Pyrrhon of Elis

Philosopher

Born: c. 360 b. c.e.; Elis, Greece

Died: c. 272 b. c.e.; Buried in village of Petra, near Elis, Greece Also known as: Pyrrho Category: Philosophy

Life Pyrrhon of Elis (PIHR-ahn of EE-lihs), like Socrates, wrote nothing, and so information on his life must be gleaned from later sources. The founder of Greek skepticism, he may have been influenced by Indian ascetics he encountered during Alexander the Great’s eastern campaigns. For Pyrrhon, the senses were unreliable and people’s beliefs neither true nor false. He recommended the simple life, free of beliefs, with a goal of mental and emotional tranquillity (ataraxia). The skeptic should remain neutral with respect to things that cannot be known for certain and should avoid fruitless discussion about them. Pyrrhon made his daily life a demonstration of his skeptical detachment and is said, for instance, to have displayed a legendary sangfroid during a storm at sea. Much of the biographical information recorded about him by Diogenes Laertius is, however, of dubious veracity.

Influence Pyrrhon’s response to the problem of knowledge marks the beginning of Greek skepticism. It was the object of attacks by early Christian writers such as Gregory of Nazianzus but then lay dormant until the publication of a Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus’s Pyrrdneidn Hypo-typoseon (c. second century c. e., also known as Pyrrhoniarum hypo-typoses; Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1591) in France in 1562. From that time, skepticism has strongly influenced the Western philosophical and intellectual tradition.

Further Reading

Bett, Richard. Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by R. D.

Hicks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Hankinson, R. J. The Sceptics. London: Routledge, 1995.

Popkin, R. H. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, ed. Pyrrhonian Skepticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Unger, P. Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1975.

David H. J. Larmour

See also: Philosophy.