Journal of the History of Philosophy

600 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:4 OCTOBER 199Z fortune can be equated with the presence of bodily and external goods, and it concords with Antiochus of Ascalon as well, as Centrone points out (though Antiochus liked to make a distinction between "the happy life" and "the supremely happy life," only the latter of which demanded the presence of the lower classes of good). The idea, on the other hand, found in Euryphamos' De Vita, that man's ability to raise himself up off the ground and contemplate the heavens is a gift from God, whereas his ability to exercise his will and develop a moral personality (prohairesis)is in his own power, while traceable back to Plato in the Timaeus, has close affinities in Philo (esp. Deus 47-49). The meticulous annotation of the various analogies to these relative commonplaces is a major contribution of Centrone in this volume, and it makes it a most useful tool for students of later Greek philosophy. JOHN DILLON Trinity College,Dublin Jonathan Barnes. The Toil~ of Skepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199o. Pp. xiii + 161. Cloth, $34.5 o. This is a revised version of five lectures given by Barnes in April 1988. Their subject is Agrippa's modes leading to skepticism. These famous arguments were presumably written at the end of the first century s.c., probably rewritten by Sextus Empiricus, and certainly transmitted by him (PH I 164-77) and Diogenes (IX, 88). Barnes restricts his analysis to Sextus' testimony. He prefers to say that the subject of his book is "the Agrippan aspect of Sextus' skepticism" (viii). The reasons for Agrippa's degradation to an adjective are not completely clear to me, especially taking into account the fact that Barnes's main interest is the general form of Agrippa's argumentation; and this form is attributed by Barnes once to "Sextus' exposition of Agrippa's modes" (12 x) but a few lines later undoubtedly attributed to Agrippa himself (121-22). It is a pity that Barnes does not consider the mode of relativity (PHI 167, 175, 177). Annas and Barnes's account of Aenesidemus' modes of relativity (PHI 135-4 o) was the most controversial issue of their book, The Modes of Scepticism:Ancient Texts and Modern Inte~retations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 128--45. Therefore , important elucidations were to be expected from this book. However, this absence is fully compensated by the final chapter on "the skeptic's net," in my opinion the best of the book. A profound debate takes place between an ancient skeptic and an externalist epistemologist. It is a very impressive spectacle in which the modern matador is finally caught by Agrippa's bicornute dilemmas. Or so Barnes decides at the end of his work. This book represents an important improvement over the earlier one by Annas and Barnes. To take only one example: Annas and Barnes only considered epistemic equipollence (~4-~5). If this were an adequate interpretation ofequipoilence the skeptic presumably would find equality sometimes (with specified margins of inequality), and sometimes not. But the skeptics do not consider (to the best of my knowledge never BOOK REVIEWS 6Ol consider) nonequipollent oppositions. Additionally, Annas and Barnes's exclusivist epistemic view of equipollence precluded them from taking into account oppositions between bare assertions. According to the epistemic interpretation, equipollence is the result of an appraisal of conflicting reasons. On the contrary, oppositions between bare assertions, since they do not present supporting reasons, contain nothing to be evaluated . In this book Barnes offers a full account of oppositions between bare assertions. Furthermore, he convincingly shows that this kind of opposition is also a camouflage. Actually, it is only one among several masks under which Sextus refers to the mode of hypothesis. In a passage once cited by Barnes, Agrippa says that any topic of investigation can be handled by his modes (PHI 169). This declaration--very common in skeptical texts (cf. PHI t2, x78, 18o)--refers not only to present cases but also to future ones. So skeptics are sure (and Agrippa also appears to be) that nothing will escape equipollence. Note that Sextus takes advantage of the fact that "in...