The Book of Doubt
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Doubt grows with knowledge.
Goethe (1749-1832)
Introduction
I came to Stoicism because I needed to know what was wrong with my own life.
Although I had read The Discourses several times over a period of about 25 years, I
didn't really go any further or deeper into Stoic thought until I was in my late
forties. At that time, I had experienced a succession of personal failures, what I
considered failures then, and came back to the Stoa for sustenance and
encouragement. That was when I decided I needed to know more about this
philosophy than Epictetus had offered.
After a couple of years of focused research that provided the background for my
first book, The Path of the Sage, one day, for no apparent reason, I stopped and
asked myself how I knew any of this was true. How did I know whether the Stoics
just made it all up, that Stoicism was anything other than a rational and internally
consistent version of a religion? That thought bothered me considerably, and I
puzzled over it at length.
As fortune would have it, I had some time earlier established an e-mail
correspondence with Professor Keith Campbell, who was then the Chairman of the
Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney. I considered him my mentor in
philosophical matters and had pestered him many times with questions he must
have considered amusing or annoying. Not knowing a finer way to phrase it, I came
right out and directly asked Dr. Campbell the question that was troubling me: how
can I know any of the things about the Stoa I had studied were true? He answered as
directly as I asked and said that we can’t, then recommended I read George
Santayana’s work, Scepticism and Animal Faith (Dover, 1955).
I read it, twice, and understood some of it. When I complained about my difficulty
with comprehension and
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gave Professor Campbell a passage to explain, he said he
had forgotten about Santayana's “turgid prose” and to forget it. “Life is too short,”
he said. I wasn’t satisfied and could not be turned aside that easily. I began reading
other philosophers that Santayana’s work referenced and gradually traced my new
obsession, skeptical philosophy, back to it its origins. Only then did I begin to
understand philosophy in general and Stoic philosophy in particular.
For Dr. Campbell’s patience and kindness, for pointing the way at the moment it
was most needed, I am deeply grateful.
* * *
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The Origins of Doubt
Xenophanes (570-478 BCE)
The darkest night of Pyrrhonean doubt settled on Aenesidemus, but the first prophet
of uncertainty began nearly five centuries earlier with Xenophanes, a wandering
poet-philosopher from Ionia born in the town of Colophon who lived in a number of
Greek city states during his exceedingly long life. He was often claimed by the
ancients to be the first true skeptic based especially upon one preserved fragment of
his work, a comment he purportedly made about knowledge:
...and of course the clear and certain truth no man has seen nor will
there be anyone who knows about the gods and what I say about all
things. For even if, in the best case, one happened to speak just of
what has been brought, still he himself would not know. But opinion
is allotted to all.
Contemporary academic philosophers argue over the exact interpretation of this
text, but the gist of it is that there never has been and never will be anyone who has
or will achieve certain knowledge.
*
Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BCE) and Parmenides (early 5th century BCE)
Heraclitus disagreed with Xenophanes and believed it was possible to provide an
explanation of the world by the relationship of the Logos, the divine intelligence, to
the human psyche, the seat of human knowledge whereby we come to know such
intelligence. This is thought to be the origins of epistemology, the study of the
nature of knowledge, in Western philosophy. Then, Heraclitus went on to describe
the processes of Nature as emanation from God, the One, into the many parts of our
familiar world and back again in a continuous state of flux.
Existence as we know it is in such a state of flux that at any given moment one
could not describe the nature of any object, because, by the time it was described, it
would
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have changed again and become slightly different. Heraclitus maintained that
all objects in our world were in a state of becoming, from birth and growth to
deterioration and death, from the life of planets to the aging of our own physical
constitution.
Parmenides disagreed with Heraclitus and thought it was impossible for God, the
One, to become all the many parts of our familiar world. In fact, if the One were
perfect, why would it extend itself into a state of imperfection? No, the One was an
immovable being, the world was in a state of being, not in a state of becoming, as
Heraclitus maintained, and the changes we see in life as we know it was an illusion.
In his work, The Way of Truth, Parmenides states that the One is “whole, immobile,
eternal, all together, one and continuous.” There were two kinds of knowledge: true
knowledge and common knowledge, and what most of us see with our senses and
believe with our minds is of the common sort, mere opinion.
*
Democritus (?460-357 BCE)
If rain falling on the just and unjust alike implies unconditional love, does an
earthquake swallowing up the righteous and wicked alike imply unconditional
loathing? Neither. Such statements imply only that those who make them are
anthropomorphizing Nature in the most primitive way possible. Zeus is NOT
responsible for thunder and lightening, Eros is NOT responsible for love, and all the
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finest rituals and sacrifices to the gods of Olympus will NOT guarantee a good
harvest.
Not long after Xenophanes’ death, Democritus of Abdera and Miletus, became
renowned as one of the two founders of ancient atomic theory, and it was he who
came up with this amazing deduction:
Since nothing can come from nothing,
and change really occurs,
and motion requires a void,
reality must consist of atoms moving in a void.
Democritus presents such a liberating point of view, and, by accepting the notion
that there are no gods or spirits, but only atoms moving in a void, one is suddenly
freed from the burden of otherworldly accountability. Unfortunately, after the party
is over, after the celebration of liberation recedes into silence, comes the realization
that if reality is only indivisible atoms moving in a void, then life itself has no
meaning or purpose, and death is our only goal. More on that later.
Democritus was a contemporary of Socrates but apparently unknown by him –
although Diogenes Laertius says that Plato (?427-347 BCE) considered this “prince
of philosophers” his chief intellectual rival and refused to mention him so as not
have to refute him. Democritus systematized the work of the other founder of
atomism, his teacher Leucippus, and as a materialist he believed that even the soul
was comprised of atoms, fire atoms in this case, and proposed that thought was
itself caused by the movement of atoms.
However, because atoms were not directly perceptible, there would always be doubt
as to their true nature. In addition, it was Democritus who coined the phrase ou
mallon (literally, ‘no more’), frequently used by Pyrrhoneans to describe conflicting
evidence of the senses that tell us no more this than that.
*
Protagoras (481-411 BCE)
The doubt that was accumulating
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incrementally towards a real philosophy was
carried even further by Protagoras, a pupil of Democritus, who is credited with the
first realization that there were two sides to every question, that each has its
opposite. Protagoras is also the author of the famous quotation used throughout
history: “Man is the measure of all things.” The quote in its entirety: “Man is the
measure of all things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are
not.”
One of his most startling statements was that everything is true. In the introduction
to his book, On the Gods, he wrote, “As to the gods, I have no means of knowing
that they exist or that they do not exist.” For this, he was expelled from Athens, and
a herald was sent throughout the city to collect and burn every copy of that book.
*
Socrates (469-399 BCE) and Plato (427-347 BCE)
Finally, two more philosophers added their voices to the doubt about knowing
anything, Socrates and Plato. Just as Protagoras incurred the wrath of the Athenians
for his lack of piety, so did Socrates who was accused of corrupting the youth of
Athens and forced to drink hemlock for his philosophy. It was his commonly heard
assertion that he knew that he knew nothing (despite the obvious internal conflict of
such a statement) that was most sympathetic with the claims of later philosophers
with skeptical minds. “All I know is that I know nothing,” Socrates said.
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Plato immortalized Socrates, who left no writings, by introducing the world to that
sage’s life and dialectic method of questioning. Plato also attempted a reconciliation
between Heraclitus’ flux and Parmenides’ rejection of the senses in the proposition
of his own Doctrine of Ideas. In short, the Doctrine of Ideas states that behind the
surface reality of our familiar world lie ideas, universal laws and ideals, perfect
idealizations of reality, more real than what we actually perceive with our senses.
For example, we see many different kinds of dogs in our lifetime, each of which is a
mere representation of the idea of dog. The idea of some thing, then, is universal
and permanent and, therefore, more real than the many variations of that idea
represented in the world. This is not meant to be an exhaustive explanation of
Plato’s doctrine, barely an introduction, and it should also be remembered that such
a doctrine was only one of many early influences on the development of skeptical
thought.
*
Pyrrho (?360-270 BCE)
Skepticism comes from the Greek word skepsis which means investigation, the
work of the philosopher, which commonly begins with finding a criterion that
distinguishes the true from the false. The Skeptics were unable to find a satisfactory
criterion of truth.
The fullness of skeptical thought didn’t arrive until the first century BCE when
Aenesidemus and later philosophers of this persuasion, such as Sextus Empiricus,
developed skepticism to an advanced level of sophistication built upon the
foundations of earlier work done by a number of great thinkers, including those
mentioned above. However, it was Pyrrho to whom Aenesidemus returned to in the
establishment of his school, because he apparently believed that the life and work of
Pyrrho marked the true
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beginnings of this most pure branch of ancient skeptical
thought, which was known thereafter as Pyrrhonism.
Early Pyrrho
Little of Pyrrho’s early life is known except that he appears to have been born in
Elis and was an older contemporary of Epicurus and Zeno the Stoic. He was an
obscure painter by trade, and he may have studied philosophy with the Megarians
and the Cynics. We also know that Pyrrho traveled to India with Anaxarchus who
was court philosopher to Alexander the Great.
Little is known of Anaxarchus or his philosophy except that it was reputed he had
disposed of the notion there was a criterion of truth, indicating he had a skeptical
orientation. According to Diogenes Laertius (D.L. 9.67), he admired Democritus
above all others. Whether Pyrrho accompanied Alexander on his eastern campaign
as a court painter or as a second philosopher is unknown, but such a journey was
not that unusual. By the time Pyrrho made his trip to India, there was already a
tradition of Greek intellectuals traveling to that remote extremity of Alexander’s
expanding empire.
Pyrrho and the Gymnosophists
Pyrrho traveled with Alexander to Persia (Iran), where he studied with the Magi, a
class of Zoroastrian priests who lived in Media and Persia and who were reputed to
have supernatural powers. He continued on with the Army to the Indus Valley,
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where he studied with the gymnosophists, naked philosophers, who may have been
early Buddhists. Although the majority of scholars tend to gloss over this period in
Pyrrho’s life and education, work has been done that suggests that the descriptions
of Pyrrho after his travels to the Indus Valley are those of a Buddhist arhat, one who
has attained nirvana. Some scholars suggest he wasn’t a skeptic at all, but lived and
taught as an ascetic and quietist. However, scholarly research of the evidence is so
fragmentary as to make speculation inconclusive.
The best evidence we have for the gymnosophist's influence on Pyrrho’s philosophy
comes from Flintoff (see Bibliography), who compares his thought with early
Buddhist teachings. By the time of the earliest sutras and onward, polarities and
antinomies (a contradiction between two statements, both apparently obtained by
correct reasoning) are common. The so-called agnosticism of the Buddha comes
from his use of antinomial argument in answering questions that he considered
unsolvable.
The Buddha considered all speculation as dogma and refused to commit himself to
an answer. By doing so, he taught that he was delivering the human mind from
unnecessary entanglement and that this freedom of the mind was a necessary stage
in the process of enlightenment. As Flintoff says, “...it is integral to Pyrrhonism and
to Buddhist, and other Indian, thought to formulate the antinomies in order to make
them disappear, the consequence and aim of the process being so that a certain
tranquility can supervene.”
Flintoff goes on to describe an Indian mode of thinking called the quadrilemma
(four dilemmas) and states that this form of thought was unprecedented in Greek
philosophy. In Buddhism, the quadrilemma called the Avyakrta (literally, “the
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inexpressibles”) is central to their philosophy and takes the following form:
1. Whether the world is eternal or not, or both, or neither.
2. Whether the world is finite, or infinite, or both, or neither.
3. Whether the Tathagata (the Buddha) exists after death or not, or both, or
neither.
4. Whether the soul is identical with the body or different from it.
In both Pyrrhonism and Buddhism the antinomial argument is used to alter our way
of thinking about our familiar world to show that it is, in fact, an illusion, unreal –
what Indians called Maya. The goal or end of both philosophies is tranquility
(ataraxia). The achievement of tranquility is a process, which is as follows:
1. Cessation of all conceptualization takes place, leading to...
2. Cessation of all speech, leading to...
3. Cessation of all troubling thought (ataraxia), nirvana, moksa, leading to...
“A state of beatitude at the end of the philosophical quest!”
The striking similarity between early Buddhism and Pyrrho’s thought also
continued in his personal life and practice. As was the case with all ancients, unlike
modern philosophers, practice was expected to complete a philosopher’s theory. It’s
clear from the numerous and various reports that Pyrrho practiced what he taught
and that his practice was similar to that of an arhat.
As is common among advanced Hatha yogis, Pyrrho was said to be able to
withstand the most extreme pain without even an involuntary frown; he was said to
spend a lot of time wandering the fields and living on grasses and herbs, as is
common practice in the third and fourth stages of asceticism; and, finally, it was
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said that he lived as a vagrant, often leaving home without any attachments to travel
with anyone for as long as it interested him.
Teachings of Pyrrho
Remnants of Pyrrho’s teachings are scarce and fragmentary and therefore difficult
to appraise both in terms of content and inspiration for later skeptics. What little we
do know comes down to us from his student and follower, Timon of Phlius (c.320230 BCE), as brief thoughts and ideas referenced by other writers in antiquity.
Although an admirer of Democritus, Timon took skepticism further than the
atomists, which meant rejecting atomism itself, as well as all common opinions. By
so doing, he is said to have given up on philosophy and on any attempts to establish
a criterion of truth (D.L. 9.69.65; Sextus, PH 1.28-29 & AM 11.1 from Groarke).
Also from Diogenes Laertius we learn that Pyrrho denied there was any such thing
as the morally good or morally bad and said that all such labels were a matter of
convention. He also denied knowledge of the external world and was especially
critical of the Stoic and Epicurean Epistemology (theories of knowledge), although
there is no evidence that he attacked either school personally. Pyrrho’s greatest
innovation as a Greek philosopher was the idea that freedom from mental
disturbance by the suspension of judgment (ataraxia) could be an ethical goal.
One of the most useful of these fragments is found in Aristocles’ work, On
Philosophy, that ascribes the following essential teaching of Pyrrho as reported by
Timon:
His pupil Timon says that the man who means to be happy must consider
these three questions: 1.) what things are really like; 2.) what attitude we
should adopt towards them; 3.) what the consequence of such an attitude
will be. According to Timon, Pyrrho declared that
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things are equally
indistinguishable, unmeasurable and indeterminable. For this reason
neither our acts of perception are true or false. Therefore we should not
rely upon them but be without judgments, inclining neither this way nor
that, but be steadfast saying concerning each individual thing that it no
more is than is not, or that it both is and is not, or that it neither is nor is
not. For those who adopt this attitude the consequence will be first a
refusal to make assertions and second, freedom from disturbance.
(Eusebius, Prep. Ev. 14.18.2-5, Long)
As seen from the above, Pyrrho’s answer to the basic question of Greek philosophy,
‘what things are really like,' must be rejected because things are ‘indistinguishable,
unmeasurable, and indeterminable.' In other words, unknowable. Such an assertion
flew in the face of Greek philosophers who assumed that Nature could be studied,
analyzed, and drawn upon as a resource for knowledge. Pyrrho is saying reason as
well as sense perception is unreliable and cannot be a criterion of truth. We only
have our senses to perceive the external world. Since we don’t know if our sense
perception portrays the world as it really is, we cannot know what things are really
like. Since our perceptions cannot determine if things really are what they appear to
be, we should not make judgments about them. We should suspend judgment. Later,
the common Pyrrhonist phrase for this suspension of judgment, which they
borrowed from Democritus, became ou mallon, no more this than that.
The Aristocles passage above is currently debated in academia according to two
interpretations: epistemological or metaphysical. According to the epistemological
interpretation, and one that is most in keeping with later skepticism, Pyrrho
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