Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism
John Stuart Mill · en
Let us consider the first of these causes. Aenesidemus, although
not the first of the later Sceptics, was apparently the first to
separate himself from the Academy. He was the founder of a new
movement, the attempt to revive the older Scepticism as taught
by Pyrrho and Timon, and separate it from the dogmatic teachings
of the Stoics which were so greatly affecting the Scepticism of
the New Academy. It was the spirit of his time to seek to
sustain all philosophical teaching by the authority of as many
as possible of the older philosophers, and he could hardly
escape the tendency which his training in the Academy had
unconsciously given him. Therefore we find him trying to prove
that the philosophy of Heraclitus follows from Scepticism. It is
not necessary either to explain the matter, as both Hirzel and
Natorp so ingeniously attempt to do, by claiming that the truth
of contradictory predicates which Aenesidemus accepted from
Heraclitus referred only to phenomena. The history of philosophy
gives us abundant proof of the impossibility of absolute
Scepticism, and Aenesidemus furnishes us with one example of
many of this impossibility, and of the dogmatism that must exist
in connection with all thought. In the case of Aenesidemus, who
evidently gave the best efforts of his life to establish the
Sceptical School, the dogmatism was probably unconscious. That
he remained to the end a Sceptic is shown by the fact that he
was known as such to posterity. Nowhere do we find a change of
basis referred to in regard to him, and Sextus, in refuting the
mistakes which he attributes to Aenesidemus, does it, as it
were, to point out something of which Aenesidemus had been
unconscious.
Let us consider here the second cause of Aenesidemus' Dogmatism,
the psychological effect upon himself of formulating Sceptical
beliefs. The work that he did for the Sceptical School was a
positive one. It occupied years of his life, and stamped itself
upon his mental development. In formulating Scepticism, and in
advocating it against the many enemies of the School, and amidst
all the excitement of the disruption from the Academy, and of
establishing a new School, it was inevitable that his mind
should take a dogmatic tendency. He remained a Sceptic as he had
always been, but must have grown dogmatic in his attitude
towards the Sceptical formulae, and was thus able to adopt some
of the teachings of Heraclitus, unconscious of their
inconsistency.