For my first post I will be talking about the Greek skeptic:
Pyrrho. It is probably no surprise to my group mates that this would be one of
my topics, but that is beside the point. Pyrrho is credited with being the
first skeptic. Skepticism is the philosophical belief that knowledge can never
be certain. That is to say, we cannot know anything with certainty. My favorite
way of describing this way of thinking is by holding out a pen and asking the
person I am talking to what will happen if I drop the pen. The person will then
almost certainly reply that the pen will fall. When they answer, I ask them how
they know that, to which they reply they have seen it happen before. This is
when I explain that they have not seen this exact pen drop at this exact
moment, so you cannot know what it will do. It might float to the ceiling, or
stay still in the air. All we can do is draw upon our previous experiences and
make educated guesses as to what will happen. That, in essence, is skepticism.
I do not know why I am as drawn to Pyrrho as I am. It might
be because I find his personal philosophy completely absurd, yet at the same
time completely fascinating. Pyrrho is the man who doubts everything, including
if he could actually die. Pryyho was unsure if he would die if he fell from a
cliff onto rocks. It is interesting to note that whenever Pyrrho made an
observation, he was never concrete about it, often using phrases such as “It seems
to me”, “It appears”, and “Perhaps”. This goes back to Pyrrho’s philosophy of
skepticism in the way that we cannot know anything for certain. Pyrrho is a
very interesting man who sadly never wrote anything down. The most we have are
some of his words written in the Siolli, a coletion of satirical poems. That is
all on Pyrrho for now, but stay tuned for next time as we delv into the mind of
Timon of Phlius, the student of Pyrrho.
Pyrrho is absurd, and yet there's something alluring about the thought that a person COULD be so worry-free as he apparently was. (With a little, or a lot, of help from his friends.) The therapeutic promise of skepticism, I think, is what you find so paradoxically "fascinating."
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