Shaul Tor

Parmenides’ Epistemology and the Two Parts of his Poem

This paper pursues a new approach to the problem of the relation between Alētheia and Doxa. It investigates as interrelated matters Parmenides’ impetus for developing and including Doxa, his conception of the mortal epistemic agent in relation both to Doxa’s investigations and to those in Alētheia, and the relation between mortal and divine in his poem. Parmenides, it is argued, maintained that Doxastic cognition is an ineluctable and even appropriate aspect of mortal life. The mortal agent, however, is nonetheless capable of sustaining the cognition of Alētheia by momentarily coming to think with—or as—his divine (fiery, aethereal) soul.

Mortal and Divine in Xenophanes’ Epistemology

Abstract: In the first instance, this paper offers a new interpretation of the logic of Xenophanes B18.1. Contrary to the two ways in which previous commentators have construed this line, Xenophanes neither categorically rejects the notion of divine disclosure nor acquiesces in traditional understandings of it. Rather, Xenophanes rejects traditional conceptions of divine disclosure as theologically faulty and supplants them with his own, alternative notion of disclosure. Having argued that Xenophanes developed a conception of divine disclosure, I advance further suggestions concerning its function and characteristics. I follow and develop Lesher’s (1983) argument that Xenophanes arrives at his understanding of the limitations of human knowledge by rejecting traditional divinatory assumptions. But Lesher, I suggest, tells only half the story. On Xenophanes’ conception of disclosure, the divine purposively facilitates mortal belief-formation and mortal inquiry. That is, Xenophanes’ own understanding of disclosure underlies his positive views regarding what does lie within the scope of mortal epistemology. More speculatively, I develop two alternative interpretations of the precise notion of purposiveness which underlies Xenophanean disclosure. Most probably, Xenophanes reconceptualises the notion of divine disclosure radically as the view that the divine purposively facilitates all mortal experience and belief-formation as part of its intelligent direction of the cosmos and its inhabitants. Another, somewhat less likely possibility is that Xenophanes maintains less idiosyncratically that the divine guides particular mortals in particular circumstances. Finally, I ask how the proposed interpretation of Xenophanes’ epistemology may lend nuance to our understanding of the complexity of his critical engagement with the traditional mantic model of divine disclosure.

Sextus and Wittgenstein on the End of Justification

Following the lead of Duncan Pritchard’s “Wittgensteinian Pyrrhonism,” this paper takes a further, comparative and contrastive look at the problem of justification in Sextus Empiricus and in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. I argue both that Pritchard’s stimulating account is problematic in certain important respects and that his insights contain much interpretive potential still to be pursued. Diverging from Pritchard, I argue that it is a significant and self-conscious aspect of Sextus’ sceptical strategies to call into question large segments of our belief system en masse by exposing as apparently unjustifiable fundamental propositions which are closely related in their linchpin role to Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions. In the first instance, the result is a more complex account of both a deeper affinity between Wittgenstein’s approach to hinge propositions and Sextus’ approach to what I term archai propositions and a divergence between the two. In the second instance, I suggest how the comparison with On Certainty can be illuminating for the interpreter of Sextus. In particular, it can help us to see how the Pyrrhonist’s everyday conduct—common assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding—involves rational procedures of justification, in line with a naturalism reminiscent of Wittgenstein. Furthermore, it can help us to reflect on the Pyrrhonist’s attitude to what Wittgenstein would have called her ‘worldview’. Throughout, I suggest that the comparison with Wittgenstein is interesting, although it must be cashed out differently, not only on the interpretation—or, perhaps, strand—of ancient Pyrrhonism which has the sceptic exempt ordinary beliefs from her suspension of judgement, but also on the interpretation (or strand) which has her disavow all beliefs categorically.

Sextus Empiricus on Xenophanes’ scepticism

Sextus’ interpretation of Xenophanes’ scepticism in M 7.49–52 is often cited but has never been subject to detailed analysis. Such analysis reveals that Sextus’ interpretation raises far more complex problems than has been recognised. Scholars invariably assume one of two ways of construing his account of Xenophanes B34, without observing that the choice between these two alternatives poses an interpretive dilemma. Some scholars take it that Sextus ascribes to Xenophanes (i) the view that one may have knowledge without knowing that one has knowledge. Others take it that he ascribes to Xenophanes (ii) the view that one may have true belief without knowing that one has true belief. A close examination of Sextus’ paraphrase exposes a crucial but overlooked complication. Sextus elides Xenophanes’ pivotal distinction between knowing “the clear and certain” (to saphes) and believing “what has been fulfilled” (tetelesmenon). He eliminates altogether tetelesmenon from his analysis of B34, and expands the role of to saphes. I demonstrate that, as a result, Xenophanes B34, as interpreted by Sextus, does not consistently and straightforwardly express either view (i) or view (ii). Sextus, I argue, in fact develops a fundamentally incoherent interpretation of Xenophanes B34. On Sextus’ interpretation, Xenophanes justifies the proposition “No human knows” by arguing that, even if a human does, in fact, know, he does not know that he knows. Finally, I argue that Sextus’ incoherent account reflects not unthinking negligence, but a sophisticated if ultimately doomed attempt to interpret the logical structure of Xenophanes B34 in line with later models of second-order scepticism.