Pyrrho Technics

He, too, can be considered a somewhat extravagant Socrates. In any case, he deserves our attention, because we are once again in the presence of a philosopher who … did not even write; instead, he simply lived …

His behavior was completely unpredictable. Sometimes he retired into complete solitude; at other times he went off traveling without telling anyone, taking whomever he met on the way as a traveling and conversation partners. He confronted all kinds of risks and dangers, defying prudence, and kept talking even when his audience had gone. One day he saw his master Anaxarchus who had fallen into a swamp; he continued on his way without helping him, and Anaxarchus congratulated on his for his indifference and insensitivity. Unlike the Cynics, however, he seems to have behaved in a simple manner, in perfect conformity with the lifestyle of other people. This is suggested by an ancient historian: “He lived piously with his sister, who was a midwife. Sometimes he went to the market to sell chickens or pigs. He did housekeeping with indifference, and it is said he bathed a pig with indifference, too.” Let us note in passing that this anecdote reminds us of what Chuang-tzu reports about Lao-tzu … “For three years he locked himself up, performing household tasks for his wife and serving food to the pigs as he would have served it to men; he made himself indifferent to everything, and eliminated all ornamentation, in order to rediscover simplicity.”

… Pyrrho was completely indifferent to everything. He therefore always remained in the same state; in other words, he felt no emotions or change in his dispositions under the influence of external things. He attached no importance to the fact that he was present at such-and-such a place or meeting such-and-such a person. He made no distinction between what is usually considered dangerous and what is harmless, between tasks judges to be superior and those considered inferior; between what is called suffering and what is called pleasure; between life and death. For the judgments people make about the value of such things are based on mere conventions. In fact, it is impossible to know whether a given thing is good or bad in itself. People’s unhappiness comes from the fact that they want to obtain what they think is good, or to escape what they think is bad. If we refuse to make this kind of distinction between things, and refrain from making value judgments about them or from preferring one thing above another … we will achieve peace and inner tranquility…