Sextus Empiricus

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Western Philosophy
Ancient philosophy
Name
Sextus Empiricus
Birth during the 2nd century AD
Death during the 3rd century AD, possibly in Alexandria or Rome
School/tradition Skepticism
Influenced by Pyrrho, Timon of Phlius, Arcesilaus, Carneades, Aenesidemus, Agrippa
Influenced Michel de Montaigne, Descartes, David Hume and Hegel

Sextus Empiricus (fl. during the 2nd and possibly the 3rd centuries AD), was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism.

In his medical work, tradition maintains that he belonged to the "empiric" school (see Asclepiades), as reflected by his name. However, at least twice in his writings, Sextus seems to place himself closer to the "methodic" school, as his philosophical views imply.

Contents

[edit] Writings

Sextus Empiricus's three known works are the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Πυῤῥώνειοι ὑποτύπωσεις or Pyrrhōneioi hypotypōseis), and two distinct works preserved under the same title, Against the Mathematicians (Adversus Mathematicos), one of which is probably incomplete.

The first six books of Against the Mathematicians are commonly known as Against the Professors, but each book also has a traditional title (Against the Grammarians (book I), Against the Rhetoricians (book II), Against the Geometricians (book III), Against the Arithmeticians (book IV), Against the Astrologers (book V), Against the Musicians (book VI)). It is widely believed that this is Sextus's latest and most mature work.

Books VII-XI of Against the Mathematicians form an incomplete whole; scholars believe that at least one, but possibly as many as five books, are missing from the beginning of the work. The extant books have the traditional titles Against the Logicians (books VII-VIII), Against the Physicists (books IX-X,) and Against the Ethicists (book XI). Against the Mathematicians VII-XI is sometimes distinguished from Against the Mathematicians I-VI by giving it the title Against the Dogmatists (in which case Against the Logicians are called books I-II, Against the Physicists are called books III-IV, and Against the Ethicists is called book V, despite the fact that it is commonly believed that the beginning of the work is missing and it is not known how many books might have preceded the extant books).

Note that none of these titles except Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians) and Πυῤῥώνειοι ὑποτύπωσεις (Outlines of Pyrrhonism), are found in the manuscripts.

[edit] Philosophy

Sextus Empiricus raised concerns which applied to all types of knowledge. He doubted the validity of induction[1] long before Hume, and raised the regress argument against all forms of reasoning:

Those who claim for themselves to judge the truth are bound to possess a criterion of truth. This criterion, then, either is without a judge's approval or has been approved. But if it is without approval, whence comes it that it is truthworthy? For no matter of dispute is to be trusted without judging. And, if it has been approved, that which approves it, in turn, either has been approved or has not been approved, and so on ad infinitum.[2]

Because of these and other barriers to acquiring true beliefs, Sextus Empiricus advises[3] that we should suspend judgment about virtually all beliefs, that is, we should neither affirm any belief as true nor deny any belief as false. This view is known as Pyrrhonian skepticism, as distinguished from Academic skepticism, as practised by Carneades, which, according to Sextus, denies knowledge altogether. Sextus did not deny the possibility of knowledge. He criticizes the Academic skeptic's claim that nothing is knowable as being an affirmative belief. Instead, Sextus advocates simply giving up belief: that is, suspending judgment about whether or not anything is knowable.[4] Only by suspending judgment can we attain a state of ataraxia (roughly, 'peace of mind'). Sextus did not think such a general suspension of judgment to be impractical, since we may live without any beliefs, acting by habit.

Sextus allowed that we might affirm claims about our experience (e.g., reports about our feelings or sensations). That is, for some claim X that I feel or perceive, it could be true to say "it seems to me now that X." However, he pointed out that this does not imply any objective knowledge of external reality. For while I might know that the honey I eat tastes sweet to me, this is merely a subjective judgment, and as such may not tell me anything true about the honey itself.

Interpretations of Sextus's philosophy along the above lines have been advocated by scholars such as Myles Burnyeat,[5] Jonathan Barnes,[6] and Benson Mates.[7]

Michael Frede, however, defends a different interpretation,[8] according to which Sextus does allow beliefs, so long as they are not derived by reason, philosophy or speculation; a skeptic may, for example, accept common opinions in the skeptic's society. However, the content of such beliefs is purely conventional or subjective. Thus, on this interpretation, the skeptic may well entertain the belief that God does or does not exist or that virtue is good. But he may not believe that such claims are true by nature.

[edit] The Ten Modes of Scepticism

Given the ten modes of contradictions given below by Sextus in his summary, the sceptic prescribes the best way to behave in such a world is to attain equanimity (Greek, equipollence) through a suspension of the judgement (Greek, epoché):

(1) “For how could one say, with regard to touch, that animals are similarly affected whether their surfaces consist of shell, flesh, needles, feathers or scales? And, as regards hearing, how could one say that perceptions are alike in animals with a very narrow auditory canal and in those with a very wide one, or in those with hairy ears and those with ears that are hairless...perfume seems very pleasant to human beings but intolerable to dung beetles and bees, and the application of olive oil is beneficial to human beings but kills wasps and bees.”

(2) “…the greatest indication of the vast and limitless difference in the intellect of human beings is the inconsistency of the various statements of the dogmatists concerning what may be appropriately chosen, what avoided, and so on.”

(3) “Pictures seem to the sense of sight to have concavities and convexities...but not to the touch...Let us imagine someone who from birth has …lacked hearing and sight. He will start out believing in the existence of nothing visible or audible, but only of the three kinds of quality he can register. It is therefore a possibility that we too, having only our five senses, only register from the qualities belonging to the apple those which we are capable of registering. But it may be that there objectively exist other qualities.”

(4) “Thus, things affect us in dissimilar ways depending on whether we are in a natural or unnatural condition, as when people who are delirious or possessed by a god seem to hear spirits but we do not…. And the same water that seems to us to be lukewarm seems boiling hot when poured on an inflamed place…. Further, if someone says that an intermingling of certain humours produces, in persons who are in an unnatural condition, odd phantasiai (percepts) of the external objects, it must be replied that since healthy people, too, have intermingled humours, it is possible that the external objects are in nature such as they appear to those persons who are said to be in an unnatural state, but that these humours are making the external objects appear to the healthy in a natural people other than they are."

(5) “lamplight appears dim in sunlight but bright in the dark. The same oar appears bent in water but straight when out of it.”

(6) “we deduce that since no object strikes us entirely by itself, but along with something, it may perhaps be possible to say what the mixture compounded out of the external object and the thing perceived with it is like, but we would not be able to say what the external object is like by itself… The same sound appears one way when accompanied by a rarefied atmosphere, another way when accompanied by a dense atmosphere”

(7) “individual filings of a piece of silver appear black, but when united with the whole they affect us as white...And wine, when drunk in moderation, strengthens us, but when taken in excess, disables the body.”

(8) “…since all things are relative, we will suspend judgement about what things exist absolutely and in nature… This has two senses. One is in relation to the judging subject...The other in relation to the conceptions perceived with it.”

(9) “The sun is certainly a much more marvellous thing than a comet. But since we see the sun all the time but the comet only infrequently, we marvel at the comet so much as even to suppose it a divine portent, but we do nothing like that for the sun. If, however, we thought of the sun as appearing infrequently and setting infrequently, and as illuminating everything all at once and then suddenly being eclipsed, we should find much to marvel at in the matter.”

(10) “among the Persians sodomy is customary but among the Romans it is prohibited by law; and with us adultery is prohibited, but among the Massagetae it is by custom treated as a matter of indifference, as Eudoxus of Cnidos reports...and with us it is forbidden to have intercourse with one's mother, whereas with the Persians this sort of marriage is very much the custom. And among the Egyptians men marry their sisters, which for us is prohibited by law."

[edit] Legacy

An influential Latin translation of Sextus's "Outlines" was published by Henricus Stephanus in Geneva in 1562. Petrus and Jacobus Chouet published the Greek text for the first time in 1621. Stephanus did not publish it with his Latin translation either in 1562 or in 1569, nor was it published in the reprint of the latter in 1619. Sextus's "Outlines" were widely read in Europe during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and had a profound impact on Michel de Montaigne, David Hume, and Hegel, among many others. Another source for the circulation of Sextus's ideas was Bayle's Dictionary. The legacy of Pyrrhonism is described in Richard Popkin's The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Descartes and High Road to Pyrrhonism. The transmission of Sextus's manuscripts through antiquity and the Middle Ages is reconstructed by Luciano Floridi's Sextus Empiricus, The Recovery and Transmission of Pyrrhonism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Sextus Empiricus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism trans. R.G. Bury (Loeb edn) (London: W. Heinemann, 1933), p. 283.
  2. ^ Sextus Empiricus. Against the Logicians trans. R.G. Bury (Loeb edn) (London: W. Heinemann, 1935) p. 179
  3. ^ The extent to which a skeptic can hold beliefs as well as the kinds of beliefs a skeptic can have is a matter of scholarly dispute.
  4. ^ See PH I.3, I.8, I.198; cf. J. Barnes, "Introduction", xix ff., in Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism. Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (transl.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
  5. ^ Burnyeat, M., "Can The Sceptic Live His Scepticism" in Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede (ed.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Hackett, 1997): 25-57. Cf. Burnyeat, M., "The Sceptic in His Place and Time", ibid., 92-126.
  6. ^ Barnes, J., "The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist" in Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede (ed.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Hackett, 1997): 58-91.
  7. ^ Mates, B. The Skeptic Way (Oxford UP, 1996).
  8. ^ Frede, M., "The Sceptic's Beliefs" in Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede (ed.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Hackett, 1997): 1-24. Cf. Frede, M., "The Sceptic's Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possibility of Knowledge", ibid., 127-152.

[edit] References

[edit] Translations

  • Sextus Empiricus, Against the Grammarians (Adversos Mathematicos I). David Blank (trans.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). ISBN 0-19-824470-3.
  • Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists: (Adversus Mathematicos XI). Richard Bett (trans.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). ISBN 0-19-825097-5
  • Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians. Richard Bett (trans.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). ISBN 0-521-53195-0
  • Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism. Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (trans.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 2000). ISBN 0-521-77809-3
  • Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism. R.G. Bury (trans.) (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1990). ISBN 0-87975-597-0
  • Sextus Empiricus, Selections from the Major Writings on Skepticism Man and God. Sanford G. Etheridge (trans.) (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985). ISBN 0-87220-006-X
  • Sextus Empiricus, Sextus Empiricus I: Outlines of Pyrrhonism. R.G. Bury (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933/2000). ISBN 0-674-99301-2
  • Sextus Empiricus, Sextus Empiricus II: Against the Logicians. R.G. Bury (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935/1997). ISBN 0-674-99321-7
  • Sextus Empiricus, Sextus Empiricus III: Against the Physicists, Against The Ethicists. R.G. Bury (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936/1997). ISBN 0-674-99344-6
  • Sextus Empiricus, Sextus Empiricus IV: Against the Professors. R.G. Bury (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949/2000). ISBN 0-674-99420-5
  • Sextus Empiricus, The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Benson Mates (trans.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). ISBN 0-19-509213-9

[edit] Scholarly works

  • Annas, Julia and Barnes, Jonathan, The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). ISBN 0-521-27644-6
  • Bett, Richard, Pyrrho, his antecedents, and his legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-19-925661-6
  • Brennan, Tad, Ethics and Epistemology in Sextus Empiricus (London: Garland, 1999). ISBN 0815336594
  • Brochard, Les Sceptiques grecs (1887)
  • Burnyeat, Myles & Frede, Michael The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997). ISBN 0-87220-347-6
  • Hankinson, R.J., The Skeptics (London: Routledge, 1998). ISBN 0-415-18446-0
  • Jourdain, Sextus Empiricus (Paris, 1858)
  • Mates, Benson. The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
  • Pappenheim, Lebensverholtnisse des Sextus Empiricus (Berlin, 1875)
  • Popkin, Richard, The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). ISBN 0-19-510768-3
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