Pyrrhonian Relativism

DIEGO E. MACHUCA

Durham

Conferencia; Seminar Department of Classics and Ancient History; 2009

Durham University

This paper proposes to show both that the Pyrrhonism expounded in (most of) Sextus Empiricus’ extant writings can be regarded as a form of relativism, and that this relativist stance is markedly different from the positions which are typically referred to by the term ‘relativism’. The distinctiveness of Pyrrhonian relativism is the result of the agnosticism that characterizes Sextan skepticism and that differentiates it from the more usual types of both modern and contemporary skepticism. Indeed, the universal suspension of judgment about matters of objective fact that makes the Sextan Pyrrhonist restrict his discourse to the realm of his own phainomena is the reason his relativism makes no assertion whatsoever about how things really are. The few specialists that have explored the relativistic elements found in Sextus’ account of Pyrrhonism have not carried out an exhaustive and systematic analysis of all the relevant texts. In addition, most of them have not considered Pyrrhonism to be a kind of relativism, probably because when we employ the term ‘relativism’ we hardly have in mind the kind of attitude adopted by the Pyrrhonist. Finally, those interpreters who have affirmed that Pyrrhonism amounts to a relativist stance mistakenly ascribe to the Pyrrhonist a position which is Dogmatic.