The Modes of Scepticism. Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (review)

474 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:3 JULY 1988 unit ("the One") subject to spatio-temporal categories such as part-whole (the "thing") must be different from the form; (2a [155e4-157b6]) things are in transit between contradictory characters, but in the "instant" between the contradictories, things are just what they are, for the form is present in the instant (which is everpresent, since change is constant), underlying the changes and giving the thing a basic unity; (3) "participation" is the imposition of limit (form, "the One") upon the mere quantity which things ("the others") would be without form, and (4) things would have neither being nor unity without this limit; (5) the spatio-temporal non-being of the form ("the One") is subject, as the object of knowledge, to its own special version of motion between contradictories, remaining the same but partaking of different forms, and (6) this special, eidetic being is a necessary counterpart to the being of things; (7) things only "seem" to have the characteristics granted them in 2, and (8) their participation in forms is necessary to their phenomenal status. The crucial points in Miller's impressive structure are the "systematic ambiguity" of "the One" (99, ~4~ 244n3 o) and the relationship of the form to the thing in ~a (111-1 a l). Some places at which Miller finds "the One" (=form) seem misinterpreted. Thus, at 157d8 idea means "kind of thing," not "form" 029), and is used as a preliminary term for what is being defined as the "whole." Also, at 158c6 ten heteran phusin tou eidous means "the remaining stuff of this type"a (referring to the plethos), not "the nature different from the form" (130). And the thought experiment here involves not the separation of thing from form, but subtraction of the smallest conceivable part from the plethos. In discussing (2a) the unity of the thing, which is characterized at different times by contradictory states (117), Miller asserts that the immanent form "provides an underlying stability": "the thing remains self-same in its form, it retains a basic unity through its constant change of states and, so, is first able to stand as that which underlies and has these states as its own" (119). This move cannot provide a principle of individuation for the thing (cf. 253n.63), only a unity of kind, but how can a thing persist in being of one sort when it does not persist as one thing? Further, this will produce a severe conflict with the Timaeus' account of "space" (cf. 259n. 15) as the persistent substratum of change. Many other such questions no doubt remain, and Miller's excellent book will provoke much discussion along new lines, which is the best any book on this dialogue can hope for. D. L. BLANK UCLA Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes. The Modes of Scepticism. Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x985. Pp. 2o4. $29.5o, cloth; $9.95, paper. This is the best academic book I have read for a long time. Succinct, elegant, careful, and original, it will enlighten and stimulate three different types of reader---elementary 3 To eidosrefers back to ton toiouton058c2), which have no name; cf. hed' heautonphusis(d6). BOOK REVIEWS 475 students of philosophy, professional philosophers in general, and specialists in ancient philosophy. The credit for this unusual achievement belongs both to the authors and to the ancient Greek texts which form their subject. Nothing, as they point out, did more to stimulate the development of modern philosophy than the rediscovery of Sextus Empiricus in the second half of the sixteenth century; but for this, it is no exaggeration to say, there would have been no Descartes, Hume, or Kant. In the pages of Sextus they and their contemporaries could read his record of sceptical arguments, marshalled and catalogued with a detail and precision far superior to that of any other ancient text. The man himself, who lived in the latter years of the second century A.D., is utterly obscure. What matters is his practice of Pyrrhonism, and his ability to expound argumentative strategies which had proved their effectiveness ever since they were first formally developed...