A new and accurate translation of an important work of ancient Greek scepticism.

Sextus Empiricus: Against Those in the Disciplines (Pros Mathematikous, also known by the abbreviated title M 1-6) deals with six specialized fields of study: grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music. In sceptical fashion, it questions the credentials of those who claim to have expert knowledge in these fields. It is the least well known of Sextus Empiricus' works, mainly because its subject-matter is not directly philosophical; some of its arguments require knowledge of these fields as they existed in the ancient world, which philosophers (Sextus' main readership) tend not to have. But it is a good specimen of Sextus' usual sceptical method of inducing suspension of judgement about the topics under consideration, and it contains much that is of philosophical interest. This volume aims to bring this work to a wider philosophical audience and to make the technicalities of the fields discussed understandable to non-specialists. It contains a translation of the work into clear modern English, accompanied by extensive explanatory notes. For ease of comprehension, the text is broken down into named sections and subsections, and these are also listed separately before the translation (the Outline of Argument). An introduction discusses the place of Against Those in the Disciplines in the totality of Sextus' work, and examines certain features that are distinctive to it. Other aids to the reader are a list of persons referred to in the work, with brief information about each; an English-Greek and Greek-English glossary of key terms; and a list of passages in other works of Sextus that are parallel to passages in this work.

This volume offers a comprehensive survey of the main periods, schools, and individual proponents of scepticism in the ancient Greek and Roman world. The contributors examine the major developments chronologically and historically, ranging from the early antecedents of scepticism to the Pyrrhonist tradition. They address the central philosophical and interpretive problems surrounding the sceptics' ideas on subjects including belief, action, and ethics. Finally, they explore the effects which these forms of scepticism had beyond the ancient period, and the ways in which ancient scepticism differs from scepticism as it has been understood since Descartes. The volume will serve as an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the subject for non-specialists, while also offering considerable depth and detail for more advanced readers.

"Judicious in every respect: selection, translation and structuring of the texts, footnotes, bibliography, and index. . . . The book of choice for undergraduate courses." --Edward M. Galligan, University of North Carolina

In this unjustly neglected and misunderstood work Sextus sets out a distinctive Sceptic position in ethics. He discusses the concepts good and bad, and puts forward the sceptical argument that nothing is either good or bad by nature or intrinsically or invariably, but only relatively to persons and/or to circumstances. He then argues that the sceptic is better off than the non-sceptic. In the latter part of the book, Sextus attacks the Stoic view that there is such a thing as a 'skill for life'.

Throughout history philosophers have sought to define, understand, and delineate concepts important to human well-being. One such concept is "knowledge." Many philosophers believed that absolute, certain knowledge, is possible—that the physical world and ideas formulated about it could be given solid foundation unaffected by the varieties of mere opinion.Sextus Empiricus stands as an example of the "skeptic" school of thought whose members believed that knowledge was either unattainable or, if a genuine possibility, the conditions necessary to achieve it were next to impossible to satisfy. In other words, in the absence of complete knowledge, one must make do with the information provided by an imperfect world and conveyed to the mind through sense impressions that can often deceive us. Throughout his life Sextus Empiricus entered into intellectual combat with those who confidently claimed to possess indubitable knowledge. For skeptics, the best one can hope to achieve is a reasonable suspension of judgment—remaining ever mindful that claims to knowledge require careful scrutiny, thoughtful analysis, and critical review if we are to prevent ourselves and others from plunging headlong into mistaken notions.

Outlines of Scepticism, by the Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus, is a work of major importance for the history of Greek philosophy. It is the fullest extant account of ancient scepticism, and it is also one of our most copious sources of information about the other Hellenistic philosophies. Its first part contains an elaborate exposition of the Pyrrhonian variety of scepticism; its second and third parts are critical and destructive, arguing against 'dogmatism' in logic, epistemology, science and ethics - an approach that revolutionized the study of philosophy when Sextus' works were rediscovered and published in the sixteenth century. This volume presents the accurate and readable translation which was first published in 1994, together with a substantial new historical and philosophical introduction by Jonathan Barnes.

Explores what it was like to argue and to live as a practitioner of Pyrrhonist skepticism.

This volume offers the first bilingual edition of a major text in the history of epistemology, Diogenes Laertius's report on Pyrrho and Timon in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Leading experts contribute a philosophical introduction, translation, commentary, and scholarly essays on the nature of Diogenes's report as well as core questions in recent research on skepticism.

This book-length treatment provides a unified account of what is distinctive in the ancient approach to the self-refutation argument.