Pyrronism

Pyrrhonism was a school of skepticism founded by Pirrón in the 4th century BC. It is best known through the surviving works of the Sextus Empiricus, which he wrote in the late 2nd or early 3rd century.

 

Origins

Pyrrho of Elis (circa 360 BC - 270 BC) is generally credited with founding this school of skeptical philosophy. He traveled to India with the army of Alexander the Great and studied with magicians and gymnosophists. Pyrronism as a school was revitalized or refounded by Enesidemus in the 1st century.

 

Philosophy

The goal of Pyrrhonism is primarily psychological, although it is best known for its epistemological arguments, particularly the criterion problem and the induction problem. Through epojé (suspension of judgment) the mind reaches ataraxia, a state of equanimity. Similar to Stoicism and Epicureanism, eudaimonia is the goal of the Pyrrhonic life, and all three philosophies place this goal in ataraxia or apatheia. According to the Pyrrhonians, personal opinions on non-obvious issues prevent eudaimonia from being achieved.

 

The most important principle of Pyrrho's thought is expressed through the word acatalepsy, which connotes the ability not to make affirmations of the doctrines relative to the truth of things in their own nature; against each statement, its contradiction can be presented with the same justification.

 

The Pyrrhonians refrain from making claims regarding non-obvious propositions, that is, dogma. They disputed the supposed truths that dogmatists had found regarding non-obvious matters. For any non-obvious matter, a Pyrrhonist tries to make the arguments for and against so that the matter cannot reach a conclusion, thus avoiding belief. According to Pyrrhonism, even the claim that "nothing can be known" is dogmatic. In this way, they tried to universalize their skepticism and thus avoid the problem of basing it on a new dogmatism. Mental imperturbability (ataraxia) was the desired result of adopting such a mental state. Skeptics (of which the Pyrrhonians are a part) can be subdivided into those who are effective (a "suspension of judgment"), Zeetics ("seeking"), or aporetic ("engaging in refutation").

 

Pyrronism is credited with being the first school of Western philosophy to identify the problem of induction, and the Münchhausen trilemma.

 

A large part of the knowledge we have of Pyrrhonism has come down to us through the preserved work of the late Skeptic Sextus Empiricus, author of the treatise Esbozos pirrónicos, which is a manual to achieve suspension of the trial. Although it is not a work of great originality within the skeptical current, it summarizes the work of the main previous skeptical philosophers and systematizes the way in which their arguments are used to achieve epoche