once again on eusebius on aristocles on timon on pyrrho

ONCE AGAIN ON EUSEBIUS ON ARISTOCLESON TIMON ON PYRRHO*

I should perhaps apologize for devoting a longish paper to a very well-knowndocument, which has been glossed again and again by every historian ofPyrrho and ancient Scepticism.l My excuse for doing so is double: first, there isa general agreement, I think, on the crucial importance of this document forany attempt to reconstruct Pyrrho's thought; secondly, I would like to offer anew, and I hope reasonable, reading, of some of the most disputed points in it.

The text comes from Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica, Bk.xiv, ch. 18,paragraphs 1-5 ( = Aristocles fr. 6 Heiland = Pyrrho test. 53 Decleva Caizzi.See the Greek text in the Appendix to this chapter). Eusebius, as is well known,writes at the beginning of the fourth century AD, with the aim of exposing theabsurdities and inconsistencies of most pagan philosophy. He makes abun-dant use of some good sources, in particular the Peripatetic philosopherAristocles of Messina, whose date has been recently pushed back from thesecond half of the second century AD to the end of the first century BC.2 Thework of Aristocles used by Eusebius was an important treatise in ten books,with the title /7ept ^iXooo^ias. Most of Eusebius' chapters 17 to 21 comesfrom Book vm of Aristocles' On Philosophy, dealing successively with

* A first version of this paper was delivered in May 1992, before the Cambridge B-Club. Manysearching objections were presented to me, in particular by Myles Burnyeat, Michael Fredeand David Sedley; others, no less impressive, were communicated to me in carefully writtenletters I received from Jonathan Barnes, Marcel Conche, Fernanda Decleva Caizzi and NickDenyer. I thank them all warmly. If I did not draw from this salvo of criticisms the conclusionthat I had better not publish the paper, it is because I still have a hunch that it is basically on theright track. I have attempted, in this new version, to answer the most powerful objectionsdirected at the original one. Thanks are also due to Michel Poirier for his Greek expertise.Finally, I must acknowledge that I received the first insight into the views I am here expressingfrom two sentences in Groarke 1990, p. 81 n. 1. A propos of the possible influence of Indianthought on Pyrrho, Groarke writes en passant. 'Buddhism eliminates all individuality andduality, establishing that things are indeterminate and unmeasurable and that beliefs areneither true nor false. All distinctions are eradicated and no category is more applicable than itsopposite' (my emphasis).

1 The bibliography of the subject is more or less identical with the general bibliography onPyrrho and ancient Scepticism. Up to 1980, such a general bibliography has been compiled byL. Ferraria and G. Santese in the second volume of Giannantoni 1981. Cf. also Decleva Caizzi1981, pp. 17-26, and now Barnes 1992, pp. 4295-301. The most important publications will bequoted or mentioned, I think, in the paper.

2 Cf. Follet's notice in Goulet 1989, s.v. Aristocles de Messine. Aristocles apud Eusebius, PExiv. 18.29 contemptuously speaks of 'a certain Aenesidemus, who quite recently (ixOes /ecu7Tpu)rjv), in Alexandria in Egypt, tried to revive this [Pyrrhonian] rubbish'. If Aenesidemuswrote around 40 BC, as is generally agreed, Aristocles cannot have written this way much later.

190

EUSEBIUS, ARISTOCLES, TIMON, PYRRHO 191

Xenophanes and Parmenides, the Sceptics, the Cyrenaics, Metrodorus andProtagoras, and finally Epicurus. The extracts usually include a short doxo-graphical section and a long critical section. Eusebius quotes directly fromAristocles' book, which he seems to have to hand; at any rate, in the extract inwhich we are interested, he claims to quote Aristocles' ipsissima verba or nearlyso (cSSe TTTJ irpos Xe^iv k'xovTOs, XIV, 17.10).

Here is the translation I propose of this controversial text:3

[Title of the chapter]: Against the people called Pyrrhonian Sceptics, orEphectics, who declare that nothing is graspable.

(1) It is necessary, first of all, to inquire about our knowledge; for if by naturewe are unable to know anything, it will not be necessary to look at therest.

(2) There were some people in older times who told such a story; Aristotlecontradicted them. Pyrrho of Elis gained some fame by saying suchthings (LOXVO€ fxev rotavra Xeycov /cat TIvppcov 6 'HAetos), but he himselfdid not leave any written work.

In any case, his disciple Timon (6 8e ye fjLaOrjrrjs avrov TL/JLCOV) saysthat it is necessary, for whoever is to enjoy happiness, to look at the threefollowing points (cfrrjol 8eiv rov fjueXXovra evSai/jLOvrjoetv eh rpia ravra

[1*] First, how things are by their nature {irpcorov ^ev, OTTOLOL 7re</>u/ce TOLTTpdyfjuara)',

[2*] Secondly, in what way we must be disposed towards them (Sevrepov Se,rt'va XPV rpoirov rjfjb&s rrpos avra Sta/cetcx0at);

[3*] Finally, what the benefit will be for people who are so (reXevralov §e, riTrepieorai rots OVTOJS e'xovoi).

(3) [1](la) As for things, he [i.e. Timon] says that he [i.e. Pyrrho] declares

them equally indifferent and unstable and undecidable4 (ra yiev ovvirpdyfjuard (f>7]otv avrov a7TO<f)aLveLV eir larjg ahid<f)Opa /cat dorddynqra/cat dv€77t/cptra),

[lb] that for this reason neither our sensations nor our beliefs are eithertrue or false (Std TOVTO \vf\re rd? alodiqoeis TJJJLOOV jji-qre ras 86£asaXr)deveiv rj ifjevSeodcu).[2]

[2a] For this reason then, that it is necessary not to trust them (StdTOVTO ovv fjirjSe TnoTeveiv aurats" 8etv),

3 The numbers in plain type are those of the traditional paragraphs; those in bold type are mine,and will be useful for my discussion. When discussing the views of scholars who introducedother symbols, I shall adapt the latter accordingly.

4 The meaning of the three adjectives, and the question whether eirioiqs goes with the three ofthem or only with the first, have been hotly discussed. But not much depends on it for the pointsI am here discussing. I adopt the translation given in a paper to which I am much indebted(Stopper 1983, p. 274).

192 SCEPTICISM

[2b] but to be unopinionated, impartial and unwavering5 (dAA' d8o£do-rovs Kal OLKALV€LS Kal OLKpaSdvrovs etvat),

[2c] saying about each one that it no more is than is not, or that it both isand is not, or that it neither is nor is not6 (irepl evos eKaarov Aeyovras onOV fJL&AAoV €OTIV 7] OVK €GTIV Tf Kal €OTL Kal OVK €OTLV rj OVT€ €GTLV OVT€ OVK

€<JTLV).

(4) [3] Now, for the people disposed that way Timon says that the benefit willbe first abstention from assertion (d^aciav), then absence of trouble(drapagiav), and Aenesidemus says pleasure.

(5) Those are the main points of their sayings (rd /JL€V OVV Kecf>dAaia rcovXeyofievcov); let us see if they speak rightly (el opdcog Xeyovoiv).

I shall here mainly concentrate on the controversial meaning of the inferencemarked by Sid rovro at the beginning of the sentence I have numbered as [lb](not the following inference, also marked by Std TOVTO at the beginning of [2a]).This inference has been labelled as 'a zany inference' by Stopper (1983, p. 293n. 53); and I shall hereafter designate it as 'the zany inference'. I have twoclaims about it: first, that we should not attribute the zany inference to Pyrrho,but to Timon; and secondly, that it is not a zany inference at all. I shall firstargue in some detail in favour of these two claims, about which I feel myselfreasonably certain. Then, in the second part of this paper, I shall try to draw,from the results of the first part, some more general and more speculativeconsequences.

To begin with, I shall briefly recall the complex, many-layered structure ofEusebius' text. As indicated above, Eusebius is quoting Aristocles, presum-ably verbatim. Aristocles himself relies on Timon (C.320-C.230); but hisrelation to Timon is certainly not of the same nature as the relation of Eusebiusto him. Aristocles devotes the whole section to the critical account of theopinions of a group of people, 'called Pyrrhonian Sceptics or Ephectics' (thisphrase comes from the title of chapter 18, a title which also seems to stem fromAristocles himself)- He essentially considers them as ancient representatives ofan epistemological version of scepticism, i.e. of the claim that we are by natureunable to know anything (cf. §1). After noting that versions of epistemologicalscepticism were already known to Aristotle, and impugned by him, Aristoclesintroduces Pyrrho as a man who uoxvoe roiavra Xeycov. The meaning of thissentence is unclear between (a) 'Pyrrho was very good at saying such things'and (b) 'Pyrrho gained some fame by saying such things'. I have adopted (b),

5 These three adjectives too have been carefully dissected by the scholars, but their exactmeaning does not matter much either for my discussion. I adopt here the translation offered inanother recent paper to which I owe a great deal (Ausland 1989, p. 406).

6 The above translation of this all-important sentence corresponds to one of its possiblesyntactical analyses, probably the most usual. Stopper 1983, pp. 272-4 contrasts it with - andrejects it in favour of- the following one: saying that it is no more than it is not, or it both is andis not, or it neither is nor is not. I am inclined to prefer the usual construction, but here again thechoice does not have any bearing on my claims.


because it makes a fairly neat contrast to the sentence which follows, namely:'but whereas he himself did not leave any written work, his disciple Timonsays, e tc ' Aristocles thus seems to say: Pyrrho is credited with having been anotorious proponent of epistemological scepticism; but unfortunately Icannot substantiate this reputation by producing direct evidence, because wehave no direct evidence from Pyrrho at all. Then Timon, Pyrrho's disciple, isintroduced in the story, but visibly as a second-best solution (see the contrastbetween avros \xev and 6 he ye jjLadrjrrjs avrov). Aristocles does not evensuggest that Timon is an especially authorized disciple; he does not introducehim as Pyrrho's 'spokesman' (TTpo^rrjs), like Sextus, M 1.53.7 He claimsto give what Timon said (jfirjoi, three occurrences in the text, in (2), [la] and(3)), but he does not refer to any definite work; only later on in the chapterwill he mention Timon's Pytho and Silloi. Many people have suggested thatAristocles' source here is the Pytho, since this work apparently was a prosework, unlike the Silloi, and Aristocles is going to quote precisely from thePytho in §14. But, according to Diogenes Laertius ix. 111, Timon's prose worksamounted to 20,000 lines, so that there is no certainty at all about the Pythobeing the source here as well. And of course it is important to notice that thewhole extract is labelled, at the end of it, as a summary (/c€</>aAcua).

A summary of what, and a summary made by whom? Certainly not asummary of what Pyrrho said, made by Timon himself, since Aenesidemus(first century BC) is mentioned in the text (as he will be later on in the chapter,§§11,16 and 29). Not even a summary of what Timon said, made by Aristocles,since it is presented as a summary of what was said (rd)v Xeyofjuevajv) not by oneman only, but by a number of people, whose views will then be scrutinized,after having been summed up (note the plural in transition at the end of theextract: oKei/jtofjieda 3' el opdtbs Xeyovoiv). Hence, I suppose we are dealing atbest with a summary of what was supposedly said by the Pyrrhonian Scepticsin general, made by Aristocles himself (or an intermediate source), on the basisof something that he had good reasons to think that Timon, Pyrrho's disciple,had said. We can only hope, at the very best (to quote Stopper 1983, p. 271),that 'Aristocles, hostile though he was to Pyrrhonism, [was] an honestreporter.' But we cannot expect him to report about anything other than whathe says he is reporting about.

If he is an honest reporter about what he claims to report, we have to lookvery carefully at his report. And here will be my first question: what exactlydoes Aristocles say about what Timon was saying about Pyrrho! Surprisingly

7 This point has been criticized by Fernanda Decleva Caizzi, who claims (in correspondence)that ye has very often (and very often particularly in Aristocles) an emphatic force, so that weshould think, on the contrary, that Timon is presented by Aristocles as a very good source, asAristocles needs him indeed to be, in order to polemize with him in the following pages. I do notdeny that at all, (after all, a second-best solution is a second-best solution); but I maintain thetrivial truth that Aristocles would have been happier, in order to polemize with the 'PyrrhonianSceptics', to have something to quote from Pyrrho himself. And it is equally true that he doesnot say anything explicit about the privileged status of Timon, of all Pyrrho's disciples, as awitness to Pyrrho's thought.

1 9 4 S C E P T I C I S M

enough, as far as our passage is concerned, the Timon-Pyrrho question hasbeen largely ignored by modern interpreters, whereas the perhaps lessimportant Aristocles-Timon question has been much discussed. Modernscholars are almost unanimous in considering our text as a crucially importantdocument about Pyrrho's thought, tacitly relying on an assumption oftransparent faithfulness on behalf of Timon, supposed to be Pyrrho's 'spokes-man' and just that.8 They usually have no qualms in quoting a part or thewhole of our text as indiscriminately reporting Pyrrho's views, or Timon'sviews (assuming that they are identical), or, at their most prudent, Timon'sviews about Pyrrho's views.

But that is still not to be prudent enough, it seems to me. We must actuallyresist the temptation to assume that Timon attributes or refers to Pyrrho,either explicitly or even implicitly, everything that he says or is supposed to sayin the Aristocles document, and this for a very simple reason: whereas we findin our passage two occurrences of the phrase TLûyv <f>rjoi, we find one sentence,and only one, beginning with the more complex phrase (f>rjoLv OLVTOV arroâi-veiv: (frrjGiv, i.e. Timon says; avrov arro(j>aiv€iv, i.e. that Pyrrho declares. It isthe [la] sentence, which deals with TOL Trpayâra: 'Timon says that Pyrrhodeclares rd Trpdyfiara equally indifferent', etc. If this sentence, or the sentencebeginning with these words, is the only one which Timon explicitly attributesto Pyrrho, we must conclude, a contrario, that the rest of the text, either in partor wholly, contains things which were at least not explicitly attributed toPyrrho by Timon.9 Thus we have an urgent task to perform, or to try toperform: namely, to determine where we have to put the end-quote sign, inorder to demarcate what is explicitly attributed by Timon to Pyrrho from whatis not so.

When trying to answer this question, we come across a very disputed point,namely the syntax, meaning and value of the clause [lb], beginning with StdTOVTO (the first occurrence, which is in [lb], not the second one, which is in[2a]). At least two syntactic problems are raised by this clause, I think. One ofthem has been raised by Stopper: there is, he says (1983, p. 293 n. 53), 'a strangeasyndeton in the text': the Sid TOVTO clause has indeed no linking particle withwhat comes before. I shall come back to this question later on. But anothersyntactic problem has, as far as I can see, been largely ignored. Most peopleseem to construe, more or less explicitly, the infinitive proposition jjur/Te TOLS

8 The only frank exception I know of is Michael Frede, who sounds a note of warning in Frede1973-

9 Fernanda Decleva Caizzi objects that it would need very clumsy Greek sentences, with threeinfinitives, to express each time explicitly that Timon says that Pyrrho said that, etc., and that itwas unnecessary, since the master-pupil relation between Pyrrho and Timon had been laiddown from the outset. But the fact is, precisely, that such a clumsy phrase (perhaps not soclumsy after all) is used once and only once (<j>r)Giv avrov dnoâiveLv), and then not at thebeginning of the report. Precisely at the beginning of the report, we do have a sentence withthree infinitives (8eiv, euSou/u-ovqcreiv, pXeneiv), but it is simply prefixed by TIJACOV <j>rjoi. Let usadd, above all, that there was a very simple and economical way of expanding the scope of(f>r)oiv avrov airofyaivziv to both [la] and[lb], by writing ra fxev ovv irpdy^xard (f>rjGiv avrova7TO<f>aLV€LV in LGTJS aoia<j>opa /ecu a.Grdd[ir\ra teal aveniKpira ^cfvai), Sia rovro /xrjrc rasalodrjoeis TJ/JLCOV firjre ras oo£as aArjOeveiv 7/ i/jSd

EUSEBIUS, ARISTOCLES, TIMON, PYRRHO I95

. . . ipevSeoOac [lb] as dependent on avrov ano$alv€iv\ so thatPyrrho is made directly responsible for the Sid rovro clause, i.e. for the zanyinference, for its contents as well as for its logical link with what comes before.According to this analysis, the text would mean: Timon says that Pyrrho (a)declares the things indifferent etc., <and (b) declares > that for this reasonour sensations, etc. This analysis I do not hesitate to call wrong. Why? Becausein the previous clause, namely [la], we find the verb <j>r]oiv (subject Timon),followed by an infinitive proposition (avrov drr offtake iv, subject Pyrrho),which is itself followed, not by a second subordinate infinitive propositiondependent on a-noâlveiv, but by an attributive construction (airoâlveiv raTTpdyîara dSid</>opa, without any eivai). On the face of it, therefore, it is muchmore natural to consider that we have indeed two infinitive propositions, butcoordinated, and both dependent on faoiv (subject Timon): the first onehaving avrov (i.e. Pyrrho) as its subject, and airocfraiveiv as its verb; the secondone having pnqre ras alodrjceis etc. as its subject, and aX-qdeveiv rj ifjevSeadai asits verbs. The meaning then is: Timon says (a) that Pyrrho declares the thingsindifferent, etc., < and > (b) that for this reason our sensations, etc. This is theanalysis which I venture to call right, not because the alternative one isgrammatically impossible (some colleagues who are good at Greek have toldme that it was quite acceptable), but because it is the simpler and more naturalof the two possible analyses: nothing tells against it, I think, and absolutelynothing compels us to prefer the other one. If this argument is not totallymistaken, we can thus conclude that the zany inference was not attributed byTimon to Pyrrho. The scope of the quotation of Pyrrho's views by Timon,opened by avrov airocftaiveiv, ends with aveiriKpira', it includes [la], it does notinclude [lb]. And if Timon did not attribute the inference to Pyrrho, the mosteconomical and likely hypothesis is that he made the inference himself. He saidhimself what followed from what he said Pyrrho had said.

Let us turn at present to the meaning of this inference. If it is a zanyinference, well, we have just succeeded in exonerating Pyrrho from a zanyinference. But we have charged Timon with a zany inference. Now, is it a zanyinference?

A long time ago, Zeller suggested, without explanation, that we should readSid TO instead of Sid rovro. The meaning of the logical sequence then becamethe following: 'things are indifferent, etc., for the reason that our sensations,etc ' The motivation of this proposal is clear enough; it is very well explainedby Stopper, the most confident modern supporter of Zeller's emendation. Iquote him (1983, p. 293 n. 53):

How does Timon's remark about the senses connect with his remark about thedSia(j)opta of ra Trpay/xara? The transmitted text is clear: since things areindifferent,/<9r that reason (Sid rovro) our senses are unreliable. But that is a zanyinference, as a little reflexion will show. Moreover, it leaves a strange asyndetonin the text. The inference should go the other way about, as it does in laterscepticism. We should accept Zeller's Sid TO for Sid rovro, which restores senseand syntax at one blow.

I96 SCEPTICISM

And Stopper goes on: 'I am not assuming that Timon thought in the same wayas later Pyrrhonists and then emending the text to suit this assumption: thereceived text is wholly puzzling as it stands, and the emendation is compellingwithout any such assumption.'

Let us develop the Zeller-Stopper position a little, before trying to challengeit. What makes the inference 'zany', and the emendation of the text 'compell-ing', is a natural enough, but quite determinate interpretation of the threePyrrhonian adjectives kir Lorjs dhidcjyopa KCLL doraO/ji^Ta KCLL dverriKpira. Thefirst thing which comes to mind is indeed to give to these adjectives a'subjective' meaning, i.e. a meaning which includes a reference to our owncognitive and discriminating capacities: 'things' are dhid<j>opa in the sense thatwe cannot differentiate them; they are dordd^ra in the sense that we cannotassess them; they are dverriKpna in the sense that we cannot make any decisionabout them.10 If we give to the three adjectives such a 'subjective' meaning, theSLOL TOVTO inference is zany indeed: for it does not make sense to say first that weare unable to differentiate 'things', and then that/or this very reason our sensesand beliefs are unreliable. Our epistemic powerlessness, if anything, is theground for the indifference of 'things' understood that way; it cannot be aconsequence of it. Once turned upside down by the emendation, the sequence isfaultless: our sensations and beliefs are neither true nor false; then how arethings? They are equally indifferent and unstable and undecidable.

There are two big drawbacks to this reading of the text. First, how can weknow, or simply assert, that our sensations and beliefs are neither true norfalse? This assertion seems only to be made possible on the basis of a long andsophisticated scrutiny of the credentials of such sensations and beliefs11 - ascrutiny which should be at least mentioned as an all-important step on thePyrrhonian road to happiness, if it is to be conceived in this way. Secondly, andstill more seriously, it seems totally forbidden to ask the question 'then how arethings?', since Aristocles' text is absolute clear on the injunction (howeverpuzzling it might seem on behalf of Pyrrho) to look first at the nature of things{-npojTov JJL€V, 67701a TT€(f)VK€ Ta TT pay paT a). How could we obey this injunctionif we had to look elsewhere (i.e. at what Aristocles calls 'our own knowledge')beforehand?

That is, I suppose, why a number of modern scholars reject Zeller'semendation, albeit for various reasons.12 But they have to try to escape the

10 Quite consistently, Stopper 1983, pp. 274 and 292 n. 50 argues that if the question is obscure asfar as the two first adjectives are concerned, the 'subjective' sense is indisputable in the case ofthe third adjective aveiriKpLTa, so that the same type of sense should be transposed to the twoothers.

11 Still quite consistently, Stopper writes (1983, pp. 274-5): 'Pyrrho urged, no doubt on the basis ofsome of the arguments later collected by Aenesidemus, that "our perceptions and our beliefs areneither truthful nor liars"' (my emphasis).

12 Let us notice that in order to keep the manuscript reading, it is not possible to rely on therecurrences of Sid TOVTO in Aristocles' following critical considerations (§5.3; §7.1), for theserecurrences go back to the 8LOL TOVTO in [2a], not to the one in [lb]. The criticism launched at§10.1-2, moreover, seems to imply that the Pyrrhonians did not say wherefrom they had learntto say that all things are dS^Aa.


quite real difficulty this emendation was meant to dissolve. Roughly speaking,in order to give a plausible meaning to the zany inference without emendingthe text, it was necessary to find for the three Pyrrhonian adjectives of [la]another meaning than the 'subjective' one which had prompted the Zeller-Stopper position. These attempts, I think, are mainly of two kinds: either youtake the adjectives to refer to 'objective' properties of 'things', propertieswhich 'things' have quite independently from our capacities or incapacities toassess them, and you deduce the epistemological impotence of our sensationsand beliefs from this so to speak intrinsic inapprehensibility of things; or youtake the same adjectives to refer to the 'moral' indifference of'things', and youtry to show that a destruction of the epistemological claims of sensations andbeliefs is a kind of middle term between the awareness of this indifference andthe attainment of happiness. The most detailed attempts to argue these twosolutions to the puzzle have been put forward, I think, by Decleva Caizzi(1981) for the first one, and by Ausland (1989) for the second one. I do not findthose attempts to be satisfactory; but since I want to come as soon as possibleto the constructive part of this paper, I shall say only a few words about each ofthem, hoping, however, not to be unfair to them.

According to Decleva Caizzi (1981, 225-7), the logical succession doesindeed go, as the received text clearly implies, from the 'nature of things' to theimpossibility of sensations and beliefs to be true or false. In order to make thismove legitimate, the three adjectives which describe the status of'things' musthave an 'objective' meaning, i.e. to designate properties which 'things' dopossess in themselves, independently of any relation to our cognitive capaci-ties. Decleva Caizzi suggests the following meanings: 'without differencesbetween them' for aScdfopa, 'unstable' for darafyx^Ta, 'confused' for aveiri-Kpira. The inference from the 'things' having such a 'nature' to the unreliabi-lity of our senses and judgements is then glossed in the following way: 'Timon'swords [i.e. his words in la] do not refer to a dichotomy between a reality whichremains unknown and a world of phenomena, i.e. ofappearances of something,but imply the negation of the concepts of <j)vcns and r68e n\ it follows that,once the notion of being as determination is dissolved, everything is reduced toappearance, for which it makes no sense to speak of truth or error'. HereDecleva Caizzi seems to be clearly indebted to Marcel Conche's nihilistic viewof Pyrrho (in Conche 1973), which relies on the same distinction between thenotion of an 'appearance of something' (which is the very basis of the later,'phenomenistic' neo-Pyrrhonism) and the notion of 'sheer appearance' or'appearance of nothing' (which would be, according to Conche, the genuinePyrrhonian notion). Whatever we may think of this interpretation, it is hard toattribute such a view to Timon, since he is credited (by DL ix.105) with thetypically 'phenomenistic' formula: 'That honey is sweet I do not posit, that itappears to be so (^cuWrcu) I admit' - a formula which Conche can onlyaccommodate by saying (1973, p. 57) that 'the Pyrrhonian thesis is immedi-ately betrayed when it is expressed'. In addition to these general difficulties,Decleva Caizzi's suggestion does not properly fit our text: Timon does not say

I98 SCEPTICISM

that, since 'things' are indifferent, 'it makes no sense to speak of truth or error';he says that since 'things' are indifferent, it makes perfectly good sense to saythat our sensations and beliefs are neither true nor false. If this means, asStopper (1983, p. 292 n. 53) quite reasonably suggests, that they are 'neitherconstant truth-tellers nor constant liars', then it is perfectly meaningful to saythat they sometimes tell the truth and sometimes lie; the only trouble is that wecannot say when they tell the truth, and when they lie.13

On the other hand, Ausland (1989) powerfully argues in favour of giving tothe three Pyrrhonian properties of'things' a 'moral' meaning, mainly relyingon the well-known use of ahia<j>opa in the ethical field, with the specific sense of'neither good nor bad'. In this long and important paper, Ausland does notdissimulate the trouble he faces when trying to account, in this perspective, forthe zany inference: 'it is still unclear', he says on p. 407, 'what the reference toour senses and opinions is doing in the argument and, in particular, why theyare untrustworthy (.. .) on the basis of the nature of things'. It seems difficultindeed, as a matter of principle, to infer a conclusion bearing on theunreliability of sensations and beliefs from a statement about the ethical'indifference' of'things'.

I shall not try to sum up the very complicated and even tortuous moves,occupying no less than twenty pages (407-28), by which Ausland tries to solvethis problem. Rather unexpectedly, Ausland first invokes a definitely episte-mological argument set out by Diogenes Laertius (ix.92-3), which he finds'parallel' to the Timonian argument from [la] to [lb], and having 'a definiteaffinity' with it. This argument in Diogenes Laertius explains that neitheraiod-qcis nor vorjois can distinguish truth from falsity, that no other facultycan help us to make a decision between opposite Sd£cu concerning objects ofsense or of thought, and that this undecidable conflict eventually suppressesany fxerpov by which we could think it possible to determine anything. Thisargument, as can be seen, is thoroughly epistemological, and it deals explicitlywith matters of truth and falsity. How can Ausland hope to extract from it anyhelp for his moral interpretation of our Timonian passage? I must confess thatI do not understand very well what he says on p. 413: 'The argument in

13 Variants of Decleva Caizzi's position (or so I think) have been orally presented to me byMichael Frede and Myles Burnyeat. According to Frede, the zany inference is not zany at all asit stands, because there are many reasons, independent of the unreliability of our senses andbeliefs, which could support [la], and from [la] it is easy to infer [lb], since according to [la]there is nothing left for the senses and beliefs to be reliable about. In the same vein, Burnyeatclaims that [2c] explains why the inference is not zany; which I take to mean that the intrinsicindetermination of 'things' similarly removes the ground for senses and beliefs to be reliableabout anything. I remain unpersuaded, because (i) it seems difficult to see how any generalpronouncement about the 'nature of things', such as [la] in the standard view, could be madewithout any examination of our cognitive ability to grasp it (that is what prompted Zeller'semendation, which however meets all the problems mentioned above), and (ii) [2c] is not an'objective' statement, but expresses what we should say (Xeyovras), i.e. in what way we shouldbe disposed towards the 'things', given their nature [2*] and the unreliability of our senses andbeliefs [lb]; so that [2c] is a consequence of [lb], not a ground for it.


Diogenes shows how the Pyrrhonians could argue from claim [la] in Timon'sargument, through applications on the successive levels of appearance andopinion, to claim [lb] in such a way as to make claim [2a] a reasonableinference from the latter.' Ausland's general conclusion is a little clearer, if notcompletely clear:

Ancient skepticism (. . .) comes first into view as a philosophy which takes itsbeginning, not from a challenge to account for our cognitive access to an externalworld, but rather from the problem of human happiness. The Pyrrhonian way tothe good life relates a human disposition productive of undisturbed calm [3]directly to an undecidability inherent in practical affairs [1]. But the critique ofour senses, opinions, and reason [lb + 2a] that it includes for the sake ofdemonstrating this relation is not pursued in a fashion suitable to the intention ofexposing any comparative or general unreliability of our several faculties inrelation to external things, but is instead practised with a view to showing itwrong for us to exercise a preference between competing claims on our choicethat are similar in dignity. Viewed from this new (really old) perspective,Pyrrho's skepticism stands revealed as integral, and not incidental, to his moralphilosophy.

(pp. 427-8; figures added are mine)

This conclusion shows that, in Ausland's view, Pyrrho was indeed anepistemological sceptic, but en passant: his epistemological scepticism, insteadof being an end in itself, was only a moment in the demonstration of his mainconcern, i.e. his ethical indifferentism.14

I cannot help finding that, throughout the long and tortuous moves effectedalong these pages, the tiny and precise problem of making sense of the zanyinference has somehow fallen out of the picture. In any case, I cannot see, fromhis paper, what exactly Ausland's answer would be to the simple question: howand why does [la] provide the reason (Sta TOVTO) for [lb]? I find his paperconvincing in many respects; but on this particular point I find it ratherdisappointing.

Now, it is time to come to the solution which I venture to offer as the obviouslycorrect one. The complicated and ingenious moves of Decleva Caizzi, Auslandand others are, I think, superfluous and in some sense misguided, because, infact, there is a much simpler way to get things right, and to draw from [la] to[lb] an inference which has absolutely nothing 'zany' in it. We have just tosuppose (i) that 'our sensations and beliefs' are Trpay^xara,15 and (ii) that theproper way for sensations and beliefs to be ahia<f>opa /ecu aorddix^ra KOLL

14 Cf. also the programmatic statement: 'it remains unclear why and in what way [lb] acts tomediate the clearly symmetrical formulations of [la] and [2]' (p. 407, my emphasis). The'epistemological' statement [lb] is nothing more than an intermediate link between two (inAusland's view) 'moral' statements, [la] and [2].

15 In the ordinary, predicative sense of'are', not of course in the sense of identity. This is to avoidpossible misunderstandings (Fernanda Decleva Caizzi told me that she found it hard toswallow that Pyrrho's Trpay/zara might be conceived of as alodrjoeLs KOLI Sof at; but this ismiles away from what I mean).

200 SCEPTICISM

av€7TLKpira is to be neither true nor false. Then everything falls into perfectorder.

Point (i) is the crucial one. Formally speaking, it obviously provides a trivialBarbara: All Trpay/xara are indifferent (according to Pyrrho) [la]; all oursensations and beliefs are (special kinds of) rrpdyixara [implicit premiss];therefore, all our sensations and beliefs are indifferent. From the structuralpoint of view, the legitimacy of bringing sensations and beliefs under rdTTpdyfjuara is wholly confirmed, I think, by the following remark. The firstquestion [1*] bears on the nature of rd irpdyâra, and only on that; the secondquestion [2*] bears on the right attitude we should adopt irpos avrd, i.e.towards rd -npdyâra. The answer to the second question begins with thesecond hid rovro [2a], which introduces the advice or invitation to adopt acertain attitude (SeiV). So it is not artificial at all, but on the contrarymandatory, to consider [lb] as a part of [1], i.e. as a part of the answer to thequestion concerning the nature of rd TTpdyfiara; therefore, sensations andbeliefs are introduced into the story as (a kind of) TT pay par a. This point is alsoput beyond any doubt, if needed, by the fact that question [2*] asks for theright attitude to adopt towards rd rrpdyfjuara (note the neuter npos aura),whereas the first element of the answer to this question, namely [2a], describesthe right attitude to adopt towards sensations and beliefs (note the feminineavrais). This would simply not be possible if sensations and beliefs did notcount as rrpdyâra. As such, they have certain intrinsic properties, describedin [lb], which dictate (through the second Sid rovro) the right attitude to adopttowards them.

This account of the argument is therefore supported by good and strongreasons, I believe. However, I realize that it is a somewhat difficult andparadoxical task to defend my claim. The bringing of sensations and beliefsunder rd -npdy\xara must be both perfectly obvious and somewhat unex-pected: perfectly obvious, on one hand, since it gives a straightforwardjustification to the zany inference; and somewhat unexpected, on the otherhand, since the text has been read by dozens of learned and careful people,none of whom has ever read it this way, so far as I know. In other words, if Iclaim to correct a misreading, I must also explain why this misreading has beenso widely shared. Such a peculiar mixture of acceptability and unexpectednessmust be accounted for. But it can be accounted for, I think, both conceptuallyand historically.

From the conceptual point of view, I assume that the word rrpdyârausually refers, in Greek, to external 'things' or 'states of affairs', particularly,but not exclusively, when they have some relation with our activities(irpdrreiv), i.e. when we can by ourselves obtain them or bring them about; sothat bringing our own sensations and beliefs under rd 77payyzara must soundprima facie slightly paradoxical. However, this usual connotation is perhapsunduly strengthened by our usual translations in modern languages, whetherwe adopt 'things' or 'states of affairs'. It is almost a commonplace to point outthat, for ancient philosophers, mental items are not of a radically different type


from physical items: they are just the same type of natural items, differentiatedonly by their 'inner' or 'outer' location.16 So there is nothing to prevent oursensations and beliefs counting as Txpdy\xara after all.17

From the historical point of view, it is still easier to account for theimpression that bringing our sensations and beliefs under rd TT pay para is bothan obvious move and a slightly unexpected one. On the basis of thegrammatical structure of the sentence, I have already claimed that [la] wasexplicitly attributed to Pyrrho by Timon, but that the zany inference was not,and that this inference was drawn by Timon himself. The mixed impression wehave in front of this inference can thus be accounted for by the distribution ofroles between our two characters: the song sounds strange, because it is a two-part song, written on a single line. I suggest that Pyrrho, when he talked aboutra Trpdy/jLara, had in mind external 'things' or 'states of affairs' - presumablyin so far as they are related to our practical activity - and nothing else; so thathe would have been himself somewhat surprised by the unexpected appli-cation of his statement to sensations and beliefs. But after a moment ofbewilderment, he would probably have conceded to Timon that there was nocompelling reason to reject this application.x 8 Our sensations and beliefs, afterall, are TTpdyfjuara of a sort.

If I may indulge in following up this sketch of a historical novel, I shallventure to say that it could perhaps also account for the 'strange asyndeton'(Sta TOVTO without a particle) which was pointed out by Stopper, if it is anasyndeton at all.19 I do not claim to be able to explain how Timon'sintervention managed to leave this trace in the text; but I would be fairly readyto admit that if there is any asyndeton here, it is, in some way or other, a textualtrace of Timon's intervention.

So much, for the moment, for bringing our sensations and beliefs under TOLTTpdyjjLara. What I have still to do is to account for the fact that the supposedTimonian syllogism, instead of mechanically applying Pyrrho's statement

16 Cf. e.g. the interesting remarks of Everson 1991, pp. 131-2.17 Perhaps it is not completely irrelevant to point out that in the Charmides 169A, Plato brings

together, under the label ra ovra ('things that are'), various items like science, sight, audition,sensation, desire, will, love, fear, belief, movement, heat. Within such a list, it seems to be thecase that the items which would have a special claim to be called TT pay \xaTa are mental itemsinvolving some sort of internal object, like all kinds of presentative or representative acts orstates of mind - or, by extension, their internal objects themselves. For instance, according to afamous passage in Sextus, M vm.12, the Stoic 'signified', orjfxaLvofxevov, was defined as 'auroTO TTpdyfjua which is revealed by the vocal sound, and which we apprehend as subsisting in ourthought'. However we understand the word TTpdyyia here, this definition shows that a npayfiamay perfectly well be an item which has no existence at all outside the thought.

18 I do not claim that Timon brought our sensations and beliefs under the concept of TT pay paraexactly in the same sense as Pyrrho himself had understood this concept (I shall come back tothis later on). Pyrrho would have to accept an extension of his notion of it.

19 It has been pointed out to me from various sides, either that the asyndeton is not in the leaststrange in the style of K€<f>d\aLa, or even that 8LOL TOVTO does not need any particle at all,especially when followed by fxr/Te . . . /X^TC (Fernanda Decleva Caizzi learnedly refers me toPlutarch, Anim.procr. IOI8B6, Philoponus, Aetern. mundi 278.28 and 439.14; Simplicius In DeCael. 563.7; Plotinus, Enn. 5.1.7.20 and 6.7.16.20). In consideration of these objections, Iwould not rely too heavily on this argument.

202 SCEPTICISM

about irpdyfiara to sensations and beliefs (and thus getting to the conclusionthat sensations and beliefs are dhid<f>opa /cat dardOfjirjTa /cat dveTrt/cptra),draws the conclusion that they are neither true nor false. This is quite plainsailing, in comparison with the previous question. It would be fairly uninfor-mative to say that sensations and beliefs have the three general Pyrrhonianproperties of'things': what is interesting is to know what specific aspect theseproperties take on, when applied to sensations and beliefs. What are therelevant 'differences' they do not exhibit? What sort of 'stability' are theydeprived of? What kind of 'decision' are they unable to allow? Since theirordinary claim is to discriminate between what is the case and what is not thecase, it is clear that the relevant form of loss which they suffer from beingbrought under ret Trpdyâra, as characterized by [la], has to do with theirpower of giving access to truth and avoiding error; e.g. the relevant differencein reference to which they are dhid<f>opa is the difference between dXiqdevtivand ifjevSeodaL. In this way, let us notice that we can completely clear away thedifficulty some people have felt in understanding why the text says thatsensations and beliefs are neither true nor false, instead of saying simply thatthey are false. If all of them were false, they would not be any longer'indifferent' with respect to the relevant difference, namely the differencebetween truth and falsity: they would be uniformly 'differentiated', throughbeing always on the same side of that difference.

In addition to that, it might be suggested that there is, between thePyrrhonian properties of 'things' and the Timonian properties of sensationsand beliefs, a relationship exactly similar to that between the Pyrrhonian'things' themselves and the Timonian sensations and beliefs. In other words:just as Pyrrho's -npayâra quite probably did not originally include sensationsand beliefs, so Pyrrho's properties of 'things', expressed by the adjectivesd8id<f)opa /cat darddiJLrjTa /cat aêTit/cptTa, quite probably had originallynothing to do with truth and falsity. But just as it was both defensible andunexpected to bring sensations and beliefs under Trpayâra, so it was bothdefensible and unexpected to consider being neither true nor false as a case ofdbia<f>opia.

So far, I hope to have shown that the zany inference from [la] to [lb] doesnot come from Pyrrho, that it comes from Timon, and that it is not a zanyinference at all. I am fairly confident that these results are correct. I would nowlike to raise the question of what consequences we can draw from them; andhere I must confess that what I shall say is much more speculative.

Within the small section [1], if I am not mistaken, [la] is explicitly attributed byTimon to Pyrrho; [lb] is not, and we have found good reasons to think that [lb]is the result of a personal intervention by Timon. Can we extract from that ageneral rule, and extend its bearing over the whole passage? In other words,should we consider that everything in the text which is not explicitly attributedto Pyrrho is implicitly not attributed to Pyrrho, and should be similarlyattributed to Timon? Since only [la] is explicitly attributed to Pyrrho, the


application of such a rule would be extremely damaging for the master, andextremely generous for the disciple. We would have to take away from Pyrrho,and to give to Timon, an enormous part of the text, namely: the wholedescription of a philosophical programme for happiness, the division of thisprogramme into three main points, the second half of the fulfilment of part [1]of this programme, and the whole fulfilment of parts [2] and [3]. This would bea bit frightening, and also a bit silly: Pyrrho certainly did not describe 'things'as indifferent, etc., just for the sake of describing them that way. That is why Iam not inclined at all to such a maximalist proposal. On the other hand, wemust admit that the whole piece is very tightly articulated: the threefoldprogramme is first described, and then carried out, in closely related terms: therepetitions of ra Trpay/zara, SiaKeia&u, Trepiefvcu, are especially striking.Moreover, within each section, ternary sets are conspicuously present: thethree Pyrrhonian adjectives in [la], the three other adjectives in [2b], theprobably ternary structure of the Sceptical formulas in [2c] again, the threeresults of the Sceptical attitude according to [3] - even if they are somewhatperturbed by the insertion of Aenesidemus' 'pleasure'. The texture of the pieceis thus so closely knit that it seems very hard to dismantle it, and to try torender to each of the two Caesars the things that are his own. The job can onlybe done in a very tentative way.

Nevertheless, I think that some plausible arguments should be given achance. Timon was probably rather more of an independent thinker than isusually believed; his intellectual and human personality seems to have beenquite different from Pyrrho's. In any case, there is one big difference betweenthem, namely the fact that Pyrrho wrote nothing, or hardly anything (cf.Sextus, M 1.282), whereas Timon was a prolific writer, in vastly differentliterary genres (cf. DL ix. 110-11). So it could be legitimate to leave him at leasta fairly important role in the literary shaping of Pyrrho's teaching. Neverthe-less, whatever we may think about the extent of his intellectual independence,he is obviously a devoted, almost fanatical disciple of Pyrrho. Whatever hesays and writes, he probably takes it to be quite faithfully true to his master'sthought. Therefore, it is certainly very unlikely that Timon would have taken itupon himself to change the overall meaning and intention of Pyrrho'sphilosophy. When he presents it as a quest for happiness (quite unexpectedlyafter Aristocles' own epistemological introduction in §§ 1-2), he is certainlyneither innovating nor wanting to do so. His own dialogue with his master,reflected in fragment 48 of the Silloi and in fragments 67 and 68 of theIndalmoi, shows that he felt himself fully entitled to attribute to Pyrrho such abasically eudaimonistic intention.

As far as the threefold programme for happiness is concerned, its school-masterly style and its rigidity might be ascribable, to a certain extent, to somesort of Timonian reshaping; but it is hard to believe that the contents andsuccession of its three steps are completely foreign to Pyrrho's originalthought. In particular, first asking a question about the 'nature' of T<X

, a feature which looks fairly strange to the reader of the neo-

204 SCEPTICISM

Pyrrhonian classical texts, can hardly be the product of a personal initiative byTimon: as we shall see later on in more detail, putting this question first wouldalready have been unexpected from his point of view.

Things become a little more problematic when we look at the fulfilment ofthe threefold programme. Within point [1], as we have seen, [la] is certainlyPyrrhonian; and [lb], I think, is certainly Timonian. Of the two remainingpoints, let us first look at point [3]. Aristocles explicitly gives it to Timon(TLJJLOJV (f>rjaC). Indeed, the sequence 'first a</>aaia, then drapagta is possibly apiece of genuine Timonian pedigree; for we read in DL ix. 107 that, accordingto Timon and Aenesidemus, the Sceptic reAo? is the en-o^, which brings withit drapaûa like its shadow; the substitution of eiroxf] for dcfxxoia in the firstposition (as in Sextus, PHi.S) might be the role of Aenesidemus in the story. Ofcourse, the third item in answer [3], Alv7)oi§r)ixos 8' rjSovrjv, cannot come fromTimon. If I had to guess what the third item was in Timon's original answer - 1assume, with many people, that there was a third item - my own bet would befor evhaiyLoviav, rather than for diradeiav or eTro^^, which have beensuggested by various scholars: it would be strange indeed to promise ushappiness at the beginning, and not to say at the end that if we follow the recipewe shall eventually get it. But even if Timon might be responsible for anordered sequence d</>aoia - drapaîa - evhaiôvla, this obviously does notmean that the three corresponding notions were unknown to Pyrrho himself.

The most interesting and problematic case is answer [2]. It seems perfectlyclear that [2a] is so closely linked together with [lb] that there is no question ofdissociating them: they are, from the grammatical point of view, on the samelevel (the infinitive helv in [2a] has the same syntactical status as the infinitivesaXiqdzvtiv 77 ifjevSeodaL in [lb]); and the necessity of our mistrusting oursensations and beliefs is a direct consequence (cf. the second Sta TOVTO) of theirintrinsic indeterminateness in respect to truth and falsity. If [lb] comes fromTimon, then [2a] must come from Timon as well.20 But what about [2b] and[2c]? Concerning [2b], we must remember that [la] is the only absolutely

20 David Sedley noticed that the vocabulary in the sequence [lb] -I- [2a] is typically Hellenistic, bycontrast with the context. In addition to that element of confirmation, I am happy to registerhere the agreement of Fernanda Decleva Caizzi on the substantial part of this claim, namelythe close interdependence between [lb] and [2a] (the question of Timon's authorship andintentions apart). She writes (in correspondence - parenthetical remarks are hers): 'There is noreason why [lb] and [2a] should not have been added by some witness more faithful (but inwhat sense can we speak of a faithful witness?) to Pyrrho.' She adds, however, in the form of anobjection to my claim (parenthetical remarks still hers): 'If the author was Timon (and notAristocles summarizing the Sceptical source - Timon or a Sceptic later than Aenesidemus?), Istill do not see any difficulty in interpreting [lb] as the consequence which Timon believed (thatPyrrho believed?) to derive from [la], and [2a] as the linking sentence which makes it easier toexplain [2b]: [2a] is not the direct answer to [2*], but that which makes it possible to understandit in relation to [la]'. But I subscribe to everything in this. Most valuable for my claim is the lastsentence in particular: if [2a] is not the direct answer to [2*], but that which makes it possible tounderstand it (i.e. to understand the direct answer to [2*], namely [2b]) in relation to [la], thatimplies that the logical dependence of [2b] (quite probably Pyrrhonian) on [la] (certainlyPyrrhonian) was somewhat unclear; this very lack of clarity might have prompted Timon toinsert the sequence [lb] 4- [2a].


certain Pyrrhonian bit in the whole text; and we must also be sensitive to thefact that the three adjectives in [2b] are obviously meant to answer to the threeadjectives in [la]. Even if we do not totally accept the valuable attempt byAusland (1989, pp. 389-97), to establish a close term-to-term correspondencebetween the two triplets, we cannot deny that at least some sort of correspon-dence obtains between them. The outcome of this argument is that Timon'spersonal intervention, beginning with [lb], must come to an end with the endof [2a], and that with [2b] we find Pyrrho again, or at any rate what Timon wasready to attribute explicitly to Pyrrho. Let us bear in mind that we have foundgood reasons to think that the first item in Pyrrho's own eudaimonisticprogramme was (rather unexpectedly from the point of view of the standardSceptical moves) to inquire about 'the nature of things'; if so, it is only naturalto think that the answer to this first question was followed, in Pyrrho's ownplan, by a carefully articulated answer to the question of which attitude weshould adopt towards 'things' of such a nature.

For reasons which are not exactly the same, I am inclined to think that thefamous formulas of [2c] also belong to Pyrrho, or at least to Timon's officialPyrrho. This is not the right time and place to discuss whether we shouldconstrue the complex [2c] sentence as threefold, as I believe with mostcommentators, or as fourfold, as do some people who incline to see here anecho of the Indian tetralemma, which Pyrrho supposedly came to know in hisfar away travels.21 In any case, the use of the ov /JL&XAOV formula, whichgoverns [2c], is of course very well attested by other pieces of evidenceconcerning Pyrrho himself (in particular DL ix.61); and there are no groundsfor doubting that he might have recommended saying at least the kind of thingswhich we find in [2c], whatever might be the exact meaning he wanted to givethem.

If what I have said thus far is not complete nonsense, I come to the conclusionthat our document is a piece of philosophical cutting, in which we can holdTimon personally responsible for the insertion of sections [lb] and [2a]. Now,these two sections are the only ones, in the whole text, which bear a distinctlyand unequivocally epistemological character; I mean, the only ones whichintroduce the notions of truth and error, and the names of cognitive events,faculties and states like sensations, beliefs and trust. On the face of it,therefore, what Timon is responsible for might be called the epistemologicaltwist to the whole story.221 shall now briefly show that such a conclusion is in

2 1 Cf. n. 6 above. The tetralemma is a form of argument favoured by Indian thought , and havingthe following structure: p , not-p, p and not-p, neither p nor not-p.

2 2 This epistemological twist does not seem to be perceived as such by Aristocles; but it isobviously what motivates his quotat ion of this summary of Sceptical views, in spite of thecontrast betweeen the epistemological perspective opened up by him in his own introductionand the eudaimonistic perspective opened up by the beginning of the summary he is quoting.Most of his objections, in what follows (§§ 5-26), are directed to a version of epistemologicalscepticism; he does not directly at tack Pyrrhonism as a way to happiness (cf. however someobservations on the supposed utility of the Sceptic view in §§ 16-17).

206 SCEPTICISM

agreement with some other things we know about Timon; and I shall end bytrying to say what we should infer from that concerning Pyrrho's ownphilosophical stance.

First of all, Timon's epistemological concerns are fairly well attested byother pieces of evidence. We know, for instance, that he had written a bookTlepl aladrjoecov (DL ix. 105), in which he produced the typical expression ofsceptical phenomenalism that I have already mentioned: That honey is sweet Ido not posit, that it appears to be so (^alverai) I admit.' Such a phenomenalistposition seems also to be attested, whatever its exact meaning, by the famousline in the Indalmoi, quoted by various authors (DL ix.105, Sextus, M vii.30,Galen, Dignosc.puls. 1.2): aAAa TO (^atvofjievov iravrrj oOevei, ovnep av eXOrj (itis in view of this line that I said earlier that it was very unlikely that Timonhimself might have put a question about 'the nature of things' first in hispersonal philosophical agenda). We also know that he had found an oppor-tunity to use his satirical bent even in epistemological discussions: according toDL ix. 114, 'he was constantly in the habit of quoting, to those who wouldadmit the evidence of the senses when confirmed by the mind (npos rovs rasalodrjozis fier^ €TnfjLapTvpovvTos rov vov iyKptvovras), the line "Attagas andNumenius came together"'; whatever the exact meaning of this joke, itsupshot is obviously to disparage both senses and the mind; and it is interestingto notice that it was a polemical weapon, apparently directed at a quite definiteepistemological position (namely a non-Epicurean version of the theory ofiTTijjLapTvprioLs), within the framework of the epistemological discussions inwhich Timon was constantly engaged (ovvexes re eiriXeyeiv elajdei). Besidesjokingly taking up his stand in epistemological discussions, Timon seems tohave also dealt quite technically and seriously, in his treatise Against thePhysicists, with some of the most fundamental problems in the theory ofscience, since we know that, in this work, he was calling into question the use offirst principles adopted eg vTrodeoeous (Sextus, M 111.2).

Still more importantly, we know that Timon was much interested inArcesilaus, even if this interest was of a rather ambivalent nature. Accordingto Diogenes Laertius IX.I 15, he attacked Arcesilaus in his Silloi (this point islargely confirmed by several fragments of the Silloi, namely fragments 31-4);on the other hand, the same Diogenes Laertius informs us that (quite probablyafter Arcesilaus' death) Timon praised him in a work entitled The FuneralBanquet of Arcesilaus. According to Numenius, quoted by Eusebius, PExiv.6.5, he even went so far as to call him a GK€7TTLK6S, which is probably notliterally true, but might reflect some shadow of the truth. From all thisevidence, it seems to emerge that Timon first presented Arcesilaus as adishonest rival and plagiarist of Pyrrho, mixing up Scepticism with the worse'sophistical' tradition; let us say, by the way, that Timon's representation soonmade its mark, since his contemporary Aristo of Chios, in a famous line - quitein tune with Timon's parodistic vein - depicted Arcesilaus as 'Plato in front,Pyrrho behind, Diodorus in the middle'. The best if not the fairest way ofdisparaging the originality of Arcesilaus' cognitive scepticism was of course to


inject retroactively, into Pyrrho himself, the appropriate dose of cognitiveconcerns and doubts; and this, I submit, is exactly what Timon had tried to do.With this operation successfully achieved - and his rival dead - it was easy forhim to display his superior intellectual generosity, and to admit that, after all,Arcesilaus himself was a OK€TTTLK6S of sorts. The attention devoted by Timonto Arcesilaus makes it quite reasonable to assume, in the terms of MichaelFrede (1973, p. 806), 'that the Pyrrho of Timon's writings represents thedoctrine Timon himself developed under Pyrrho's influence, at a time whenthe debate between Academic sceptics and the dogmatists was well under wayand had reached considerable sophistication'. If I am not mistaken, the aboveremarks should justify my further suggesting that even when he summed up hisown basic positions, Timon could not keep from making a difference betweenwhat he thought he had directly borrowed from Pyrrho and what he wanted toadd on the basis of his own epistemological concerns.

If he felt like making such an addition, the obvious conclusion we have todraw seems to be that he did not find anything properly epistemological in hismemories of Pyrrho's own sayings and concerns. This conclusion, I think,powerfully reinforces the strictly ethical interpretation of Pyrrho's philos-ophy, an interpretation which has constantly been, from Cicero (perhapsalready from Epicurus23) to Ausland through Brochard (to some extent) andothers, an unobtrusive companion and rival to the standard epistemologicalinterpretation. If I am right in my suggestions, Timon, a competent authorityin the matter, is (albeit quite indirectly) the first to testify to this ethicalinterpretation being the correct one.

Let us therefore return to the Aristocles passage one last time, in order to seewhat sense we can make of what is left of the text, if we mentally suppress theproduct of Timon's purposeful intervention, namely the epistemological twist[lb] + [2a]. If Timon inserted this epistemological twist because he found itmissing in Pyrrho's own teaching, we have to think that the original meaningof everything else in Aristocles' summary was not epistemological, and thatTimon somehow knew that it was not. Accordingly, we should try to construea number of elements in the text in a non-epistemological way. The ethical wayis the obvious alternative. I think it is quite possible, and in some cases almostmandatory, to do so. Let us examine the main elements in this perspective.

Question [1*] of the Pyrrhonian programme, the question about 'the natureof things' (TTpdyfjuara), should be construed not as a properly ontologicalquestion, let alone a physical one, but rather as a question about 'things' asrelated to our activity (TrpdrreLv), i.e. as goals or ends for our acts of choice and23 When writing this paper, I had not yet noticed the judicious remarks of Vander Waerdt 1989,

p. 235 ('Epicurus plainly admired his [Pyrrho's] way of life and his tranquillity . . . but may nothave attributed these to skepticism. It was Timon, after all, who established the tradition thatPyrrho was a skeptic, and this tradition did not win out entirely in antiquity, for Cicero knowsof Pyrrho only as a moralist') and p. 236 ('Colotes' silence about Pyrrho implies, as DavidSedley first suggested to me, that he was not even considered as a skeptic in the Epicureantradition').

208 SCEPTICISM

avoidance. This interpretation is in complete agreement, I think, with theinitial and overall characterization of Pyrrho's thought given in DL IX.6I,perhaps on the authority of the otherwise unknown Ascanius of Abdera: 'hesaid that nothing is noble or ignoble, just or unjust; and similarly in all cases hesaid that nothing truly is (/cat OJJLOLOOS ZTTI Trdvrcjv fjurjSev etvau rfj dXrjdeLa), butmen do everything they do by convention and custom (VO/JLCO Se KCU €0€i irdvraTOVS dvOpcjTTovs rrpdrreiv)', for each thing (eKaorov) is no more this than that.'The scope of the generalization O/JLOLOOS i-rrl navrcov is, admittedly, notimmediately clear; but the contrast with the following clause (vofxco Se), whichdeals with what people do (Trpdrreiv), is enough to show that it does not extendbeyond the ethical and practical sphere. For the same reason, I think that/jLTjSev etvai rfj dXiqdeia has nothing to do with 'real existence', but is a crypto-copulative phrase ('nothing is really F'), in which the range of the variable F isrestricted to ethical and practical predicates, of the type which has just beenillustrated by examples like KOLXOV, aloxpov, SIKOLLOV and CLSLKOV. The same istrue with roSe 17 ToSe in the last sentence, introduced by ov /xdAAov. Theconspicuous absence of dyad 6v and KCLKOV in the list might be easily accountedfor by pointing out that Pyrrho was certainly not ready to say that indifferenceitself was no more good than bad. Now that we have dispelled the ghost ofPyrrho's epistemological scepticism, we may welcome without qualms the so-called 'ethical dogmatism' exhibited by two famous fragments of the Indalmoi(67-8 Diels), which used to worry so many people so much, and which I thinkis quite compatible with his 'ethical scepticism', since the second bears onconventional values, which people actually follow in their actions, whereas thefirst bears on the second-order value of being indifferent to the conventionalvalues, which Pyrrho's perfect happiness is supposed to illustrate.

As for the answer to question [1*], namely the three adjectives of [la], theseadjectives can be given a specifically ethical meaning, particularly (in the caseof the first one) in reference to the well-known use of dStcu^opia, ovSev8ta<f>€p€L, etc., in ethical contexts. Pyrrho, as we know, is repeatedly associatedby Cicero with two typically ethical indifferentists, Aristo and Herillus. If wetake €TT' 1(777? dhtd(f)opa in the sense of ethically indifferent, there are goodreasons to adopt the same type of meaning for the two remaining adjectives,doTdd/jLrjTa and dveiriKpiTa. On this point I agree with the main claims ofAusland (1989, pp. 378-406). He convincingly shows, I think, that theprogression of the three adjectives means something like the following: 'things'(as possible objects for our choices and avoidances) are no more choiceworthythan not choiceworthy (in' lorjs dhid<j>opa)\ they cannot be discriminated byany critical instrument, similar to scales (darddixrjra); their equivalent claimscannot be decided even by appeal to some higher faculty of adjudication(dv€7TLKpira).

A similar account can be given of the three adjectives of [2b] purporting todescribe the attitude we should adopt towards such TTpdy^ara. If we admitthat these adjectives have a genuinely Pyrrhonian origin, it is not particularlydifficult to construe them as describing an ethical attitude, rather than a


cognitive one. It is true that the first adjective, dSogdorovs, seems to refer backquite literally to the epistemological mistrust towards beliefs, recommended in[2a] (ju/rySe 7TLOT€V€LV aurafs, i.e. Sd£cu inter alia). But, needless to say,suspension of Sd£a may bear on practical beliefs concerning the value andchoiceworthiness of 'things', as well as on theoretical beliefs concerning theexistence and nature of external objects. The use of the adjective dSotjaoros isby no means restricted to abstention from theoretical beliefs, on the contrary:if Aristo was so firmly attached to the Stoic dogma that the sage will beaSogaoros (DL vn. 162), it is quite certainly in reference to his ethicalindifferentism; even in the classical neo-Pyrrhonian tradition, the mottoaSogdoTcos JULOVV precisely applies to ]8ios, i.e. to practical life. If there was anydoubt on this ethical interpretation of dho^dorovs, it would be removed, Ithink, by the two adjectives which follow, drivels and aKpaSdvrovs, whichpretty clearly refer to ethical attitudes, namely absence of inclination orleaning towards one side of the scales rather than the other, and absence of anywavering between the two sides. The metaphor of 'inclining' seems to beimmediately appropriate when the things towards which one is inclining or notinclining are things to be taken or left, and less immediately when they areopinions to be adopted or rejected.

And now, what to do with the famous so-called 'Sceptical' expressions of[2c]? If we leave aside the discussion about the right syntactical construction of[2c], which has no direct bearing on my theme, the main question is whatmeaning to give to eanv. It seems obvious that on any satisfactory interpre-tation this meaning is not existential, but crypto-copulative ('things no moreare F than they are non-F', etc.); but one can still hesitate about the range ofsubjects and predicates we should admit for the subject-variable irepl ivdseKaoTov and for the predicate crypto-variable. We can quite probably dismissthe hesitation by observing that the range of the subject-variable must cover rdTTpdyfxara and only rd 77pay fxara, i.e. 'things' and states of affairs in so far asthey are of concern for our irpdrreiv, since the recommended judgements aresupposed to express the attitude we should have towards those very Trpdyfjuara.If so, I believe that the range of possible predicates does not extend eitherbeyond the sphere of ethico-practical predicates, such as 'noble' and 'base','just' and 'unjust' (as in DL IX.6I) , which could precisely be predicated, byordinary people, of the TT pay para understood that way. The limitation of thisrange might seem to be excessively narrow: but we should remember that wehave to give exactly the same limited scope, in view of their context, to theseemingly very wide generalizations of DL IX.6I ('similarly in all cases he saidthat nothing truly is'; 'each thing is no more this than that'). If we are still, andquite naturally, tempted to enlarge the range of possible predicates in [2c], soas to include predicates like 'white', 'sweet' and the rest, it is just becauseTimon changed the context by inserting [lb] and [2a]; leaving aside thismodification, we are entitled to interpret the text exactly as we do the Diogenespassage, namely in purely ethical and practical terms.

Before concluding, I wish to make it clear that in my view, Timon's

210 SCEPTICISM

epistemological shift does not leave what I take to be Pyrrho's main conceptsand advice as they were, i.e. of a strictly ethico-practical significance.Otherwise, I would have to face a difficulty which has been keenly and lucidlyexpressed by Nicholas Denyer (in correspondence). Denyer supposes that theinference I would like to attribute to Timon is the following one:

(a) [la] Trpay/xara (i.e. things that we can by our actions obtain or avoid) areuniformly indifferent (i.e. none of them has those properties which motivateand/or justify their being obtained/avoided).(b) But opinions are Trpdy^xara (e.g. you might look at your watch in orderto obtain belief about what the time is).(c) Hence, no belief has those properties which motivate and/or justifyaccepting or rejecting it.(d) But those properties are truth and falsehood.(e) Hence [lb], no belief is ever either true or false.(f) Hence [2a], we should not put our trust in any belief.

If that is Timon's argument, its crucial move would be to bring opinions underTrpdy/jLara in exactly Pyrrho's sense, as appears from the example under (b).But then, one could address him the following question, still in Denyer's terms:'why should it be supposed that the beliefs we are urged to live without ([2b]]are limited to those which affirm that TT pay para (in the narrow, action-relatedsense) have ethico-practical properties?' Quite clearly, any 'theoretical' belief,bearing on no narrowly practical irpdy^a, is not to be endorsed (f) if it isneither true nor false (e). And similarly, there is no reason to restrict the rangeof the subject variables in [2c] to narrowly practical TTpdyjxara, nor to restrictthe crypto-variable for predicates there to ethico-practical predicates: rather,these variables should 'range over everything which we might have thoughtsabout', and 'over every way that we might take anything to be'.

All these consequences do follow, and are indeed damaging, if we supposethat Timon meant to bring opinions under irpdyixara in exactly Pyrrho'ssense. But I surmise that this was not what he meant to do. The claim thatopinions are rrpdyixara in Pyrrho's sense would be plausible only for arestricted class of opinions, namely those which we can and do obtain by ouractions; there are of course a lot of opinions which we cannot and do notobtain in that way. When implicitly stating that opinions are Trpdy^ara of akind, I suppose that Timon was exploiting the vagueness of the wordTTpdyfiara, and was simply meaning that they are 'things' of a kind. But this istrue, of course, of'theoretical' opinions as well as of'practical' ones. Then, allthe consequences drawn by Denyer, instead of being unwanted consequencesof Timon's step (b) as read by Denyer, become not only entirely welcome, butalso fully intended consequences of Timon's step (b) as I read it. Bringingopinions under Trpdyfjuara turns out to be the crucial Timonian swerve inrespect to Pyrrho: it has the double effect of enlarging the meaning ofTTpdyfiara, and of paving the way for also enlarging the range of opinionswhich we will be urged by [2b] to live without. After Timon's intervention ([lb]


+ [2a]), it is plausible to hold that [2b] has received a broader meaning than itsinitial Pyrrhonian meaning, and similarly, that the range of the variables in [2c]has been enlarged in comparison with its initial Pyrrhonian acceptation. Andit is with this broad meaning and this range that, thanks to Timon, we nowassociate the label of Tyrrhonian Scepticism'.

It is time to sum up, and to conclude. The trouble with Pyrrho is of course thathe wrote nothing. In order to know anything about him, we are so totallydependent on indirect tradition, in particular on Timon, that we might well betempted to adopt a Tyrrhonian' attitude towards Pyrrho, and to share theagnosticism of Theodosius, who refused to be called a Pyrrhonist, arguing thatthe movement of the thought in somebody else is inaccessible, and that weshall never know what Pyrrho's inner attitude was (DL ix.70). But we mustresist this temptation: thanks to Timon, we know what Timon took it uponhimself to add to his master's teaching; and we know, by elimination, what thisteaching was like. Modern reinterpretations of Pyrrho have been labelled (byStopper 1983, p. 275) as 'heresies to be anathematised'; I confess my ownheresy in similarly religious terms. Jesus was not the first Christian. Marx wasnot the first Marxist. Pyrrho was not the first Pyrrhonist. This title should go toTimon.

APPENDIX

Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica xiv.18.1-5:

npoi TOYI KATA nrppQNA ZKETITIKOYZ HTOI E&EKTIKOYZEniKAHGENTAI MHAEN KATAAHTITON EINAI ATIO&HNA-MENOYI.

( i ) ' AvayKattos S' ex€L ^P® TTCLVTOS StaGKeifjaodat irepl rrjs r)fx(hv avTwv yvajoeais 'el yap av (irjoev rre^vKayiev yva)pi£,eiv, ovSev en oel 7repl rtov dXXwv GKoneiv. (2)Êyevovro fxev ovv Kal TWV irdAai Tives ol d<f>evTes Trjvoe rrjv <f>a)vrjv, ois dvr€LprjK€v'ApioroTeArjS' 'Ioxvoe /JL€V roiavra Xiycov KCLL TIvppcov 6 ' i f Aeto? * aAA' auT09 fievovSev €.v ypa(f>rj /caraAeAoiTrcv, d 8e ye fjLadr^rrjs avrov TLJJLWV (fyrjol Sefv rov fjueXXovra€v8aL[jLOvrjG€LV els rpia ravra jSAeTietv

[ 1 * ] TTptOTOV fJL€V, OTTold 7T€<f>VK€ TOL 77pdyfACLT<!'[2*] 8evT€pov c)€, Tiva xpy Tpoirov rjfJL&s npos avrd[3*] reAeuTcuov 8e, r t TrepieaTat TOLS OVTOJS eôucrt.

) [ ][la] 7a JJL€V ovv TTpdyfJLara <f>rjoiv avrov aVcHâiWiv €TT' ior)s d8id(f)opa KaldfjLTjra Kal dvcTriVpira,[lb] Sid TOVTO jj,r)T€ rds alodrjoeLS rjfJicbv jjLrjre rds" 86£as dX-qOeveiv rj i[ ]

[2a] Aid TOVTO ovv fjLrjSe rnoTeveiv avrals Seiv,[2b] dAA' d8o£doTovs Kal aKXtvets Kal aKpaSdvTovs etvat,[2c] Trepl evos eKaoTOV Aeyovra? on ov fidXXov €OTIV rj OVK eanv rj Kal eon Kal

OVK €OTIV r) OVT€ €GTLV OVT€ OVK €GTLV.(4)[3] Tot? /xevrot ye Sta/cet/xevots" ovrco Trepieoeodai Tificov (frrjol rrpcoTOv fjiev

d^>aatav, eVeira 8' drapaîav, AlvrjOLorjfjios S' r)oovf]v.(5)7d fjuev ovv K€<f>dXaia TCOV Xeyofjuevcuv COTI r a u r a • GKei/jcofxeda S' el opdtbs

XeyovoLV.

once again on eusebius on aristocles on timon on pyrrho

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