COLLOQUIUM 5

ON THE PRE- HISTORY OF

RICHARD BETT

The Pyrrhonist variety of Greek may be said to reach its culmination in the writings of , who was probably active in the second century AD;1 we have the name of a pupil of Sextus,2 but no clear indications of a Pyrrhonist movement after that. And certainly it is the writings of Sextus that constitute, for us, by far the most extensive source of evidence for the character of Pyrrhonism. From him we have two complete works and a third that is probably incomplete,3 comprising a total of fourteen books; for the entire Pyrrhonist tradition preceding Sextus, we have no more than fragments and secondhand reports, and relatively few of those. It is natural, then, that when the question of the antecedents of the Pyrrhonist movement is raised, as it sometimes is, the answer tends to be framed, implicitly or explicitly, in terms of similarities between ideas in early Greek and the outlook apparent in the works of Sextus.4 The exploration of such similarities may well be of some intrinsic interest. But we would be justified in seeing them as genuinely pointing to the antecedents of Pyrrhonism-that is, to the sources from which the Pyrrhonist movement actually drew its original inspiration-only if we had good reason to think that the Pyrrhonist outlook was always essentially the same as that which we find in Sextus. In fact, however, it is far from clear that this is the case. The startingpoint of Pyrrhonism, of course, is himself, who lived in the fourth and early third centuries BC. Though, as I said, the

On Sextus' dates see House 1980. Decleva Caizzi 1993 argues more specifically for a floruit of 150-170 (see esp. 328-330). 2 Saturninus ( Laertius 9.116), of whom nothing more is known. On the incompleteness of the work to which Against the Logicians, Against the Physicists and Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos 7-11) originally belonged, see Janacek 1963. 4 See, for example, Brochard 1923, whose chapters on skeptical elements in pre- Pyrrhonian philosophy are mostly concerned with the kinds of epistemological difficulties that drive much of the Pyrrhonism of Sextus. And the same is largely true of Hankinson 1995, ch. III ("Precursors"), even though he does not take Pyrrhonism to have been by any means wholly uniform throughout its history (see below). evidence concerning Pyrrhonism prior to Sextus is exiguous, there is enough there in Pyrrho's case to enable us to form an opinion about his philosophy; and in recent years a number of scholars, including myself, have argued for an understanding of Pyrrho which makes his position look substantially different from that of Sextus-so different that the very term "skeptic," at least as understood by Sextus, would not even have applied to him.5 If this is correct, the question of Pyrrhonism's antecedents needs to be looked at in a new way. Similarities between the thoughts of early Greek and the thoughts of Sextus are not to the point; the issue, rather, is what philosophical currents might plausibly be thought to have contributed to the distinct outlook of Pyrrho himself. It is this matter that I wish to examine here. I shall begin with a very brief summary of the interpretation of Pyrrho's philosophy for which I have argued elsewhere. I shall then take up the question of what ideas in Greek philosophy prior to Pyrrho are most likely to have served as an inspiration for him. The most important antecedent for the central components of his philosophy, I shall argue, is a cluster of ideas about the status of sensibles that are familiar from several dialogues of ; if one wanted a slogan, one might say that Pyrrho is "Plato without the Forms." Like most slogans, this would be a crude oversimplification; but it contains-or so I shall maintain-a significant core of . This is by no means the whole story of Pyrrho's antecedents, and we shall consider other possible sources of inspiration to the extent that time permits. But in any case, the picture that emerge will prove not to have anything much to do with the ideas usually cited as "precursors" to Pyrrhonism. It may be objected that this exercise will be of interest only to those who already accept a particular understanding of Pyrrho's philosophy-an understanding that, as far as the present occasion is concerned, I am simply taking for granted. Now, it is true that the interpretation of Pyrrho's philosophy is, and is likely to remain, a controversial matter. Though a fair percentage of those who have considered the question would agree that the Pyrrhonism of Pyrrho is importantly different from the Pyrrhonism of Sextus-and that the form it takes instead is at least something like what I shall propose6-there are others firmly committed to the opposing view,.7

5 My own contribution to this topic occurs mainly in Bett 1994. Other readings that are in accord with this one at least to the extent of holding that Pyrrho espoused a dogmatic thesis about the of things (on which more in section I below) include Sakezles 1993; Long and Sedley 1987, section 1; Sedley 1983, esp. 14; Decleva Caizzi 1981, esp. 218-234; Reale 1981, esp. 306-321. 6 See again n.5.