Pyrrho

Introduction

Pyrrho of Elis is the Greek philosopher who founded the skeptical tradition that bears his name. The Pyrrhonian framework Pyrrho developed in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE is one of the four major Hellenistic philosophical schools alongside Stoicism, Epicureanism, and the Academic tradition. Where the other Hellenistic schools all proposed positive doctrines about the human good and the structure of reality, Pyrrho proposed the suspension of judgment on such questions as the path to tranquility — ataraxia achieved through the recognition that we cannot settle most theoretical questions and that the attempt to settle them is itself a source of disturbance.

Pyrrho wrote nothing. The biographical and doctrinal information comes from later sources, principally Sextus Empiricus (second century CE, whose Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Mathematicians are the major surviving Pyrrhonian works), Diogenes Laertius (third century CE, whose Book IX gives the biographical account), and Aristocles of Messene (preserved in Eusebius). The reliability of the Pyrrho legend is contested; some scholars (especially Christopher Beckwith in Greek Buddha, 2015) have argued that Pyrrho's experience of Indian thought during his service in Alexander the Great's expedition shaped his philosophy in ways the standard accounts underplay.

Life

Pyrrho was born around 360 BCE in Elis, a city in the western Peloponnese. The early biographical reports describe him as initially a painter of modest talent. The decisive event of his life was his service in Alexander the Great's expedition to the East (334–323 BCE), which brought Pyrrho into contact with Persian Magi and (most importantly for the Beckwith reading) the Indian gymnosophists or naked philosophers whom the Greek sources identify with the Buddhist or Jain ascetic traditions.

Pyrrho returned to Elis after Alexander's death and lived there until his own death around 270 BCE. He held the city's high priesthood, which the biographical tradition presents as a honor; the city granted him citizenship despite his non-Eleian origin, and after his death erected a statue in his memory.

The biographical reports describe Pyrrho's practical philosophy through anecdotes that are partly historical and partly hagiographic. He was indifferent to physical danger (walking past cliffs without veering, ignoring oncoming carts); his friends followed him to protect him from his own indifference. He was unmoved by external events (storms at sea, attempted assault). He cooked for his sister, washed the household pig, performed domestic tasks that the Greek social hierarchy made unusual for a free citizen of his standing. The reports may be later constructions but they capture the practical orientation of the Pyrrhonian framework: the philosophical position should produce a particular kind of life, and the life is the verification of the position.

Pyrrho left no school in the institutional sense. His student Timon of Phlius preserved and transmitted his teachings through poetic compositions (the Silloi or Lampoons and the Indalmoi or Images). The Pyrrhonian tradition went largely underground for two centuries before being revived by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE; from that revival the tradition continued through Agrippa, Sextus Empiricus, and the Pyrrhonian writers of the early Christian era.

The problem he worked on

Pyrrho's project was the development of a practical philosophy adequate to the conditions of life under conditions where the major theoretical questions about reality, the gods, the good, and the structure of human existence cannot be settled by inquiry. The dogmatic schools of the Hellenistic period — Stoicism, Epicureanism, Aristotelianism — each proposed positive answers to these questions; each had developed elaborate theoretical apparatus to defend the answers; each promised that adherence to the doctrines would produce ataraxia.

Pyrrho's response was the recognition that the dogmatic answers cannot in fact be settled by inquiry. The arguments for and against any position can be marshaled on both sides; the evidence is never decisive between competing accounts; the inquirer who attempts to settle the questions through reasoning finds themselves continuously moved between positions without ever reaching the stability the inquiry promised. The proper response is to suspend judgment (epochē) on the questions that cannot be settled, accept appearances as they present themselves without committing to claims about the reality behind appearances, and find through this suspension the tranquility that the dogmatic schools had promised but failed to deliver.

Contributions

The threefold structure

The Aristocles passage preserved in Eusebius gives the most compressed statement of the Pyrrhonian framework. The framework has three parts: things are by nature equally indifferent, unmeasurable, and indeterminable; consequently, our sensations and opinions tell us neither truths nor falsehoods; the proper response is to be without opinions, leaning neither one way nor the other, and to remain unmoved by what occurs; from this disposition arises first aphasia (the absence of speech that takes a position) and then ataraxia (tranquility).

The Aristocles passage has been continuously contested in its interpretation. Two main readings have dominated. The metaphysical reading takes Pyrrho to be making a positive claim about how things really are — that reality is genuinely indeterminate, and the recognition of this indeterminacy produces the appropriate response. The epistemological reading takes Pyrrho to be making a claim about the limits of human cognition — that whatever the nature of reality, we cannot settle the question, and the recognition of this limit produces the appropriate response. The two readings differ in whether the suspension of judgment is itself a metaphysical commitment.

The later Pyrrhonian tradition through Sextus Empiricus favors the epistemological reading. Sextus's framework of modes (the ten Aenesideman modes; the five Agrippan modes; the eight modes against cause) provides the technical apparatus for showing how any dogmatic claim can be undermined and how the equal weight of arguments on competing sides produces the suspension of judgment.

Ataraxia through epochē

The practical core of the framework is the connection between epochē (suspension of judgment) and ataraxia (tranquility). The dogmatic schools had promised tranquility through the adoption of the right theoretical positions; Pyrrho proposed tranquility through the suspension of all theoretical positions.

The argument: theoretical disputes are themselves a source of disturbance. The agent who is committed to a particular position must defend it against opposing positions, must engage in the work of refuting alternatives, must continuously revisit the question when new arguments arise. The agent who suspends judgment is freed from this work; they can engage with appearances as they present themselves, follow the practical guidance of custom and natural disposition, and live without the disturbance that theoretical commitment requires.

The famous anecdote of Pyrrho on the storm-tossed ship captures the practical effect. The other passengers were terrified; Pyrrho pointed to a pig that was eating its food calmly throughout the storm and said that this was the attitude philosophy aimed at — unmoved engagement with appearances, without the additional disturbance that theoretical commitment about the meaning of the storm would produce.

The four modes of life under epochē

Pyrrho identified four kinds of conduct that the agent who has suspended judgment can follow without committing to theoretical positions about them. The agent can follow the guidance of nature (the body's natural responses of hunger, thirst, fatigue, sexual desire); the necessity of feeling (responding to immediate pleasure and pain without commitments about what produces them); the tradition of laws and customs (following the conventions of one's society without claiming they reflect any deeper truth); and the instruction of the arts (practicing the crafts and skills that one's circumstances require, without claiming the arts reveal anything beyond the practical guidance they offer).

The fourfold framework gives the practical answer to the standard objection that suspended judgment produces paralysis. The agent who suspends judgment about the theoretical questions can still act, follow conventions, pursue practical projects, and live a recognizable human life; what they suspend is the dogmatic commitment to theoretical claims about the underlying nature of these activities.

The Buddhist hypothesis

The Beckwith reading argues that Pyrrho's framework was influenced by his contact with Indian thought during the Alexander expedition. The Aristocles passage's threefold structure (things are indeterminate; we cannot speak truly of them; tranquility follows from this recognition) has parallels in early Buddhist formulations of the three marks of existence (impermanence, suffering, non-self) and in the broader Buddhist framework of the cessation of theoretical commitment as the path to liberation.

The Beckwith argument has been contested by classical scholars who emphasize the continuities between Pyrrho and earlier Greek skeptical traditions (especially the late Academy under Arcesilaus, who developed parallel positions). Whatever the verdict on the specific historical thesis, the structural parallels between Pyrrhonian skepticism and the Buddhist framework have been continuously noted from the nineteenth century onward and have shaped the contemporary engagement with both traditions.

Reception

Pyrrho's immediate reception was limited; he founded no institutional school in the sense Plato's Academy or Aristotle's Lyceum had been institutionalized. The Pyrrhonian framework was transmitted through Timon and went underground for two centuries before being revived by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE. The revival produced the Sextan corpus that has shaped subsequent skeptical philosophy.

The Renaissance recovery of Sextus Empiricus through Henri Estienne's 1562 Latin translation made Pyrrhonian skepticism available to early modern Europe. Michel de Montaigne's Apology for Raymond Sebond (in Essays Book II, 1580) gave the major early modern engagement; Descartes's Meditations (1641) developed the skeptical method as a propaedeutic to the recovery of certain knowledge; Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697) transmitted skeptical themes into the Enlightenment.

The contemporary engagement through Myles Burnyeat (especially The Skeptical Tradition, 1983), Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (The Modes of Scepticism, 1985), Richard Bett (whose monographs on Pyrrho and Sextus are the major recent scholarship), Christopher Beckwith (whose Greek Buddha, 2015, presents the Buddhist hypothesis), and the broader skepticism literature continues to develop the framework.

Continuing engagement

Major recent scholarly work includes Richard Bett's Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy (2000), Bett's How to Be a Pyrrhonist (2019), Christopher Beckwith's Greek Buddha (2015), the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (Bett, ed., 2010), and the broader work of Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, Casey Perin, and Diego Machuca. Active scholarly debates concern the relation between Pyrrho's framework and Sextus's later systematization, the historical question of Indian influence, the relation between Pyrrhonian and Academic skepticism, and the contemporary applicability of the Pyrrhonian framework in epistemology and the philosophy of life.

Further reading

• Sextus Empiricus — the major Pyrrhonian author whose works are the principal surviving source
• Skepticism — the tradition Pyrrho founded
• Epicurus — the Hellenistic contemporary whose dogmatic alternative the Pyrrhonian framework opposed
• Zeno of Citium — the Stoic contemporary whose framework Pyrrho's skepticism also opposed
• Ataraxia — the goal both Pyrrhonian skepticism and Epicureanism pursued through different means

The Greek philosopher who founded Pyrrhonian skepticism in the late fourth century BCE — the practice of suspending judgment as the path to tranquility.