Abstract

In his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume presents Pyrrhonian skepticism as an excessive kind of skepticism that is at odds with everyday life. A Pyrrhonist, Hume says, “cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: Or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail” (2007, p. 116). Notwithstanding the fact that the charge of “inactivity” (apraxia) has been leveled against the Pyrrhonists since antiquity, Hume's understanding of Pyrrhonism has been a major influence on one of the most famous debates in Pyrrhonian scholarship. Namely, the debate about whether a Pyrrhonist can hold any beliefs at all. This chapter wishes to shed some light on a different interpretation of Pyrrhonian skepticism, one that proves, contrary to what Hume claims, that Pyrrhonian philosophy can be beneficial to society, as well as exert an influence on how we understand our relation to the world and others. I will do so by focusing first on an interpretation that brings Pyrrhonism close to the non-judgmental aspect of mindfulness, and then by showing how Pyrrhonian skepticism sheds light on the human-world correlation in what one might call a proto-phenomenological gesture