Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Sceptical Philosophy
- 2 Scepticism in Ancient Philosophy
- 3 The Ten Modes
- 4 Humans and Other Animals
- 5 Human Variations
- 6 The Senses
- 7 Circumstances
- 8 Places and Positions
- 9 Mixtures
- 10 Quantities
- 11 Relativity
- 12 The Common and the Rare
- 13 Customs and Persuasions
- Appendix A Philo and Diogenes on the Modes
- Appendix B The Eight Modes against Causal Explanation (Sextus, PHI 180–5)
- Appendix C The Five Modes of Agrippa (Sextus, PHI 164–9)
- Appendix D The Two Modes (Sextus, PHI 178–9)
- Appendix E Textual Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index of People Referred to
- Index of Topics
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Sceptical Philosophy
- 2 Scepticism in Ancient Philosophy
- 3 The Ten Modes
- 4 Humans and Other Animals
- 5 Human Variations
- 6 The Senses
- 7 Circumstances
- 8 Places and Positions
- 9 Mixtures
- 10 Quantities
- 11 Relativity
- 12 The Common and the Rare
- 13 Customs and Persuasions
- Appendix A Philo and Diogenes on the Modes
- Appendix B The Eight Modes against Causal Explanation (Sextus, PHI 180–5)
- Appendix C The Five Modes of Agrippa (Sextus, PHI 164–9)
- Appendix D The Two Modes (Sextus, PHI 178–9)
- Appendix E Textual Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index of People Referred to
- Index of Topics
Summary
Those who investigate any subject are likely either to make a discovery, or to deny the possibility of discovery and agree that nothing can be apprehended, or else to persist in their investigations. That, no doubt, is why of those who undertake philosophical investigations some say that they have discovered the truth, others deny the possibility of apprehending it, and others are still pursuing their investigations. Those who are properly called dogmatists – such as the Aristotelians and the Epicureans and the Stoics and others – think they have discovered the truth; Clitomachus and Carneades and other Academic philosophers have said that the truth cannot be apprehended; and the sceptics persist in their investigations.
With this paragraph Sextus Empiricus, the Greek sceptical philosopher, begins his introductory handbook to sceptical thought, the Outlines of Pyrrhonism. He portrays sceptics as perpetual students or researchers, as people who ‘persist in their investigations’, and the Greek adjective skeptikos derives from a verb meaning ‘to inquire’ or ‘to consider’. Now inquirers persist in their inquiries because they have neither discovered the object of their search nor concluded that it lies beyond all discovery: they have, as yet, no opinion on the matter. Hence the word skeptikos or ‘sceptical’ acquires its familiar connotation. Sceptics are doubters: they neither believe nor disbelieve, neither affirm nor deny.
To be sceptical on any given matter is to suspend judgement on it, to subscribe to no positive opinion either way.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Modes of ScepticismAncient Texts and Modern Interpretations, pp. 1 - 3Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985