Abstract
Luca Castagnoli, Ancient Self-Refutation. The Logic and History of the Self-
Refutation Argument from Democritus to Augustine, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 2010, pp. XX+394. Hardback, ISBN 9780521896313.
Abstract. In his book Ancient Self-Refutation L. Castagnoli rightly observes that selfrefutation
is not falsification; it overturns the act of assertion but does not prove that the
content of the act is false. He argues against the widely spread belief that Sextus
Empiricus accepted the self-refutation of his own expressions. Castagnoli also claims
that Sextus was effective in answering to the self-refutation charge. The achievement of
the book is the disperitropécovery that in passages where Sextus seems to embrace the selfrefutation
of his expressions (PH 1.14-15), he does not use the term peritropé, technical
for self-refutation, but the term perigraphé, which means self-bracketing. Selfbracketing
is weakening one’s own thesis, but not overturning it. Castagnoli claims that
Sextus embraces the self-bracketing of his expressions, but never accepts their selfrefutation.
However, Castagnoli is not right in saying that self-refutation is a shameful
mistake for everybody. The mature skeptic cannot even think that self-refutation is
wrong, because it would be a dogmatic view. Sextus seems to accept self-refutation at
the end of Against the Logicians, where he presents the argument against proof and the
metaphor of the ladder (M 8.480-1). Regardless of Sextus’ declarations, we have reason
to think that he does not avoid self-refutation in a pragmatic sense. Self-bracketing of
his position is not a consistent dialectical strategy, as Castagnoli writes, but the end of a
rational discussion. Sextus avoids absolute self-refutation (we cannot falsify what he
suggests), but he is unable to avoid pragmatic self-refutation (there is no way to assert
his position without contradiction). This is the case even if Sextus refuses to assert his
position.