Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism (review)

Luciano Floridi. Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 150. Cloth, $54.00.

This is a most important book for those who wish to understand how skepticism became a vital part of philosophy from the Renaissance onward. For at least the last decade, the author has been working as a historical detective to find out what was known about ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism and the writings of Sextus Empiricus during the Middle Ages and what happened when Greek manuscripts of the texts became available in Europe. Floridi's information enables us to gain a more accurate picture of how, when, and where Greek skepticism reached Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; who had access to manuscripts; who translated the Greek texts into Latin; and who read them, thereby correcting the usual picture that I and other scholars have presented.

Floridi reveals that there was a lingering knowledge of Pyrrhonian skepticism in philosophical handbooks that were used during the Middle Ages. But it is only in the mid-fifteenth century that one finds reports of someone reading them in Italy. The first known European reader, as Charles Schmitt had earlier noted, was Francesco Filelfo, who mentions Sextus Empiricus in a letter of 1441. Floridi also shows that Filelfo used arguments from Sextus to protest against his political banishment from Florence. Filelfo's letters were widely circulated, so it is likely, as Floridi points out, that quite a few people learned about Sextus from him. Filelfo studied Greek in Constantinople, married his teacher's daughter, and became an emissary for the Byzantine authorities. He brought many Greek materials back to Italy with him but probably not a manuscript by Sextus. His information about Sextus's Pyrrhonism apparently came from a Greek manuscript that was already in Italy.

Floridi has also found that the great Italian humanist Angelo Poliziano (Politian) used materials from Sextus in his public lectures in Florence in the 1480s. By this time, several manuscripts of the works of Sextus were in the Medici library. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola had a manuscript of Sextus's Adversus Astrologiam, and one of the monks at the convent of San Marco, Antonio Vespucci, had a manuscript of Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes. His leader, Girolamo Savonarola, requested that Vespucci and another monk, Zanobi Acciauoli, prepare a translation into Latin of Sextus's work. No sign of this translation has survived. After Savonarola was executed in 1498, much of the material at San Marco was destroyed.

The first important introduction of Sextus's views in European thought came about from the work of one of Savonarola's disciples, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, the nephew of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In 1520, the younger Pico published a defense of Savonarola's teachings in the form of a Pyrrhonian attack on Aristotelianism, as well as philosophy in general, entitled Examen Vanitatis Doctrinae Gentium. This provided the first printed source of some of Sextus's arguments. It indicated that Savonarola's crusade involved abolishing philosophy through skepticism so that people could turn to revelation instead.

Floridi shows that alongside the printed text, a growing number of manuscripts turn up in various collections and several Latin translations of portions of Sextus's work were made. He carefully tracks down the translators, what sources they had, and who read the results. There were a growing number of sources of skeptical knowledge throughout the mid-sixteenth century. Floridi has discovered the Latin translations made by Johannes Laurentius and Joannes Paéz de Castro, and has found the actual manuscript that Henri Estienne used for the first printed edition.

The full texts of both Sextus's Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes and Adversus Mathematicos were published in Latin in 1562 and 1569. From then on, a much wider group of readers knew about ancient skepticism. The most famous of these readers, Michel de Montaigne, had phrases from Sextus carved into...