Skepticism will naturally impress many people who are not very philosophical. People see the differences between different factions and the sharpness of their arguments, so they come to the conclusion that all of us pretend to have knowledge that is actually impossible to obtain. Skepticism is a comfort to lazy people, because it proves that ignorant people are as smart as famous scholars. For those who ask for the gospel in quality, it may seem unsatisfactory; But like every theory in the Hellenistic period, it became a drug to relieve anxiety and was very popular in itself. Why worry about the future? The future is completely unpredictable. You might as well enjoy the present; Everything in the future is uncertain. For these reasons, skepticism has achieved considerable success among ordinary people.
It should be pointed out that skepticism, as a philosophy, is not only doubt, but also arbitrary doubt. The scientist said, "I thought so, but I'm not sure." The curious person said, "I don't know what it looks like, but I hope I can figure it out." Philosophical skeptics say, "no one knows, and no one will ever know." It is this dogmatism that makes the skepticism system weak. Skeptics certainly deny that they arbitrarily affirm the impossibility of knowledge, but their denial is not convincing.
However, Timon, a disciple of Pyrrho, put forward a rational argument, which is difficult to answer from the standpoint of Greek logic. The only logic recognized by the Greeks is deductive logic, and all deduction, like Euclid, must start from the universal principle that is recognized as self-evident. But Timon denied that it was possible to find such a principle. So everything has to be proved by something else; So all arguments are either circular or endless chains bound in nothingness. Neither of these situations proves anything. We can see that this argument has cut into the root of Aristotle's philosophy that ruled the whole Middle Ages.
Some forms of skepticism advocated by people who are not completely skeptical today have never appeared to ancient skeptics. They don't doubt phenomena, and they don't doubt those propositions that they think only represent our direct understanding of phenomena. Most of Timon's works have been lost, but his existing two sentences can illustrate this point. In a word: "phenomena are always effective." Another sentence is: "honey is sweet, I am never sure;" Honey looks sweet, I totally admit it. "(1) a modern skeptic will point out that the phenomenon is just a kind of appearance, it is neither effective nor invalid; Valid or invalid must be a statement; But no statement can be so closely related to the phenomenon that it can't be false. In the same way, he will also say that "honey looks sweet" is only a high probability, not absolutely reliable. In some respects, Timon's theory is very similar to Hume's. He thinks that we can't effectively infer things that have never been observed, such as atoms; When two phenomena are repeatedly observed by us, we can infer another phenomenon from one phenomenon.
Timon lived in Athens in the last years of his long life and died in Athens in 235 BC. With his death, the school in Pyrrho came to an end as a school; But his theory-strange to say-was somewhat reformed, but it was accepted by the academy representing Plato's tradition.
The man who caused this amazing philosophical revolution was Asilous, a contemporary of Timon, who died of old age around 240 BC. What most people accept from Plato is the belief in the rational world of extrasensory, and that the immortal soul is better than the perishable body. But Plato is multifaceted, and in some ways it can also be regarded as preaching skepticism. Socrates in Plato's works claimed to know nothing; Naturally, we always take this sentence as irony, but we can also take it seriously. Many dialogues have not come to any definite conclusion, the purpose of which is to make readers in a state of doubt. Some dialogues, such as the second half of parmenides, seem to have no other purpose except to point out that both sides of any problem can give equally credible reasons. Plato's dialectics can be regarded as an end rather than a means; If handled in this way, it will itself become the most admirable defense of skepticism. This seems to be the way Arcelor explained Plato. He thinks he is still following Plato. He cut off Plato's head, but the trunk he kept was real anyway.
If the young people who study with him can not be paralyzed by it, Asilous's teaching method will have a lot to commend. He doesn't advocate any argument, but he will refute any argument put forward by students. Sometimes he will put forward two contradictory propositions to illustrate how to convincingly demonstrate either of them. A student with enough rebellious courage can learn wit and avoid fallacies; But in fact, no one seems to have learned anything except cleverness and indifference to truth. Acesilaus's influence is so great that the whole academic community has been skeptical for about 200 years.
An interesting thing happened in the middle of this doubt. In BC 156, there were three philosophers in Athens' diplomatic mission to Rome, one of whom was Kahn Yade, who deserved to succeed Asilios as the dean of the college. He saw no reason to think that his dignity as an envoy would hinder his great opportunity, so he began to talk about studying in Rome. At that time, young people were eager to imitate Greek customs and learn Greek culture, so they flocked to listen to his lectures. His first speech was to develop Aristotle and Plato's view of justice, which was completely constructive. However, his second speech was to refute everything he said the first time, not to establish the opposite conclusion, but only to prove that every conclusion was unreliable. Plato's Socrates believes that it is a greater sin for criminals to cause injustice to others than to endure injustice. In his second speech, carn Yard treated this statement with great contempt. He pointed out that great powers became powerful because of their unjust aggression against small and weak neighbors; This is hard to deny in Rome. When the boat breaks through the water, you can sacrifice other weak people to save your life; If you don't do this, you are a fool. He seems to think that "save women and children first" is not a motto that can lead to personal salvation. What should I do if I am defeated in front of the victorious enemy and find an injured comrade riding a horse and lose it? If you are rational, you will knock him down and take his horse, no matter what justice is. Surprisingly, all this is not a constructive argument from a nominal Plato follower, but it seems to make Roman youth with modern ideas very happy. But this makes a person very unhappy, and that person is old Cato; Old Cato represented a strict, rigid, stupid and rude moral code, and it was this moral code that the Romans defeated Carthage. Old Cato lived a simple life since childhood. He got out of bed early in the morning, did strict physical labor, only ate coarse grains, and never wore clothes worth more than 100 cents. He is loyal to his country and rejects all bribery and corruption. He strictly required other Romans to have all the virtues he practiced, and insisted that accusing and exposing bad people was the best thing an upright man could do. He strongly advocated the serious fashion of ancient Rome: "Cato drove a man named Manili uz out of the Senate. This man had a good chance of being appointed consul next year, just because he kissed his wife too passionately in front of his daughter during the day; When Cato condemned him for doing so, he told him that his own wife had never kissed him unless it thundered. " ①
When Cato was in power, luxury and banquets were forbidden. He hoped that his wife would breastfeed not only her own children, but also his slave's children, so that the slave's children could love his own children after feeding them with the same milk. When his slaves were too old to work, he sold them without mercy. He insisted that his slaves should always work or sleep. He encouraged his slaves to quarrel with each other, because "he couldn't stand slaves becoming good friends". If a slave makes a serious mistake, he will call all the other slaves and induce them to curse the man who made the mistake. Then he personally executed him in front of other slaves.
The contrast between Katu and Kanyade is really comprehensive: one is that morality is too harsh and traditional, which leads to rudeness, and the other is that morality is too unrestrained, which is too contaminated with the social degeneration of the Hellenistic world, which leads to meanness.
"Malcus Cato didn't like it from the beginning-when young people began to learn Greek, so that Greek became more and more important in Rome-fearing that young people in Rome who were eager to learn knowledge and debate would completely forget the glory of honor and force. ..... So one day in the Senate, he publicly criticized these envoys for staying here too long and not doing things quickly: considering that these envoys are cunning people, it is easy to convince others to believe them. If there are no other considerations, this alone is enough to convince the Senate to make a decision on the envoys, let them return to China to teach, teach their Greek children, and leave them alone in Rome; Let the children in Rome learn to obey the law and the Senate as before. He said this to the Senate, not because he had any personal hatred or malice against Kahn Yade (as some people suspected), but because he always hated philosophy. " ①
In Cato's eyes, the Athenians are inferior people without laws; So it doesn't matter if it is corroded by the shallow sophistry of intellectuals; But Roman youth must be Puritans, imperialists, heartless and ignorant. However, he did not succeed; Later Romans not only retained many shortcomings of Cato, but also accepted many shortcomings of Kanyade. After Kahn Yade (about BC 180- 1 10), the next dean of the college was a Carthaginian. His real name is Hasdrubal, but when dealing with Greeks, he likes to call himself Cledomako. Unlike Kahn Yade, who was confined to lectures, Cledor Kyle wrote more than 400 books, some of which were written in Phoenician. His principles seem to be the same as carn Yard's. In some ways, they are useful. Both skeptics are opposed to the increasingly popular divination, witchcraft and astrology. They also developed a constructive theory about the degree of probability; Although we can never have reason to feel reliable, some things seem more realistic than others. Possibility should be the guide of our practice, because it is reasonable to act according to the most probable hypothesis. This view is also recognized by most modern philosophers. Unfortunately, the book that played this view has been lost; It is difficult for us to reconstruct this theory based on some existing clues.
After Clayton MacKay, the college was no longer skeptical. Since Antioch (who died in 69 BC), its theory has actually become similar to the Stoicism for centuries. However, the suspicion has not been forged. People are printed with generals and emperors, and things are printed with honor, wisdom, happiness and wealth; Northos (if we know a little) may have had skeptics as early as 2000 years ago. They tried to please dissolute courtiers by questioning the divinity of the animal goddess. The age of hypoxia cannot be determined. He abandoned the possibility theory advocated by Kahn Yade and returned to the original form of skepticism. His influence is considerable; He was followed by Lucian, a poet in the second century A.D., and Sektor Empiri Kush, the only ancient skeptical philosopher whose works were handed down to later generations. For example, there is a short essay "Argument against Belief in God", which was translated into English by Edwin Bevan in his book "Late Greek Religion" on pages 52-56. According to him, it may have been extracted from Yade in carn by Sexto Empiri Kush according to Claidomarco's dictation.
At the beginning of this paper, it is explained that the skeptic's behavior is orthodox: "We skeptics follow the practice of the world in practice and have no opinion about it. We talk about God as if they exist. We respect God and say that they carry out their own destiny. But when we said this, we did not express our beliefs, thus avoiding the recklessness of dogmatists. "
Then he thinks that people have different views on the nature of God. For example, some people think he has a body, while others think he has no body. As we have no experience with him, we can't know his attributes. The existence of God is not self-evident, so it needs to be proved. At the same time, he has a puzzling argument that such a proof is impossible. Secondly, he talked about the problem of sin and concluded: "Those who positively affirm the existence of God cannot avoid falling into a kind of ungodliness. Because if they say that God rules everything, then they regard him as the creator of evil things; On the other hand, if they say that God rules only certain things or nothing; Then, they will have to make God narrow or weak, which is obviously a complete ungodly. "
Although skepticism continued to impress some educated individuals until the third century BC, it went against the character of the times, and it was increasingly turning to dogmatic religion and salvation theory. Sceptics are powerful enough to make educated people dissatisfied with the national religion, but they can't provide anything positive (even in the field of pure knowledge) to replace it. Since the Renaissance, theological skepticism (as far as most of its supporters are concerned) has been replaced by ardent belief in science, but there was no such substitute for doubt in ancient times. The ancient world failed to answer the skeptics' arguments, so it avoided them. The Olympic God was no longer believed by people, and the path of the invasion of eastern religions was cleared, so eastern religions began to win the support of superstitious people until the victory of Christianity.