Pyrrho

Pyrrho
Born	c. 360 BC Elis, Greece
Died	c. 270 BC
Era	Ancient philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Skepticism
Influences Democritus
Influenced Arcesilaus, Crates of Athens, Carneades, Timon of Phlius, Epicurus, Aenesidemus, Sextus Empiricus, David Hume

Pyrrho (; Greek: Πύρρων Pyrrōn, c. 360 BC – c. 270 BC), a Greek philosopher of Classical Antiquity, was a student of Eastern philosophy and is credited as being the first Greek skeptic philosopher and the inspiration for the school known as Pyrrhonism, founded by Aenesidemus in the 1st century BC. He was exposed to Eastern (Indian) philosophy and introduced it to Greece and is popularly known for his skeptic philosophy modeled on the pioneering Indian skeptical philosophical schools and traditions.^[1]

Life

Pyrrho was from Elis, on the Ionian Sea. Diogenes Laertius, quoting from Apollodorus of Athens, says that Pyrrho was at first a painter, and that pictures by him were exhibited in the gymnasium at Elis. Later he was diverted to philosophy by the works of Democritus, and according to Diogenes Laertius became acquainted with the Megarian dialectic through Bryson, pupil of Stilpo.^[2]

Pyrrho, along with Anaxarchus, travelled with Alexander the Great on his exploration of the East, and studied under the Gymnosophists in India and the Magi in Persia. This exposure to Eastern philosophy seems to have inspired him to adopt a life of solitude; returning to Elis, he lived in poor circumstances, but was highly honored by the Elians and also by the Athenians, who conferred upon him the rights of citizenship.

Pyrrho wrote nothing. His doctrines were recorded in the satiric writings of his pupil Timon of Phlius (the Sillographer). Unfortunately these works are mostly lost. Today Pyrrho's ideas are known mainly through the book Outlines of Pyrrhonism written by the Greek physician Sextus Empiricus.

Philosophy

Pyrrho was renowned for creating the first formal school of skepticism in western philosophy. Pyrrhonians (or Pyrrhonism) can be subdivided into those who are ephectic (a "suspension of judgment"), zetetic ("engaged in seeking"), or aporetic ("engaged in refutation").^[3]

The main principle of Pyrrho's thought is expressed by the word acatalepsia, which connotes the ability to withhold assent from doctrines regarding the truth of things in their own nature; against every statement its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification. Secondly, it is necessary in view of this fact to preserve an attitude of intellectual suspense, or, as Timon expressed it, no assertion can be known to be better than another. Thirdly, Pyrrho applied these results to life in general, concluding that, since nothing can be known, the only proper attitude is ataraxia, "freedom from worry". ("By suspending judgment, by confining oneself to phenomena or objects as they appear, and by asserting nothing definite as to how they really are, one can escape the perplexities of life and attain an imperturbable peace of mind.")

The proper course of the sage, said Pyrrho, is to ask himself three questions. Firstly we must ask what things are and how they are constituted. Secondly, we ask how we are related to these things. Thirdly, we ask what ought to be our attitude towards them. Pyrrho's answer was that things are indistinguishable, unmeasurable, undecidable, and no more this than that, or both this and that and neither this nor that. He concluded that human senses neither transmit truths nor lie.^[4] Humanity cannot know the inner substance of things, only how things appear.

The impossibility of knowledge, even in regard to our own ignorance or doubt, should induce the wise person to withdraw into themself, avoiding the stress and emotion which belong to the contest of vain imaginings. This theory of the impossibility of knowledge is the first and the most thorough exposition of noncognitivism in the history of Western thought. Its ethical implications may be compared with the ideal tranquility of the Stoics and the Epicureans.

See also

• Callisthenes
• Greco-Buddhism

Notes

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
• Algra, K., Barnes, J., Mansfeld, J. and Schofield, M. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Annas, Julia and Barnes, Jonathan, The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
• Beckwith, Christopher I., Greek Buddha. Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2015.
• Bett, Richard, "Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho: The Text, Its Logic and its Credibility" Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12, (1994): 137-181.
• Bett, Richard, "What did Pyrrho Think about the Nature of the Divine and the Good?" Phronesis 39, (1994): 303-337.
• Bett, Richard, Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Brunschwig, Jacques, "Introduction: the Beginnings of Hellenistic Epistemology" in Algra, Barnes, Mansfeld and Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 229-259.
• Burnyeat, Myles (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
• Burnyeat, Myles and Frede, Michael (eds.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.
• Doomen, Jasper, "The Problems of Scepticism" Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 10 (2007): 36-52.
• Halkias, Georgios, "The Self-immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters among Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the Hellenistic world." Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Vol. VIII, 2015: 163-186.^[1]
• Hankinson, R.J., The Sceptics, London: Routledge, 1995.
• Kuzminski, Adrian, Pyrrhonism; How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2008.
• Long, A.A., Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, University of California Press, 1986.
• Long, A.A. and Sedley, David, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
• Striker, Gisela, "On the difference between the Pyrrhonists and the Academics" in G. Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 135-149.
• Striker, Gisela, "Sceptical strategies" in G. Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 92-115.
• Striker, Gisela, "The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus" in G. Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 116-134.
• Svavarsson, Svavar Hrafn, "Pyrrho’s dogmatic nature", The Classical Quarterly, 52 (2002): 248-56.
• Svavarsson, Svavar Hrafn, "Pyrrho’s undecidable nature", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 27 (2004): 249-295.

External links

• Pyrrho entry by Richard Bett in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Pyrrho entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Pyrrho, translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925).