Pyrrho of Elis · Philosophy
The central act of Pyrrhonism is <em>epochē</em> - the suspension of judgement. Confronted by considerations of equal strength on both sides of any question, the skeptic finds he cannot assent to either, and rests in that balance. From this withholding, tranquillity is said to follow.
When the mind confronts a claim - ‘the soul is immortal,’ ‘honey is sweet,’ ‘the gods exist’ - it has, on the face of it, two options: to assent (accept the claim as true) or to dissent (reject it as false). The whole originality of skepticism lies in insisting on a third option, often overlooked: to suspend - to do neither, to hold judgement in abeyance, to neither affirm nor deny but to leave the question open. This third stance is epochē, ‘suspension,’ and it is the central act of the entire skeptical way of life. Everything in Pyrrhonism turns on it.
It is crucial to see that suspension is genuinely a third thing, not a disguised version of denial. The person who denies that the soul is immortal has taken a definite position - he claims to know it is mortal - and is as much a dogmatist as the one who affirms it. The skeptic who suspends has taken no position at all; he reports only that he finds himself unable to come down on either side. He is not saying ‘the soul is not immortal’ nor ‘we cannot know whether the soul is immortal’ (which would itself be a knowledge-claim); he is in the condition of a person whose scales hang level, tipping toward neither pan. To grasp Pyrrhonism is to grasp this peculiar, poised, in-between state - and to ask what could put a thinking mind into it, and what follows when it does.
How does the skeptic produce isostheneia, the equal balance that induces suspension? By a disciplined practice of opposition: against every appearance or argument, he sets an opposing appearance or argument of equal force. The tower that looks round from a distance looks square close up; the oar that looks bent in water looks straight in air; the same honey that tastes sweet to the healthy tastes bitter to the sick; the same action counted virtuous in one society is counted shameful in another; for every philosophical proof, an equally cogent counter-proof. The skeptic collects these oppositions tirelessly - appearance against appearance, argument against argument, appearance against argument - until, for any question, the two pans of the scale hang level.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that epochē - suspension of judgement - is produced by isostheneia , the ‘equal strength’ of opposing arguments: when the case for and against a claim are evenly balanced, the mind cannot in honesty assent to either, and so withholds. Suspension is not denial (which would be a fresh dogma) but a standing-s…
Leads to Zeno of Citium.
Begin this lesson →epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.