Richard Bett

Scepticism and ethics

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.

The Sceptics and the Emotions

The Stoics proposed a complex and highly controversial account of what a pathos is and how it comes about.’ One might expect that the sceptics would have gleefully fastened upon this as material for sceptical scrutiny. Galen certainly found the Stoic analysis of the pathe philosophically objectionable;2 it would be entirely understandable if the sceptics had subjected it to similar kinds of attacks. And they might have extended their attacks to the Epicureans as well; for the Epicureans, though nowhere near as explicit on the subject as the Stoics (at least in the surviving sources), also appear to have had views on the nature of the pathe. 3 Yet we find very little evidence, in any of the sources for Greek scepticism, of arguments specifically targeting such views for criticism.

On Pyrrhonism, Stances, and Believing What You Want

The paper considers the relations between the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus and epistemological voluntarism, as applied both to epistemic stances and to individual beliefs. In the first part, the main question is whether ancient skepticism is congenial to the idea of alternative epistemic stances (and hence, potentially, to voluntarism about them). The answer proposed is that skepticism does not in fact recognize this possibility. However, this is not due to any essential features of skepticism itself; rather, it is because, like ancient Greek philosophy in general, the stance skepticism in fact unquestioningly assumes is that of realism. In the second part, the focus is more directly on voluntarism and its compatibility with skepticism. The difficulty with bringing these two together, it is argued, is that, while voluntarism gives one license to hold either of two opposing beliefs, skepticism is in the business of subverting beliefs; in this respect their orientations are in opposite directions. A closing suggestion is that if there is any place where ancient skepticism and voluntarism might meet, it is not in the Pyrrhonist tradition, but in the mitigated skepticism of the late Academy, which allowed the holding of (albeit tentative) beliefs.

How Ethical Can an Ancient Skeptic Be

The paper addresses the question whether a Pyrrhonist skeptic has the resources with which to live a life that the rest of us would consider ethically robust, focusing especially on the writings of Sextus Empiricus. In the area of ethics, the Pyrrhonist refrains from positing anything that is good or bad by nature. This is a belief that he takes ordinary people, and not just philosophers, to hold. Although Sextus says that the skeptic’s ataraxia, freedom from worry, comes from suspension of judgment on all topics, his account of how ataraxia is generated focuses exclusively on the turmoil that afflicts those who do believe in things good or bad by nature. His argument that such beliefs are a source of trouble seems more convincing in some cases than in others. As for the skeptic’s own actions, Sextus says that they are shaped by the way things appear; in the case of ethics, the most important such “appearances” are the laws and customs of the society in which one was raised. Now, to follow laws and customs with no convictions as to their rightness or wrongness seems a strikingly passive approach to life. It seems to eliminate any notion of values in which one is invested as a self; and it seems to encourage an unattractive degree of conformism. In other words, it does not seem to permit an ethically robust life. It is suggested that, contrary to Sextus’ own presentation of the matter, the crucial point is not the absence of any belief in things good and bad by nature. What is central is the absence of any thought that certain things really matter or are really important (a thought that is not necessarily dependent on any belief in ethical objectivity). At the root, then, of the skeptic’s ethically impoverished attitude (as most of us would think of it) is the commitment to ataraxia or tranquility.

What Kind of Self Can a Greek Sceptic Have

I have always had difficulty understanding talk about the self; precisely what is being referred to by the term has always seemed to me elusive. And so, in beginning work on this paper, I did what I do not generally encourage my students to do; I looked up the word in the dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following overlapping series of definitions: “That which in a person is really and intrinsically he (in contradistinction to what is adventitious); the ego (often identified with the soul or mind as opposed to the body); a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness”. Even aside from the sexism of the first definition, this set of definitions has a very archaic ring to it; it is perhaps no surprise that, although it was the 1971 edition that I consulted, the most recent of the examples of the word’s usage that followed the definitions was from 1909. For the claim that there is some group of features that constitute the real or intrinsic character, or the essence, of a person; the notion of a strong form of personal identity inhering solely in psychological, and not at all in physical, features of a person; and the suggestion that there is any such thing as “a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness” – all these ideas have been the objects of severe and widespread philosophical suspicion for a long time (indeed, since long before 1909, one of their most vocal detractors being Hume). If that is what is meant by the self, it might well seem that the question whether an ancient Greek sceptic can lay claim to such a thing is of no great interest. If that is what the self is supposed to be, one might say, then of course no ancient Greek sceptic would want such a thing; but this creates no problem for sceptics in particular, since we all manage quite satisfactorily without it. Yet many scholars have felt that there is something problematic about what we could call the personhood of the Greek sceptic. Myles Burnyeat, for example, has spoken of the sceptic as committed to “a detachment from oneself”. Despite all that the sceptics themselves, especially Sextus Empiricus, say about how normal the sceptic’s existence is, it has often seemed that there is something not quite

A Sceptic Looks at Art (but not Very Closely): Sextus Empiricus on Music

The paper examines Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Musicians (M 6), one of the least studied portions of Sextus’ surviving work, against the background of the more general question why he has so little to say on questions that for us would fall under aesthetics. The structure and goals of the book are considered, along with some puzzles about the consistency of his aims. Each of the two main parts is then analyzed separately, including a comparison between the first part and Philodemus’ On Music. Sextus’ apparent lack of interest in aesthetics is explained primarily by his quite general tendency to focus on foundational questions, of which the second part of M 6 is a notable instance; another, connected factor is the common ancient habit (illustrated in the first part of M 6) of treating aesthetic questions in conjunction with ethical or political ones.