Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
reality; and finally, in a general way, it not only annuls this and
that sensuous fact or thought, but is adapted for the recognition in
everything of its untruth.
The history of Scepticism, properly so called, is usually commenced
with Pyrrho as being its founder; and from him the names Pyrrhonism
and Pyrrhonic are derived. Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 3, § 7)
says of him “that he went into Scepticism more fully (σωματικώτερον)
and clearly than did his predecessors.” He is earlier than some of
the philosophers already considered; but because Scepticism is to be
taken as a whole, Pyrrho’s Scepticism, even if it is merely aimed
against the immediate truth both of the senses and of morality, must
be taken along with the later Scepticism, which directs its attention
rather against the truth as thought, as will be farther shown on a
closer consideration; for this last was the first, properly speaking,
to make a sensation. As to the events of Pyrrho’s life, they appear to
be as much a matter of doubt as his doctrine; for they are without any
connection, and little is known for certain concerning them. Pyrrho
lived in the time of Aristotle and was born at Elis. I shall not give
the names of his instructors; Anaxarchus, a disciple of Democritus, is
specially mentioned amongst them. We cannot discover where he really
lived, for the most part at least. As a proof of how very much he was
esteemed during his life, it is said that his native town chose him as
head priest, and the town of Athens gave him the right of citizenship.
It is finally stated that he accompanied Alexander the Great in his
journey to Asia; and that there he had considerable dealings with
magicians and Brahmins. We are told that Alexander had him put to
death because he desired the death of a Persian satrap; and this fate
befel him in his ninetieth year. If all this is to be accepted, since
Alexander spent between twelve and fourteen years in Asia, Pyrrho must
at the earliest have set out on his travels in his seventy-eighth year.
Pyrrho does not appear to have come forward as a public teacher, but
merely to have left behind him individual friends who had been educated
by him. Anecdotes are told, not so much about the circumstances of
his life as about the sceptical manner in which he conducted himself,
and in them his behaviour is made to look ridiculous; in this the
universal of Scepticism is set against a particular case, so that what
is absurd shoots up as of itself into relationships which appear to be
consistent. For because he asserted that the reality of sensuous things
has no truth, it is, for instance, said that were he walking he would
go out of the way of no object, no waggon or horse that came towards
him; or he would go straight up against a wall, completely disbelieving
in the reality of sensuous sensations and such like. They also said
that it was only the friends surrounding him who drew him away from