Le Scepticisme antique: Perspectives historiques et systématiques. Actes du Colloque international sur le scepticisme antique (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 129 virtues if only because they are indispensibly instrumental to his own good (178). It denies, however, that the practice of the moral virtues forms an integral part of the happiness of the theoretical person. Kraut's arguments for this are largely philological. When Aristotle says that "happiness is activity of the soul in accord with [kata]... the highest virtue," we are told that he means that we act "in accord with" only the virtue that stands at the pinnacle of our hierarchy of goods, and that our happiness consists of its exercise alone. By constrast, when something is done for the sake of something else (hou heneka), one does not act in accord with it, even if it is an intrinsic good and a virtuous activity. Treating the moral virtues as "for the sake of" the theoretical implies that even the practical decisions and virtuous acts through which a theoretical person decides to be theoretical, and allocates time, energy, and goods accordingly, are not an intrinsic part of his happiness, since, even if these decisions do not take the shape of a political life, they are a function of practical wisdom (phronesis), the comprehensive virtue of practical reason, rather than of theoretical reason. Kraut's rejoinder is that in becoming a theoretical person one's identity is shifted from the self of practical reason (NE IX.8.1168b35 ) to the self of theoretical reason (nous, NE X.7.a 178b2), with the result that what the practical reason decides doesn't count as part of the acts in accord with which the theoretical person is happy (128-3o; 189-9o). I agree that inclusivists typically do not discriminate firmly enough between the bios politikos and the b/0s theoretikos. But Kraut's way of making the cut seems to me excessive. Just what the right alternative is, however, may well be found out first by someone who tries hard to meet the arguments he makes in this well-written and iconoclastic book. DAvm J. DEPEw California State University, Fullerton and Centerfor Advanced Studies, University of lowa Andre-Jean Voelke, editor. Le Scept'wisme antique: Perspectives historiques et systkmatiques. Acres du CoUoque interrtationale sur le scepticisme antique. Cahiers de la Revue de Th*ologie et de Philosophie, t 5. Geneva, 199o. Pp. ~15. NP. In his "Avant-propos" (6), the editor notes that the fourteen contributors to this volume of conference proceedings (written in French and Italian) adopt widely various styles of interpretation: "analytical interpretation in line with the Anglo-Saxon tradition , 'neo-Zellerian' historiography, phenomenological description of the usage of certain terms, etc." Furthermore, conference participants were allowed to construe "ancient scepticism" in its broadest sense, as ranging from Protagoras and Plato, through Pyrrho to Sextus Empiricus, by way of medical Empiricism. Only the scepticism of the Academy was to be off-limits, "in order to avoid too great a diversity of subjects dealt with" (7); and even that gets a mention here and there in the more general essays. Unsurprisingly, the results are diverse, and not a little uneven. In a brief notice, I cannot deal with them all; hence I shall treat a few representative samples. The first contribution, by Lambros Couloubaritsis, is entitled "La Probl~matique sceptique d'un impens~: H8 skepsis," a title which will alert the attentive reader to the fact that this will 130 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:1 JANUARY i993 be an essay in "phenomenological description." The "probl~matique" is the development of the notion of "research" or "inquiry" itself, the skepsis of the tide which gave the Sceptics their name. Couloubaritsis collects a large body of data from Homer to tragedy and Plato which is relevant to the semantic field of skepsis and its cognates; he concludes that it develops a specifically evaluative connotation from its earliest descriptive sense of "look in all directions"; its sense expands from the purely visual to the reflective; and then in Plato's hands it takes on the color of a detailed examination and analysis of which of two or more possibilities is the best. Couloubaritsis further detects the gradual development of a recta-concern with the nature of inquiry...