Scepticism - Lecture 5b
5b. The Rediscovery of Sextus’ Pyrrhonism, and Montaigne’s Christian Pyrrhonism
It is frequently claimed that Frege’s work inaugurated a revolution in philosophy that placed issues of logic and meaning at the heart of the discipline. Before this preoccupation with language and logic, however, came the age of epistemology. A characteristic methodological pronouncement from that era would be Locke’s statement in the ‘Epistle to the Reader’ that before we set ourselves to inquiries concerning religion and ethics, ‘it was necessary to examine our own abilities and see what objects our understandings were, or were not fitted to deal with’ (Essay concerning Human Understanding). This age in philosophy is often dated to Descartes. However it might well be preferable to date it to 1562 and the publication by Henri Estienne of the first printed edition of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism.
Annas and Barnes (The Modes of Scepticism) say this hitherto obscure book rapidly rose to become the dominant philosophical text of that time.
Certainly it seems to have had a very important influence on Descartes: ‘We must not think that the sect of sceptics is long extinct. It flourishes today as much as ever, and nearly all who think that they have some ability beyond that of the rest of mankind, finding nothing that satisfies them in the common philosophy, and seeing no other truth, take refuge in scepticism’ (Reply to the Seventh Set of Objections).
Significantly the impact of Sextus’ ideas on Descartes seems to have been principally via the writings of Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 92). Montaigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond (written around 1575 and published in 1580) arranges material from Sextus in a new literary form and greatly aids the dissemination of Sextus’ ideas by making them available in French as well as Latin. Montaigne also presents Pyrrhonism as potentially serving a religious and moral function: it is recast as a preparation for receiving the word of God and a defence against heresy.
Hume too is evidently influenced by Sextus’ writings. And although detailed consideration of Hume’s place in the sceptical tradition will be deferred until later lectures, it is relevant to note that Kant asserts that it was an encounter with Hume’s sceptical puzzlings that awoke him from his own ‘dogmatic slumbers’. According to Kant ‘the sceptic is ... the taskmaster who constrains the dogmatic reasoner to develop a sound critique of the understanding and reason’ (Critique of Pure Reason A769). Ironically, though, it is perhaps Kant’s distinction between transcendental and empirical scepticism that ultimately leads to the views of real-life sceptics becoming far less relevant to the internal workings of philosophical epistemology.
Why did Sextus’ writings make such an impact? The answer seems to lie in the fact that the sixteenth century saw Europe engulfed in both a religious and a scientific crisis. Looking ahead a little we have the struggle between the modern mechanical philosophy and Aristotelian/scholastic science. But even before a compelling rival emerged, Aristotelian science was a degenerating research programme.
Although Copernicus put forward a heliocentric account of the solar system in De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium (1543), more than half a century would pass before Galileo’s publication of his discovery (via telescope) of the moons of Jupiter (1610) and Kepler’s publication in 1627 of his Tables – the first accurate procedures for specifying the speeds and paths of planetary orbits. Moreover the extremely contentious nature even at that time of such views can be gauged from the fact that in June 1633 the Inquisition in Rome issued a formal condemnation of Galileo’s views. It had earlier (1618) formally condemned Galileo’s defence of the proposition that the Earth moves, but had permitted it to be presented as a instrumental device. In the condemnation of 1633, however, it was implied that the heliocentric view could not be put forward even as instrumentally useful. And this ruling was instrumental in persuading Descartes to suppress his own work Le Monde.
The religious crisis, however, was of at least equal magnitude. Martin Luther initially backed his reforming views with arguments that made use of the accepted criterion of the Catholic Church that religious propositions were to be judged as true or false in terms of their agreement with Church tradition, councils and Papal decrees. However he later adopted a different criterion - the testimony of Scripture or manifest reasoning (Leipzig Disputation of 1519, The Appeal to the German Nobility and The Babylonish Captivity of the Church 1520, Diet of Worms 1521)
How is such a dispute to be resolved? From the Catholic perspective, Luther’s criterion is readily condemned. From Luther’s perspective, based as it is on his new criterion of religious truth, the Catholic perspective is wholly worthless. Is there some more fundamental criterion of truth that can stand in judgement over these two competing criteria? If so, what is it? Why hadn’t it been explicitly invoked before? What justifies this criterion? What happens if it, in turn, is challenged?
The emergence of such a fundamental dispute over the appropriate way of seeking truth in religious matters undermines previous certainties and raises in a particularly pressing form issues of how religious inquiries are to be conducted. It also threatens to be a source of perplexity that potentially extends beyond the religious sphere. How are fundamental disputes about morality (cf. the recently discovered residents of South America, the civilizations described in ancient writings) and matters of secular fact to be settled in a non-arbitrary way?
The rediscovery of Sextus’ writings confirms the depth of the problem, and provides the thinkers of that time with an array of effective techniques for undermining the credibility of what might otherwise have seemed to be potentially satisfactory ways of responding to the crisis. However Sextus’ Pyrrhonism also strikes some people as itself offering a radical solution to the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism: a solution that requires us to accept that mere human reason is wholly incapable of establishing any belief to be true.
Pyrrhonism and the Counter-Reformation
1562 – Henri Estienne publishes a Latin edition of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism
1569 – a Latin edition of all of Sextus’ extant writings is published by the French Counter-Reformer, Gentian Hervet
1590/1 (according to Popkin) - an English translation of the Outlines
1621 - an edition of the Greek text of Sextus’ writings
Hervet claimed in the introduction to his edition that Sextus’ writings showed that no human knowledge can resist the arguments that can be opposed to it. The only certainty we can have is God’s revelation. Thus Hervet professed to believe that scepticism, by controverting all human theories and speculation, would cure people from dogmatism, give them humility, and prepare them to accept the doctrine of Christ.
However as other thinkers would soon come to appreciate, scepticism, in doing this allegedly good work, challenges the authority of all varieties of metaphysics and physical science.
This attempt to use philosophical scepticism as an antidote to the attacks launched against the Catholic Church by Protestant reformers can be traced back at least as far as Erasmus’ De Libero Arbitrio (1524). In this riposte to Luther, Erasmus disclaimed any interest in theological speculation and argued in favour of a stance of modest Christian piety that relied on faith rather than argument and metaphysical systems. According to Erasmus, it was more appropriate for a Christian to rest in a sceptical attitude and accept the age-old wisdom of the Church. Luther was not impressed by what he interpreted as evidence of Erasmus’ lack of strong religious convictions, and in the angry reply he delivered to Erasmus’ book, he combatively asserted ‘the Holy Ghost is not a Sceptic’.
The Protestant reformers in order to bring about a religious revolution were naturally disposed to claim certainty. Defenders of the status quo were able to take a more relaxed approach.
Both camps, though, faced severe internal problems. If we are supposed piously to repose our confidence in the pronouncements of the Pope, how does the ordinary believer come to know who is Pope? In contrast the Protestants put their trust in the individual’s response to Scripture; yet this simply seems to raise the perplexing question of how we are to distinguish between infatuation and genuine inspiration.
Catholic attempts to press home questions of this latter kind reached their apogee in the 17th C in the person of Francois Veron – a Jesuit priest and a teacher of philosophy at La Fleche during the time when Descartes was a pupil there. Veron was made official arguer for the Faith for the King of France, and he systematized his argumentative methods in his work La Victorieuse Method. Veron would normally begin his public debates with the question ‘How Sirs do you know that the books of the Old and New Testament are Holy Scripture?’ before proceeding to expound at great length on the problems facing the attempt to make use of natural logic and common sense in the field of religious controversy and the implausibility of the supposition that religious matters could safely be left to individual illumination. Veron himself attempted to confine this destructive dialectic exclusively to the religious sphere. However it is difficult to see how such methods could fail to have at least some tendency to call into question the confidence placed in everyday beliefs concerning secular matters.
Montaigne
Montaigne wrote the Apology ostensibly as a defence of Raymond Sebond’s Theologia Naturalis against the charge that the arguments it contained were lacking in persuasiveness and cogency.
One of Montaigne’s main themes was an attempt to undermine human pretensions by pointing to examples of animals possessing faculties and abilities similar to or even superior to our own. Thus we are introduced to numerous anecdotes about such things as praying elephants, dogs who reason logically, and bees capable of routing invading human armies. Montaigne also makes a point of arguing that good character and religious piety are not founded on secular wisdom.
Montaigne’s account of Pyrrhonism acutely distinguishes between Pyrrhonism and the Academic fallibilism criticized by Sextus. Montaigne compares Pyrrhonism favourably with the wavering and conflicting opinions of other philosophers, and he forcefully sets out a variety of grounds for agreeing with the Pyrrhonean conclusion that human reason is entirely unable to provide our beliefs with any positive justification.
One of the principal considerations deployed by Montaigne here is the inability of philosophers to give a satisfactory account of the soul and our powers of reasoning. He also points to our wavering scientific theories and pervasive disagreements in morals and custom. However his main line of argument emphasizes the key role of the senses in providing us with putatively justified beliefs. According to Montaigne, the senses are not a source of genuine justification; and he defends this pessimistic contention with arguments that are closely analogous to those set out in Sextus’ exposition of Aenesidemus’ ten tropes. The senses do not give a consistent account of the world, yet any attempt to identify some sense impressions as veridical and others as misleading would require us to have at our disposal a criterion of truth. Unfortunately in order to establish the trustworthiness of that criterion, we would need to construct a credible proof of its reliability; and that proof, in turn, would then be in need of validation by a criterion of truth. Montaigne accordingly concludes that justification is impossible because ‘We are going round in circles’.
 Scepticism - Lecture 6 |
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