Ancient philosophy produced many approaches to achieving the good life, but none was more counterintuitive than Pyrrhonism. While Stoics counseled acceptance of fate and Epicureans pursued measured pleasure, the Pyrrhonists proposed something radical: stop believing anything at all. Not as despair, but as liberation.

Our primary source for understanding this tradition is Sextus Empiricus, a physician-philosopher writing around 200 CE. His Outlines of Pyrrhonism preserves not merely historical curiosity but a sophisticated philosophical method. The Pyrrhonists developed systematic techniques for undermining dogmatic certainty—techniques that continue to challenge our assumptions about knowledge and happiness.

What makes Pyrrhonism distinct from modern skepticism is its practical orientation. Contemporary skeptics often question whether we can know the external world exists. Ancient Pyrrhonists had no interest in such puzzles. Their skepticism was therapeutic, aimed at a specific human problem: the anxiety that comes from dogmatic commitment to beliefs we cannot adequately justify.

The central technique of Pyrrhonism is epochē—suspension of judgment. This is not mere indecision or intellectual laziness. It emerges from a disciplined method Sextus calls the equipollence of opposing arguments. For any claim that dogmatic philosophers advance, the Pyrrhonist produces equally compelling considerations on the opposite side.

Consider the question of whether honey is really sweet. The dogmatist says yes—sweetness belongs to honey's nature. But the Pyrrhonist observes that honey tastes bitter to those with jaundice. What grounds do we have for privileging one perception over another? Both perceivers are equally human, equally in contact with the honey. To declare one perception accurate and another distorted requires a criterion—but any proposed criterion faces the same problem of justification.

Sextus compiled extensive lists of such opposing considerations, organized into what he called modes or tropoi. The Ten Modes attributed to Aenesidemus systematically generate disagreement by appealing to differences among animals, among humans, among sense organs, in circumstances, in positions, in mixtures, in quantities, in relations, in frequency, and in customs. Each mode provides templates for opposing any dogmatic claim.

The result is not permanent confusion but intellectual equipoise. When arguments on both sides carry equal weight, the natural response is neither to affirm nor deny. The mind settles into suspension, like a scale with balanced loads. This suspension is not forced or artificial—it follows naturally from honestly confronting the limits of our justifications.

Takeaway

When you find yourself firmly convinced of something, try generating the strongest possible case for the opposite view. Not to change your mind necessarily, but to test whether your certainty is warranted or merely comfortable.

A natural objection arises: how can skeptics live without beliefs? If they suspend judgment about everything, won't they stand paralyzed, unable to eat, walk, or avoid cliffs? This objection, which Sextus calls the apraxia (inaction) objection, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of Pyrrhonist practice.

Sextus distinguishes carefully between appearances and beliefs. When honey appears sweet to me, I report my experience—this is an appearance, a passive affection I cannot choose. When I claim honey is sweet by nature, independently of how it appears to any perceiver, I make a dogmatic assertion about hidden reality. The Pyrrhonist accepts appearances while suspending judgment about the underlying nature of things.

This distinction allows normal life to proceed. The skeptic eats when hungry (hunger being an appearance), follows local customs (which appear to be laws), practices arts and crafts (guided by how things appear to work), and avoids what appears harmful. Sextus describes four guides for skeptical living: nature's guidance (like hunger and thirst), necessity of feelings, tradition of laws and customs, and instruction in arts.

What the skeptic avoids is the additional step of theorizing that appearances reveal how things truly are. The honey appears sweet—this much is undeniable. But the philosophical claim that sweetness belongs to honey's real nature, that sweetness isn't merely how honey affects certain organisms under certain conditions—this is the dogmatic addition the Pyrrhonist refuses.

Takeaway

Notice the difference between reporting your experience ('this seems wrong to me') and making metaphysical claims ('this is objectively wrong'). The first describes your condition; the second claims knowledge of reality's structure.

The ultimate aim of Pyrrhonism is ataraxia—tranquility or freedom from disturbance. This goal it shares with Stoics and Epicureans. But the Pyrrhonists claimed their rivals' methods were self-defeating. Dogmatic philosophers, by committing to specific beliefs about what is good and evil by nature, guarantee their own anxiety.

Sextus illustrates with a famous image. The person who believes some things are good by nature and others evil will be disturbed twice over: when they lack what they consider good, they suffer from wanting it; when they possess it, they suffer from fearing its loss. The skeptic, believing nothing good or evil by nature, experiences neither craving nor fear regarding such things.

This does not mean skeptics feel nothing. They experience what Sextus calls moderate affections—ordinary hunger, thirst, cold. What they escape are the intensified sufferings that come from beliefs. The hungry dogmatist thinks: 'I lack a genuine good; my nature is being thwarted; this should not be happening.' Each thought amplifies suffering. The hungry skeptic simply feels hunger and seeks food.

Sextus records that tranquility followed suspension of judgment as if by chance—like a shadow following a body. The Pyrrhonists did not begin by seeking peace through suspended judgment. They began investigating which beliefs were true, encountered equipollence, suspended judgment, and discovered unexpected calm. The path to tranquility was indirect, stumbled upon rather than engineered.

Takeaway

Much of our suffering comes not from circumstances themselves but from beliefs about what those circumstances mean. The gap between 'this is happening' and 'this shouldn't be happening' is where anxiety lives.

Pyrrhonism offers a radical alternative to our usual assumptions about knowledge and happiness. We tend to think that more certainty means more security, that firm beliefs provide stable foundations for living. The Pyrrhonists reversed this equation: they proposed that our grasping after certainty generates the very anxiety we hoped belief would cure.

This does not mean Pyrrhonism is correct—the Pyrrhonists themselves would never claim such a thing. But engaging seriously with their arguments reveals how much we take for granted about the relationship between knowledge and wellbeing.

Perhaps the deepest Pyrrhonist insight is that intellectual humility might be therapeutic, not just epistemically honest. When we loosen our grip on certainties we cannot adequately justify, we may find not paralysis but peace.