Humility is Freedom II: Why scepticism is the antidote to tyranny
The philosophers are coming, and they wield silly arguments about something called 'apraxia'
This letter continues a theme of scepticism I want to explore: That losing our dogmas is liberating. Getting on with life is far better than scheming up burdensome theories. There are some who would try to turn this argument around, to suggest that dogmas are required for activity, not a barrier to it. This is called the Apraxia Charge (apraxia very roughly translated as inactivity). This is an old argument specifically against scepticism: that you cannot act without belief. A charge taken to be so important the venerable enlightenment philosopher David Hume suggests that when you have no belief, you cannot act at all:
“All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.”1
Hume thinks that either all sceptics have starved to death, or that we must be acting with some sort of preconceived belief system. It seems that the practicality of Pyrrhonian scepticism shows its strength again, and the charge that activity is impossible without dogma is silly. That we starve to death is evidently not true, and Hume had evidently missed the practical criteria at their most simple- hungry? eat!
In spite of Hume’s apparent poor comprehension of Pyrrhonian scepticism there are more interesting arguments for the apraxia charge These are the problems of the tyrant and the teacher2. In the former, the sceptic is asked how they would act in the face of tyranny. The latter questions a sceptics ability to help those in need.
The argument concerning the tyrant is generally concerned with the third practical criteria discussed in the last letter- following the traditions and customs of your locale. If your democratic life is taken over by a tyrant who forces you to harm others, is it the case then that we must be passive recipients of this tyranny in our government? Do we simply fall into a new set of customs? The argument is that if you are a “true sceptic”, you must assent to the tyranny. Not so! Tyranny is dogma made manifest and forced upon others. The sceptic should be the first to denounce dogma forced on a populace by its governors. We can also take the simpler view- under mass coercion by a tyrant, ataraxia, our tranquillity, is impossible to achieve due to external forces upon us, so steps should be taken to fix this. Also, as Sextus Empiricus says:
“The sceptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists.”
-Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book 3, section 280
So then, we act, but then, as the argument goes, we are no longer acting without judgement. Do we judge the tyrant as an evil thing to fight him? If we do, are we no longer a sceptic? Are we not allowed to call ourselves this? On the back of this philosophical argument, simply to act makes one no longer a sceptic. They would have us believe A sceptic is just a rudderless boat cast out to sea! A better description of an academic career, perhaps? As I continue to discuss in these letters, the sceptic is quite the opposite. The sceptic’s life is one of activity in contrast to the word-playing philosophers and dogmatists stuck trying to prove the unprovable.
In the second example a teacher has fallen in a swamp and needs help getting out. In this case, it would require a moral decision to aid the fallen friend. This is also based on an account of Pyrrho3, whose companion Anaxarchus had fallen in a swamp. Pyhrro passed by and did not help him, for which Anaxarchus praised him for his detachedness. In this, Pyhrro demonstrated inaction- he did not help Anaxarchus, and in doing so maintained his ataraxia.
To an unimaginative philosopher this seems a closed case, one from the supposed founder of Pyrrhonism! However, I will forgive Pyrrho his inaction, as hundreds of years of refining sceptical ideas give us some better ideas on how to act. With the practical criteria in mind, helping ones companions out of ditches is something of a standard practise across all societies4. Helping another who is in need may even be the basis of society in the first place. To help a someone in need is certainly a tradition of the customs of the land I inhabit. It is this basic decency between that a sceptic accepts and now feels no need to inquire into. Following the quote of Sextus Empiricus above, we are lovers of our kind. I am certainly happy to accept this decency. Instead we might hold a mirror to philosophers who suggest basic human decency is something to be probed and questioned in pursuit of idle thought-experiments.
The answers I have provided are not particularly philosophical ones. I have tried to keep my answers to these apraxia charges as short and as simple as possible. Others give answers in a far more philosophical manner- answers the academically-minded may find more palatable than my occasionally caustic approach to a practical life. They are also answers as to how I personally live my scepticism- I never speak for others.
Hume, 1748 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 12
The most recent argument in this case is Wieland, JW (2012) Can Pyrrhonists Act Normally? Philosphical Explorations 15, 277-89, who includes work previously done to construct daft thought experiments.
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Pyhrro, Book 9
Well, not all. I have lived in Sweden, they are pretty sketchy with this sort of thing