Sextus Empiricus
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By: Cambridge University Press
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
The Best In-Print Translation 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.
This is a classic and priceless work. Along with the other extant works of S.E. it remains virtually the only surviving record of teachings attributed to the very influential 4th c. B.C.E. philosopher Pyrrho of Elis. As such, the book preserves a now largely forgotten body of thought that rivals anything produced in the same vein since. I think there is nothing -- except a lot of multisyllabic obfuscation -- in the works of the phenomenologists, the existentialists, or the usually uneducated and thoughtless so-called "postmodernists" that can't be found in ancient skepticism.I think this particular translation is also the best for most readers. (If you are a serious scholar and can read the Greek yourself, then you are a better judge than I of whether it's a good translation. What I mean is that it is the most accessible for modern readers.) Numerous other translations are available and several are in print. Annas & Barnes, however, both noted classics scholars and both persons who deeply understand and seem sympathetic to the ancient skeptics, have set out a translation very accessible to modern English readers. They have also set out copious notes and cross references that are very useful to more serious readers.
The previous reviewer from Colorado, incidentally, is off the mark on a few things. First, I doubt that S.E. was really interested that much in "truth." Though he may sometimes say or imply that that is his aim, I think he does so in a catty or coy way. I think he never thought he was going to find the truth; rather, he knew before he started writing that the skeptic simply cannot be answered -- there is no argument the skeptic cannot pick apart. As S.E. -- a professional doctor -- repeatedly says, skeptical arguments are like a doctor's medicine. They go in and dissolve the patient's illness, and then flow out with it to be disposed of. In other words, the skeptic argues not to discover truth, but only to dissect illusions.
Moreover, in the spirit of full disclosure, S.E. is not as timely as the Colorado review implies. S.E. nowhere mentions God, contrary to what the previous review suggests, and is not in this book concerned with scientists as such. Rather, he attacks the prevailing *philosophical* schools of his day, namely the Stoics, the still-lingering corpse of the Academy, and a group he calls the Peripatetics (meaning Aristotelians). This book is largely a technical manual of arguments to be made in response to the arguments of those other groups, which in turn are technical themselves.
That is not to say that this is not a fascinating book. For example, how interesting it is that S.E. solves riddles that would so traumatized Sartre and Camus 2000 years later!
Editorial Review:
Outlines of Scepticism, by the Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus, is a work of major importance. It is the fullest extant account of ancient Scepticism, and also one of our most copious sources of information about the other Hellenistic philosophies. Moreover, the rediscovery of Sextus in the sixteenth century brought about a revolution in philosophy. Anyone interested in the history of philosophy must have at least an acquaintance with Sextus, and for students of Hellenistic philosophy his writings are indispensable. Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes provide an accurate and readable English translation of the Outlines, with a short introduction and brief annotation.
