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Pyrrhonism : How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism / Adrian Kuzminski

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Pyrrhonism : How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism / Adrian Kuzminski PyrrhonismPODLITH.qxd 5/6/08 3:20 PM Page 1 KUZMINSKI Classical Studies • Philosophy Studies in Comparative Philosophy and Religion Series Editor: Doug Allen “The connections between Greek Pyrrhonism and Indian Madhyamaka- are too striking to ignore. Adrian Kuzminski provides welcome attention to the philosophical vision they share and to the arguments Pyrrhonists and Madhyamikas- deploy to advance that vision. The exposition is clear and accessible to the nonspecialist.” —Jay L. Garfield, Smith College Pyrrhonism is commonly confused with scepticism in Western philosophy. Unlike sceptics, who believe there are no true beliefs, Pyrrhonists suspend judgment about all beliefs, PYRRHONISM including the belief that there are no true beliefs. Pyrrhonism was developed by a line of ancient Greek philosophers, from its founder Pyrrho of Elis in the fourth century BCE through Sextus Empiricus in the second century CE. Pyrrhonists offer no view, theory, or knowledge about the world, but recommend instead a practice, a distinct way of life, designed to suspend beliefs and ease suffering. Adrian Kuzminski examines Pyrrhonism in terms of its striking similarity to some Eastern PYRRHONISM nondogmatic soteriological traditions—particularly Madhyamaka- Buddhism. He argues that its origin can plausibly be traced to the contacts between Pyrrho and the sages he HOW THE ANCIENT GREEKS encountered in India, where he traveled with Alexander the Great. Although Pyrrhonism has not been practiced in the West since ancient times, its insights have occasionally been REINVENTED BUDDHISM independently recovered, most recently in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Kuzminski shows that Pyrrhonism remains relevant, perhaps more than ever, as an antidote to today’s Adrian Kuzminski cultures of belief. Adrian Kuzminski is a research scholar in philosophy at Hartwick College. For orders and information please contact the publisher LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2506-9 ISBN-10: 0-7391-2506-0 Lanham, Maryland 20706 1-800-462-6420 www.lexingtonbooks.com Pyrrhonism Studies in Comparative Philosophy and Religion Series Editor: Douglas Allen, University of Maine This series explores important intersections within and between the disciplines of religious studies and philosophy. These original studies will emphasize, in particular, aspects of contemporary and classical Asian philosophy and its relationship to Western thought. We wel- come a wide variety of manuscript submissions, especially works ex- hibiting highly focused research and theoretical innovation. Varieties of Ethical Reflection: New Directions for Ethics in a Global Context, by Michael Barnhart Mysticism and Morality: A New Look at Old Questions, by Richard H. Jones Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth: Essential Writings by and about Mahatma Gandhi, by Richard L. Johnson To Broaden the Way: A Confucian–Jewish Dialogue, by Galia Patt-Shamir Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism, by Adrian Kuzminski Pyrrhonism How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism Adrian Kuzminski LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2008 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kuzminski, Adrian, 1944– Pyrrhonism : how the ancient Greeks reinvented Buddhism / Adrian Kuzminski. p. cm. — (Studies in comparative philosophy and religion) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2506-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7391-2506-0 (cloth : alk. paper) eISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3139-8 eISBN-10: 0-7391-3139-7 1. Pyrrhon, of Elis—Influence. 2. Buddhism. I. Title. B613.K89 2008 186'.1—dc22 2008010723 Printed in the United States of America ϱ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. To the memory of Everard Flintoff Contents Preface ix Foreword xiii C. W. Huntington, Jr. 1 Why Pyrrhonism is Not Scepticism 1 2 Pyrrhonism and Buddhism 35 3 The Evident and the Nonevident 71 4 Modern Pyrrhonism 113 Bibliography 145 Index 149 About the Author 155 vii Preface Pyrrhonism is commonly confused with scepticism in Western phi- losophy. But unlike sceptics, who believe there are no true beliefs, Pyrrhonists suspend judgment about all beliefs, including the belief that there are no true beliefs. Pyrrhonism was developed by a line of ancient Greek philosophers, from its founder Pyrrho of Elis in the fourth century BCE through Sextus Empiricus in the second century CE. Pyrrhonists offer no view, theory, or knowledge about the world, but recommend instead a practice, a distinct way of life, designed to suspend beliefs and ease suffering. Since beliefs are attachments to what is nonevident, they say, and are therefore distorting, uncertain, and subject to challenge and contradiction, they generate anxiety and fear, compounding suffering. By suspending judgment on beliefs, Pyrrhonists seek to liberate themselves from attachment to things nonevident; having achieved this, they claim a certain tranquility (ataraxia) follows. Only appearances are evident, they say, these being sensations and thoughts which we cannot help having, which are in- voluntary, and it is by them rather than by our beliefs that we should live. Pyrrhonism bears a striking similarity to some Eastern non- dogmatic soteriological traditions, particularly Ma-dhyamaka Bud- dhism. Indeed, its origin can plausibly be traced to the contacts be- tween Pyrrho and the sages he encountered in India, where he trav- eled with Alexander the Great. Even though Pyrrhonism went on to develop in a Greek idiom without reference to Eastern traditions, the similarity of views is remarkable, suggesting a commonality of insight not much explored. Although Pyrrhonism has not been prac- ticed in the West since ancient times, its insights occasionally have ix x PREFACE been independently recovered, most recently in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. They remain relevant, perhaps more than ever, as an antidote to today’s cultures of belief. Q I think of this book as growing out of two trips, one to a series of an- cient Greek sites in Italy, Greece, and Turkey in 1994, and the other to Benares, India, in 2001. The tactile reality of these places gave some kind of flesh to years of thinking and reading in Western philosophy and, increasingly, in Asian traditions of liberation. My interest in Asian thought and culture was sparked earlier by a decade of teaching at the University of Hawaii back in the 1970s, where Asian specialists predominated in most fields, including my own history department. For me, trained as a specialist in European intellectual history, my Hawaiian experience was a healthy corrective to the Eurocentrism of my previous education. After leaving Hawaii and settling in rural upstate New York, I wrote a book, The Soul, in 1994, which took the Wittgensteinian tac- tic of trying to separate what can be said from what can be shown and applied it to George Berkeley’s distinction between perceptions and the perceivers of those perceptions. In subsequent years I continued to find parallels between this approach and South Asian philosophical and religious traditions, especially Buddhism, and particularly the Ma-dhyamaka. Like Wittgenstein and Berkeley, Buddhists emphasized not knowledge but liberation from suffering, and like them they did so in a context that distinguishes between the objects of consciousness and consciousness itself. And always in the back of my mind were the Pyrrhonists of the ancient Greco-Roman West, who had intrigued me since graduate school, and who I believed pursued a similar path. What began to bring these threads together was a reading of Ever- ard Flintoff’s 1980 article in Phronesis entitled “Pyrrho and India.” Flintoff, like others before him, saw a connection between ancient Greek Pyrrhonism and early Buddhism, a connection suggested by Pyrrho’s trip to India with Alexander the Great. But he took it more se- riously and offered, as a sketch, the beginnings of a systematic com- parison between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism. I thought a closer compar- ison of classical Buddhist and Pyrrhonian texts beyond what Flintoff presented was warranted, and the result was a paper, “Pyrrhonism and the Ma-dhyamaka,” published in Philosophy East and West in October 2007, most of which is incorporated in the second chapter of this work. I then saw that the affinity between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism had larger implications, and the result is this book. PREFACE xi I would like to thank above all C. W. Huntington, Jr., my friend and colleague at Hartwick College and author of The Emptiness Of Emptiness. It was with “Sandy” (Professor Huntington) that I traveled to Benares, along with a group of students, in 2001. He has been un- failingly enthusiastic and extraordinarily
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