Abstract
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.
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Notes
- 1.
I enter the caveat because one might at least expect that skepticism about ethics would be acknowledged to have practical ramifications. And it is possible to find suggestions along these lines; see, for example, Lear (1983), where the position Lear calls relativism can also be seen as a form of skepticism. For the most part, however, moral skepticism today is not taken to have any more in the way of practical implications than is epistemological skepticism. I have said a little more about this in Bett (forthcoming a).
- 2.
Both Pyrrho, the starting-point of the movement, and Aenesidemus, the founder of the later Pyrrhonist tradition to which Sextus belonged, emphasize the skeptic’s happiness and contrast it with the torments experienced by other people. For Pyrrho, see Aristocles in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 14.18.1–5; for Aenesidemus, see Photius, Bibliotheca 169b19–26.
- 3.
For a good account of the various different types of apraxia objection, see Vogt (2010).
- 4.
- 5.
As Aristotle says his opponents, on the issue of the primacy and inescapability of the Law of Non-Contradiction, claim to do. Note how Aristotle attributes to these people both the belief that propositions of the form “P and not-P” can be true, and the belief that it is possible to hold beliefs of this kind (Met. 1005b35–1006a2); a major part of his response consists of attacking the former by means of attacking the latter. For Aristotle, as for the skeptics and their opponents (see above), the possibility of incorporating a philosophical outlook into one’s ordinary attitudes is important, as it typically is not for philosophers today. I have discussed this in Bett (1993).
- 6.
Or indifferent – that is, neither good nor bad. But Sextus does not consistently include the indifferent alongside the good and the bad in these discussions; and in any case, no issue of principle is affected by its presence or absence.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Another point that Sextus makes in this context is that those who achieve what they take to be good “are irrationally and immeasurably excited” (PH 1.27, cf. M 11.116, 146), and that this too is something the skeptic is better off without. To us this may have a strange ring; but again, it is in line with Stoic opposition to the passions, this time on grounds of their excessiveness.
- 10.
Unless we suppose a distinction between “piety is really good”, which he takes both ordinary people and theorists to accept, and some weaker sense of “piety is good” that involves no commitment to ethical objectivity. But Sextus shows no sign of recognizing any such distinction.
- 11.
This must be the force of biôtikôs, translated “in terms of ordinary life”. But in light of the previous point about the ethical beliefs of ordinary people, “in terms of ordinary life” cannot be understood to capture everything worth noting about ordinary people’s attitudes. Perhaps the thought is that in the everyday business of life, ordinary people will simply act, as does the skeptic, but that when it comes to matters of good and bad (unlike many other matters that are solely the provinces of theorists), ordinary people also have a reflective side, and that it is here that their beliefs about what is really good and bad emerge.
- 12.
There are complicated questions about the skeptic’s attitude towards religion, as portrayed by Sextus. I have discussed this in Bett (forthcoming b); for a partially opposed perspective on the same topic, see Annas (forthcoming). But these do not, I think, affect how we are to understand the nature of his “acceptance” of the goodness of piety and the badness of impiety; this “acceptance” must consist in something other than endorsement of the propositions “piety is good” and “impiety is bad”, and this is the crucial point for present purposes.
- 13.
Which decision the skeptic makes is not relevant either to the objection or to Sextus’ response to it. It is sometimes suggested that the objection is that the skeptic will not do the right thing, as judged by the objector. It may indeed be hard to imagine the skeptic standing up to the tyrant, and I return to this point below. But the question at issue here is, can the skeptic make either decision without inconsistently committing himself to beliefs about good and bad?
- 14.
This paragraph and the next reuse material from Bett (forthcoming a). I thank the editor, Roger Crisp, and Oxford University Press for permission.
- 15.
I have discussed the skeptic’s self in Bett (2008).
- 16.
The possibilities here were no doubt more limited in Sextus’ time than they would be in ours, given the much more homogeneous nature of ancient society. But Sextus’ picture of the factors influencing the skeptic’s dispositions is perhaps still excessively limited.
- 17.
See Sartre (1973, pp. 35–8).
- 18.
For Ayer’s early emotivism, see Ayer (1936, chapter 6). For his later position on the status of ethics, see Ayer (1973, chapter 10).
- 19.
See Rogers (1999, p. 344).
- 20.
See in particular Evans (2004), with references to earlier articles.
- 21.
Mates (1996, p. 314), even proposes excising the chapter as a later interpolation (although not for the reason I am suggesting). In a work that is clearly in part a patchwork of material from earlier sources, this seems quite unwarranted – even if we are as impressed as Mates is by the incongruity between this passage and the rest of the work.
- 22.
This was first noticed by Striker (1990).
- 23.
See again n. 2.
- 24.
I have discussed other possibilities in Bett (2003).
- 25.
Although there is of course a very great difference between Stoicism and common sense when it comes to the appropriate objects of this full-blooded concern.
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Acknowledgments
I thank the audience at the Buenos Aires conference “Ancient Pyrrhonism and its Influence on Modern and Contemporary Philosophy” (August 2008), and also the participants in the NYU La Pietra workshop/conference “Skepticism: Ancient, Modern and Contemporary” (June 2008). The same earlier version of this paper was presented in both places, and I learned a great deal from the discussions on both occasions.
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Bett, R. (2012). How Ethical Can an Ancient Skeptic Be?. In: Machuca, D. (eds) Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 70. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1991-0_1
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