Abstract
One of the most provocative remarks of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism is his quasi-prescription of a skeptical “Fourfold” indicating that skeptics (should?) follow the “guidance of nature.” But how can a skeptic both place dogmatic claims in abeyance through epochē (suspension of judgment) and also claim to grasp how nature guides or does not guide us? Should not skeptics who advocate aphasia (silence) about things dogmatic entirely refrain from making assertions about nature? More generally, how can skepticism be consistent with any form of naturalism? This essay undertakes to explore the possibility of a skeptical naturalism as it appears in the work of David Hume. The essay surveys the ways in which Hume himself may have appropriated skepticism as well as the extent to which his thought may be properly characterized as Academical or Pyrrhonian. The essay argues that skeptical naturalism is possible through the sort of reconceiving of “nature” found in Humean philosophy.
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Notes
- 1.
“Adhering, then, to appearances we live in accordance with the normal rules of life, undogmatically, seeing that we cannot remain wholly inactive. And it would seem that this regulation of life is fourfold, and that one part of it lies in the guidance of Nature, another in the constraint of the passions, another in the tradition of laws and customs, another in the instruction of the arts. Nature’s guidance is that by which we are naturally capable of sensation and thought; constraint of the passions is that whereby hunger drives us to food and thirst to drink; tradition of customs and laws, that whereby we regard piety in the conduct of life as good, but impiety as evil; instruction of the arts, that whereby we are not inactive in such arts as we adopt. But we make all these statements undogmatically” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH) I 23–4, Bury’s translation).
- 2.
At PH I 28, Sextus describes the skeptic as “the man who determines nothing as to what is naturally good or bad”; in PH I 197 he writes that the skeptic merely announces “undogmatically what appears to himself regarding the matters presented, not making any confident declaration, but just explaining his own state of mind.” Sextus, in short, seems to cast the activity of skepticism as merely describing what appears to be the case to a particular individual (making first-person reports, as it were) rather than prescribing what really ought to be the case for everyone. Cf. PH III 179.
- 3.
Hume (1978), hereafter “T”: see T 224, 269, and 273 for examples of places where Hume describes himself or his philosophy as skeptical: e.g., “in this blind submission I shew most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles” (1.4.7; T 269). Famously in section XII of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (EHU), Hume outlines his “Academical or Sceptical Philosophy” (in Hume 1975).
- 4.
Kemp Smith and Popkin, of course, reach different conclusions about whether or not Hume is best characterized as a skeptic. Kemp Smith (1905, 1941) argues that Hume appeals to nature in order to overcome skepticism, while Popkin reads that appeal as exhibiting the truly Pyrrhonian character of Hume’s work (because Pyrrhonists submit to the guidance of nature). Both, however, read Hume as appealing to nature to defeat skeptical doubt. My position, by contrast, is that for Hume the reassertion of natural beliefs does not restore them to the same condition they held before the believer’s engagement with skeptical arguments. In the wake of the skeptical arguments Hume philosophically assents only to non-dogmatic beliefs, and in this way for Hume belief becomes consistent with skepticism.
- 5.
- 6.
Garrett’s crystalline work, of course, follows a decade after Fogelin (1994).
- 7.
Sextus describes it as a capacity or an agogē or discipline for living (PH I 7). R. G. Bury writes: “Probably, then, the main, if not the only interest of Pyrrho was in the ethical and practical side of Scepticism as the speediest cure for the ills of life” (1933, p. xxxi). David Sedley says: “The practical model which this unopinionated life-style offered was, I believe, Pyrrho’s unique contribution to Hellenistic skepticism” (1983, p. 115).
- 8.
The Library of the Faculty of Advocates seems to have acquired the text in 1723. The inclusion of a Latin translation in the Fabricius text may be significant if Cavendish’s claim that Hume’s “knowledge of Greek was inadequate for the purpose” of reading Sextus in the Greek is true (Cavendish 1958, p. 175 n. 1; Groarke and Solomon 1991, p. 650); using this text Hume would have been able to consult the text as it appears in both languages, thereby compensating for any weakness he may have had in Greek.
- 9.
As Popkin points out, Jean LeClerc published a lengthy and detailed review of Fabricius’ 1718 edition in the popular Bibliotèque ancienne et moderne XIV (1720), 1–113 (Popkin 1993, p. 139). Hume hailed from a family composed of many successful advocates, including his father (Joseph Home) and maternal grandfather (David Falconer); there are indications that Hume himself may have studied law, most likely from 1725/1726 to 1729. Hume became keeper of Edinburgh’s Library of the Faculty of Advocates from 1752 to 1757.
- 10.
The character of some of the press-marks used by the Library of the Faculty of Advocates makes it impossible to determine the exact date of acquisition. It is possible to determine, however, the range of years over which individual press-marks were employed. This book contains the old (cancelled) press mark, “H.2.10,” which was used by the Advocates from the 1720s onward; we may infer that this mark was changed in the later part of the eighteenth century, as a marked up copy of the 1776 catalogue gives the press mark still used today in this text, “z.5.15(1).”
- 11.
This volume includes Book I, chapters One through Four, of Fabricius’ 1718 folio volume of Sextus’ Hypotyposes, accompanied by Estienne’s Latin translation and commentaries. The present day NLS press-mark of this volume of Thomson’s text is: “z.5.15(2).”
- 12.
Confusingly, this text has been bound in the NLS collection in volume 3 of the Bibliothecæ. This volume also contains summaries and reviews of the Outlines and Adversus Mathematicos, together with lists of editions of Sextus’ work. See pp. 590–9: chapter (Caput) XVIII, “De Sexto Empirico.” Records indicate that the Edinburgh University Library acquired the same text sometime prior to Hume’s death. Edinburgh University also held copies of Bibliothecæ Græcæ (Hamburg) from the period, 1705–26.
- 13.
Hume refers to Adversus Mathematicos “lib. viii.” at Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) section II, p. 142 n. 1 [p. 180 n. 1]. In the passage to which Hume refers (Against the Physicists I 18), Sextus quotes the sophist Prodicus of Ceos (late 5th and early 4th centuries BCE), who asserted that: “The ancients accounted as Gods the sun and moon and rivers and springs and in general all the things that are of benefit for our life, because of the benefit derived from them, even as the Egyptians deify the Nile” (PH III, p. 11). Hume also refers to Outlines of Pyrrhonism “lib. iii, cap. 20” at Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (EPM, in Hume 1975), section IV, p. 166 n. 1 [p. 207 n. 1]. Section II of the second Enquiry is titled, “Of Benevolence”; section IV is titled, “Of Political Society.” Hume’s abbreviations may be translated as follows: “lib.” for liber (book) and “cap.” for capitulum (heading or chapter).
- 14.
Hume (1985, p. 399 n. 58) hereafter “Essays”. Hume refers here to “SEXT. EMP. lib. iii. cap. 24.” Hume’s essays first published as Essays: Moral and Political (Edinburgh: Alexander Kincaid, 1741, 2nd edition 1742, 3d edition 1748); Political Discourses (first and second editions 1752, 3d edition, 1754); Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1753–77). Hume’s reference in the first edition of the Political Discourses appears in Arabic rather than Roman numerals.
- 15.
(1) Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals II (1751): “Sext. Emp. adversus Math. lib. Viii”; (2) Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals IV (1751): “Sext. Emp. lib iii. cap. 20”; (3) “On the Populousness of Ancient Nations” (1752): “SEXT. EMP. lib. iii. cap. 24”; (4) The Natural History of Religion IV (1757): “lib. Ix”; (5) The Natural History of Religion XII (1757): “lib.viii”.
- 16.
Which copy of the Chouet edition that might have been, however, is difficult to establish, since inspection of the records of National Library of Scotland (NLS) and the Edinburgh University Library indicates that Hume could not have had access to a Chouet edition through either the university library or through the Library of the Faculty of Advocates since neither collection held a copy of the text at that time.
- 17.
Although Hume purchased many books himself and in 1751 boasted of possessing a library worth £100, David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton’s recent The David Hume Library does not indicate that Hume owned any edition of Sextus’ work. On the other hand, as it is based upon the 1840 catalogue of Hume’s nephew, we cannot be sure of the completeness of Norton’s list; and in any case the Norton’s list does not include the Ninewells holdings. Based as it largely is on the 1840 catalogue of Hume’s nephew, Baron David Hume, the character of Norton and Norton’s text is, however, somewhat speculative and does not definitively rule out the possibility that Hume had acquired Sextus’ text but that the text was removed from his collection sometime before the Baron’s catalogue was prepared. Also, as they acknowledge (p. 42), Norton and Norton’s findings do not exclude the possibility that Hume made use of texts not in his own private collection. See Norton and Norton (1996), hereafter “DHL.” Indeed, the DHL does not contain texts by a number of philosophers whose works we can be reasonably sure that Hume read – e.g. Descartes, Locke’s Essay, Bayle’s Dictionnaire, and Pascal’s Pensées (DHL 42).
- 18.
Éclaircissements sur la recherche de la vérité accompanying the third edition of his De la recherche de la vérité (1674–5; 3d ed. 1677–8). In the same footnote, Malebranche refers to both Cicero’s account of the Egyptian deification of the sun and moon (“c. liv. I. De natura Deorum”) and to Sextus’ discussion of the same phenomenon (“Voyez Sextus Empiricus, l, 8. ch. 2.”); see “Elucidation Fifteen,” “Seventh Proof,” “Reply,” in Malebranche (1980, 684n‘a’). Hume refers to Cicero’s De Natura Deorum (“De Nat. Deor. lib. I”) at EPM II, p. 142 n. 1 [p. 179 n. 1]. The likelihood of Hume’s taking these references from Malebranche is strengthened insofar as Hume apparently owned a copy of the 3d edition of De la recherche with the accompanying Éclaircissements (Lyons 1684). DHL, pp. 18, 42.
- 19.
- 20.
Letter #13, in Hume (1932, p. 34, vol. I). A passage in his essay, “Of Eloquence,” shows that Hume regarded Cicero (106–43 BCE) as one of the ancient world’s two greatest orators (Demosthenes being the other): “It is observable, that the ancient critics could scarcely find two orators in any age, who deserved to be placed precisely in the same rank, and possessed the same degree of merit. CALBUS, CÆLIUS, CURIO, HORTENSIUS, CÆSAR rose one above another: But the greatest of that age was inferior to CICERO, the most eloquent speaker, that had ever appeared in Rome” (Hume 1985, p. 98). The Whole Duty of Man was a then-popular didactic and devotional work now attributed to Richard Allestree, first published in 1658. Hume’s remark in this letter, thus, distances his own moral theory from religion.
- 21.
David Hume, An Abstract of a late Philosophical Performance, entitled A Treatise of Human Nature, &c. Wherein the chief Argument and Design of the Book, which has met with such Opposition, and been represented in so terrifying a Light, is further illustrated and explain’d (London: Charles Corbet at Addison’s Head in Fleet Street, 1740); published anonymously (T 657).
- 22.
EHU 128–30 [159–62].
- 23.
Consider also this passage from the Dialogues: “In reality, Philo, continued he, it seems certain that though a man in a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the contradictions and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion; it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours. External objects press in upon him: Passions solicit him: His philosophical melancholy dissipates; and even the utmost violence upon his own temper will not be able during any time, to preserve the poor appearance of skepticism” (Hume 1947, I 132; hereafter “D”). Compare Cleanthes’s remark with Hume’s at T 269: “Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras … Here then I find myself absolutely and necessarily determin’d to live …”
- 24.
“Therefore those who assert that nothing can be grasped deprive us of these things that are the very tools or equipment of life, or rather actually overthrow the whole of life from its foundations and deprive the animate creature itself of the mind that animates it … ” (Acad. II, x, 31 [pp. 508–9]; see also Acad. II, xxxi, 99 [595]). Hume, as we have seen, regards such “total” skepticism impossible, but he also suspects it of being downright dangerous: “this resolution [to reject all the trivial suggestions of the fancy], if steadily executed, wou’d be dangerous, and attended with the most fatal consequences” (T 267). Two important articles assessing the ancient skeptics’ understanding of the range of epoch are: Myles Burnyeat’s “Can the Skeptic Live His Skepticism?” and Jonathan Barnes’ “Ancient Skepticism and Causation.” Both appear in Burnyeat (1983). Another influential article which answers these is Frede (1984).
- 25.
Hume wrote the epistle in defense of his work as opponents solidified their case against his candidacy for the Professorship in Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh about to be vacated by John Pringle. The epistle, perhaps not intended for publication, was collected by Hume’s friend and kinsman – Henry Home, later Lord Kames – together with a list of charges that had been compiled and distributed by the Rev. William Wishart (the younger), principal of the university, who regarded Hume’s candidacy as posing “a great danger.” Kames published the letter and charges as a pamphlet under the title by which it is known today, A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh. See Stewart (1994, p. 13).
- 26.
Tacitus, Histories, chapter 1: “Rara temporum felicitas, ubi fentire, quae veils; and quae sentias, dicere licet.” Spinoza uses a similar quotation at the start of the final chapter of the Theological-Political Tractatus, as well as in the work’s Preface.
- 27.
- 28.
As Sextus accused the Academics of maintaining; see PH I 29–30 and 230.
- 29.
Robert Fogelin seems on the verge of recognizing Hume’s Pyrrhonism along these lines when he writes: “The final point I wish to make about Hume’s presentation of scepticism is that he offers no independent arguments for the moderate scepticism that generally characterizes his position. Instead, his moderate scepticism is literally a mitigated Pyrrhonian scepticism” (Fogelin 1983, p. 399).
- 30.
Garrett’s “title principle” is taken from Hume’s remark: “Where reason is lively and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us” (T 1.4.7.11).
- 31.
This is, of course, very different from maintaining that no theory can possibly be validated or justified.
- 32.
My thanks to Plínio Smith for a number of important suggestions animating this section.
- 33.
About the partiality and selfishness of humanity, Hume writes, for example: “The remedy, then, is not deriv’d from nature, but from artifice; or more properly speaking, nature provides a remedy in the judgment and understanding, for what is irregular and incommodious in the affections” (T 489).
- 34.
Heraclitus is recorded as having said: “Man’s ethos [character] is his daimon [fate, spirit, divinity, fortune]” (CXIV, D.19). See Kahn (1979). See also Martin Heidegger’s comments on this passage in his “Letter on Humanism” (Heidegger 1977). The Latin natura is related to nascí, to be born, and hence “nature” bears the sense of what one is born to, what is natal, i.e., one’s fate.
- 35.
Echoing what Wittgenstein calls “surface grammar” (Wittgenstein 1953, hereafter PI, #664), a notion related to Wittgenstein’s search for fundamental or “grammatical” propositions (PI #232, 251, 293, 295, 371, 373, 458, 496, 497. “Essence is expressed by grammar” (PI #371)).
- 36.
Concerning such fantastic revisions of human convention, Cavell observes: “That human beings on the whole do not respond in these ways is, therefore, seriously referred to as conventional; but now we are thinking of convention not as the arrangements a particular culture has found convenient, in terms of its history and geography, for effecting the necessities of human existence, but as those forms of life which are normal to any group of creatures we call human, any group about which we will say, for example, that they have a past to which they respond, or a geographical environment which they manipulate or exploit in certain ways for certain humanly comprehensible motives. Here the array of “conventions” are not patterns of life which differentiate human beings from one another, but those exigencies of conduct and feeling which all humans share” (Cavell 1980, p. 111). I also take it that this is the type of convention or agreement to which Wittgenstein refers to at PI #355: “the point here is not that our sense-impressions can lie, but that we understand their language. (And this language like any other is founded on convention [Übereinkunft].)”
- 37.
Wittgenstein writes that in following rules we ultimately do so “blindly” (PI #219) and “act, without reasons” (PI #211): “If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do’” (PI #217). Like those who have discussed Hume’s use of “natural,” many have understood this suggestion to mean something like the claim that our acts are really just “automatic,” “instinctive,” and “determined.” For more on the meanings of “nature” as Hume uses it, see McCormick (1993). David Bloor (1976, 1983), for example, largely understands Wittgenstein in mechanistic and deterministic terms. See also Malcolm (1982).
- 38.
Cavell argues that something like this despair in the face of skepticism can easily translate into violent, world-consuming revenge (Cavell 2003, pp. 125–43).
- 39.
The OED tells us that the Latin natura, from which “nature” is derived, refers to the character, constitution, or course of things. In Cavellian terms we might say that for Hume what constitutes founding a genuinely philosophical way of thinking includes finding the ways of thinking that one is born to, what one is compelled to inherit and take over as a human being (Cavell 1989).
- 40.
For an expansive articulation of Hume’s theory of true and false philosophy, see Livingston (1998).
- 41.
Bertrand Russell gives a similar account of what I have called the first of philosophy’s possible modes of rest. He writes: “When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases, people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly, and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed, the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction” (1948, p. 13, quoted by Hallie 1985, p. 34 n. 2).
- 42.
The suggestion of a philosophically educated rest or pause accompanying or resulting from such ways of thinking connects Sextus not only with Hume but also with Wittgenstein, who writes in Philosophical Investigations of “breaking off” [abzubrechen] from (false) philosophy (or at least from the relentless (and futile) self-questioning of philosophy) through a discovery that gives philosophy peace (“die Philosophie zur Ruhe [quietude or rest] bringt….”) [#133] (Wittgenstein 1990, p. 305).
- 43.
PH I 25–30; 19–20. Remaining quotations in this and the succeeding paragraph are from this passage of PH.
- 44.
After being stung by the sarcasm of John Stewart in an article criticizing the anti-Newtonian work of Kames, Hume wrote, in a letter to Stewart: “All Raillery ought to be avoided in philosophical Argument; both because it is unphilosophical, and because it cannot but be offensive, let it be ever so gentle… . This Spirit of the Inquisitor is in you the Effect of Passion, and what a cool Moment wou’d easily correct. But where it predominates in the Character, what Ravages has it committed on Reason, Virtue, Truth, Liberty, and every thing, that is valuable among Mankind?” Kames’s article was “Of the Laws of Motion,” the first article published in Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary, Read before a Society in Edinburgh and Published by Them (1754). The work was a collection of articles read before the Philosophical Society, later the Royal Society of Edinburgh (chartered as such in 1783). Hume co-edited the volume with Alexander Monro the Younger, as they were joint secretaries of the society at the time (Mossner 1954, p. 257). Stewart, then Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, published his criticism in the same collection as “Some Remarks on the Laws of Motion, and the Inertia of Matter.” The abusive sections seem to have been inserted into the article only just prior to it being printed and apparently were not included when the piece was first read (Mossner 1954, p. 259).
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Acknowledgments
Elements of this essay were delivered at the American Philosophical Association Pacific meeting in Portland, OR, 2006 and also appear in Fosl (2004) as well as in Fosl (2010). I am grateful to Plínio Junqueira Smith for his comments on an earlier version of this essay as well as to Diego Machuca for his thoughtful and careful editing.
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Fosl, P.S. (2012). Skepticism and the Possibility of Nature. 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_8
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