Humility is Freedom I: A practical life

Unlike philosophising detractors of Pyrrhonian thinking, we purge barriers to an active life and filter out idle theorising

This letter is about practise. It’s about how good practise of scepticism and maintaining your tranquillity leads to living a good life, and how living a good life maintains you tranquillity. This relates back to the primary outcome of Pyrrhonain scepticism- ataraxia, a state of tranquillity, but also a second outcome, when we act positively, within the practical criteria, to that of a simple life¹. When practised, we can see two processes: a positive one, that promotes tranquillity and a simple life, and a negative one, that filters out idle theorising.

As the title of this letter says, humility is freedom. Practicing your life along simple criteria removes the stumbling-blocks of theory and the pride that comes with it. Scepticism makes us humble in the face of that which we cannot own knowledge of.

Before I continue I want to admit to a minor error that I have no intention of correcting. I have been referring to those modern hair-splitting wordsmiths who are uninterested in practical wisdom as ‘philosophers’ when the more respectable philosophers of ancient Athens would have called them ‘sophists’. It seems today the sophists have won over their superiors, so I will refer to them as philosophers, as they refer to themselves.

I mentioned in my last letter that which a practitioner of scepticism may come to simply and easily, but a philosopher may struggle to comprehend: The simple rule, if you are hungry, eat; tired, sleep, etc. I am not interested in any underlying theory of why this should be. Let the philosophers chase their own tails. There are four criteria that often go overlooked in philosophical work (remember their allergy to ‘practical’) but are of expansive importance to a life lived well²:

1. The guidance of nature

2. Compulsion of feelings

3. Tradition of laws and customs

4. Instruction of the arts

These criteria are not developed beyond their listing in the writings of Pyrrhonian scepticism, as they are either quite obvious, or something you need to work out from the context of your own life- an expert cannot prescribe them for you. The first two refer to the simple advice: you are hungry, you should eat. The first part of this advice is the guidance of nature (hunger), the latter is the compulsion of feelings (eating). Not following these simple signs will obviously lead to misery and a bad life. No need to be sceptical over this (unless you’re an unemployed philosophy PhD trying to justify your life choices).

The fourth criterion (I’ll return to the third) does not really relate to ‘art’ in the wishy-washy form we understand it today, rather it is the art of the artisan, the skills of a worker. To employ your art, you must first be instructed in it, then practise it. Good advice for anyone, we are guided by common sense again.

The third criteria is more subtle, probably beyond the subtlety of an academic desk-jockey. The traditions of laws and customs are best related to the strong filter of stuff-that-doesn’t work of the pre-modern world. Societal norms worked. Sextus Empiricus says of this:

“It is by the virtue of the tradition of laws and customs that in everyday life we accept piety as good and impiety as evil”³

It is because these norms worked that they were kept. War, famine, plague, all the catastrophes feared by humanity rapidly collapsed stuff that didn’t work, regardless of theory about whether it should or not. Time is a very strong filter: social norms live and die by it.

I do not want to dwell on whether the modern world ‘works’ or not. Nor will I suggest you ignorantly follow your local customs, although I’m pretty sure if you don’t pay your taxes you will soon experience a loss of tranquillity. I will not prescribe behaviour. I will say it is apparent to me we have lost the intuition of what works for something far worse. To look at the of politics of a modern nation state is to see the bickering zealotry of its politicians, all of whom seem content on pushing a dogma of their own. They all note quite correctly the dogmatic nonsense of their opponents, but never realise their own trousers are stained by a different type of bullshit, the smell of which they have grown used to.

This type of thinker is nicely summarised here in relation to these practical criteria:

“As for those who think that we should not judge of truth from surrounding circumstances or legislate on the basis of what is found in nature, these men, they used to say, made themselves the measure of all things…”

Diogenes Laërtius, Pyrrho

An individual’s politics are a measure of themselves, not of the world⁴.

Now we understand the wisdom of the practical criteria, we can see how they promote activity by filtering out those professors interested in selling you their book on how to scratch your bottom, instead of living well. We can also try to rid ourselves of the politician who wishes you to support their policy on bottom-scratching reform. Here though we encounter a more dangerous form of dogmatist. The philosopher is content on reading a book on how to live well, rather than simply live it. The politician will tell you they know the truth of a good life, and intend on making you live it.

In this case, we must go beyond mischief, and poking fun at academics, and deal with the issue of what a sceptic does under tyranny. Much like hunger, some things are forced upon us by the outside world. How a Pyrrhonian sceptic might think when others attempt to force their dogmas upon them I will discuss in the next letter.

1. In Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Chapter 8: “Does the sceptic have a system”, Sextus Empiricus emphasises that the Pyrrhonian ‘system’ indicates how to live “rightly”, in his terms : “rightly, understood not only in reference to virtue, but more simply”. This is a part of eudaimonia philosophers at the time pursued.

2. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Chapter 11

3. Piety here, not referring to a religious notion of devotion to God that we understand today, but following localised social norms- the Greek term eusebia.

4. This is better generalised by Nassim Taleb: “Wittgenstein’s ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.”