bett, richard -- sextus's against the ethicists- scepticism, relativism or both

Sextus's Against the Ethicists:Scepticism, Relativism or Both?Richard Bett

In Book XI of Adversus Mathematicos, entitled Against the Ethicists, SextusEmpiricus appears to subscribe to a form of ethical relativism. He arguesthat nothing is *by nature' (phusef) either good or bad. The argumentseems to turn on the fact that different things are believed to be good bydifferent people (68-78,89). And the upshot of this argument is that onecan speak of things as desirable or undesirable only in relation to a certainperson (114), or on a certain occasion (118). In order for anything to bedescribable as good or bad in reality, or "by nature', it is suggested, itsgoodness or badness must be 'common to all' (koinon panton69,71); thatis, its good or bad effects must be uniform for everyone. That nothingexhibits this required uniformityand hence, that nothing is Tjy nature'good or badis what the references to disagreement about good and badare apparently designed to establish. Now, it is in virtue of this denial thatanything is "by nature' good or bad, and the accompanying assertion thatthings are good or bad only in relation to specific individuals or circum-stances, that the sceptic is described as One who suspends judgement'(Epechon, 160; cf. Ill, 150); and it is this suspension of judgement which issaid to give rise to the sceptic's calm and untroubled attitude to life. Thosewho do believe that things are good or bad by nature are burdened with agreat source of worry and concern, all of which the sceptic, through notholding the belief, manages to avoid (110-67).

This is by no means the only place in Sextus where claims concerningrelativities are used to generate a supposedly sceptical outcome; to citeonly the most obvious example, the Ten Modes and the Five Modes bothcontain a 'Mode from Relativity' (PH1135-140,167). However, Against theEthicists is perhaps the place where this kind of argumentative strategy ismost explicit and most fully developed. Very few scholars have taken

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124 Richard Bett

much notice of this work;1 but such reactions to it as are recorded in therecent literature have been of two kinds. One reaction has been to accuseSextus of gross inconsistency. It has been held that the relativity argu-ments in Against the Ethicists and elsewhere, so far from being helpful tothe sceptic, are actually incompatible with anything which could reason-ably be called scepticism.2 The other reaction has been to try to assimilateAgainst the Ethicists to the more familiar form of Pyrrhonian scepticismexpounded at the beginning of Outlines ofPyrrhonism, in which relativitiesplay no essential role.3

It is my contention that both of these reactions are mistaken. Sextus'swillingness, in Against the Ethicists, to assert that nothing is *by nature'good or bad, and to speak of situation-relative goods, is not compatiblewith his official characterization of Scepticism in the opening chapters ofOutlines ofPyrrhonism. This does not, however, mean that Sextus is guiltyof a flagrant and confused violation of sceptical principles. For Against theEthicists presents a clear and consistent positionor so I shall suggestand a position which can quite fairly be described as a form of scepticism.It is not the same form of scepticism as that which is usually associated withlater Pyrrhonism; but it is a form of scepticism, and it is not obviouslyconfused. In fact, I shall argue, it is Outlines of Pyrrhonism, rather thanAgainst the Ethicists, which shows confusion and inconsistency. Once thedistinct position represented by Against the Ethicists is properly examined,

1 For example, a recent paper examining Sextus's use of the contrasting pair of terms idion andkoinon never mentions M XI 77-8, where this contrast plays a vital role in an argumentcentral to the whole book (discussed in sections II and IV below). See Franoise Caujolle-Zaslawsky, 'L'opposition Idion/Koinon chez Sextus Empiricus', in Andre-Jean Voelke, ed.,le Scepticism Antique, Cahiers de la Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie 15 (1990) 139-49.

2 See Julia Annas, Ooing Without Objective Values: Anaent and Modem Strategies', in M. Schofieldand G. Striker, eds., The Norms of Nature (Cambridge, 196) 3-29; Julia Annas and JonathanBarnes, The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1985); Gisela Striker, The Ten Tropes ofAenesidemus', in Myles Bumyeat, ed., The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley, 1983) 95-115.

3 See Mark McPherran, 'Pyrrhonism's Arguments Against Value', Philosophical Studies 60 (1990)127-42. Julia Annas has also moved some way towards this position, though withoutwholly abandoning her former stance (see the previous note); see her 'Scepticism aboutValue', forthcoming in the Proceedings of Scepticism: A Pan-American Dialogue, a confer-ence held at the Center for Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside, February1991. This interpretation was also pressed by my commentator at an APA colloquium(see note 64).



Sextus's Against the Ethicists: Scepticism, Relativism or Both? 125

it becomes clear that the parallel ethical portion of Outlines of PyrrhonismIII (168-279) contains elements of that distinct position, inconsistentlywith its avowed conclusions. This fact raises interesting questions aboutthe development of Sextus's thinking, and about the order in which hisworks were composed. And since Sextus is usually thought tobe drawingheavily on earlier sources throughout his work, this comparison betweenthe two books may also affect our opinions about Pyrrhonian scepticismmore generally. I shall attempt, in the final section (section V), to say aword about these issues. But at any rate, I hope to show that Against theEthicists (hereafter referred to by its abbreviated title M XI) should not bedismissed either as an ill-considered or unwitting deviation from theapproach represented by the better-known Outlines of Pyrrhonism (here-after PH), or as simply more of that same old approach.

I

I begin by focusing briefly on the second of the two reactions to M XI justmentioned. Sextus does argue that nothing is by nature good or bad, andhe does claim, as a corollary of that conclusion, that things can be good orbad only in some relative sense. How is this consistent with the universalsuspension of judgement which is supposed to be the hallmark ofPyrrhonism? The answer, it has been suggested, is that Sextus does notneed to be seen as himself committed either to the negative conclusionor to the corollary involving relativity. Rather, the conclusion and itscorollary are intended to stand as one member of a pair of opposingpositions; Sextus's intention is not to argue in his own person for theconclusion that nothing is by nature good or bad, but to induce suspen-sion of judgement about precisely this issue, by juxtaposing this conclu-sion with another, equally plausible claim to the effect that there are somethings which are by nature good or bad.4 This competing claim may bethought to come either from pre-reflective common sense, or from thewritings of Sextus's 'dogmatist' opponents; but in any case, according tothis interpretation, it should be understood as balancing, and hence can-celing out, the negative conclusion which appears in the text.

4 This argument is made by McPherran, 'Pyrrhonism's Arguments against Value', 134-5. JuliaAnnas has also suggested it to me in discussion.



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Now, it is true that Sextus and other ancient sceptics may often plausi-bly be interpreted along these lines. The four books which together com-prise Against the Logicians and Against the Physicists (M VII-X) consistlargely of attacks on the basic concepts employed by practitioners of logicand physics, and also, in many instances, by common sense. Sextus oftensounds as if he is delivering negative dogmatic conclusions; in Against thePhysicists, for example, he tells us that "body is nothing' ( .439), that'motion is nothing' ( .168), that 'number is nothing' ( .309) and that'nothing either comes into being or perishes' ( .350). But he severaltimes tells us that these negative conclusions are to be juxtaposed with thepositive conclusions of the dogmatists, or the positive beliefs of the ordi-nary person; and even when he does not explicitly say so, it is unproblem-atic to understand this as his intention.5 However, this approach willunfortunately not work for XI. For not only does Sextus never indicatethat his intention is to induce suspension of judgement about the existenceof things good or bad by nature; he clearly and repeatedly presents theconclusion that nothing is good or bad by nature as one which the sceptichimself adopts. He tells us mat one can achieve the sceptic's aim of livinghappily and free from worry (eudaimonos kai atarachos .118) bycoming to hold that things are desirable, or the reverse, only in certaincircumstances, and not by nature. This freedom from distress, he furtherexplains, will come 'from the belief that nothing is by nature good or bad'(EJt tou meden phusei agathon e kakon doxazein). A little later, we are told that'when reason has proved (logou de parastesantos) that none of these things isby nature good or by nature bad, there will be a release from worry and apeaceful life will await us' (130). And in the same vein, it is asserted that'It will only be possible to avoid this [i.e., tarache, the opposite of thesceptic's aim] if we show (hupodeixaimeri) to the person who is troubled, onaccount of his avoidance of the bad or his pursuit of the good, that there isnot anything either good or bad by nature' (140).

The claim that nothing is good or bad by nature is not, then, just oneof a pair of opposing arguments which together lead to ataraxia whenone suspends judgement on the merits of either. On the contrary, this

5 For explicit mentions of this strategy, see M VTI443, Vm298,476-7, IX137,191-2, X168. For an examination of similar interpretations of the Academics Arcesilaus andCameades, see my 'Cameades' Ptthanon: A Reappraisal of its Role and Status',Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 7 (1989) 59-94.




claim is supposed to be endorsed by the sceptic, and it is this veryendorsement which is supposed to lead to ataraxia. According to M XI,it is essential to one's well-being that one adopt the belief that nothing isby nature good or bad, and accompanying beliefs concerning the rela-tivity of goodness and badness not that one cease to hold any beliefsone way or the other about the existence or the nature of goodness andbadness. It follows that M XI cannot be interpreted as consistent with thefamiliar Pyrrhonist strategy of assembling opposing positions of equalstrength (isostheneia), and withdrawing commitment from either side ofthe opposition; and it is perhaps no accident that the word isostheneianever once appears in M XI.6

This brings us to the other reaction to M XI, the accusation that it issimply confused. As we have seen, Sextus does talk here of 'suspensionof judgement' (epoche); is he not then contradicting himself? I want toshow that this reading, too, is mistaken, and that M XI represents a bonafide but distinct version of scepticism. This task will occupy most of therest of the paper, and will require a somewhat more detailed examina-tion of the main argument. I conduct this examination in the next section.Section then addresses the accusation directly, and in section IV Iattempt to dispel some doubts which may remain concerning my owncontrary interpretation.

II

For our purposes, the most important portion of the book is the chapterentitled ei esti phusei agathon kai kakon (42-109), 'Whether there are Goodand Bad by Nature'. This chapter begins with an account of somedisagreements among philosophers, which are taken as typical, concern-ing what things are good, bad or indifferent (44-68)7 There follows anargument for the conclusion that nothing is by nature good (or, byimplication, bad) (69-78), in which, as already noted, the fact of disagree-ment about these questions is crucial. After this is a subsidiary argument

6 See the Indices of K. Janacek, vol. IV of the Teubner edition of Sextus Empiricus(Leipzig, 1962).

7 Here and throughout, the intended scope of 'things' is very broad. It can encompassevents, material objects, states of mind or of character, achievements, etc. any-thing, that is, to which the epithets 'good' and "bad' might plausibly be applied.



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for the same conclusion (79-89), which eventually relies again on theprevalence of disagreement (89); then an explicit argument, using thesame basic strategy as 69-78, for the conclusion that nothing is by naturebad (90-5); and finally a consideration of, and replies to, Epicureanattempts to identify certain things as naturally to be chosen or to beavoided on the basis of the natural behavior of animals (96-109). The coreof the argument is clearly the passage immediately following the initialretailing of disagreements (69-78), and we shall concentrate on this.

The most immediate difficulty, in trying to make sense of this argu-ment, is to see why disagreement should be thought to show that nothingis by nature good or bad rather than, as one might expect from PH(e.g., 235), that we should suspend judgement about what, if anything,is by nature good or bad. It is stated initially that if anything is good, orbad, by nature, it must be good, or bad, 'in relation to everyone' (proshapantas, 71) or 'for everyone' {pasin, 69); an alternative way to put this,as we remarked at the outset, is that its goodness, or badness, must be'common to all' (koinon pant n, 71). And the argument then purports todemonstrate, on the basis of disagreement, that there is nothing whichis good or bad 'in relation to everyone'. The steps are as follows.

Either whatever anyone thinks is good really is good, or this is not thecase (72). But the first alternative cannot be correct; for if whateveranyone thinks is good (or bad, or indifferent) really is so, then, sincepeople's views about what is good, bad or indifferent vary widely, thesame things will be by nature good and bad and indifferent, which isimpossible (72-4). If, on the other hand, not everything which is thoughtto be good really is good, there must be some way of distinguishingbetween the things which are thought to be good and really are so, andthe things which are merely thought to be good but are not really so (75).Such a distinction might be drawn either 'through self-evidence'(di'enargeias, 76) that is, it might be a matter of plain and immediateexperience8 or through reasoning. But it cannot be a matter of 'self-evidence'. For, by definition, there is no room for error or dispute aboutthe content of 'self-evident' impressions; yet, as has already been said,

8 Enargeia is taken to be a mark of truth by the Peripatetics (Sextus 218), theEpicureans (M VII212) and the Stoics ( 257). For discussion of this concept seeMichael Frede, 'Stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions', in MylesBumyeat, ed., The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley, 1983) 65-93, esp. 74-6.




there is dispute about what is good (76). Nor, however, can the distinc-tion between real and spurious goods be drawn by reasoning. For eachof the philosophical schools has its own 'private' system of reasoningabout these matters (idion echei logon, 77); hence the items which each ofthem designates as goods, in accordance with these systems of reason-ing, are themselves 'private goods' (idion ... agathon, 77). But 'privategoods' are not 'common to all', and hence not goods by nature. So thereis nothing which is good by nature (78)9 and the same, of course,applies to the bad.10

The argument seems easy enough to follow, and easy enough to agreewith, until the final step. In what sense is the reasoning employed byeach philosophical school 'private'? And in what sense are the thingswhich this reasoning declares to be goods 'private goods', rather than'common to all'? All Sextus seems entitled to assert at this point is that

9 On the equation of 'really good' and 'good by nature', see further section OX

10 M XI90 says that the arguments offered so far, which eliminate the good by nature,also eliminate the bad by nature. Does the same also apply to the indifferent? PH 191-3 does argue that nothing is by nature indifferent, again on the basis of thediffering views about the indifferent held by different philosophers. But XI neveroffers any parallel argument, nor any acknowledgement that the arguments givenconcerning the good and the bad also count against anything's being by natureindifferent; the disagreements listed at 42-68 include disagreements about what isindifferent, but the indifferent seems to be dropped from the argument which beginsat 69.1 think that this vacillation can be explained as follows. Statements of the form'X is indifferent' might be understood simply as denying that X is, in its true nature,either good or bad; or they might be understood as asserting that X has, in its truenature, a certain characteristic, namely indifference. The concept of the indifferent,as developed by the Stoics, is not clearly determinate as between these two options.Now, understood in the first way, statements of the form 'X is indifferenf need notbe objectionable to Sextus, in the way that 'X is good' or 'X is bad' are objectionable;understood in the second way, all three types of statements would be equallyobjectionable. PH 191-3, which argues that nothing is by nature indifferent,alongside parallel arguments concerning the good and the bad, clearly adopts thesecond understanding. But XI is at least to some extent drawn towards the firstunderstanding; at 102 Sextus is apparently willing to assert that 'winning andleading are therefore not good by nature but indifferent' (ou toinun phusei agathon estinall'adiaphoron to nikan kai to hegeisthai). If this is so, it makes sense for him not toinclude any argument to the effect that nothing is by nature indifferent; in fact, ifindifferent is taken simply to mean 'not by nature either good or bad', there will noteven be any use for the phrase "by nature indifferent'.



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different schools have different views about what is good, establishedby different types of arguments. But if this is all that the reference to'private reasoning' and 'private goods' amounts to, it is very unclear whySextus feels justified in inferring that none of these schools has hit uponwhat is really good. He does not even bother to argue or suggest, as heoften does elsewhere, that the disagreements are unresolvable (thougheven this would seem to show only that we cannot be sure what is reallygood, not that nothing is really good); he seems to assume that the veryexistence of disagreement is enough to prove his point.

To begin to understand this, we need to look more carefully at theopening of the argument, where the term 'common to all' is introduced(69-71). Here Sextus gives examples of things whose effects do qualifyas 'common to all'. Fire, he says, warms everyone, not just some people,and similarly snow chills everyone; hence these things may be said,respectively, to be warming and chilling by nature.11 In the same way,he suggests, 'that which is good by nature ought to be good for everyone,and not good for some but not good for others' (69). That is, the effectsof that which is by nature good ought to be uniform for all people, justlike the effects of that which is by nature warming or by nature chilling.And the distinctive effect of the good is to benefit (agathopoein, 70); onthis Sextus cites Plato with approval, but the point is of course commonground among Greek philosophers generally.12 That which is by naturegood must therefore be uniformly beneficial; it is in this sense that it mustbe 'good for everyone' or 'good in relation to everyone'. There cannot,then, be a good by nature which benefits only some people but not others.But it is still not obvious how the fact that people disagree about what isgood is supposed to help establish that nothing is uniformly beneficial.Could there not be something such as virtue, according to the Stoics which is in fact beneficial for everyone, no matter what the circum-stances, but which not everyone recognizes as such?

11 The use of these examples need not commit Sextus to dogmatism. He could claimto be using them only for the sake of argument, and that counter-instances can infact be found (e.g., Demophon, who was cold in the sun and warm in the shade PH182). In this connection, note the participial constructions to pur physei aleantikonkathests and he chion psuchousa, which may be read conditionally ('fire, i/it is bynature warming', etc.), contrary to the Loeb translation.

12 For Sextus's acceptance of this point as a commonplace, see also M XI35-6.




It looks as if Sextus's answer to this question is 'no'. That is, as heconceives the matter, in order for something to count as beneficial to acertain person, that person must view it as beneficial; there can be no suchthing as a benefit which the beneficiary does not regard as a benefit. Thisassumption may seem curious, and it is admittedly not stated in thepassage with which we have been concerned. However, it is clear thatjust such an assumption is operating in the parallel passage of PH .The argument here is similar to, but considerably briefer than, that in MXL Just as fire 'appears to all as warming' (pasi phainetai aleantikon) andsnow 'appears to all as chilling' (pasi phainetai psuktike), Sextus says, soeverything which possesses a certain power by nature affects everyoneequally or at least, 'everyone who is, as they say, in a natural state'(pantos ... tous kata phusin, hos phasin, echontas) (179). Thus, in particular,if something is by nature good, it 'affects everyone as good' (pantas kineihas agathon); but there is no such thing, since neither philosophers norordinary people agree about what is good (a point which is then sup-ported by examples, 180-1). Now, since the existence of disagreement ishere taken to rule out the possibility that anything 'affects everyone asgood', it is evident that 'affecting everyone as good' must consist in, ormust at least include, being regarded by everyone as good; but 'affectingeveryone as good' is taken to be a necessary condition for anything'sbeing really, or by nature, good. A thing cannot, then, be a genuine goodwithout being regarded as good by those for whom it is a good.

Similarly, in the brief treatment later in M XI of whether there isanything bad by nature (90-5), it is clear that being experienced as bad (thatis, harmful) is understood as a necessary condition for being bad. Ad-dressing the question whether folly harms fools, Sextus says that it mustharm them 'either being evident to them' (etoi prodelos autois ousa) or'non-evident' (adelos) (92). But the latter alternative is plainly impossible,he continues; 'for if it is non-evident to them, it is neither bad nor to beavoided by them, but just as no one avoids or is disturbed at grief whichis non-apparent and pain which is unfelt (ten nie phainomenen lupen kaianepaistheton algedona), so no one will shun as bad folly which is unsus-pected and not evidenced (ten anupoptoton aphrosunen kai ten adeloume-nen)' (93). Uncontioversially enough, Sextus here assumes that it isabsurd to think that one could regard one's folly as bad if one is not evenaware of having itjust as absurd as the notion of an 'unfelt pain'; buthe also takes this claim, that one would not regard one's 'unsuspected'folly as bad, as tantamount to the claim that it is not bad.

It need not be a surprise, then, to find that the same kind of assumptionis at work in the argument at M XI69-78. And if that is so, the point about



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'private goods' in the final step of that argument becomes clearer. Forsomething to be by nature good, it would have to be universally benefi-cial; but to be universally beneficial, it would have to be universallyregarded as beneficial. But the various views about what is good held bythe philosophers are arrived at by way of idiosyncratic or 'private'schemes of reasoning; since the schemes of reasoning are 'private', thesupposed goods which they generate are 'private' as well. That is, whatis regarded by some one school as beneficial, as a result of a scheme ofreasoning peculiar to that school, will not be universally regarded asbeneficial; other schools employ different and incompatible schemes ofreasoning, yielding different and incompatible views of what is good,and ordinary people do not arrive at their views of what is good byreasoning at all. Since all the alleged goods arrived at by philosophicalreasoning are in this sense 'private' that is to say, none of them areuniversally agreed to be goods none of them are candidates for beinga good by nature.

This reconstruction of Sextus's reasoning may still be found unsatis-factory. For it may be wondered why different schemes of reasoningshould necessarily lead to such extreme disagreement about what thingsare goods. There will no doubt be disagreement in the complete lists ofwhat types of things are thought good by the different schools. But forSextus to establish his conclusion that nothing is by nature good, he mustsurely establish that there is not a single thing which all the schools agreeto be good; and merely observing that different schools use reason indifferent ways does not seem to establish that, since the same thing mightwell be argued to be good in several different ways. In fact, one mightask, what is there to prevent this in the cases Sextus actually cites (77)?He says that Zeno thought virtue was good, Epicurus pleasure andAristotle health. These are not presented as competing views about thehighest good;13 Sextus is well aware that Aristotle does not think thathealth is the highest good (cf. 51, where the Peripatetics are said to hold

13 Contrary to the Loeb translation. Julia Annas, 'Sextus and the Peripatetics', Elenchos13 (1992) 203-31, accuses Sextus of 'an unbelievably gross error' here the error ofthinking 'that health had the role for Aristotle that virtue had for Zeno and pleasurefor Epicurus' (206). But Sextus never suggests any such thing; nor, as I shall show,do we need to ascribe this erroneous view to him in order to make sense of thepassage.



Situs's Against the Ethicists: Scepticism, Relativism or Both? 133

that health is a good, but not the good). They are simply examples ofthings deemed to be good by different philosophers, by means of differ-ent schemes of reasoning;14 but why should we suppose that all suchthings can only be 'private' goods, as opposed to being acknowledgedas goods by everyone?

The discussion at this point is admittedly very compressed; Sextusmight have explained himself a good deal more fully. But if forced tojustify his elliptical remarks, he could answer along the following lines.(To what extent he had actually thought this through is impossible tosay; but at any rate, the following answer is available to him.) First of all,the only thing which could possibly be agreed to be a good by everyonewould be virtue. For this is the sole good recognized by the Stoics; otherthings, such as Sextus's examples pleasure and health, which are widelyregarded as goods both by philosophers and ordinary people, are rele-gated by the Stoics, as a result of their 'private' system of reasoning, tothe category of the indifferent. And perhaps there are some who willeven argue that virtue is not a good in which case nothing will beuniversally agreed to be a good. But second, even if it turns out that allagree that virtue is good, it is certainly not true that all will agree in theirparticular conceptions of what virtue is; each school, by means of itsidiosyncratic or 'private' scheme of reasoning, will in fact arrive at adifferent end product, even though all of them may call it by the samename 'virtue'. Virtue-as-conceived-by-the-Stoics, for example, is by nomeans the same as virtue-as-conceived-by-the-Epicureans. For onething, the Epicureans regard virtue as good only in an instrumentalsense, as productive of pleasure;15 for another, the Stoics have a far moreintellectualist conception of virtue than the Epicureans, or than manyother schools; the catalogue of differences could be extended. (Similarly

14 The fact that he is thinking in terms of these examples explains his use of the singularidion agathon in the phrase 'each will in turn introduce a private good' (idion palinhekastos eisegesetai agathon, 77). This may make it sound as if Sextus thinks eachschool only believes in one thing that is good (which may in turn tempt one to thinkthat he is speaking of the highest good). But his point is simply that, in designatingvirtue, pleasure and health respectively as goods, each of the three sample philoso-phers he has mentioned will be 'introducing a private good'; he is not denying thateach of them will adhere to other 'private goods' as well.

15 See A.A. Long & D.M. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), texts21 A,L,M,O,R



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though this is not required for the argumentpleasure-as-conceived-by-Epicurus is very different from pleasure-as-conceived-by-Aristotle,even though they both say that pleasure is good.) Hence there is, afterall, nothing whatever which is agreed to be good by all the schools (letalone by people in general); rather, it is quite true that, because eachschool uses its own 'private' system of reasoning, the things which aresupposed good as a result of this reasoning are only 'private' goods.16

It has taken some time to make sense of Sextus's main argument. Butit has emerged that we are able to do so, provided we are justified inattributing to Sextus the crucial assumption discussed above theassumption that nothing can be good, or beneficial, for a person unlessit is regarded as beneficial by that person. I have shown that evidencefrom closely related texts suggests that he accepts this assumption; I havealso shown how it fills a significant gap in Sextus's stated reasoning. Butthe assumption seems at first sight arbitrary and question-begging. I donot want to leave it aside before trying to understand why Sextus mayhave felt entitled to it.

The assumption is not in fact as outrageous as it may appear. First, itdoes not entail that whatever anyone regards as a benefit automaticallyis a benefit for that person (it is not a form of Protagoreanism). Beingregarded as a benefit, or as a harm, is a necessary condition for being abenefit, or a harm; there is never any suggestion that it might be asufficient condition. Second, Sextus is not required to deny that some-thing may be a benefit which is not regarded as such at the time whenit is received. For example, a session with the dentist may very well not

16 It might still be argued that Sextus's view, as I have analyzed it, is problematic, ontwo grounds. First, he does not even consider the possibility that one of thesesystems of reasoning might be judged superior to the others and by means ofreasoning itself. Though it is true that Sextus does not discuss this possibility(probably because he considers it an obvious non-starter), I think it is clear how hewould respond to it. He would ask what scheme of reasoning could be employedto make this judgement which was not itself 'a party to the dispute' (meros (esdiaphonias: for this phrase, see e.g., PHI 59,90). Second, some residual discomfortmay be felt with the term 'private good'. I have explained it as essentially equivalentto Object believed to be good by some limited group of people'; but the term 'privategood' does not sound as if it refers merely to something believed to be good. I returnto this point in section IV.




be experienced as beneficial at the time; but it may nonetheless be benefi-cial, and Sextus does not have to take issue with this common-senseconception. All he needs to deny is that one may receive a benefit, or aharm, without at any point even with hindsight, careful reflection orany other epistemological advantages recognizing it as a benefit, oras a harm; this is sufficient for his main argument to go through. Forgiven this assumption, the existence of intractable disagreement aboutwhat is good or beneficial that is, the absence of any item whicheveryone (even with hindsight, careful reflection, etc.) agrees in regard-ing as good shows that there is nothing whose goodness is 'commonto all'. And this, according to Sextus's conception of what it is forsomething to be good by nature, shows that nothing is good by nature.

Why does Sextus make the assumption on which I have been dwell-ing? To judge from his dismissive remarks about a 'non-evident' harm,it looks as if the notion of a wholly unexperienced benefit or harm simplyseems to him nonsensical. In taking this view, he is going against theclaim that, for example, folly is always and necessarily harmful, even iffools never realize this, and cheerfully maintain their foolish way of lifeuntil death at a ripe old age. It is not surprising that Sextus would beopposed to claims of this kind. For, he might say, in order to claim thatfools, even those who are to all appearances happy, would be bound tobe better off without their folly, one must take oneself to have a specialinsight into what is really good or bad for people, an insight whichsupersedes their own experience in these matters, and which is sup-ported by some kind of theoretical underpinning. In other words, onewould have to be a dogmatic philosopher. By contrast, Sextus might wellclaim that his own assumption is simple common sense; the idea thatone might receive benefits or harms which remain entirely unregisteredin one's experience is indeed not easy to swallow.17 (It is especially hardto swallow, of course, for one whose aim is ataraxia, which is preciselyan experienced condition; but one need not share the Pyrrhonist's goal inorder to sympathize with Sextus's attitude on this particular issue.) Hemight therefore suggest, as he does elsewhere, that he is 'fighting on the

17 As even Aristotle admits, in the course of his struggles with the question whetherone may be called happy, or whether one's level of happiness may alter, after oneis dead; see in particular EN 1100al3-14,1101a34-6. Aristotle does eventually acceptthis idea, but only in a very hesitant and qualified way (1101bl-9).



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side of everyday life' (toi bioi... sunagonizometha, PH 102), and againstthe theoretical constructions of the dogmatists. At any rate, his assump-tion is quite intelligibly related to his general sceptical outlook; it isperhaps unorthodox by comparison with other Greek philosophers, butthen most other Greek philosophers are dogmatists.18

So much for the explicit argument for the conclusion that nothing isby nature good or bad. Now, as was observed earlier, Sextus connectsthis conclusion with the notion that things may be described as good orbad only relatively speaking that is, in relation to some people but notothers, and in some circumstances but not others. These relativity claimsdo not appear until after the chapter called 'Whether there are Good and

18 The assumption is not, however, free from difficulties; consider the following cases.1) You are exposed to a certain poisonous gas, which immediately puts you into acoma and then kills you. Has the poison harmed you? 2) You are exposed, over aperiod of time, to a less virulent but still toxic substance; you feel sick, but you donot know what is causing this sickness. Has the toxic substance harmed you? 3) Isurreptitiously put money into your bank account at regular intervals. Since you donot read your bank statements, you do not realize that this is happening. Yourmaterial circumstances are thereby eased, but you do not recognize that this is thecase. Have I benefited you? In all three cases, it seems as if Sextus's assumptionforces him to answer counterintuitively in the negative. Now, the second case isperhaps the least troublesome; the toxic substance does here have an effect whichis experienced as harmful, and so Sextus can perhaps allow that the substance doesharm you, even though you are not aware of what it is that is harming you. In thethird case, too, it might be suggested that you do, in fact, experience the benefit and hence, by Sextus's assumption, it can after all qualify as a benefit simply inthe sense that your financial circumstances are less straitened than they would havebeen without my periodic deposits, and this difference affects your life for the better.However, Sextus cannot admit this without accepting what we have seen that hedenies, namely that folly may affect your life for the worse, even though you areentirely unaware of any harmful effects from it. So it seems that he would insteadhave to throw doubt on the idea that you are actually better off with my secrethand-outs than you would be without them (perhaps wealth is inherently corrupt-ing; or perhaps, if you were left to your own devices, you would work harder andeventually become much more wealthy). Similarly, in the first case, he would haveto question whether a painless and unwitting death should necessarily be consid-ered a harm. A good argument or at least, an argument fully consistent withsceptical principles might well be made in both these cases. But of course, otherdifficult cases might be adduced, and it is not clear that Sextus will be able tomaintain his consistency without at some point lapsing into excessive implausibil-ity. Hence the legitimacy of Sextus's assumption is at this stage an open question.




Bad by Nature', which is summed up with the remark 'We have suffi-ciently considered the fact that there is nothing by nature good or bad'(pen men oun tou meden einai phusei agathon te kai kakon autarkes eskep-sametha, 110). But they are clearly intended to be derivable from theconsiderations employed in that chapter, and the nature of this connec-tion deserves further scrutiny.

Following the sentence just quoted, Sextus proceeds to compare thelife prospects of people who believe that there are things which are bynature good or bad, and those of people who do not (llOff.). Near thebeginning of this discussion (114), he characterizes the three possiblepositions one might take. One might claim that whatever anyone thinksis good or bad is good or bad by nature; or one might claim that thereare at least some things which are by nature to be chosen or to beavoided. Or, thirdly, one might hold the position for which Sextushimself has argued in the previous chapter namely, the positionthat 'these things are in the relative category, and in relation to thisperson this thing is to be chosen or to be avoided, but in relation tothe nature of things it is neither to be chosen nor to be avoided, butat one time to be chosen and at another time to be avoided' (en toi prosti pas echein esti tauta, kai has men pros tonde tod'estin haireton e pheukton,hos de pros ten phusin ten tn pragmatn oute haireton estin oute pheukton,alia nuni men haireton nuni de pheukton). Sextus then argues briefly thatthe first position is simply unlivable, and the second position, whilecapable of being incorporated into a life, will lead to a highly disturbedlife (115-17). After this he restates the third position (118), and arguesthat it will produce the most trouble-free life. Specifically, one willachieve such a life 'if one says that any given thing is by nature nomore to be chosen than to be avoided nor any more to be avoided thanto be chosen, every event being relative and, in accordance withdiffering states of affairs and circumstances, turning out as at one timeto be chosen and at another time to be avoided' (ei de me mallon tislegoi ti phusei haireton e pheukton mede mallon pheukton e haireton, hekastoufn hupopiptontn pros ti pas echontos kai kata diapherontas kairous kaiperistaseis nuni men hairetou kathesttos nuni de pheuktou). It is only inthese two passages that the relativity claims are advanced; and Sextusseems to be regarding these claims as simply equivalent to, or as anamplification of, the conclusion that nothing is by nature either goodor bad.

There is no difficulty in understanding the claim, which appears inthe first of these two passages (114), that goodness and badness arerelative to persons. As we have seen, Sextus states at the outset that for



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something to be by nature good is for it to be good for everyone, not justfor some people; and the argument we examined earlier is designed toshow that nothing fits this description. But to say, as he does say in 114,that things are good only in relation to some individuals (but not inrelation to other individuals) is simply to say that they are not good inrelation to, or good for, everyone, and hence that they are not good bynature; the two points are simply alternative sides of the same coin. Whatis less clear is how the claim that goodness and badness are relative totimes, or to circumstances, which appears in both of the two passages(114, 118), is supposed to have been justified by any of the previousdiscussion. Sextus appears to be taking for granted that 1) if what is goodvaries from person to person (that is, the same thing may be good forsome people but not others), it also varies from situation to situation (thatis, the same thing may be good at one time but not at another, even forthe same person19). He also seems to be taking for granted that 2) beinggood only in some situations, and not in all, disqualifies something frombeing good by nature, just as being good only for some people, but notall, disqualifies something from being good by nature.

To make sense of 2), we must suppose that Sextus's conception ofwhat it is for something to be by nature good is slightly more restrictivethan he explicitly announces. His view must be that, for something to beby nature good, it has to be invariably and unqualifiedly good that is,good for everyone and in all circumstances. He never explicitly states thiscondition all he says is that, for something to be by nature good, itmust be good for everyonebut it is an easy extension of what he doessay. Moreover, this kind of conception of what it is for something to beby nature a certain way is not especially uncommon in the ancient world;I shall come back to this point in the next section. 1) is also perhapsunsurprising; but it too is without support in the text as it stands. For theargument for the conclusion that nothing is good by nature proceedssolely by demonstrating that nothing is good for all people; it relies on

19 Variability from person to person is of course one case of variability from situationto situation. However, it is clear from 118 that Sextus is also thinking of cases wherethe same thing may be at times good and at times bad for a single individual. Forhis point here is that one will be relieved from distress if one gives up thinking thatthe things which happen to oneself arc unequivocally either good or bad, and insteadadopts the view that the same type of thing may turn out either good or bad,depending on the circumstances.




the existence of disagreement about what is good,20 coupled with theassumption that, for something to be good for some person, it must beregarded as good by that person. At no point does Sextus attempt toestablish that nothing is invariably good for any single person in otherwords, that things are good, even for a single person, only in somecircumstances but not others; nor does this follow from anything whichhe does establish. Even if, as just suggested, he holds that 'X is by naturegood' entails both 'X is good for everyone' and 'X is good for any givenperson in all circumstances', it does not follow that a) 'nothing is bynature good' entails both b) 'nothing is good for everyone' and c)'nothing is good for any given person in all circumstances'. Sextus arguesfor b), and thereby establishes a); but neither a) nor b) allows him to inferc) he simply helps himself to c) without warrant. Of course, he mightmake up the deficiency relatively easily. That the goodness and badnessof things varies with circumstances is hardly a new thought in Greekphilosophy; in particular, arguments along these lines were common-place among the fifth-century Sophists, and Sextus could appeal to thattradition if pressed.21 But the fact remains that his train of thought in itspresent form is incomplete.

Ill

Now that we have examined M XTs central argument, we are in aposition to tackle the accusation that the book fails to present a coherentor viable scepticism. This charge has to do not with infelicities or lacunaein the details of Sextus's argumentof which, as has emerged, there areseveral but with his fundamental approach. The confusion whichSextus is alleged to have committed is a crude confusion between

20 It is sometimes suggested, in contemporary moral philosophy, that apparent dis-agreements about values can be reduced to, or explained away by reference to,differences in circumstances among the apparently conflicting parties. But there isno hint of this kind of strategy in Sextus; in fact, one could scarcely point to anythingof which Sextus is more certain than that disagreements, on values as on a greatmany other topics, are real and fundamental.

21 On the Sophists' interest in relativities of the kind discussed in this paragraph, seemy The Sophists and Relativism', Phronesis 34 (1989) 139-69, esp. section .



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dogmatism and absolutism. A dogmatist is one who makes pronounce-ments about the way things really are, and the sceptic's characteristicattitude is suspension of judgement about any such pronouncements.But M XI, the critic will say, fails to maintain this suspension of judge-ment. As we have seen, Sextus endorses the denial that anything is goodor bad by nature. This is a rejection of ethical absolutism that is, of thebelief that things can be designated as unqualifiedly good or bad; but itby no means suffices to absolve Sextus of dogmatism, for it is, precisely,a pronouncement about the way things really are. Again, he is willing todescribe things as good or bad in certain relative or qualified ways;despite the qualifications, this too seems to violate the sceptic's suspen-sion of judgement. Both the denial of absolutism and the assertion ofrelativity ought, it is claimed, to be anathema to a sceptic, and Sextusshould have avoided them. I shall take up these points one by one.

The critic is certainly right that the denial of absolutism is inconsis-tent with the scepticism described at the beginning of PH. For, as hasbeen clear since section I, Sextus does commit himself to the claim thatnothing is good or bad by nature. His answer to the question 'isanything good or bad by nature?' is not suspend judgement aboutthat question', but 'no'. Thus he cannot claim to be making no assertionswhatever about the real nature of things, as he does in PH; in particular,he cannot claim to be 'making no determinations about things that aregood or bad in respect of their nature' (aoristn pen tn pros ten phusinkaln e kakn, PH I 28). But it does not follow, from the fact that Sextusis not here suspending judgement in precisely the manner proposedin PH, that he is not suspending judgement in any meaningful sense.Given the assumptions examined in the previous section, the assertionthat nothing is good or bad by nature is fully consistent with thePyrrhonist rule that one should assent to no claims regarding 'non-evi-dent' matters (adela, PH I 197). As we saw, Sextus may best beinterpreted as holding 1) that, in order for something to qualify as bynature good or bad, it must be invariably good or bad good or badfor everyone without regard to circumstances and 2) that foranything to count as good or bad for a certain person, it must beregarded as, or experienced as, good or bad by that person. It followsfrom these two propositions that the non-existence of anything goodor bad by nature can be established without any troublesome commit-ments concerning the 'non-evident'. That nothing is universally re-garded as good or as bad is, at least in Sextus's view, a matter of plainexperience; it follows that there is nothing which is good or badinvariably, and hence that there is nothing which is good or bad by




nature. This result is not achieved by some dubious inductive inferencefrom the evident (enarges) to the non-evident (adelori), such as Sextuscriticizes the dogmatists for making (PH 95); the failure of anythingto measure up to the standards for being good or bad by nature issimply 'given', as we might now put it, within the realm of ordinaryexperience.

It is important to note that, in denying that anything is good or badby nature, XI commits itself to no definite positive assertions aboutthe nature of things. To deny that something is by nature good asSextus is here quite willing to do is not to assert that, by nature,that thing has some quality other than goodness; in particular, it is notto assert that the thing is by nature not-good. To repeat, somethingwhich is by nature good must be invariably good. But then for some-thing to qualify as by nature not-good, its lack of goodness would haveto be similarly invariable; and there is no reason to think that Sextuswould be prepared to agree that anything invariably fails to be good,any more than he agrees that anything invariably is good. (To recall,he says that, as far as goodness and badness is concerned, everythingis relative (118), being sometimes to be chosen and at other times tobe avoided; and in any case, the truth of universal statements of theform 'X is invariably not-good' unlike their counter-instances could not be simply given in experience). Similarly, when he deniesthat anything is by nature bad, he is not asserting that things by naturehave some feature other than badness. Given his conception of whatit is for something to be by nature F, 'X is not by nature F' entailsnothing whatever about the nature of X except that F-ness would notbelong in an objectively correct account of X's nature. To say, then,that nothing is by nature either good or bad is to block certain attemptsto specify the nature of things, but it is not to make an alternativeattempt at the same task. Nowhere does Sextus himself offer any kindof answer to the question 'What is the nature of things?'; if that questionwas posed to him, he could quite legitimately reply "The dogmatistsare the ones who think they know the answer to that question, not me;I suspend judgement'.

The suspension of judgement practised in XI is, then, less extremethan the kind normally associated with later Pyrrhonism; it does allowone to assert that certain claims about the nature of things are wrong,rather than forbidding one to take any definite stand on their validity.Thus far the critics of XI are correct. But this is not enough to showthat, when Sextus says here that he is suspending judgement, he iseither muddled or disingenuous. Suspension of judgement in XI



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consists in refusing to put forward any positive account of the natureof things, and in committing oneself to no claims concerning the'non-evident'. Someone who claims that certain things are by naturegood violates this suspension of judgement; someone who denies thatanything is by nature good does not, since no statements of the form'X is by nature F' follow from this denial, nor are any other commit-ments regarding the 'non-evident' entailed in making it. This is howSextus can say both that freedom from distress comes from suspensionof judgement (111) and that freedom from distress comes from thebelief that nothing is by nature good or bad (118).

What of Sextus's willingness to describe things as good or bad forcertain people (though not for all people), or in certain circumstances(though not in all circumstances)? To restrict oneself to such relativizedclaims, it may be said, is by no means to avoid commitment to theview that anything is really good or bad. 'Tylenol is good for peoplewith headaches' is a perfectly genuine assertion about what is reallythe case; the qualification 'for people with headaches' restricts the scopeof the assertion, but does not alter its status as an assertion about theway things are. Hence, even if Sextus can deny that anything is bynature good or bad, and maintain a legitimate form of suspension ofjudgement, he may still seem plainly inconsistent on another count.

But this depends on what it is for something to be really a certainway (for example, really good or bad). We have seen that, accordingto M XTs conception, for something to be F by nature is for it to beinvariably F. Its F-ness must not be limited to specific circumstances;nor can its F-ness be discernible only by certain people it mustinstead be 'common to all'. Thus anything which is (for example)good only for some people but not for others, or only in certainsituations and not in others, is thereby deemed not good by nature.But now, as we noted in passing in the previous section, Sextus takesthe question what things are like by nature as equivalent to the questionwhat things are really like. Throughout his main argument that thereis nothing good by nature, he shifts between the phrases 'good bynature', 'in truth good', 'really good', and simply 'good', assuming allfour to be interchangeable,22 and the same pattern is repeated else-

22 Phuseiagathon, M XI69,71,78, etc.; tais aletheiais agathon, M XI72,75; ontos agathon,M XI76; agathon, M XI76.




where.23 Hence what is not F by nature, according to the conceptionwe have examined, is also regarded as not really F. We may indeedrefer to things as F for certain people, or at a certain time to jogging,for example, as good for some people (but not good for everyone), orto the surf as good today; but such claims, simply because they arerelativized to people or to situations, do not count as claims about thereal character of the things in question. So in restricting himself torelativized claims of this type, Sextus is indeed suspending judgementabout the way things really are; given the above conception of whatit is for something really to possess a certain property, his use of relativequalifiers allows him to avoid any definite commitments about theproperties things possess in reality.

This conception of what is involved in things' really being a certain wayis no doubt substantially different from that which would normally occurto us. But it is not by any means unique to Sextus. The same sort ofconception may be attributed to the Stoics regarding the concepts ofgoodness and badness, at leastand also, as Sextus himself points out, toPlato.24 The Stoics argue that virtue is the only true good, and vice the onlything truly bad, precisely on the grounds that virtue and vice, and theyalone, are invariably beneficial and harmful respectively.25 And Plato, ina famous passage at the end of Republic Book V (476a-80a), argues thatthings in the sensible world no more are (for example) beautiful than theyare not beautiful, on the grounds that whatever we may under certainconditions call beautiful may equally well, under other conditions, becalled the opposite. For anything truly to be beautiful (or large, or heavy26),its beauty (or largeness, or heaviness) would have to belong to it withoutqualification. Nothing in the sensible world meets this standard; only the

23 See, e.g., M XI114, where tei phusei and toi onti are treated as parallel and synony-mous phrases; and M XI 79, 89, where ei esti ti agathon and oude ... ti estin agathonrespectively are treated as equivalent to eiesti ti phusei agathon and oude ...tiesti phuseiagathon.

24 For Sextus's reference to Plato on this topic, see M 11 70.

25 See sections 58, 60 of Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, especially 58A(=DL VII101-3), which contains the same analogy with heat employed by Sextus,and 60G (=Sextus, M XI22-6).

26 As is well known, it is not clear just how far, or in precisely what directions, Platomeans this list of predicates to be extended.



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Form of Beauty, and the other Forms, are whatever they are withoutqualification, and so only the Forms count as true beings.27 For Plato as forSextus, relativity or variability disqualifies a thing from being part ofreality in the full or strict sense. In addition and this is of more directrelevance for the history of scepticismit has recently been argued thata similar conception was adhered to by Aenesidemus.281 shall return tothis point in the final section.

But to cite precedents for Sextus's conception is not, of course, to showthat it is defensible; and scholars have insisted not only that Sextus'sconception is confused, but that it had already been shown to be confusedlong before Sextus's time. In support of the latter point, they haveadduced an argument by the third-century Epicurean Polystratus, to theeffect that relative qualities are no less real than non-relative qualities.29It is true, Polystratus says, that the same things are not, for example,invariably healthy; many things are healthy for some people but un-healthy for others. But this does not in the slightest suggest that thehealthy effects of such things, in the cases where they do have healthyeffects, are unreal. In fact, he continues, one might just as well argue thatthe intrinsic properties of a thing, which do not vary from case to case,are unreal; to use lack of variability as an argument for unreality wouldbe no more absurd than to use variability, as do the opponents Polystra-tus is imagining. In view of this sophisticated and considerably earlierargument, Sextus's continued reliance on the assumption that relativeproperties are somehow less real than intrinsic properties displays lam-entable philosophical naiveteor so it has been claimed. Although Sextusnever mentions Polystratus, and shows no evidence of knowing anythingabout him, a comparison between the two will be helpful, both forclarifying Sextus's conception and for evaluating it.

27 The end of Rep V is probably the dearest and most extended example of this line ofthought in Plato. Other examples are Pfoir247d-e, Symp211a-b, Ph 78d-e, Hipp Ma 289a-c.

28 By Paul Woodruff, 'Aporetic Pyrrhonism', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6(1988) 139-68, who also discusses the Platonic precedent at some length.

29 De Contemptu Inani, 21-8, part of which forms passage 7D in Long and Sedley, TheHellenistic Philosophers; for the full text (with Italian translation and commentary), seeGiovanni Indelli, Polistrato sul Disprezzo Irrazionaledelle Opinion! Popolari (Naples, 1978).My translations and quotations follow Indelli's text, which is in places conjectural. Fordiscussions of this book in the present context, see again the works died in notes 2 and 3.




Does Polystratus's argument show up Sextus as naive? This is by nomeans as obvious as is usually assumed. We do not know who was theoriginal target against which Polystratus's argument is directed.30 Butone thing is evident: Polystratus presumes his opponent to be claimingthat attributions of relative properties are all false. That is, the opponentis imagined as claiming that because, for example, a certain type of actioncan be deemed fine (kalori) only in certain circumstances, and not in allcircumstances, it would be false to assert that that type of action is fineeven in those circumstances in which the assertion would normally beconsidered appropriate.31 Such a position has absurd consequences, asPolystratus aptly demonstrates. However, Sextus does not make anysuch claim. He does not say that attributions of relative qualities are false;what he says is that relative qualities are not part of the nature of thethings in question. But Polystratus himself distinguishes between rela-tive qualities and those which belong to things by nature. In fact, hispoint is precisely that one should not condemn 'relative predicates' (tapros ti kategoroumena) for not behaving in the same way as 'those thingssaid in accordance with the object's own nature and not relatively' (toiskata ten idian phusin legomenois kai me pros ti); the two types of predicatesare fundamentally different, and each is perfectly admissible in its ownterms.32 So far there is no quarrel between the two positions.

There is, of course, a point at which Sextus's and Polystratus's posi-tions are incompatible namely, on the question what is to qualify astruly real. As we saw, Sextus counts only what belongs to a thing bynature as being truly real, and he counts only what belongs to a thinginvariably as belonging to it by nature. By contrast, if something can beconsidered (for example) good or bad only in a relative or qualified way,then the thing cannot be described as really being good or bad at all. Thisdoes not mean that it is wrong to speak of the thing as good or bad evenjust in certain circumstances; it means that, when one does so, one is notreferring to genuine features of reality. Polystratus's standard, on the

30 For various conjectures on this, see Indelli, Polistrato, Introduction, ch. 5; DavidSedley, review of Indelli, Classical Review, N.S. 33 (1983) 335-6; Long and Sedley, TheHellenistic Philosophers, vol. II, commentary on text 7D.

31 This example occurs at de Contemptu, 24; cf. 25,26,27 for other instances.

32 De Contemptu, 25; cf. 21



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other hand, is considerably more accommodating. For him, things whichare 'falsely believed in' (pseuds nomizomena) are contrasted with thingswhich 'truly exist' (aleths huparchei), or things which 'are' (eitwi), orthings which 'are in truth' (kat'aletheian en);33 thus anything which it iscorrect to Tjelieve in' truly exists, or is truly real and this encompassesboth relative qualities and qualities which belong to a thing by nature.Now, does either thinker have the better of this disagreement? I cannotsee that this is so. Given Sextus's conception of what it is for somethingto be truly real, it does not follow, from the fact that one may correctlyspeak of something as good for someone, on some occasion, that thegoodness of the thing in question is truly real; given Polystratus's con-ception, it does follow. Certainly Sextus's conception of reality is lessfamiliar to us than Polystratus's. However, as I suggested, it is not anunprecedented conception in the ancient world. And Polystratus makesno attempt to argue against this conception; from the point of view ofsomeone who adheres to it, Polystratus is simply begging the question.

One part of Polystratus's argument may seem to cut deeper, and tocreate a problem for Sextus. Towards the end of this argument, Polystra-tus says that variability is not confined to the class of relative properties;some non-relative things the examples given are medical remediesand actions have variable effects as well. It is obviously not true thatthe same medicines, or the same actions, are good for everyone; rather,'different ones benefit different people, not being all falsely believed [tohave these effects], but according to the difference in the nature andproperties of each'.34 That is, because the same types of medicines oractions do not benefit everyone, it does not follow that the belief that acertain type of medicine or action benefits a certain person (but not allother people) is false; rather, it is due to the nature of a given medicineor action, and to the nature of a given person, that the medicine or actioneither does or does not benefit the person. Now, the first part of this point that variability does not introduce falsehood is familiar and, as wehave seen, unproblematic for Sextus. But the second part introduces amore interesting issue. Polystratus is disputing the idea that the effects

33 De Contemptu 25,26

34 Allots alia [sumpherei is understood from the previous clause]', [o]u pse[u]do$ doxa-zomena panta, alia kata ten diaphoran kai tes phuseo[s] hekastou kai tn [s]umbebekotn de Contemptu, 27. (Letters in square brackets are reconstructed.)




of a thing which are due to its nature must be uniform and invariant.Sextus seems to hold that those features of a thing which are part of itsnature must manifest themselves in a way which is 'common to all';Polystratus seems to be employing a more subtle conception of a thing'snature. To return to an earlier example, both would agree that Tylenolis good for people with headaches and various other ailments, but notgood for everyone all the time. But, while Sextus will infer from this thatTylenol is not by nature beneficial (or by nature not-beneficial), and willnot say anything more about the nature of Tylenol, Polystratus will saythat Tylenol is by nature such as to benefit people with headaches, etc.,but not other people. For Polystratus, then, the variable effects of a thingmay themselves be accounted for by aspects of that thing's nature; andthis will no doubt strike us as a much less crude and a much moresensible conception than Sextus's.

Once again, though, it is by no means clear that Sextus is touched byPolystratus's polemic, and it is instructive to see why. Both thinkerswould agree that the natures of things are, in a certain sense, fixed. Thatis, whatever properties a thing possesses by nature, it must possess thoseproperties at all times (or at least, as long as it remains the type of thingthat it is); something which is in some circumstances F and in othercircumstances not-F cannot be by nature F. The difference between themis simply that Sextus's examples of actual or possible natural propertiesof things are all, in a broad sense, phenomenal properties; they are allproperties which are inherently such as to affect us in some way or other a thing's being warming or chilling, beneficial or harmful, desirableor the reverse. Now, with properties of this type, it is of course true thattheir effects on us must be uniform and invariant if they are to beconsidered properties which belong to things by nature. If it is part of athing's nature to be good that is, beneficial then its goodness is'fixed', in the sense just explained; hence it must benefit us invariably.35Polystratus does not deny this; he never suggests that something can beby nature good without being in all circumstances beneficial. However,Polystratus is prepared to speculate about properties of things beyondthose which figure in our experience; and it is this which makes itpossible for him to talk of things being by nature such as to affectdifferent people differently. It is something about Tylenol's nature not

35 That is, in all circumstances in which the thing is in a position to affect us at all.



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any phenomenal property, but something about its underlying nature which makes it beneficial in some circumstances but not in others; sincehe is an Epicurean, Polystratus would presumably say that this 'some-thing' is Tylenol's atomic structure. This atomic structure is certainly'fixed', and the natural effects of Tylenol are all due to its atomic struc-ture. But these effects may differ depending on the physiology of theperson it is interacting with.

The reason why Sextus does not engage in explanations of this kindshould be obvious enough. It is not because he is in principle opposedto the abstract claim that the natural features of a thing may sometimeshave varying effects. Rather, it is because alleged natural features of thiskind can only be conceived as part of some 'non-evident' or underlyingreality; a property which is 'fixed', but which nonetheless affects us invarying ways, must be a property which is specifiable quite inde-pendently of any effects it may have on us. As a sceptic, Sextus will avoidall conjectures about such 'non-evident' properties of things (as we saw,this is no less true of M XI than of PH, despite some differences in theirrespective conceptions of suspension of judgement); and he will pickholes in any account, such as Polystratus might offer about the nature ofTylenol, which does appeal to the underlying structures of things. Sextusand Polystratus do not, therefore, differ fundamentally on what it is fora property to be part of something's nature; they merely differ in theadventurousness of their hypotheses about what, in particular, the na-ture of things might be. If, on the particular point just discussed,Polystratus's account seems to us the more congenial of the two, that isnot because of some embarrassing mistake or inadequacy in Sextus'saccount; it is simply because, unlike Sextus, we are confident that wehave a large body of knowledge about the underlying structures ofthings, and are accustomed to explanations of a thing's effects, variableor otherwise, in terms of its underlying structure. In other words, it isbecause we are not sceptics. It is fair to say that, in the ancient context,such confidence was far less obviously justified.36 However, it is not partof my program here to undertake a defense of the sceptical attitude itself.

36 Another case raising issues similar to those discussed in the last few paragraphs isthe inconclusive and very lengthy debate between the Rationalists and the Empiri-cists in medicine; on the history of this debate, see Michael Frede, 'Philosophy andMedicine in Antiquity' and "The Ancient Empiricists', both in Frede's Essays in




IV

We cannot, then, easily convict Sextus of naivete or confusion. His argu-ment may be flawed in some of its specifics; but his approach is notglobally problematic. Given the conception of reality with which he isoperating, his willingness to talk of the relative properties of a thing, andhis claim that to talk of relative properties is not to talk about the natureof reality, both appear quite defensible. Nonetheless, there may still bea reluctance to believe that this position is compatible with any properlysceptical suspension of judgement. For relativism and scepticism areusually seen as incompatible with one another;37 it may therefore seemthat, by countenancing talk about relativities, Sextus must be abandon-ing any legitimate claim to be sceptic.

But the matter is not so simple. It is true that the position generallyknown as relativism nowadays is incompatible with sceptical suspen-sion of judgement. To suspend judgement about the real nature of thingsis to assume that there is (or at least, that there may be) a real nature tothings, independent of our representations of them, but that we are notin a position to determine their real nature. Relativism, on the other hand,dispenses with the very concept of 'the way things are independently ofour representations of them'. Instead, it claims that we can talk of theway things are only as viewed from some perspective, or in some concep-tual framework; and it claims that statements about the way things are,made from some perspective, are statements about the real nature ofthings, in the only sense we can attach to that idea.38 But relativism, sounderstood, is not the position Sextus is offering here. Sextus does notdispense with the concept of a thing's real nature, independent of anyperspective. On the contrary, he regularly makes use of the concept of athing's underlying, intrinsic nature; he simply does not accept any of theattempted specifications of the underlying nature of things. And as we

Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1987). For Sextus's own involvement in this debate,see in particular the second of these two essays, which defends the view that Sextus,true to his name, was an Empiricist despite PH1236-41, which seems to suggesta preference for Methodism.

37 See, e.g., Annas and Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism, esp. 97-8.38 For further discussion of this, see my "The Sophists and Relativism', section I.



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saw, the relative statements which he allows are statements of the form'X is good for one person but not for another', or 'X is bad in somecircumstances but not in others'. Making such statements is perfectlycompatible with accepting the concept of a perspective-free reality;relativity to persons or to circumstances is not at all the same as relativityto a perspective or a conceptual framework. Yet, as became clear in theprevious section, relative statements of the kind which Sextus allows inM XI are not themselves statements about reality at least, not if onegrants Sextus his conception of reality; so they are not incompatible withsceptical suspension of judgement.39

It is true mat these relative statements are not merely claims aboutappearances; Sextus is quite willing to use esti, rather than phainetai, instatements of the form 'X is good for A' or 'X is good at time f'.40 But thisdoes not negate the previous point; for M XI does not require that thesceptic should restrict himself to claims about appearances. We are accus-tomed from PH to thinking of 'following the appearances' as a centerpieceof Pyrrhonian scepticism;41 but in this respect as in others, M XI does notconform to the expected pattern. The relative claims permitted by M XIqualify as sceptical despite going beyond the realm of appearances. On theM XI conception, that which is really the case and that which only appearsto be the case are not exhaustive categories. M XI never says that scepticsconfine themselves to appearance-statements;42 what it does say is that

39 It is true, however, that Sextus also seems to accept such relative statements atcertain places in PH, which does not share M XTs conception of reality, or M XTsconception of suspension of judgement. Annas and Barnes (see note 37) are right toobject that this is inconsistent. On the other hand, the inconsistency may tell ussomething about the history of scepticism; it should not simply be dismissed as anaberration. I say a little more about this, with reference to PH , in section V below.

40 M XI114; cf. 118, kathest tos.

41 See, e.g., PH 115,17,19-20,22 191,196,208.42 M XI17-20 does say that 'are' can sometimes mean 'appear'. But the point is made

in a highly specific context. Sextus has been discussing the basic division on whichall ethical thinkers are more or less agreed, the division of things into good, bad andindifferent (3-17). He wants to accept this traditional classification that is, to usethese categories as an organizing principle for discussionbut without conveyingthe impression that he actually believes that there are any items which are, in theirreal nature, good, bad or indifferent. It is as a way of making this point that thespecial use of 'are' to mean 'appear' gets introduced. Sextus says, 'When we say




sceptics avoid statements claiming to specify the true nature of things, andthe permitted relative statements are fully consistent with this. Sextus hereregards the relative rather than the apparent as the key to living well. Butthis does not mean that he is violating his scepticism either because itcommits him to a relativism which is inconsistent with that scepticism, orfor any other reason.

It will be objected that Sextus's references to a person's 'private good'do not allow him to be exonerated so quickly. To recall, a 'private good'is a good generated by way of some 'private' system of reasoning. Sextusseems to admit that there are such things as 'private goods', as opposedto goods by nature; and he has sometimes been taken to be recommend-ing that our own 'private good' is what we each should pursue.43 Thismay look very much closer to the modem form of relativism which Ihave agreed is incompatible with scepticism; for 'private goods' mayseem to be, precisely, goods which are relative to a certain perspectiveor scheme of thinking.

But the references to 'private goods' are a red herring. They occuronly in one passage (M XI 77-8), and it is never suggested that 'privategoods' are what the sceptic will rely on. A 'private good' is simply whatis thought by the members of some philosophical school to be good,as a result of some 'private' scheme of reasoning pursued by thatschool. Sextus's point in this passage is that none of the goods believed

sceptically (hotan legomen skeptikos) "Of the things that are, some are good, some arebad, and some are between these", we insert the "are" not as indicative of realitybut of appearance' (19). That is, he may refer to the standard categories by saying'some things are good, some things are bad and some things are indifferenf. Butsince he is 'speaking sceptically', this is not to be understood as making any claimabout the real nature of anything; he is simply acknowledging that things strike usas belonging to one of these three categories, and proposing to conduct his exami-nation of ethics on this basis. This passage does not, then, indicate (as suggested byMcPherran, 'Pyrrhonism's Arguments against Value', 135) that whenever, at anyplace in the book, Sextus uses the word 'are', he should be taken to mean 'appear';the point is restricted to his claim about the fundamental ethical division. It issometimes suggested that PH I 135 gives us blanket permission to substitute'appear' for 'are'. I am not sure if that is true (entuutha risper kai en allots need notmean liere as everywhere else'); but in any case, PH I is not M XI.

43 This is explicit in Annas and Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism, 164, and implied byAnnas, 'Doing without Objective Values', 9, and McPherran, 'Pyrrhonism's Argu-ments against Value', 132.



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in by the various schools are anything other than 'private'. They are'private' in the sense that they are believed to be good only by theparticular schools which have proposed them, as a result of thoseschools' own particular systems of reasoning; other schools have otherschemes of reasoning, and hence other supposed goods.44 And, accord-ing to the assumptions which we examined earlier, this shows thatnone of them can qualify as goods by nature. They are not goods bynature because they are not 'common to all'; they are not 'common toall' because they are not regarded as good by all. The entire argumentfrom 69-78 is focused on the question whether any of the things whichappear good to, or are supposed good by, any particular person arereal goods, or goods by nature;45 the term 'private good' is simply onemore name for these apparent or supposed goods specifically, forthose things supposed good by some philosophical school, employinga mode of ethical reasoning not shared by the other schools.

Why, then, does Sextus use the term 'private good' at all? If I amright that 'private goods' are simply a species of apparent goods, theterm seems highly misleading; 'private good' sounds as if it refers,rather, to a good which is genuine, though in some way restricted. ButSextus's usage makes good sense in the context in which it is employed.As we have seen, his argument proceeds on the assumption that therecan be no genuine goods which are merely 'private'; and the term'private good' is an oxymoron, coined precisely to emphasize this point.The possibility being considered is that one might be able to distinguishreal goods, or goods by nature, from merely apparent goods "by reason'(logi, 77). Sextus says that if that is so, then, since each set of thinkersreasons in their own 'private' way, 'each will in turn introduce a privategood' (idion palin hekastos eisegesetai agathon, 7T).4* That is, since the

44 On the legitimacy of this inference, see section , note 16 and immediately precedingtext.

45 The phrases used are 'that which appears good to someone' (to tini phainomenonagathon, 74, 75) and 'that which is supposed good by someone' (to hupo tinosdoxazomenon agathon, 72, cf. 75). See also M XI89 (recalling the argument at 69-78),where Sextus says that each of the parties to a dispute about the good 'thinks goodthat which appears so to himself' (hekaston to phainomenon auti agathon hegeisthai).

46 On the use of the singular idion agathon, rather than, as one might expect, the pluralidia agatha, see again note 14.




various schools all use reason to derive their views of what is good,each of them will be able to put forward as really good whatever itdeems good as a result of such reasoning; anything which is reasonedto be good will count as a genuine good. But since each school'sreasoning is 'private' to that school, the items which thus pass forgenuine goods will all be 'private' as well. And in this case, of course,the suggestion that reason can discern what is really good is contra-dicted; for a 'private good', an item which only some particular schoolconceives of as good, is automatically not a genuine good as Sextusimmediately goes on to say. The reification suggested by the phrase'private good' is, then, a piece of irony on Sextus's part. If we were togrant the supposition that reason can discern what is really good, thethings argued to be goods by the various schools would be real goods yet goods which would be 'private' to the schools in question. Thispurported state of affairs is inherently contradictory; and it is to playup this point that Sextus introduces the oxymoronic term 'privategood'. 'Private goods', then, are simply apparent goods which aremistakenly deemed to be real goods by their adherents namely, thevarious philosophical schools. They do not belong in some problematicvariety of relativism; nor do they play any role in Sextus's view ofwhat the sceptic should concern himself with.

I do not pretend to have covered M XI exhaustively.47 Nor do I claimthat its argument is entirely free from difficulties. But I have saidenough, I believe, to show that the position which Sextus offers in MXI is not fundamentally confused, and that it is not a mistake to regardthis position as sceptical. So what is the answer to the question posedin my title? If I am right, Sextus's position here is not scepticism ofprecisely the form which he presents at the beginning of PH I, the textwhich is usually taken to be definitive of later Pyrrhonism. But he does

47 For one thing, I have said nothing whatever about the chapters on the 'art of living'(168-256), whose subject-matter is quite separate from the topics discussed here.



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in a genuine sense suspend judgement about the way things really are.His position, then, can quite reasonably be considered a form ofscepticism, in the ancient understanding of that term even thoughit is not the most familiar form. And it is a form of scepticism whichmakes legitimate use of arguments concerning relativities eventhough, as we have just seen, it is not relativism, as that term is usuallyunderstood in contemporary philosophy. Several ancient authors whoare not themselves sceptics claim that the Pyrrhonians 'say that every-thing is relative'.48 Whatever may be the case with Sextus's other works,or the lost works of other Pyrrhonians, M XI shows that this charac-terization is not wholly deluded.49

It does not seem to have been noticed that some passages of PH IEconform to the position presented in M XI. Though it is M XI whic

bett, richard -- sextus's against the ethicists- scepticism, relativism or both

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