosophical or other impact can be determined. A single reference is found in Peter of Auvergne’s Quaestiones-commentary on Aristotle’s Politics. Its origin is difficult to assess.

Epicurus on Truth and Falsehood

Sextus Empiricus ascribes to Epicurus a curious account of truth and falsehood, according to which these characteristics belong to things in the world about which one speaks, not to what one says about them. I propose an interpretation that takes this account seriously and explains the connection between truth and existence that the Epicureans also seem to recognise. I then examine a second Epicurean account of truth and falsehood and show how it is related to the first.

Las hijas del Sol en el proemio de Parménides

<p class='p1'>El presente trabajo esbozará ciertos elementos para una interpretación global del proemio de Parménides, a partir del análisis de uno de sus elementos centrales: las doncellas hijas del Sol. Tras examinar las acciones que éstas realizan dentro de la narración, y con el objetivo de defender una interpretación alegórica, se definirá la actividad alegórica arcaica mediante algunos ejemplos. Finalmente, se trazarán los cimientos para una revalorización crítica de la interpretación de Sexto Empírico y se argumentará que la alegoría platónica del carro alado como símbolo de la ψυχή en el Fedro bien podría estar recreando y evocando de cerca el mito parmenideo del proemio. La disyuntiva hermenéutica ( νάβασις-κατάβασις) se halla motivada por la ambigüedad intrínseca del relato, ambigüedad que tiene por objeto mostrar la unidad real de los contrarios aparentes a través del símbolo de las doncellas hijas del Sol</p>

Encouraging professional scepticism in medical practice.

Complex cases constitute a considerable part of what medical practitioners have to deal with. In this paper, I refer specifically to instances that are complex as they are related to the profound epistemological problem of underdetermination. The underdetermination thesis states that theories are underdetermined by data, meaning that any set of data is logically compatible with different scientific theories. For the medical practitioners, this means that there is a risk that the analysis they give or the judgments they make might be incorrect. As being incorrect might lead to patients experiencing additional, more intense or prolonged suffering, it is very important that uncertainty is dealt with in a professional way. The ancient scepticism proposed by Sextus Empiricus and the professional scepticism in auditing of today both offer systematic approaches to what is uncertain that might work also in a medical setting.

OS CÉTICOS E SUAS CRENÇAS: A APARENTE DUPLICIDADE DE SEXTO EMPÍRICO

Desde a sua origem o ceticismo tem enfrentado inúmeras críticas e tentativas de refutação. Uma das críticas mais antigas e recorrentes é que o cético não poderia agir porque para agir são necessárias crenças e um cético suspende o seu juízo sobre todas as crenças. A resposta mais comum para este desafio é que o cético suspende seu juízo só em relação aos dogmas científicos/ filosóficos, preservando, assim, as crenças do senso comum. Mas tal resposta não é satisfatória, pois indica um insulamento que não encontramos nos textos céticos. No entanto, uma resposta é possível, e após um exposição dos tropos de Enesidemos, pretendo desenvolver uma interpretação de Sexto Empírico onde suas crenças seriam baseadas só na aparência sem que seja feito um juízo sobre tais aparências. Assim um ceticismo radical preservando a capacidade de agir ainda seria possível.

Keats, Sextus Empiricus, and Medicine

This essay discusses Keats's affinity with Pyrrhonian scepticism as recorded by Sextus Empiricus in Outlines of Scepticism in the following aspects: the investigative, non-dogmatic attitude towards the truth, the ability to set out oppositions and to realise the equipollence in opposed accounts of the truth, suspension of judgement, and the goal of tranquility. It also speculates on the implication of the common medical background Sextus and Keats shared by linking the ethical values of ancient scepticism to the humanitarian concerns of medicine that might have shaped Keats's scepticism. Although the connection between Keats, Sextus, and medicine is speculative, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy – carefully studied by Keats – mentions Sextus, from which we can assume Keats's exposure to Sextan scepticism. The Renaissance revival of Pyrrhonian scepticism provides us with stronger evidence about its indirect influence on Keats through Montaigne and Shakespeare as its important inheritors.

Philosophers Redux: The Hermotimus, the Fisherman, and the Role of Dead Philosophers

Abstract This article reexamines the Hermotimus’s status as a Lucianic anomaly: a serious dialogue. Recent scholarship on the Hermotimus has focused on its debt to the Platonic dialogue and to the writings of Sextus Empiricus; but the Hermotimus also contains telling similarities to other Lucianic dialogues. An analysis of characters and scenarios familiar from the Lover of Lies, the Symposium, and the Fisherman suggests that, despite its outwardly serious tone, the Hermotimus follows the Lucianic trope of blending the comic with the serious to expose the foibles of philosophers. This article therefore reframes the way we approach this dialogue by highlighting the protreptic function of Lucianic comedy to inspire the Hermotimus philosophically.