Pyrrhon of Elis

Greek philosopher

• Born: c. 360 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Elis, Greece
• Died: c. 272 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Buried in village of Petra, near Elis, Greece

The founder of skepticism, Pyrrhon, a companion of Alexander the Great, taught that the nature of things is inapprehensible; his attitude greatly influenced science and philosophy throughout antiquity.

Early Life

Few details about the life of Pyrrhon (PIHR-ohn) have been preserved. Born in Elis, Pyrrhon was the son of Pleistarchus or, by other accounts, Pleitocrates. Apparently of humble background, Pyrrhon first studied painting, no doubt influenced by the master Apelles in nearby Sikyon, then briefly turned his hand to poetry.

Pyrrhon’s early philosophical training must have begun soon thereafter; he studied under Bryson and Anaxarchus (a pupil of Democritus and adviser to Alexander the Great), whom he joined in the Macedonian invasion of Persia and India in 331 b.c.e. During that invasion, Pyrrhon gained a reputation for high moral conduct among the quarrelsome Macedonians. After returning to his native Elis, he was awarded a high priesthood and was exempted from taxes; he also received honorary Athenian citizenship and knew Aristotle, Epicurus, the Academic Arcesilaus, and Zeno of Citium. A tradition that Alexander had provided Pyrrhon with a comfortable endowment may help to account for the philosopher’s high social standing. Although probably a man of some means, he was renowned for his modest and withdrawn life.

Pyrrhon’s Greece witnessed a major revolution in philosophical thinking as the old political order of independent city-states yielded to the Hellenistic empires. Pyrrhonistic philosophy joined the Epicurean and the Stoic in seeking ways to achieve ataraxia—a personal state of freedom from worldly cares. Pyrrhon differed both from his contemporaries and from the previous skeptical trends of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Democritus, and the Sophists, in that he held no dogmatic position concerning the nature of truth. According to Pyrrhon and his followers, the phenomena of sense experience are neither true nor false, and there is no access to any proof of reality beyond the empirical world. The wise and happy man takes an agnostic stance on the nature of reality.

Pyrrhon did not establish a formal school, as did Epicurus and Zeno, though he was the mentor of Philo of Athens, Nausiphanes of Teios, and Timon of Phlius, his only true successor. In his third century c.e.Peri biōn dogmatōn kai apophthegmatōn tōn en philosophia eudokimēsantōn (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, 1688), Diogenes Laertius quotes extensively from the writings of Timon and from the life of Pyrrhon written by Antigonus of Carystus shortly after the philosopher’s death. Diogenes Laertius’s account, together with Cicero’s somewhat problematic references, provides an important check on the portrait presented by later skeptical thinkers, including the major work of second century c.e. skeptic Sextus Empiricus.

Life’s Work

The second century c.e. Peripatetic philosopher Aristocles of Messana quotes Timon, saying that the happy man must examine three questions: What is the nature of things, what attitude should one adopt with respect to them, and what will be the result for those who adopt this attitude?

Pyrrhon held that things by nature are inapprehensible (akatalypsias) and indeterminate (adiaphora). Making use of the established distinction between appearances and reality, Pyrrhon elaborated, stating that sense experiences and beliefs are neither true nor false because the true nature of things, if one exists, cannot be known.

Pyrrhonistic skepticism is summed up in the following formula: The nature of things no more is than is not, than both is and is not, than neither is nor is not. Shortened to the phrase “no more,” the indeterminability of nature leads the wise man to withhold judgment (aprosthetein). According to Pyrrhon, “That honey is sweet I do not grant; that it seems so, I agree.” The objective world cannot be perceived, and no ultimate truth can be assigned to subjective observations.

Pyrrhon did not urge the cessation of inquiry into the natural world. On the contrary, he held that the skeptic should continue to seek truth; this position influenced the development of medicine and science in Cos and in Alexandria. A suspension of judgment for Pyrrhon was a system (agoge) that leads to the desired goal of mental imperturbability, ataraxia.

While the essential origins of Pyrrhonism clearly are to be found in a purely Greek philosophical dialogue, it is possible that Pyrrhon’s epistemology had been influenced by Buddhist thought. Contemporary accounts of Alexander show that the Greeks did have access to interpretations of Indian gymnosophists (literally, “naked wise men”). Alexander and his men, presumably including the youthful Pyrrhon, watched a certain Sphines (called Calanus in Greek) voluntarily mount his own funeral pyre, declaring that it was better for him to die than to live. The extent to which Pyrrhon was aware of Buddhist agnosticism or the dictum that happiness was freedom from worldly desires cannot be determined. Pyrrhon’s penchant for wandering in deserted places searching for knowledge and his attempt to achieve that state of mind he called “silence” (aphasia) may well have had their roots in the asceticism of India.

Given the dominance of ethical questions in Greek thought after Plato, it is not surprising that Pyrrhon also addressed the problem of virtue. The testimony of Timon and Cicero shows that Pyrrhon was a stern moralist who led an exemplary life. Rejecting all definitions of virtue, Pyrrhon declared that without any true guide to moral conduct, one must observe traditional laws and customs. Withdrawn from active life though he may have been, Pyrrhon nevertheless was a good citizen.

It is unfortunate that testimony on Pyrrhon reveals little else about his positions. It may be surmised that the debate between Stoics and later skeptics over possible criteria of right conduct had its origin in Pyrrhon’s thought. A poem by Timon mentions a right standard (orthon canona) by which he can question those who hold that the nature of the divine and the good makes men live most equably. In this poem, Timon inserts the qualification “as it seems to me to be,” perhaps to indicate that the Pyrrhonic standard is the incommensurability of appearance and reality.

Pyrrhon was not original in doubting the ultimate truth of sensory experiences. His true contribution to Greek philosophy lay in his denial of the possibility that true knowledge can be gained by pure reason: If the only access to the world is through phenomena, there is no way to judge these phenomena against any objective model. Pyrrhon thus turned away from the monumental intellectual systems of Plato and Aristotle and helped to usher in an age of empiricism.

Significance

Pyrrhon’s empirical skepticism did not outlive his pupil Timon. Skeptical thought did persist, however, in the new Academy of the Aeolian Arcesilaus (315-240 b.c.e.) and of Carneades (214-129 b.c.e.). This Academic skepticism was more a second version of skepticism than a direct continuation of Pyrrhonism. The Academics used the Platonic dialectic as their basis for a suspension of judgment on the true nature of things. This Academic skepticism was a direct attack on the Stoic position, which held that some sense impressions were true. Unlike the Pyrrhonists, however, the Academic skeptic did maintain that sense impressions can be representative of an objective, external world.

After Carneades, the next important skeptical thinker was the enigmatic Aenesidemus, who lived sometime between the first century b.c.e. and the second century c.e. in Alexandria. Aenesidemus reorganized skeptical sayings into ten “tropes,” a not-too-original attack on the possibility of deriving true knowledge from perceptual experiences.

The last major figure in the history of ancient skepticism was Sextus Empiricus, a Greek physician who lived sometime between 150 and 250 c.e. The large corpus of Sextus’s writing that has been preserved provides the most complete statement of ancient skepticism. A true disciple of Pyrrhon, Sextus used the Pyrrhonistic suspension of judgment in his attacks on the dogmatic positions of contemporary philosophers and physicians. Through Sextus Empiricus, the original philosophy of Pyrrhon of Elis has been saved from oblivion.

Bibliography

Bett, Richard. Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Bett investigates the origins of Pyrrhon’s ideas; in particular, Plato is singled out as an important inspiration.

Burnyeat, Miles F, ed. Original Sceptics: A Controversy. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. Five essays on the nature and scope of ancient skepticism.

Long, A. A. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. A general work on the three main philosophical schools of the Hellenistic age. Includes a chapter on Pyrrhon and the later skeptics.

Schofield, Malcolm, Myles Burnyeat, and Jonathan Barnes, eds. Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. This work is a collection of ten essays from a 1978 Oxford conference. Presents detailed studies on Hellenistic theories of knowledge.

Tarrant, Harold. Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. An original investigation of the first century b.c.e. philosophies of Philo and Charmadas. Discusses the influence of early Pyrrhonists.

Zeller, Eduard. The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics. Translated by Oswald Reichel. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962. Part of Zeller’s massive nineteenth century history of Greek philosophy, this work contains a useful chapter on Pyrrhon. Includes bibliographical footnotes.