Античный скептицизм и философия науки: диалог сквозь два тысячелетия

301. Zeller Ed. The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics. New York: Russelland Russell, 1962.

Summary

Ancient skepticism putting everything in doubt, to be consistent, have to doubt isostenia itself, i.e. to equate it to the very equality it expresses. In this case the thesis that «skeptics only seek» (i.e. neither state nor negate anything but only doubt), on the one hand, will not turn out dogmatism. And on the other hand, it will avoid an inner contradiction. Thus one of the widespread arguments against skepticism claiming that it’s either a kind of negative dogmatism or a self-contradictory philosophical construction will be neutralized. Here lies one of the essential differences between skepticism and traditional types and forms of philosophical thinking: skeptical «world view» is fundamentally mobile and plastic and, consequently, skeptical philosophical constructions don’t lead to any definite results and, simultaneously, they are open to different points of view, therefore they are alien to arbitrary and, in the end, unfoundedly accepted theses, they put nothing «into brackets», and this helps them to see the rightness (as well as wrongness) of any philosophical idea. This is why skepticism is the very quest for truth, not the denial of the possibility to reach it as it’s fairly often being interpreted.

Ancient skepticism can be defined as a doubting doubt. Being quite an untraditional philosophical solution, it constitutes a dialectical interaction of isostenia and phenomenalism, a paradoxical amalgam of what prima facie seems to be incompatible. It is the philosophical thinking that is always in search, never satisfied, never settling on anything.

Therefore the ancient scepticism can be presented as a general intellectual trend of the Hellenistic philosophy. First of all it was expressed by sceptical and protesting mood of the representatives of different schools of that period directed at the contemporary social reality. One of the methods helping to overcome this mood was specific «internal emigration»: the human mind became the centre of investigation, thetruth became a problem, the reflectionof the theoretical knowledge began. As a result the ancient (Hellenistic) scepticismbecame an important innovation of the Greek philosophy, though it was traditionally considered to be the decline of the Greek philosophy as compared with its classical period. The ancient scepticism anticipated a lot of modern epistemological ideas. Besides, different Hellenistic schools supporting sceptical ideas have got common features with modern trends of the philosophy of science.

The differences between sceptically oriented philosophical schools of Hellenism were quite obvious and important for that period. But they are being gradually erased in the course of time and now the similarities between these schools are much more important for us as they help to examine the discussion between ages separated by approximately two thousand years.

There is a quite obvious link between ancient scepticism and philosophy of science: all considerable trends of the ancient scepticism – positivistic, historic, postmodern, similar to all Hellenistic philosophical schools, – are united round one idea. According to this idea the truth of science has got a conditional character and the scientific rationality can get knowledge, but not the truth. The idea combines all the trends of philosophy of science and the science itself with all the schools of ancient, or Hellenistic scepticism. But on the other part every school of ancient scepticism correlates to the appropriate trend of the philosophy of science.

Epicureanism has in many ways anticipated the positivistic philosophical trend. The Epicureans can easily be called sceptics in point of the theoretical thinking. The positivistic philosophers of science turned to have much the same ideas: they couldn’t let thinking to work alone, to work theoretically, in isolation from «the suggestions of observation». In fact the Epicureans attached the thinking to the same «suggestions of observation». If we consider the Epicureans to be the ancient «positivists», it’s possible to assert that they showed the substitute for thinking in their epistemology, as the positivistic philosophers of science themselves transformed the theoretical thinking to the specific substitute.