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The Sceptics: the Arguments of the Philosophers

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The Sceptics: the Arguments of the Philosophers THE SCEPTICS The Arguments of the Philosophers EDITOR: TED HONDERICH The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance. Plato J.C.B.Gosling Augustine Christopher Kirwan The Presocratic Philosophers Jonathan Barnes Plotinus Lloyd P.Gerson The Sceptics R.J.Hankinson Socrates Gerasimos Xenophon Santas Berkeley George Pitcher Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson Hobbes Tom Sorell Locke Michael Ayers Spinoza R.J.Delahunty Bentham Ross Harrison Hume Barry Stroud Butler Terence Penelhum John Stuart Mill John Skorupski Thomas Reid Keith Lehrer Kant Ralph C.S.Walker Hegel M.J.Inwood Schopenhauer D.W.Hamlyn Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay Nietzsche Richard Schacht Karl Marx Allen W.Wood Gottlob Frege Hans D.Sluga Meinong Reinhardt Grossmann Husserl David Bell G.E.Moore Thomas Baldwin Wittgenstein Robert J.Fogelin Russell Mark Sainsbury William James Graham Bird Peirce Christopher Hookway Santayana Timothy L.S.Sprigge Dewey J.E.Tiles Bergson A.R.Lacey J.L.Austin G.J.Warnock Karl Popper Anthony O’Hear Ayer John Foster Sartre Peter Caws THE SCEPTICS The Arguments of the Philosophers R.J.Hankinson London and New York For Myles Burnyeat First published 1995 by Routledge First published in paperback 1998 Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1995 R.J.Hankinson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-45825-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-76649-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-20353-8 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-415-20392-9 (set) Publisher’s note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent. Contents Preface ix BOOK I I INTRODUCTION: SOURCES AND TRANSMISSION 3 II THE NATURE OF SCEPTICISM 12 III PRECURSORS 28 IV PYRRHO AND THE SOCRATIC TRADITION 47 V THE SCEPTICISM OF THE MIDDLE ACADEMY 67 VI CARNEADES AND THE LATER SCEPTICAL ACADEMY 84 VII SECESSION: THE ‘FOURTH ACADEMY’ AND AENESIDEMUS 105 VIII THE SCEPTICISM OF THE EARLY EMPIRE 123 BOOK II IX THE TEN MODES OF SCEPTICISM 139 X THE MODES OF AGRIPPA 163 XI THE CRITERION, SIGNS, AND PROOF 173 XII CAUSES AND EXPLANATION 191 XIII SCEPTICISM IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOLS 202 XIV SCEPTICAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS 213 XV THE LIBERAL ARTS 226 XVI SCEPTICAL ETHICS 236 XVII THE SCEPTICAL ATTITUDE 246 XVIII THE SCEPTIC WAY OF LIFE 264 Biographical appendix 278 Glossary 282 Notes 286 Bibliography 322 General index 337 Index of texts cited 357 This page intentionally left blank. Preface It may sound pretentious to say it, but this book has been nearly a decade and a half in the making. I first became interested in Greek scepticism when, as an undergraduate, I took part in a reading party on Sextus organized by Jonathan Barnes at the Chalet des Mélèzes in the Summer of 1979. As a graduate student I originally intended to work directly on Sextan and Carneadean scepticism, although I eventually found myself dealing with scepticism by the back door, as it were, via the Greek medical tradition, and the work of Galen in particular; the principal focus of my study, Galen’s On Antecedent Causes, consists in an attempt to defend the notion of causation against sceptical attack. In the late 1980s, while teaching at McGill, I wrote several papers dealing more or less directly with scepticism and the epistemology of the later Greek medical schools, in particular my 1987a, 1987b, and 1988c; a little later on, in Texas, I wrote 1990a, 1991c and 1994. So Greek Scepticism has never been very far from my thoughts for more than a decade. But it was not until the Autumn of 1988, when I was invited by Ted Honderich to contribute a volume on the matter to this series, that I began seriously to consider writing anything in extenso directly on the subject. Pressure of other, prior commitments forced me to put off any real work until January of 1991; but many of my basic views, in particular on the nature and liveability of the sceptical way of life, had already been formed in the course of a joint seminar on Scepticism, Ancient and Modern, that I gave with Charles Travis at McGill in the Spring of 1988; the class, which was also regularly attended by Harry Bracken, was fertile and stimulating, and I wish to record my gratitude to the seminarians for their intellectual engagement and acuity. Most recently of all, the first draft of this book was presented, chapter by chapter, to a class on Greek Scepticism at the University of Texas in the Spring of 1991. My students not only displayed an admirable flexibility in adapting to an unorthodox format, as well as a generously forgiving attitude to the frequent lateness and sketchiness of the material—they also threw themselves enthusiastically into the discussion of what was, very obviously, work in progress: and to their acute questioning and not infrequent insight I owe much of what is good about the final product. I was also fortunate in having the scholarly benefit of the presence of Jacques Brunschwig (for several sessions) and Jonathan Barnes (for one). Two of the students who attended the seminar in particular, Mike Einhaus and Mark Gifford, have been extremely helpful in assisting the gestation of this project; in particular the latter read and commented with great acuteness on the entire penultimate draft, and the final result is both philosophically more coherent and literarily more felicitous in innumerable places as a result of his keen and critical eye. Finally the areas of my greatest indebtedness. Jonathan Barnes is in many ways the Ur- progenitor of this book; and his influence, both in style and substance, will be equally apparent throughout. He was the first to turn my gaze towards philosophy a decade and a half ago; and he has been a continual source of philosophical stimulation and conbibulous companionship ever since. I have found the example of Michael Frede, both in his published work and in conversation, of incalculable value; my debt to him, and to the others mentioned in this paragraph, will be obvious to all who are familiar with their work. Lastly Myles Burnyeat, as my doctoral supervisor, played a key role in my general philosophical formation, both by the power of his example of clear and rigorous thought, and by his unfailingly encouraging, if critical, attitude to my work. His influence too is ubiquitously evident. As a small acknowledgement of this and other debts, with thanks and gratitude, I dedicate this book to him. Texas, June 1994 Note to the Paperback Edition For the paperback edition, I have mostly confined my corrections to errors of typography, reference and (occasionally) fact, and the smoothing out of some infelicities of style. I have made additions to the bibliography, but mostly in order to remedy earlier deficiencies—I have made no systematic attempt to bring it up to date. The glossary is considerably fuller, and (I hope) more helpful. In some cases I have altered my views since writing this book, in some cases substantially: but to take account of those changes would have involved wholesale revision and rewriting impractical at this stage; and by and large I still stand by the account of Greek scepticism and its history contained herein. Texas, November 1997 Book I This page intentionally left blank. I Introduction Sources and Transmission The student of ancient philosophy is in a position at once more fascinating and more frustrating than that of his colleagues who work in less antique disciplines. The exegete of Hume, for instance, has a complete body of text to deal with—and while the writings themselves may prove difficult and opaque, there is little dispute about how the text itself should actually read. Occasionally, a diligent editor may be able to point to differences between various editions of the same text, or between the printed version and the manuscript, in order to restore the precise reading intended by the author which has been obscured by typographical error or lapsus calami—and in even fewer cases, such alterations are philosophically significant (although one such case is noted in Chapter II: n. 25). Sometimes, too, investigators may discover among unpublished fragments, notebooks, and letters indications of where the author’s thought was tending. But by and large their efforts are directed towards the explication of a well-established text written in a relatively accessible language. By contrast, the ancient philosopher works with material, often incomplete and fragmentary, written in dead languages. Even Platonists and Aristotelians, although relatively well served by the tradition, still need to take account of lacunae and imperfections in the transmitted texts, as well as of the fact that some of their work has been lost to the depredations of time.
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