Anna Tigani

“Do we need a criterion of truth to make ordinary claims like ‘the water in the bath is tepid’? Yes. Then the Pyrrhonians cannot consistently hold such claims, and inactivity threatens their skeptical philosophical undertaking.” When introducing the discussion of the criterion in M 7, Sextus presents certain beliefs about the existence and priority of the criterion of truth as commonly held – beliefs that could make the above line of reasoning seem natural and inescapable. Yet this opening serves to set up Sextus’ subsequent strategy, which not only rejects the Dogmatists’ arguments about the criterion of truth but also undermines a common way of thinking and speaking about it – a way based on an analogy with measuring instruments that had shaped the very preconception of the criterion. By targeting this preconception and this analogy, Sextus’ strategy weakens the persuasive force of the inactivity argument against the Skeptics and opens up a different perspective on ordinary truth claims and the investigation into the criterion of truth.

Sextus responds to the Dogmatists’ criticism that the Sceptics cannot investigate Dogmatic theses, formulating his own version of Meno’s puzzle against them. He thus forces them to adopt υοεῐυ ἁπλῶς – a way of thinking that does not carry any commitment to the reality of what someone thinks – as their only solution to the puzzle and as the necessary starting point of their investigation. Nοεῐυ ἁπλῶς avoids Dogmatic assumptions without making use of the Sceptical argumentation that leads to suspension of judgment. It constitutes a novel answer to Meno’s puzzle, Dogmatism- and Scepticism-free, with important consequences both for Dogmatism and for Scepticism.

Hegel’s interpretation of ancient skepticism contains philosophical insights which can lead to an important breakthrough in our understanding of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Current interpretations of Pyrrhonian skepticism, because of a biased conception of philosophy as a positive enterprise, are blind to the Skeptical conception of philosophizing. Hegel’s approach, by contrast, accurately captures and effectively brings to the surface the conception of Skepticism and the conception of philosophy - as well as the relationship between them - which Sextus attempts to outline. According to Hegel, the “noblest side” of Pyrrhonism is its orientation against the dogmatism of ordinary life; it is this orientation which is represented by the Ten Modes of suspension of judgment and which makes Skepticism identical with true philosophy. Although Hegel is historically unjustified when he postulates an original historical phase of Pyrrhonism in which Pyrrhonism used the Ten Modes solely against the certainties and the dogmatism of ordinary life, his account is philosophically and exegetically legitimate. The Hegelian interpretation follows Sextus’ attempt to prove that Skepticism is philosophy and original philosophy is a kind of skepticism and thus to defend Skepticism as the best form of philosophy, exactly because it is devoted to the original aporetic or ephectic way of philosophizing.