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WorkSextus Empiricus

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

A physician's handbook for living without beliefs: set every argument against an equal one, and calm follows.

by Sextus Empiricus843 passages held

  • Greek, the original language
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Original title
Πυρρώνειοι ὑποτυπώσεις
Original language
Greek

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Overview

Philosophers who think they have found the truth, Sextus Empiricus explains at the outset, are dogmatists; those who declare that it cannot be found are the Academic skeptics; the Pyrrhonists, named after Pyrrho of Elis, are the ones still searching. The Outlines of Pyrrhonism is the handbook of that third way: three books of Greek, composed around 200 CE by a physician of the Empiricist school of medicine. Almost nothing else is known of his life. Its claim is that a trained mind can meet any argument with another of equal force, an equality the Greeks called isostheneia. Judgment is then suspended, the state called epochē, and an unlooked-for tranquility, ataraxia, follows. Sextus compares this to the painter Apelles, who failed to paint the foam on a horse's mouth, threw his sponge at the picture in frustration, and found the foam there. The first book sets out the method and its tools: ten modes of argument he credits to older skeptics, and five he credits to later ones, whom Diogenes Laertius, the ancient biographer of the philosophers, names as Agrippa. The second and third books turn them on the logic, physics and ethics of the Stoics, the Epicureans and other dogmatists, from the criterion of truth to cause, god and the good. The skeptic who comes out of it still eats when hungry and keeps the customs of his country, without claiming to know how things really are. In 1562 Henri Estienne, a printer in Geneva, issued a Latin translation. Seven years later Gentian Hervet, a Catholic theologian, translated Against the Mathematicians into Latin and wrote in his preface that these books held the answer to the Calvinists. Most of the skeptical sayings Montaigne had inscribed on the beams of his library came from Sextus. The Greek text was first printed in 1621.

Key concepts

What does epochē, suspension of judgment, actually mean?

Epochē is holding back from saying either yes or no about how something really is. It is neither a mood of doubt nor a denial: the skeptic grants that honey tastes sweet to him and declines only to say whether honey is sweet by nature. It comes about when the arguments on each side seem equally strong, so that nothing tips the balance.

What is isostheneia, the equal force of arguments?

Isostheneia is the state in which opposing arguments seem equally convincing, so neither can be preferred. The book defines skepticism as an ability to set appearances and thoughts against each other in any way at all until this balance is reached. Its motto, that every argument is met by an equal one, names the method the skeptic follows, not a fact he claims about the world.

What is ataraxia, and why doesn't the skeptic aim at it directly?

Ataraxia is freedom from inner disturbance, the calm the skeptic hopes for. The book's surprise is that it is not won by finding the answer. Skeptics first hoped to reach calm by deciding which appearances were true, could not decide, suspended judgment, and found that calm followed anyway, as a shadow follows a body.

What are the Ten Modes?

The Ten Modes are ten standard patterns of argument for reaching suspension of judgment, which Sextus credits to older skeptics. Each collects cases where the same thing appears differently: to different animals, to different people, to different senses, in different conditions, positions, mixtures, amounts, relations, frequencies and customs. Since no appearance can be shown to be the privileged one, judgment is held back.

What are the Five Modes credited to Agrippa?

They are five shorter patterns of argument from later skeptics: disagreement, endless regress, relativity, hypothesis and circularity. Any claim meets a dispute, and settling it needs a reason, which needs another reason, and so on forever, unless the chain loops back on itself or stops at a bare assumption. Diogenes Laertius, the ancient biographer, names their author as Agrippa.

How is a Pyrrhonist different from an Academic skeptic?

A Pyrrhonist does not say that truth cannot be found. The book's opening sorts philosophers into three groups: dogmatists, who think they have found it, Academics, who declare it beyond reach, and skeptics, who are still searching. For Sextus, saying that nothing can be known is itself a firm claim about how things are, and the Pyrrhonist suspends judgment on that too.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Living Without Beliefs

Can a person stop deciding how things really are and still act, keep the law and be at peace? The opening book answers yes, and shows how such a life runs.

Sextus Empiricus sorts philosophers into three: those who claim to have found the truth, those who declare it cannot be found, and the skeptics, who are still looking. Set any argument against an equal one and judgment is suspended; tranquility then follows, as a shadow follows a body. The skeptic does not deny appearances, and honey still tastes sweet to him. He lives by them, guided by nature, by hunger and thirst, by the laws and customs of his country and by the skills he was taught.

  • skepticism
  • suspension of judgment
  • assent
  • dogmatism
  • appearance and reality
  • language
  • ethics
  • knowledge

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Ten Ways Things Look Different

If the same thing looks one way to one creature and another way to the next, whose view shows it as it is? Ten patterns of argument press that question until judgment gives way.

The Ten Modes, which Sextus credits to older skeptics, gather cases where appearances clash: animals built differently, people of different constitutions, senses that disagree, sickness and health, distance and position, mixture, quantity, relation, rarity, and the customs of different peoples. Honey tastes bitter to someone with jaundice, an oar looks bent in water, and gold lying about like stones would be worthless. Sextus does not conclude that things have no nature. He finds no way to prefer one appearance over another, and so holds back.

  • perception
  • relativism
  • animal cognition
  • moral relativism
  • disagreement
  • epistemology

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Every Reason Needs a Reason

What could ever end the demand for one more justification? Five short arguments show every attempt running into a dispute, an endless chain, a circle or a bare assumption.

Later skeptics, whom Diogenes Laertius names as Agrippa, compressed the method into Five Modes. Any question meets a disagreement that cannot be settled without a test of truth, and the test needs a test of its own. A proof then either goes back forever, turns in a circle where each step props up the other, or halts at a premise simply assumed, which an opposite assumption can match. The second and third books turn these tools on the logic, physics and ethics of the dogmatic schools.

  • infinite regress
  • circular reasoning
  • demonstration
  • inference
  • criterion of truth
  • definition
  • logic
  • truth
  • reason

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Within this work

passages held
843
distinct concepts
490
by passages held, corpus-wide
#76

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “epistemology” and “skepticism”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
epistemologyskepticism113
skepticismsuspension of judgment65
perceptionskepticism61
criteria of truthskepticism39
logicskepticism38
criteria of truthepistemology32
epistemologyperception31
knowledgeskepticism30
metaphysicsskepticism24
epistemologylogic12
epistemologysuspension of judgment11
perceptionsuspension of judgment10
criteria of truthperception6
criteria of truthsuspension of judgment5
epistemologyknowledge4
knowledgeperception4
knowledgelogic3
criteria of truthknowledge2
epistemologymetaphysics2
knowledgemetaphysics2
knowledgesuspension of judgment2
metaphysicsperception2
criteria of truthlogic1
criteria of truthmetaphysics1
logicperception1
metaphysicssuspension of judgment1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Against the Dogmatists (Πρὸς δογματικούς)

    Written as one long attack in three parts — logic, physics and ethics — it covers the ground of the second and third books of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism at far greater length; its books on logic quote earlier philosophers whose words survive nowhere else.

     EL
  2. Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Πυρρώνειοι ὑποτυπώσεις) you are here EL
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