Pyrrhonian paideia [electronic resource]
Keywords: Philosophy

Ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism purports to offer philosophical therapy: Philosophical dogmatism is a disease which perpetuates disturbance. Pyrrhonism is a cure which brings tranquility. Through—or in—suspension of judgment, the Pyrrhonist claims to come to overcome the problems of the dogmatists, and live well just in accordance with appearances. But perhaps Pyrrhonism is bunk: Its professed end of freedom from disturbance—ataraxia—appears insubstantial. The professed means of the attainment of this Pyrrhonian tranquility—suspension of belief—appears degenerate, if not impossible. For example, it seems we could not live rational human lives without believing. To explore these complaints, this work attempts, first, to construct Pyrrhonism as a pedagogy towards a radical skepticism in which the thinker may experience appearance unadulterated by dogma. And second, it attempts to bring us to undergo the pedagogy we construct. We attempt the latter, because if the Pyrrhonist is a radical skeptic, she has no theory whose factual correctness could overcome the complaints against it. Then, to appreciate the viability of Pyrrhonism, we would not look for its superior capacity to produce facts, but for its therapeutic power to produce unadulterated appearance. In this effort at constructing an ancient skeptical pedagogy for the sake of undergoing it, we come to produce a Cartesian meditation. For example, we try, along with the Pyrrhonist, to subtract belief in the propositions of material perception and mathematical intuition for the sake of revealing appearance. Since it seems that the Pyrrhonist could not put forward a pedagogy dogmatically, we try to be charitable, and see if we can construct, first, the Pyrrhonian pedagogy through ad hominem analysis of dogmatism, and, second, ad hominem analysis as unavoidable in rational interaction. In the present work, the particular Pyrrhonian ad hominem analysis for a skeptical pedagogy is of Platonism: We attempt to construct Pyrrhonian suspension as a final movement in Platonic ascent towards vision. We analyze the Republic for a conception of the completion of Platonic ascent in contemplative and practical ataraxia. We go on to take seriously Socrates' suggestion in the Republic's Line and Cave that the philosopher, towards the end of her science, is given to apophasis. In going on to examine such apophasis, we take as our exemplar the Neoplatonic remarks about the One in Plotinus' Ennead 5.3. In accordance with the pedagogy of the Republic, we pursue ascent through material and mathematical subtraction towards the principle. And in the end, we pursue analogy between Plotinian vision of the One in subtraction, and Pyrrhonian vision of appearances in suspension of belief. The Pyrrhonists suffer an appearance of the shortcoming of language: Propositional thought appears temporally extended, but the thing we would affirm in believing it would, it seems, have to be entirely present. Likewise, for Plotinus, in the end, vision of the unified principle comes by way of a subtraction in the face of the problem of capturing simplicity in extended thought. The Pyrrhonist claims that we may bring against our present certainty the consideration that we have come to change our minds about things we once thought obvious. Then, we should be open to the possibility that we come to disagree with ourselves in the future. Consideration of this should be enough to bring us to suspension. We pursue such skeptical consideration, and by this, understanding of how the Pyrrhonist, in subtractive vision, may act calmly and, though in suspension, still from rational activity. We try to limn the Pyrrhonist as engaged in such activity through the Aenesidemean expression of both her lack of belief, and her lack of belief that she lacks belief, as she formulates, for the sake of subtraction towards appearance, what appear to be propositions, both in favor of the necessity and against the possibility of the proposition. In this effort at subtraction through equipollence and suspension, we pursue appearance as it might reveal itself to the Pyrrhonist as ground in a reconstruction she might give of her practical activity of expressing herself in dialectic in this way. In turn, by pursuit of this appearance, we try to see how the Pyrrhonist's pedagogical—and so practical—activity of thinking, and speaking, and laying in the balance one thing against the other under norms against hypothesis, regress, and circularity, as well as her analysis of this activity, may be rational, in ease afforded by honesty, and yet without belief.