# Pyrrho

Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360 – 270 BCE) travelled to India with the army of
Alexander the Great, met the naked ascetics there, and came home to live a life
of such untroubled calm that his city made him high priest and exempted all
philosophers from taxation in his honour. He wrote nothing. What we know comes
from his pupil Timon and from the later school that took his name.

## The three questions

Timon reports that Pyrrho asked three questions of anyone who wished to be
happy:

1. What are things like by nature?
2. What attitude should we take toward them?
3. What will come of taking that attitude?

His answers were short. Things are, by nature, undifferentiated, unstable and
undecidable; our senses and opinions therefore tell us neither truth nor
falsehood about them. The right attitude is to hold no opinion, to lean neither
way, and to say of each thing that it *no more* is than is not. What follows
from that is first speechlessness, then freedom from disturbance.

## Ataraxia

The goal, *ataraxia*, is the calm that comes when one stops caring which way a
question is settled. Pyrrho did not argue that nothing can be known and then
worry about it. He observed that people are troubled because they believe some
things are good by nature and others bad, and then chase or flee them. Remove
the belief and the chase stops.

> He held that nothing is either honourable or base, just or unjust; and that
> likewise in all cases nothing exists in truth, but that men do everything by
> convention and habit.

## Stories and a caution

Antigonus of Carystus, who wrote his life, filled it with anecdotes: Pyrrho
walking straight at cliffs and carts, saved only by friends who followed him;
Pyrrho passing his drowning teacher without a glance; Pyrrho washing a pig
himself when a servant would not. Most of these were probably told against
him. The same source admits he lived to nearly ninety, which is hard to do by
walking off cliffs. The likelier man was one who kept his opinions suspended
and his habits ordinary, and found that this was enough.

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*Stoa Press · Philosophy Essays · Markdown edition*