Abstract
The orthodox position regarding how ancient Skepticism first arrived in the Reinassance and later into Modernity has been dominated by the work of Charles B. Schmitt and Richard Popkin. They jointly defended what I call here “the Popkin/Schmitt thesis”: the transmission of skeptical ideas and arguments took place via a threefold cord made up of Cicero’s Academica, Sextus Empiricus’s Opera and Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Eminent Philosophers; in which the first two are dominant over the last one. This paper is intended to challenge this historical hypothesis through a twofold movement: on the one hand, I will argue that, from a historical perspective, unlike Cicero’s Academica and Sextus’s Opera, Diogenes’s Lives was one of the primary sources of ancient philosophy since the Middle Ages. I will also argue that, given its particular compositional features, Diogenes’s Lives transcended the philosophical context, influencing other branches of science like history and literature, through which Diogenes’s characterization of Skepticism became commonplace in the Western world. Furthermore, and from a philosophical perspective, I will argue that Diogenes’s version of Pyrrhonian Skepticism has some explanatory advantages that provide us with a more comprehensive image of it, one that is not centered on epistemological topics as in Sextus’s version. Both elements allow us to understand why Diogenes’s Lives has, by its own right, a central place among the Holy Trinity of texts responsible for the transmission of ancient Skepticism into Modernity.
For the past few years I have had the good fortune to count professor John Christian Laursen as a close interlocutor. I am even more fortunate to count him as a friend. Laursen revised an earlier version of this text, and his comments contributed substantially to the improvement of the ideas presented here. My understanding of modern skepticism is indebted to his work.
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Notes
- 1.
Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism. From Savonarola to Bayle, Revised and Expanded Edition, Oxford, 2003, Oxford University Press.
- 2.
Charles B. Schmitt, “The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticisms in Modern Times,” in: M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, Berkley and Los Angeles, 1983, UC Press, pp. 225–251. Originally published in Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, 27 (1972), pp. 363–384. Here I am following Burnyeat’s edition.
- 3.
Cfr. Philelphi Epistolae, f.14v, lib. XVII f.121v, (1441), collected in Remigio Sabbadini (ed.), Le Scoperte dei Codici Latini e Greci nei secoli XIV e XV, Firenze, 1905, G.C. Sansoni, vol. 1. Also H. Mutschmann, “Der Überlieferung der Schriften des Sextus Empiricus,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 64 (1909), p. 250.
- 4.
Luciano Floridi, “The Diffusion of Sextus Empiricus’s Works in the Renaissance,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 56 (1995), pp. 63–85; and Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism, Oxford, 2002, Oxford University Press.
- 5.
Here I am following Emmanuel Naya, “Renaissance Pyrrhonism: A Relative Phenomenon,” in G. Paganini and J. Maia Neto (eds.), Renaissance Scepticisms, Dordrecht, 2009, Springer, p. 18.
- 6.
“Montaigne’s genial ‘Apologie’ became the coup of grâce to an entire intellectual world. It was also to be the womb of modern thought, in that it led to the attempt either to refute the new Pyrrhonism or to find a way of living with it. Thus, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Montaigne was seen not as a transitional figure, or a man off the main roads of thought, but as the founder of an important intellectual movement that continued to plague philosophers in their quest of certainty” (Popkin, op. cit., p. 56).
- 7.
Naya , op. cit., p. 16, holds that in his exaltation of Montaigne, Popkin is following P. Villey (Les Sources et l’évolution des Essais de Montaigne, 1908) and H. Busson (Les Sources et le développement du rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (1533–1601), 1920), who in turn echoes Pierre Bayle.
- 8.
“The number of writings produced by skeptical school must have been quite substantial, though the only primary sources still extant are the compendia of Sextus Empiricus, who seems to have been an accurate compiler, but to have contributed nothing original to the movement itself” (Schmitt: op. cit., p. 226).
- 9.
“Sextus Empiricus was an obscure and unoriginal Hellenistic writer” (Popkin, op. cit., p. 12). However, in the revised and expanded edition (2003) Popkin (p. 18) recognizes the possibility of some originality in Sextus’s work, given the evidence adduced by Richard Bett, Pyrrho, His Antecedents and His Legacy, Oxford, 2000, Oxford University Press.
- 10.
For opposing views that explore the relevance of skepticism in the Middle Ages, see: Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism, Leiden/Boston, 2010, Brill.
- 11.
The locus classicus is G.W. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, vol. 1, Edited and translated by Robert Brown and Peter Hodgson, Oxford, 1995, Oxford University Press, Introduction, p. 67–8.
- 12.
Cfr. A. Gercke, “Die Überlieferung des Diogenes Laerios,” Hermes Einzleschriften, 37 (1902), pp. 401–34; G. Donzelli, “Per un’edizione critica di Diogene Laerzio: i codici VUDGS,” BollClass, 8 (1960), pp. 93–132; M. Gigante, “Biografia e dossografia in Diogene Laerzio”, Elenchos, 7 (1986), pp. 7–102; D. Knoepfler, La Vie de Ménédème d’Érétrie de Diogène Laërce. Contribution à l’histoire et à la critique du texte des Vies des philosophes, Basel, 1991, Verlag, 214 pp.; among many others.
- 13.
Tiziano Dorandi, Laertiana: Capitoli sulla tradizione manoscrita e sulla storia del testo delle Vite dei filosofi di Diogene Laerzio, Berlin and New York, 2009, Walter de Gruyter. Also, Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Edited with Introduction by Tiziano Dorandi, Cambridge, 2013, Cambridge University Press.
- 14.
Knoepfler (1991: 154) holds that this manuscript was brought to Italy from Byzantium by Guarino Veronese (between c. 1370 and 1460) and that from it came the copy that Traversari worked with for his Latin translation.
- 15.
Dorandi , Laertiana, (pp. 185–94) also reports an older (incomplete) Latin translation attributed to Henricus Aristippus (d. 1162). There is only some reference to it in Burley’s (1274 to mid-fourteenth-century) the Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum and in Geremia da Montagnone’s (1255–1321) Compendium moralium notabilium. However, Dorandi holds that Burley’s work is a copy of Aristippus’s translation, which is why he suggests calling it as having been written by Pseudo-Burley.
- 16.
This crisis had been raised to a political and religious level during the Second Palaiologan Civil War (1341–1347), which cast doubts on the model of Roman Imperial institutions and also on the Greek city-state (cfr. Methochites, Semeioseis and Miscellanea, 8 and 93), as well as by the Hesychast Controversy, in which a skeptical defense of the Orthodox Church from Barlaam monk’s “westernizing” critics took place (cfr. A. Louth, Denys the Areopagite, New York, 2002, Continuum, p. 120).
- 17.
The oldest preserved copy of Diogenes’s Greek manuscript is dated 28th July 925, and it reproduces some fragments of book III “Life of Plato.” Schmitt also affirmed that the Latin word “scepticus” was introduced for the first time by Traversari’s Latin translation of Lives (1433).
- 18.
Rita Copeland, “Behind the Lives of Philosophers. Reading Diogenes Laertius in Western Middle Ages,” Interfaces, 3 (2016), p. 257.
- 19.
The influence of the Laertian biographical model on historical methodology was so great that even the great German historian Jakob Brücker wrote an essay on Pyrrho (1761), De Pyrrhone a Scepticismi universales macula absolvendo, and he also followed the Laertian model in his great work Historia Critica (1766–7). However, in his Institutiones historiae philosophicae (p. 31–38), he criticized this very same model because it had produced only historiae philosophiae instead of historiae philosophicae.
- 20.
Cfr. F. Rodriguez-Adrados, Greek Wisdom Literature and the Middle Ages. The Lost Greek Models and their Arabic and Castilian Translations, Bern, (2009), Peter Lang, (chap. IV).
- 21.
Cfr. Naya, op. cit., p. 22. fn 21.
- 22.
Exploring the ancient catalogs of the main Italian libraries in the fifteenth-centrury, Gian Mario Cao (“The Prehistory of Modern Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus in Fifteenth-Century Italy”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 2001, 64: pp. 229–280) showed that Sextus’s manuscripts were a “rarity” exclusive to two main intellectual Italian institutions (Medici and Vatican libraries), but were absent from most of the public and private Italian collections, even from collections belonging to religious institutions all over Italy.
- 23.
Dorandi (Diogenes Laertius. Life of Eminent… p. 11) holds that despite being corrupted, the Prague manuscript (fifteenth century) was the basis of the Frobeniana edition of Lives (1533), one of the best known in Europe.
- 24.
Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. III, trans. by G. Highet, Oxford, 1944, p. 330, fn 2.
- 25.
Cfr. J. Mejer, “Diogenes Laertius and his Hellenistic Background,” Hermes Einzleschriften, 40 (1978), p. 1. And also, Richard, Rorty, “The historiography of philosophy: four genres,” in R. Rorty, J. Schneewind and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History, Cambridge, 1984, Cambridge University Press, p. 62.
- 26.
See on this topic James Warren, “Diogenes Laërtius, biographer of philosophy,” in J. König and T. Whitmarsh (eds.), Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, Cambridge, 2007. Cambridge University Press, pp. 133–149.
- 27.
But there are also hairetic works by Eratosthenes, Philodemus, and Panaetius.
- 28.
Diogenes’s Lives is also the main source of Pierre Hadot’s La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (Paris, (2001), Le Livre de Poche), in which Hadot holds that the distinctive mark of ancient philosophy is the perfect harmony between doctrines and a particular way of life, which is why the case of Pyrrho is one of his main pieces of evidence. However, in my “El lugar de la Bíos escéptica: contra la interpretación rústica del pirronismo” (forthcoming), I argue against Hadot’s thesis.
- 29.
The paradigmatic work in this tradition is Sotion’s Successions of Philosophers (early second-century BCE), one of Diogenes’s primary sources.
- 30.
Cfr. Lorenzo Corti, “Mind and Language of the Laërtian Pyrrhonism: Diog. Laert. 9.74–77,“in K. Vogt (ed.), Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, Tübingen, 2015, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 123–145.
- 31.
Cfr. Andrea, Lozano-Vásquez, “The Pyrrhonian Language” (forthcoming).
- 32.
Hermann Diels, Doxographi Graeci, Berlin, (1879), Weidmann. For an excellent discussion on the relevance of doxography in ancient philosophy, see: Gábor Betegh, “The transmission of ancient wisdom: Texts, doxographies, libraries,” in L. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, 2010, Cambridge University Press, pp. 25–38.
- 33.
Cfr. Katja, Vogt (ed.), Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, Tübingen, 2015, Mohr Siebeck.
- 34.
On the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus see: Philo, de ebrietate 169–205; Aristocles ap. Eusebius, Prep. Evan. 14.18.11–12; Sextus Empiricus, HP: 1.36–163. On the Five Modes of Agrippa see: HP, 1.164–177 and HP. 2.18–79.
- 35.
In this direction, Katja Vogt (“Introduction: Skepticism and Metaphysics in Diogenes Laertius”, in: K, Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes…, p. 3–4) affirms that those scholars who focus on Sextus’s presentation of Pyrrhonism tend to empathize an “epistemic” version of Pyrrhonism over a “Metaphysically Inclined Pyrrhonism.” Where the latter “designate the ideas of early skeptics who seem to have arrived at conclusions about reality, human thought, language, and action”, and the former “can be described entirely in epistemic terms –terms that refer to activities and attitudes such as being puzzled or disturbed, examining premises and arguments, and eventually suspending judgment.” Here I maintain that Popkin (but also Schmitt) privileged the “epistemic” version of Pyrrhonism.
- 36.
David, Sedley, “Diogenes Laertius on the the Pyrrhonist Modes,” in K. Vogt (ed.), Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, Tübingen, 2015, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 171–185.
- 37.
As I already noted above, Diogenes’s presentation of Pyrrhonism sheds light on the fact that the early Pyrrhonians (such as Pyrrho and Timon) were more interested in establishing a “way of life” than in doctrinal inclinations, which can be used as evidence in favor of a “rustic” interpretation of early Pyrrhonism. On this topic, see my “El lugar de la Bíos escéptica…” (forthcoming).
- 38.
Cfr. J. Palmer, “Skeptical Investigation,” Ancient Philosophy, 20 (2000), pp. 351–375; and also, David Sedley, “The motivation of Greek Skepticism,” in: M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, Berkley and Los Angeles, pp. 225–251. For a criticism of this kind of defense of the “rustic” interpretation of Pyrrhonism, see my “Sképsis escéptica: contra la intepretación rústica del pirronismo sexteano”, in: J. Ornelas (Ed.), Rústicos vs. Urbanos: Disputas en torno a la interpretación del escepticismo pirrónico, México: UNAM-IIF, 2020.
- 39.
Roberto, Polito, “Was Skepticism a Philosophy? Reception, Self-definition, Internal conflicts,” Classical Philology, 102.4 (2007), pp. 333–362.
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Ornelas, J. (2021). The Missing End of the Threefold Cord in the Transmission of Ancient Skepticism into Modernity: The Lives by Diogenes Laertius. In: Rosaleny, V.R., Smith, P.J. (eds) Sceptical Doubt and Disbelief in Modern European Thought. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 233. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55362-3_17
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