Hi Dennis,

I know Sextus from my intro Philosophy. His thinking is, frankly, hogwash. It takes some kind of idiot to devote his intellect to the suspension of using it. To be fair, though, he seems to have sincerely desired something like perfection in the sense of happiness.

Self-evident is never pre-evident. I can't know what is evident or manifest before it becomes evident or manifest. Thus, what blue is, for example, is not evident to me until I see it. Those born blind will never know blue - certainly not as evident or manifest. The self-evident, however, the blind man knows because he has reason.

Sceptics always labour on the fact of self-evidence and typically use it against the senses or what is merely (in contrast) known as evident or manifest. Of course, reason knows itself better (so to speak) than that which presents things to the intellect for consideration or judgment. Exactly because the senses make for the opportunity of the exercise of the intellect - but are not themselves ultimately it - the sceptic will attack the senses on the grounds that, effectively, it is not reason itself. Only mind is self-evident for us but our human minds require something, so to speak, to think about; and that is delivered to us by our senses.

Sextus, therefore, has everything backwards. It is perfectly true that - absolutely speaking - God is manifest. It is not true, however, that for us His being manifest is reducible to the merely manifest (as opposed to self-evident) - which is, when seen in that light, of course almost (if not actually) totally ridiculous. It is true to say that in a sense (namely the intellectual one) God is self-evident. But because we must assume the self-evident whenever we think or argue for/against something, it does not follow that the self-evident is false. On the contrary, we literally cannot even in principle deny or doubt whatever is really self-evident because we can never effectively deny or doubt ourselves or our own thought; for even in the process we necessarily assume and in a sense prove the contrary.

The self-evident in man is vouchsafed exactly by the manifest. It is the manifest that causes the human intellect to act, after all. This is also why in part it is simply wrong to deny our senses. As Englishmen (or at least speakers), our mother's tongue already condemns us for denying our senses (which is the grounds for accusing someone who, having sense obviously, is accused of being senseless). Hence skepticism always attacks the senses and will end up conflating the two (i.e. sense and reason or the the manifest/evident and the self-evident). Thus, the self-evident seems like an assumption.

Last edited by Timocrates (2/20/2016 4:34 am)

iwpoe wrote:

That is somewhat unfair to Sextus (though it may of may not be fair to other kinds of "sceptics"). The point of ἀταραξία seems to be the suspension of the one-sided and partial judgement of φαντασία: it's not that he's generally declaring that, in fact, this or that position is ultimately untrue, but that by way of conflicting appearances it seems impossible to ever render final judgement on any position- or something like that. The doctrine seems to me to be- if it's proper to state it as a dogma like this, and I don't think it is -that all theoretical judgement ends up being a kind of assertion over and against the appearance of things, which is not ultimately turning to the world and seeing it for what it is. Remember the ancient sceptics are ultimately the descendents of the Platonic academy. The core point of the academy was to turn to and find one's place in the hierarchy of the forms (and cosmos and etc) as they manifest, and the classic sceptic might add 'not as they're, say, doctrinally derived in one school or another.'

But again I'm slant-wise cribbing off Hegel (and also Michael Frede, Gail Fine, Casey Perin, and probably somewhere vaguely Lloyd Gerson) here. This is not a universal view of Sextus, and many do read him just as you do.

Interesting you posted this. I had left my browser open overnight and reviewing the post thought the same thing myself - that it was probably too harsh on Sextus. You also can't ignore the context Sextus was working in; but I did try to credit him with a sincere desire to find some truth or peace or happiness in some sense. To be sure, there was much debate even amongst dogmatic philosophers and their schools that might have contributed to Sextus's skepticism. I just don't think the suspension of judgment could do that even if only selectively applied to certain things; that it was a dead end and effectively a giving up on philosophy rather than a pursuit of wisdom. Further, Aristotle had already given arguments that redeemed - at least to an extent - the senses. Sextus was somehow either unaware of these, was given false versions of them, didn't grasp their force or was guilty of a prejudice. It's not clear to me either how he could have ignored Plato's theory of the Forms about which we could have knowledge - and that scientific knowledge (not mere opinion) - even if this world is in a state of constant flux.