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The purpose in this chapter is not to cast doubt on Aristotle's dogmatic credentials, but rather focuses on a series of questions that seem to have gone largely unasked. How far is Aristotle aware of the sceptical challenge to knowledge, and how far does he attempt to answer it? How does he assess earlier Greek thinkers who have been regarded as forerunners of the official sceptics? How much, if at all, did his own work influence and anticipate the debates between sceptics and dogmatists that are charted in Cicero'sAcademicaand the writings of Sextus? It is argued that these questions are profitable lines of enquiry, and that Aristotle deserves more than the occasional footnote in histories of ancient scepticism.

The philosophical sceptic attacks, in the doctrines of his rivals, not or not primarily the traditional features of the gods that the doctrinaire schools retain, but the rational innovations — the attempt to justify theological doctrines by appeal to experience, conceptual analysis, and argument. Sextus Empiricus characterizes the sceptic as one who may be in a safer position than other philosophers: he abides by local traditions in saying that gods exist and in worshipping them. Even the official sceptics make no profession of seeking to undermine religious beliefs outside a specific dialectical context. Their object is not to induce atheism, but to show that, for every argument concluding to the existence of gods, an argument of equal strength can be advanced on the opposite side. The sceptic intends to leave himself and his audience in a position whereby they neither affirm nor deny the existence of gods.

To see what is new about Augustine's theory of signs, it is useful to notice that Greek semiotics was concerned with the epistemology of empirical inference and included no theory of language or expression. This is illustrated in Plato, in Aristotle's On Interpretation (where an Augustinian semiotics is often read into the text anachronistically), in the treatises on physiognomics in the Aristotelian corpus (where bodies are signs of the soul), in the semiotics and theory of language developed by Stoicism, and in the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus. The recurrent problem, emphasized by the more sceptical side in philosophical debates, is that signs are ambiguous whenever they are “common” to more than one thing signified. Augustine's theory of signs resembles Sextus's sceptical concept of “reminding signs,” which are both indispensably useful and epistemically inadequate.

This chapter compares the twelfth-century Tibetan thinker Patsab’s interpretation of Madhyamaka with certain readings of ancient skepticism, focusing on the central question that skeptical accounts face: Can the skeptic advance a thesis, or is it merely therapeutic? This chapter argues that Patsab’s approach is similar to that of Sextus in that it offers a radical answer to this question, and the chapter then asks whether his approach is compatible with constructive philosophy.

This chapter examines another speech by Cicero. The year after pro Quinctio, Cicero undertook his first criminal defence — that of Sextus Roscius of America — and from then on seemed to have had a regular practice in both private and criminal cases. The speech for the actor Quintus Roscius relates to another private suit arising from a partnership (societas). It was delivered some time after Sulla's dictatorship and is rhetorically more sophisticated. The issue in the speech stemmed from events around the eighties BC and relates to people of similar status to those in pro Quinctio. Like pro Quinctio, the speech provides valuable evidence for private law procedure in the late Republic and for the law of partnership. It also reveals the types of argument an orator needed to deal with such legal issues. In the surviving text, Cicero seems to be deliberately making matters as confused as he can. Based on the structure created by the partition, Cicero moves from arguments drawn strictly from law to arguments from equity, derived from Roscius' character and the history of the partnership. In this later section, he called into question allegations made by the prosecution, which involved the legal interpretation of more than one point of fact from the past, largely damaging to Roscius. Cicero seems indeed to have tried to rewrite the legal history behind the case. The reconstruction of the narrative and the legal argument are discussed.

This chapter explores the concept of ‘Sextan scepticism’. It addresses the question of whether Sextus was a radical and rustic sceptic or a moderate and urbane sceptic. It argues Sextan scepticism, despite the intimations of the first paragraph of the Outlines and notwithstanding numerous counter-indications in the Greek texts, is out-and-out rustic.

This chapter focuses on the investigation of the content of the two Perugia texts, which were produced in a relatively short period of time. It explains that the Littera is the first text of Perugia and that it is a fairly short declaration of dogmatic truth. It adds that the Littera answers an unqualified and resounding ‘no’ to the question posed by the Pope, and states that the proposition is not heretical, but ‘sound, catholic, and faithful’. It clarifies that the Littera not only cites Nicholas III's bull, but highlights Exiit's canonical pedigree, pointing out that it had been incorporated into canon law in the Liber Sextus of Pope Boniface VIII. It also examines the longer text of Perugia entitled Declaratio Magistrotum, issued three days after the first.

Early Stoic political philosophy is misrepresented in the sources—as recommending such practices as anthropophagy and incest—mostly because of the large role that the Sceptics had in transmitting the theory (the Sceptics' role in this was first shown to be important by Schofield, 1991). Sextus Empiricus cites the scandalous Stoic views when discussing the question whether there is an art of life. He contrasts them with ‘normal life’, and through the opposition between theory and appearances calls into question whether there is an art of life, an issue which is of central importance to the Sceptical project and is discussed repeatedly. The Stoic theses thus gain a disproportionate eminence within the overall sparse evidence on early Stoic philosophy. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ‘disturbing theses’ (the infamous ideas ascribed to the Stoics) which tries to assess them as what they most likely are: examples that the Stoics put forward when explaining the revisionary implications of their theory of value and appropriate action, rather than general recommendations, rules, or an account of life in a city of sages.

Pyrrhonian skepticism has roots in metaphysical discussions relevant to relativism. The chapter reconstructs these discussions in Plato's Theaetetus, and explores how different versions of Pyrrhonian skepticism—the skepticism of Pyrrho, of Aenesidemus, and of Sextus Empiricus—compare to Protagorean relativism. The chapter begins with a sketch of why Plato interprets Protagoras' Measure Doctrine as global relativism rather than relativism about a particular domain. Pyrrhonian skepticism, it is argued, inherits this global scope. But Pyrrhonian responses to disagreement differ importantly from the responses Protagorean relativism envisages. Skepticism suggests that, when encountering disagreement, it is rational to step back from one's view and investigate, rather than simply hold on to one's view, as presumably the relativist does. The chapter defends skepticism's response to disagreement as construed by Sextus Empiricus as superior to earlier proposals.

It is argued that, among ancient anti-skeptical objections, one charge stands out as particularly damning to skeptical philosophy: without forming beliefs, the skeptic cannot think. More specifically, the charge says that conceptual thought involves holding things to be a certain way, and that is, it involves something the skeptics say they do not. This charge is under-explored, and Sextus almost hides it, perhaps quite aware that it is especially hard to respond to. Surely, if the skeptic cannot think the skeptic cannot investigate, and that means, the skeptic is no skeptic. I argue that PH 2 and M 8 offer different strategies, and that PH 2 succeeds in offering a response—a response that also explains a crucial passage in PH 1, according to which the skeptic can perceive and think through the guidance of nature (1.23–4).

This chapter surveys the sources for impotence magic in the ancient world. It discusses a number of classical writers who mentioned impotence magic in their literary works, including Ovid and Petronius. It also compares these writers with surviving curse tablets and with mentions of impotence magic in ancient medicine and science, particularly in the works of Pliny the Elder, Marcellus Empiricus of Bordeaux, Sextus Placitus, and the anonymous Kyranides. The chapter argues that ancient writers rarely distinguished impotence magic from other forms of love magic, because unlike in the Middle Ages, impotence was not a ground for annulling a marriage which had to be discussed in detail. However, like medieval authors, ancient writers took some of their information about impotence magic from popular culture rather than from written sources.

This chapter opens with a discussion of “historical influence” that intends to clarify the sense in which Nietzsche can be said to have been influenced by Pyrrhonism. Then, it presents the biographical and historical evidence for Nietzsche's own familiarity with the Greek skeptics and their principal texts and arguments, and to familiarize non-specialists with the fundamental and distinctive features of Pyrrhonian skepticism, including its opposition to dogmatism, its suspension of judgment (epochē) and the equipollence of arguments, and its ultimate aim (ataraxia). Finally, a lengthy discussion of the scope of Pyrrhonian suspension of judgment is included, to clarify the interpretive possibilities and to argue for a restricted reading that does not compromise the radical nature of Nietzsche's critical philosophy.

Nietzsche's early unpublished essay, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” has a history of being used to ground radical interpretations of his work, according to which he denies the possibility of truth and knowledge and (on some readings) even rejects the canons of logical reasoning. But this work does not contain the rudiments of a metaphysical or semantic theory of truth; rather, what Nietzsche explores here is the origin of what he calls the “will to truth,” our drive for truth and our estimation of it as unconditionally valuable. This chapter presents a careful exegesis of “On Truth and Lie” in an attempt to lay to rest the idea that Nietzsche stridently denies the possibility of truth and to build a case for attributing to Nietzsche instead a position that is genuinely skeptical about it.

This chapter follows the development of Ezra Pound's modernist poetry as it responds to the culture of Great War Britain. As an American in London, Pound is alert to the postures of the partisan press of Liberal England, and as a former colonial, he animates powerfully to the self-contradictory language of the former imperial power. His response to the verbal culture of war-time journalism informs the multi-part review he serialized through 1917 in the New Age, “Studies in Contemporary Mentality”. The “seeming reason” he locates as the tone of the political times is answered in his own poetry with a style of mock logic or sham rationality that is new to his developing opus. This tone is heard as the major development in his creative translation, Homage to Sextus Propertius, in his fictional autobiographical sequence, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and in the initial installments of his emergent life-work, The Cantos.

The introduction identifies those aspects of Scepticism as Sextus describes it—its commitment to the search for truth and to certain principles of rationality, its scope, and its consequences for action and agency—that are discussed in the chapters of the book.

Sextus Empiricus' claim that the Sceptic is engaged in the search for truth has struck many as dubious for two reasons. First, the discovery of truth is neither the necessary nor the most efficient means to the Sceptic's ultimate end or objective, tranquillity. Second, the Sceptic routinely uses arguments—the Agrippan modes—that purport to show that no one can have any reason to believe anything, and the use of arguments with this negative dogmatic conclusion seems to be incompatible with engagement in the search for truth. This chapter explains why, according to Sextus, the Sceptic engages in the search for truth and how it is possible for the Sceptic to do so while using, as he does, the Agrippan modes.

It is a striking fact that Sextus Empiricus often describes the Sceptic's suspension of judgement as a matter of necessity. This chapter examines the kind of necessity Sextus has in view when he writes not that the Sceptic does or will suspend judgement, but that it is necessary, or that he is compelled, to do so. It argues the Sceptic aims to satisfy certain rational requirements and that the fact that he does so is the source of the necessity attached to his suspension of judgement. The necessity is in the first instance hypothetical: it is necessary for the Sceptic to suspend judgement if he is to satisfy, as he aims to do, certain rational requirements. This chapter then argues that the Sceptic aims to satisfy certain rational requirements because part of what it is to be engaged in the search for truth, as Sextus claims the Sceptic is, is to have this aim.