When Pyrrho of Elis returned from Alexander's campaigns in India around 324 BCE, he brought back more than memories of distant lands. Ancient sources suggest his encounters with Indian philosophers—the gymnosophists or 'naked wise men'—profoundly shaped his philosophical outlook. Whether direct transmission occurred remains debated, but the structural parallels between Greek Pyrrhonism and Indian Madhyamaka Buddhism pose questions that comparative philosophy cannot ignore.

Both traditions developed sophisticated argumentative arsenals designed not to establish truths but to systematically dismantle the pretensions of those who claimed certain knowledge. Sextus Empiricus in the second century CE and Nāgārjuna perhaps a century earlier deployed remarkably similar logical strategies across vast cultural distances. They attacked not this or that doctrine, but the very possibility of doctrinal certainty.

Yet these were not merely destructive enterprises. Both traditions insisted their skeptical practice served therapeutic ends—the Greek pursuit of ataraxia (tranquility) and the Buddhist path toward nirvāṇa (liberation). Understanding how two independent philosophical cultures arrived at comparable diagnoses of human intellectual pathology, and comparable prescriptions for its cure, illuminates something fundamental about the limits and possibilities of philosophical inquiry itself.

The Pyrrhonian skeptic's primary weapon was isostheneia—equipollence, the practice of setting opposing arguments of equal weight against each other. Sextus Empiricus catalogued elaborate modes for achieving this balance, showing how for any claim about the nature of things, an equally persuasive counter-claim could be constructed. The result was epochē, suspension of judgment. Not denial, not affirmation, but a disciplined withholding of assent that the Pyrrhonists claimed naturally produced mental tranquility.

Nāgārjuna's catuṣkoṭi—the tetralemma or fourfold negation—operates on structurally similar principles with characteristically Indian logical elaboration. Rather than merely opposing thesis to antithesis, Nāgārjuna systematically negates four logical possibilities: that something exists, that it does not exist, that it both exists and does not exist, and that it neither exists nor does not exist. This fourfold exhaustion leaves no conceptual ground on which to stand.

Consider how both approaches treat causation. Sextus argues that causes cannot be apprehended because the effect must either exist simultaneously with its cause (in which case the causal relation is unintelligible) or exist after its cause (in which case the cause acts on what does not yet exist). Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā opens with a parallel assault: effects cannot arise from themselves, from others, from both, or from neither. Both philosophers arrive at suspension regarding causation through exhaustive logical analysis.

The target in both cases is svabhāva in Sanskrit or phusis in Greek—intrinsic nature, the notion that things possess determinate essences independent of relations and perspectives. Pyrrhonists attacked the Stoic and Epicurean confidence in grasping such natures through katalepsis (cognitive apprehension). Madhyamikas attacked the Ābhidharmika Buddhist claim that ultimate analysis reveals dharmas possessing intrinsic characteristics. Both insisted that rigorous examination dissolves apparent essences into webs of relations.

The structural parallel extends to their treatment of their own positions. Sextus famously compared skeptical arguments to a ladder kicked away after climbing, or a purgative that eliminates itself along with what it purges. Nāgārjuna similarly declared that he holds no thesis—śūnyatā (emptiness) itself is empty, and grasping at emptiness as a view constitutes the worst error. Both traditions recognized that consistent skepticism must reflexively undermine its own claims to authority.

Takeaway

When confronting any philosophical position that claims certainty, the comparative skeptic asks: can arguments of equal force be constructed for the negation? If so, suspension rather than commitment may be the intellectually honest response.

Modern readers often mistake ancient skepticism for a purely intellectual exercise—clever argumentation without existential stakes. Both Pyrrhonism and Madhyamaka vigorously rejected this characterization. Their skeptical practice was fundamentally soteriological, aimed at liberating practitioners from suffering caused by attachment to views. The parallel is not accidental but reflects a shared diagnosis of human cognitive pathology.

Sextus recounts that the skeptic originally sought truth but, finding only irresolvable disagreement, stumbled upon an unexpected discovery: suspension of judgment brought the tranquility he had been seeking. The famous analogy is Apelles the painter who, frustrated in his attempts to depict a horse's foam, threw his sponge at the canvas in desperation—and accidentally achieved the effect he sought. Ataraxia comes not from possessing truth but from releasing the anxious grip that grasping after certainty produces.

Nāgārjuna's therapeutic framework is explicitly Buddhist, aimed at the cessation of duḥkha (suffering) through the elimination of kleśas (afflictions). But the mechanism bears striking resemblance to Pyrrhonian therapy. Attachment to views—dṛṣṭi—perpetuates the cycle of craving and aversion that constitutes saṃsāra. Emptiness teaching does not replace false views with true ones but undermines the very activity of view-grasping. Liberation arrives through cognitive release, not cognitive acquisition.

Both traditions distinguished their position from negative dogmatism—the confident assertion that nothing can be known. Academic skeptics like Carneades, who affirmed the impossibility of knowledge, remained dogmatists in Pyrrhonian eyes. Similarly, nihilistic interpretations of śūnyatā that assert the non-existence of things fall into the very error Nāgārjuna combats. The therapeutic effect depends on a middle way between affirmation and denial, a stance that is neither grasping nor rejecting but simply released.

This therapeutic orientation explains why both traditions developed elaborate practices beyond mere argumentation. Pyrrhonists cultivated a way of life characterized by following appearances without commitment—living according to nature, custom, and practical necessity while internally maintaining suspension. Buddhist practitioners cultivated meditation techniques that experientially revealed the constructed nature of apparently solid phenomena. In both cases, intellectual analysis served embodied transformation, not merely academic victory.

Takeaway

The suffering caused by intellectual positions stems not from their content but from the grasping that accompanies them. Liberation comes through releasing the need for certainty, not through finding the right answer.

Critics ancient and modern have posed the apraxia objection: if skeptics genuinely suspend judgment about everything, how can they act at all? Action seems to require belief—that fire burns, that food nourishes, that this path leads home. Pyrrhonists and Madhyamikas developed sophisticated responses to this challenge that reveal deep reflection on the relationship between theoretical commitment and practical engagement.

Sextus distinguished between dogma—theoretical belief about non-evident matters—and pathos—passive affection or appearance. The skeptic does not believe that honey is sweet by nature but cannot help experiencing sweetness when tasting honey. This experiencing of appearances provides sufficient guidance for action without theoretical commitment. The skeptic eats when hungry not because he believes in the nutritive properties of food but because hunger-appearance moves him and food-appearance presents itself.

Nāgārjuna's solution involves the crucial distinction between paramārtha-satya (ultimate truth) and saṃvṛti-satya (conventional truth). At the ultimate level, all phenomena lack intrinsic existence. At the conventional level, cause and effect, agent and action, operate effectively. The skilled Madhyamika navigates both levels, acting appropriately within conventional structures while recognizing their ultimate emptiness. This is not hypocrisy but wisdom—understanding that conventions function precisely because they lack ultimate grounding.

Both traditions thus articulate what we might call a non-foundationalist practical stance. The Pyrrhonist follows nature, custom, instruction in crafts, and natural drives without claiming these provide access to how things really are. The Madhyamika engages compassionately with suffering beings according to conventional understanding while recognizing that ultimately there are no beings to save and no suffering to eliminate. Practice continues; only the metaphysical anxiety drops away.

This resolution carries significant implications for how we understand the relationship between philosophy and life. Neither tradition reduces philosophy to armchair theorizing disconnected from existence. Yet neither makes theoretical correctness prerequisite for practical competence. The cobbler need not solve the mind-body problem to make shoes. Perhaps the philosopher need not solve it either—and may flourish precisely by recognizing its insolubility. Ancient skepticism thus offers not nihilism but a different mode of inhabiting our conceptual limitations.

Takeaway

Practical wisdom operates at a different level than theoretical certainty. We can act skillfully within conventions while recognizing their constructed nature—indeed, releasing metaphysical anxiety may enhance rather than impair practical engagement.

The parallels between Pyrrhonian skepticism and Madhyamaka Buddhism are too systematic to dismiss as coincidence, yet too embedded in distinct cultural soils to attribute to simple borrowing. What they reveal is that rigorous philosophical reflection, pushed far enough, may naturally encounter certain recurring structures—the exhaustion of logical possibilities, the therapeutic recoil from dogmatic anxiety, the discovery that life continues even when foundations dissolve.

These traditions do not merely share conclusions but methodological temperaments: a willingness to turn critical tools against their wielders, a suspicion of the consolations of certainty, a conviction that intellectual honesty sometimes requires the courage to suspend judgment rather than the comfort of false resolution.

For contemporary philosophy, often caught between scientistic confidence and postmodern rejection, these ancient skepticisms offer a third path. Neither asserting nor denying, neither grasping nor pushing away, they model a mature relationship with our inescapable conceptual finitude—and suggest that such maturity might itself be a form of wisdom.