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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
Sextus Empiricus
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
Sextus Empiricus
Against Those in the Disciplines
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
3
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
Contents
Introduction 1
Note on the Text and Translation 25
Outline of Argument 30
List of Abbreviations
Note: proposals for changes to the Greek text that are attributed in the
notes to scholars by last name alone, where those names are not included
in this list, are recorded in Mau’s apparatus criticus. Scholarly works
cited by author and date are included in the Bibliography.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix
Introduction
¹ The question is well treated in Allen 2010. One possibility is that Sextus does not mean
to repudiate Empiricism as a whole, but only one variety of Empiricism. But while the text
admits of this reading, that still leaves the preference for Methodism (rather than an
another, favored variety of Empiricism) to be accounted for.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
besides the passage just mentioned, he refers to (now lost) works of his
called Medical Treatises (M 7.202) and Empirical Treatises (M 1.61).² Galen
wrote about both Empiricism and Methodism,³ had voluminous know-
ledge of the medical discussions of his time, and was not shy about naming
those whose ideas he was considering; for him to have had nothing to say
about Sextus would be very surprising—unless Sextus postdated him.
Beyond this (which is already more definite than many scholars would
be comfortable with), we really know nothing about Sextus the man.⁴
There are very few references to him by name in antiquity, and very few
indications of his works being read. Another curious point is that these
works seem to show no awareness of the philosophy of Sextus’ own day.
Even if one discounts Galen’s silence, Sextus refers in the past tense to the
emperor Tiberius (PH 1.84), which puts him no earlier than the middle
of the first century CE; and yet his knowledge of the history of philosophy,
to judge from those he names, seems to end in the early first century BCE.⁵
The revived Platonism and Aristotelianism that dominated late antiquity
were underway in Sextus’ lifetime (whenever precisely that was), but one
gets no hint of this from his works. This is just one of many questions
about Sextus that are likely to remain unanswered.⁶ In any case, his own
² These may or may not be distinct; they may be the same work under alternative titles,
or the latter may be a part of the former.
³ A good introduction is Frede 1985.
⁴ House 1980 details our comprehensive ignorance, and is also much more non-
committal about Sextus’ dates. On the latter, I have been influenced by Jouanna 2009;
although the argument from Galen’s silence is not new, and although arguments from
silence are never conclusive, Jouanna makes a strong case for how unlikely it would be for
Galen not to refer to Sextus if they were contemporaries. He also sets a terminus ante quem
by the dates of Hippolytus (c.170–c.236 CE), whose Refutation of all Heresies includes text
that is very close to a considerable amount of Sextus’ Against the Astrologers (M 5) and has
generally been thought to be copied from it with insignificant changes. But this is more
questionable; Hippolytus and Sextus could each be drawing on some now lost common
source. This has been argued for in particular by Janáček 1959, 1964 (although Janáček’s
case depends on a highly disputable view of Sextus’ stylistic development; see n. 13).
⁵ The Stoic Basilides is a possible exception (see M 8.258); a Stoic of this name is attested
as a teacher of Marcus Aurelius. But we also have a list of Stoics, seemingly ordered by
chronology, in which a Stoic Basilides shows up in a group from the second century BCE (see
Rose 1866, 370–1). Sextus could be referring to either one.
⁶ Sedley 2003 shows that Sextus was by no means alone in treating philosophy as
extending no later than the early first century BCE, and posits a major transformation of
philosophy, in the mid-first century BCE, towards a project of “recovering and understand-
ing the wisdom of the ancients” (36)—rather than oneself contributing new wisdom, as it
had been previously conceived. Sedley’s case is powerful and intriguing, but I do not think it
fully accounts for the case of Sextus. For Sextus clearly does not think of himself as
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
INTRODUCTION
recovering ancient wisdom; while he talks a lot about earlier philosophies, this is always in
the service of his own present brand of Pyrrhonism. Indeed, when it comes to documenting
the relations between earlier philosophers (even earlier Pyrrhonists) and his own thought,
he seems to go out of his way to distance them all from himself; this may even be a reaction
against the tendency in his day to appeal to founding figures from the past (on this, see Bett
2015a). If so, of course, he does have at least a general awareness of the contemporary
philosophical zeitgeist. However, since one of his goals is clearly to promote and publicize
Pyrrhonism, his lack of direct engagement with the alternative philosophies of his contem-
poraries is still very surprising.
⁷ See Floridi 2010.
⁸ The first sentence of Against the Logicians (M 7.1) refers back to just such a general
exposition. This was long thought to be a back-reference to PH. But PH as a whole is not a
general exposition—only its first book is; the reference must therefore be to a general
exposition originally preceding Against the Logicians as part of the same work. This was
established by Janáček 1963.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
⁹ Also to distinguish it from Against the Logicians, Physicists, and Ethicists; see n. 12.
¹⁰ Mathêma can sometimes refer to mathematical disciplines in particular, and we shall
see a few cases, in the context of the mathematical books (3 and 4), where this is probably
what Sextus means by the term. But the more general sense is the usual one in this work.
¹¹ I have discussed this question in the introductions to Bett 1997, Bett 2005, and Bett
2012.
¹² Perhaps because of the loss of the opening general book or books, the surviving books
of Skeptical Treatises came to be regarded as a continuation of M 1–6; hence Against the
Logicians is standardly abbreviated as M 7–8, Against the Physicists as M 9–10, and Against
the Ethicists as M 11. Although this makes no sense at all, since M 1–6 is a complete and
self-contained work on a quite distinct subject, this standard nomenclature is entrenched
and I shall adhere to it for purposes of reference.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
INTRODUCTION
or vice versa.¹³ There are some passages where the same topics are treated
in both works, but with the possible exception of some general arguments
against teaching and learning—versions of which appear in all three
works (M 1.9–40, M 11.216–57, PH 3.252–72)—the parallels between M
1–6 and PH are less close than between M 1–6 and the longer work.
Nevertheless, PH, being the only one of Sextus’ three surviving works¹⁴ to
contain a general account of the skeptical outlook, is important for our
understanding of what his brand of Pyrrhonist skepticism is. I turn to this
matter next, before focusing on a number of key features of M 1–6 itself.
¹³ PH has generally been regarded as the earliest of the three works. But this view arose as
a result of a mistake; cf. n. 8. Karel Janáček, having exposed the mistake (see Janáček 1963),
nonetheless continued to argue on stylistic grounds that PH was written first; see Janáček
1972 and Janáček 2008 (a posthumous compilation of his smaller essays on Sextus and
skepticism). These studies are important in establishing stylistic differences among the
works—differences of a kind that do indeed point to their having been composed at
different times (on this point, see Bett 2015b, 35). But that does not tell us the order of
the works, and Janáček’s chronological suppositions are a house of cards; see Bett 1997,
Appendix C. In the commentary on chapter VII (with Appendix A) of the same work,
I argued on the basis of parallel passages that PH is the latest of the three works, but the case
is not conclusive.
¹⁴ Besides the lost medical works referred to earlier, Sextus also refers to a now lost work
of his On the Soul (M 6.55, M 10.284).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
INTRODUCTION
¹⁷ For the first, rational interpretation see Perin 2010, chapter 2; Vogt 2012, chapter 5.3.
For the second, psychological interpretation see Williams 2010.
¹⁸ See Bett 2011a. Here I illustrate why the Modes are hard to fit with the psychological
interpretation, while also expressing a general preference for that interpretation.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/3/2018, SPi
INTRODUCTION