I may be missing something, but I really cannot see much out there about the virtue ethics as informed by Sextus Empiricus. I find this at least a little surprising since it would not be terribly controversial to suggest that we can look at Montaigne or Nietzsche as contributors to virtue theorist in ethics; and equally it would not be terribly controversial to suggest they have sceptical ideas, which draw on the antique tradition of Pyrrhonism. It is certainly not controversial to identity Pyrrhonism as an antique form of scepticism, which culminates in the writings of Sextus Empricus,writings some suspect to be repetitions or compilations of a previous Pyrrhonic philosopher, or some multiplicity of such thinkers.

Whatever the truth of any of that, Sextus is what we have as the name associated with a set of full length writings from the ancient world concerning scepticism.  What he offers is not the abstract  speculation on possible doubts, unengaged with any possible alternative, which some (including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) have associated unfavourably with modern scepticism. Like antique philosophy in general, the Sextus texts are concerned with the good life, which  includes a properly conducted life of thought and intellectual doubt. That is to say a life of thought and intellectual doubt can only be considered a good life, rather than a loss of the goods of human life, if it is itself part of happiness and a life lived well as a whole. Still the unity of that whole seems less obvious than it would without Pyrrhonian interrogation. 

Like other post-Socratic schools , scepticism may stretch  at some ideas of the good life. The unity of knowledge or judgement in Plato and Aristotle with communal existence and virtue is a bit eroded by sceptical doubts about knowledge and judgement. Stoicism tends to challenge any role for the lower desires in the good life, Cynicism tends to undermine our communal existence, Epicureanism seems to weaken some of the more heroic-sacrificial aspects of antique virtues. All these challenges can be assimilated into antique commitments to the virtue of social status, the virtue of moderate satisfaction of desires, and the civic linked courage demands of antiquity.

Similarly Pyrrhonism can be assimilated by antique assumption that knowledge or judgement will integrate us with the world in which we live, and that they are never far from out most immediate thoughts. That is the antique world n comparison with the modern world tends to find that virtue, communal existence,  knowledge and judgement all tend to be confirmed by the world of experience and the converse is true. Even the other worldliness of Plato presumes ways in which pure ideas can be alive and real for us, not only in some forms of writing, but in some kinds of life, and in the laws of at least some states. 

The ideas of Pyrrhonism are also manifest in life, in forms of living that that have therapeutic and medical benefits, as is suggested in the second name given to Sextus which suggests membership of  a school of medical thinking. The Pyrrhonic life is a good life and therefore a life of virtue, as it is a life which avoids disturbance of mind with regard to extreme positions or the choice between sides of a question, with the idea of a choice organised in its most general way around the choice between more experiential and more theoretical approaches to questions. It tries to suspend choice, so that we have the more health giving option of grasping a balance between opposing answers. 

In the early modern era Sceptical, Stoic and Epicurean influences have an importance, which tends to be missed by the traditions of both teaching and writing, which take Descartes' Meditations together with the  Discourse on Method  as an isolated starting point for modern philosophy. The whole idea of a beginning to Modern Philosophy was itself interrogated in a witty and devastating manner by Kierkegaard in Johannes Climacus; and a much broader understanding of the whole context of History of Modern Philosophy is  now becoming more widespread, in a late accordance with that critique .  

Roughly speaking, Modern, or Early Modern, Philosophy develops because materialism in the form of Epicureanism, (particularly Lucretius), rationalism in the form of Stoicsm  (particularly Epictetus, and then Seneca), and scepticism in the form of Pyrrhonism (particularly Sextus), increasingly seem to challenge our sense of unified familiarity with nature, with society, with life, and with ourselves. The challenge is not new, but is less experienced than before as a manageable disturbance, which can be accommodated within a unity of familiar forms of knowledge and life, or at most through a philosophical kind of life, rather than a life of unquestioned habit. Though Pyrrhonism is rather quietistic it does pose some challenges to the more harmonising aspects of antique thought, which are only really explored in the modern period.

Ancient scepticism modified virtue, because the good life is seen as dependent on avoiding extremes of judgement, present in other schools. Modern scepticism modifies virtue, because allied with rationalism and materialism, the sense of a consistent character at home in nature, and in the community, is distinctly undermined. A way of thinking that can be seen emerging in Montaigne. Virtue now be thought of as  a struggle to unify the self and create some harmony out of inevitable disturbances. It is not a very new idea to suggest that we may approach virtue theory, informed by those aspects of the thought of Montaigne, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Foucault. However, I do find the role of Pyrrhonism as an ur-form of this version of virtue theory less discussed than I expected. 

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5 responses to “Sextus Empiricus and Virtue Theory”

  1. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Chapter 8 of Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire is on ethics and skepticism. Chapter 7 of Hadot’s What is Ancient Philosophy? on the Hellenistic schools has a few pages dedicated to both Pyrrho and the later Pyrrhonian revival. Annas’ The Morality of Happiness has several sections on skepticism, but they’re broken up by the theme of the argument rather than by the schools. Even Long & Sedley’s famous collections of Hellenistic excerpts includes in its commentaries on late Pyrrhonism the ethical motivations for skepticism (and the ataraxic pay-off).
    If you are looking for recent moral philosophy that takes Pyrrhonism as an inspiration for a theory of virtue, you may like to look at Katja Vogt’s work (although I’ve not looked at it myself). There may be others.

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  2. Barry Stocker Avatar

    Hello Chris
    Thanks very much, I forgot about Nussbaum’s book and I should certainly look at the material from Hadot and Annas, with whom I am certainly familiar in other contexts. Never looked at the Long and Sedley translations/commentaries I must admit or Katja Vogt, so some work for me there. There is always someone who already wrote on any topic, so I’m not surprised that some references turned up, but a bit surprised that I didn’t turn up some of this in my online searches, or think of the Nussbaum book which is on my shelves. Anyway, as you say some of the discussion of sceptical ethics is rather broken up, and I would like to add that still doesn’t leave anything much connecting Pyrrhonic ethics with development of thought in this area since Montaigne. Hadot would provide an obvious bridge with Foucault though. Still a rather marginal place for Pyrrhonic ethics compared with Aristotle, which is not terribly surprising, on the other hand Pyrrhonism might fit better than Aristotle with a lot of recent ways of thinking about identity, agency and so on. Thanks again for the references, which give me something to go on in future researches (not really working on this right now just wondering how to relate Pyrrhonism with they ways I think about virtue theory developing since Montaigne).

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  3. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    There is a volume on Hellenistic and Early Modern philosophy, but I haven’t spent any time with it. It includes at least a chapter on Hume and ancient skepticism, but I have a hunch that’s more Academic skepticism (as Hume puts himself in that camp). Hadot does mention Montaigne often (e.g., the epigraph to What is Ancient Philosophy? includes a quotation from Essais 3.13), but I am not sure he explicitly works out any connections to Pyrrhonism in particular. He seems to have been more inspiration than anything.
    I am looking forward to future posts on it.

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  4. Ed Kazarian Avatar

    Hi Barry, I love the suggestion of looking at Sextus in relation to the virtue theory. As said above, it’s definitely worth going back to Long and Sedley’s section on Phyrro, which really brings out the importance of a specifically skeptical notion of ‘virtue.’ The section from pp. 18-21 of Vol 1, especially their glosses there, are going to be pretty rich in this connection.
    I’m assuming you’ve seen Richard Popkin’s stuff on Phyrronism in the reformation and counter-reformation as a precursor to Modernity, too. I don’t recall him saying much about the moral side of things, but he does a lot with how the epistemological move was deployed in the period leading up to Descartes.

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  5. Barry Stocker Avatar

    Hello Ed, thanks very much. I can’t do much on this topic right now, there are some other projects first, how many isn’t quite clear right now, it will be while before I can really focus on virtue theory. I’ll look properly into your suggestions when I can focus a bit more on this. I am interested in suggestions and mulling over the general idea, which is the background to this post.

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