Routledge History of Philosophy Volume II : Aristotle to Augustine by David Furley (edt)

Author:David Furley (edt)
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2015-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8 The sceptics

Michael Frede

INTRODUCTION

When we speak of ‘scepticism’ and of ‘sceptics’, we primarily think of a philosophical position according to which nothing is known for certain, or even nothing can be known for certain. There are certain ways in which we go about things when we try to find out the truth about something or other. But these ways at best are such that, in following them, we come to believe something which actually is true, but they are never such that what we come to believe, given the way we came to believe it, is guaranteed to be true. Hence, we never know for certain whether what we come to believe to be true actually is true. We perhaps hope that it is, or even are confident that it is, but it might be not.

This, though, is not what those ancients who called themselves ‘sceptics’

(skeptikoi) for the most part meant by ‘scepticism’. To the contrary, the very term ‘sceptic’, at least sometimes, was meant to suggest, among other things, that a sceptic is not going to claim that nothing can be known. ‘Skepsis’ is a word which in Greek ordinarily was used to refer to one’s looking at or considering or reflecting on something. But it also came to be used to refer to one’s inquiry into a matter, and thus became, along with ‘zêtêsis’, a term to refer to any kind of inquiry, but in particular the kind of methodical inquiry philosophers and scientists are engaged in. And it surely is no accident that ancient sceptics not only were called, or called themselves, ‘sceptics’, but also ‘zetetics’ (DL IX, 69; Pyrrh. I, 7). Given the formation of the words, a sceptic or zetetic should be a person who is prone or inclined to inquire into things, or shows particular ability or persistence in doing so. So a sceptic should be somebody who is not going to content himself with any conclusion, until the inquiry has run its full course and all possibilities have been explored. As Sextus Empiricus, himself a sceptic, tells us at the end of the second century AD in his introduction to scepticism, the Outlines of Pyrrhonism, we talk of ‘scepticism’, because sceptics inquire Pyrrh. I, 7). We would like to know why the sceptics think of themselves as inquisitive in a way which singles them out. Sextus begins his account of scepticism Pyrrh. I, 1–4) explaining precisely this. He says that of those inquiring into something, there are (1) those who at some point think they have found the answer; there are (2) those who give up the inquiry, claiming that the question or problem cannot be resolved; but there are (3) also those who think that the question so far has not been resolved, and thus go on inquiring. The suggestion is that both the first and the second group, each in their own way, give up on the inquiry, before it has come to an end. The first group of inquirers

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