Why would I spend a good portion of my time over the last 35 years gathering information on the Gymnosophists? The story begins even earlier. As an undergraduate student in the Flint College of the University of Michigan, I pursued an English major with a strong history minor-always looking for something between the two, and rarely finding it. Then in my practice teaching, I happened into one of the early experimental high school courses in Interdisciplinary Humanities. With the exciting (...) interrelationships between art, literature, music, philosophy and history, I said YES-this was what I had been looking for. So I pioneered in teaching high school Humanities for the next few years. Interdisciplinary Humanities was a bottom-up movement. Gradually, colleges began offering Masters programs to give teachers the rich background they needed. I decided I was not tied to Michigan where it was cold; I would find the best Masters program in Humanities anywhere in the world, and go there. Well, it turned out that the best Masters program in the world was at Wayne State University in Detroit, of all places. Unlike other programs that were really just double majors, Wayne offered truly interdisciplinary classes. Moreover, they offered an Eastern track and a Western track. Knowing that I would never find that Eastern track anywhere else, I studied interdisciplinary courses in the cultures of India, China, Japan, and Egypt. (The middle-eastern professor was on sabbatical when I was there.) I especially liked India-perhaps because I had already travelled around the world, and India impressed me the most. (shrink)

[Does the gymnosophist’s reply to Alexander’s question on the origin of time indeed reflect an Indian doctrine?] The episode of Alexander’s interview with the gymnosophists has come down to us in several versions, among which the one in Plutarch’s Vita Alexandri is the most renowned. In this connection, the question arises whether the solutions given by the naked philosophers to the puzzles propounded by Alexander can be shown to reflect genuine Indian doctrines. Challenging Dumézil’s reply in the affirmative, the (...) author contends that they cannot. While most questions and answers are scarcely relevant to the investigation, as being of little (if any) philosophical import, the analysis concentrates on the more significant ones, and especially on the solution offered to the question as to which of the two — day or night — came first. According to Dumézil, the gymnosophist’s answer reported by Plutarch, i. e. that the day came first, by one day, reflects the vedic doctrine of the primeval cosmogonic role of Dawn and Light. Against this may be argued in the first place that such doctrine does not enjoy any prominent status in the Vedas themselves — quite to the contrary, it stands up disadvantegeously to many all-important texts, such as the Nāsadīyasūkta, which assign the primeval status to Darkness — and cannot therefore be regarded as being specifically Indian any more than its opposite. Secondly, it is shown that the Greek tradition is at great variance on this very point, to the extent that all logically conceivable solutions (i. e., precedence of day by one day / day by one night / night by one day / night by one night) are represented in some version or other. This inconsistency appears to stem from the fact that no particular doctrine (Indian or whatever) was envisaged; according to the present author, we have reason to believe that the gymnosophist’s reply was rather meant to set off by means of a paradox the sheer impossibility of a solution (all four alternatives being equivalent to that effect). This interpretation is reinforced by the gymnosophist’s own remark confessing the aporetical nature of his reply, and finally by a further recourse to paradox — this time a variant of the well-known “paradox of the liar” — which the author lays bare in the otherwise inexplicable dénouement of the anecdote. (shrink)

PYRRHONIAN BUDDHISM: AN IMAGINATIVE RECONSTRUCTION -/- Author: -/- Adrian Kuzminski 279 Donlon Road Fly Creek, NY 13337 USA -/- Description of Pyrrhonian Buddhism: -/- The ancient Greek sceptic philosopher, Pyrrho of Elis, accompanied Alexander the Great to India, where he had contacts with Indian sages, so-called naked philosophers (gymnosophists), among whom were very probably Buddhist mendicants, or sramanas. My work, entitled Pyrrhonian Buddhism, takes seriously the hypothesis that Pyrrho’s contact with early Buddhists was the occasion of his rethinking, in (...) a Greek philosophical idiom, of what he experienced in those encounters. This has major implications for our understanding of both Buddhism and Pyrrhonism. -/- Pyrrho’s rethinking of Buddhism, I argue, enabled him to introduce into Greek philosophy and culture several key Buddhist notions. These include the primacy and interdependence of immediate phenomenal experience (which the Buddhists called dependent origination), the suspension of judgment about beliefs lacking phenomenal verification (reflecting the scepticism of the Buddha about ‘unanswered’ or ‘metaphysical’ questions), and the promise of personal enlightenment said to follow such suspension, which Pyrrho called ataraxia, and the Buddhists called bodhi. -/- Pyrrho, like Socrates, wrote nothing, but the movement he founded—Pyrrhonism--became an important tradition in Western philosophy. When the texts of later Pyrrhonian philosophers, particularly Sextus Empiricus, were redicovered during the Renaissance, they sparked a reexamination of the foundations of knowledge, thereby helping to prompt the modern scientific revolution. -/- The notion that early Buddhism played a pivotal role in the birth of ancient Greek Pyrrhonian philosophy remains provocative, but has found increasing support in recent years. An earlier work of mine, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2008), was, as far as I know, the first book-length comparison of the common features of the two traditions. My current work, Pyrrhonian Buddhism, seeks to broaden and deepen this comparison. It argues that ancient Greek Pyrrhonism is best understood as a fully developed but hitherto largely unrecognized Western version of Buddhism. -/- The Introduction reviews our current understanding of Pyrrhonism in light of recent scholarship on ancient Greek-Indian cultural exchanges, and outlines the methodology I employ. -/- Part I of the book offers re-readings of the classic Pyrrhonian texts, with parallels to Buddhism in mind, including Diogenes Laertius (Chapter One), Sextus Empiricus (Chapter Two) and Timon and Aulus Gellius (Chapter Three). -/- Part II enlists the rubric of the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma to illuminate the fundamental points of comparison between early Buddhism and ancient Pyrrhonism. -/- The First Turning (Chapter Four) centers on the Buddhist insistence on the dependent origination of the objects of immediate consciousness, which can also be found in the understanding of immediate experience expressed in the phenomenalistic atomism of the Pyrrhonists. The Second Turning (Chapter Five), as posed by the ‘unanswered questions’ of the Buddha and the ‘emptiness’ of the Madhyamaka, finds its Pyrrhonian correlation in the suspension of judgment over ‘indeterminate’ beliefs. And the Third Turning (Chapter Six), reported as bodhi in Buddhism and ataraxia in Pyrrhonism, is shown in both traditions to follow liberation from suffering and existential angst, caused by what the Buddhists call our attachments and the Pyrrhonists call our beliefs. -/- Other Writers/Commentators: -/- Aspects of the Pyrrhonian/Buddhism question have been addressed by Edward Conze, Everard Flintoff, Thomas McEvilley, Jay Garfield, Mathew Neale, Ethan Mills, Christopher Beckwith, and Robin Brons, among other recent writers. The book-length studies on the issue (since my earlier work) are by Beckwith (Greek Buddha) and Neal (Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonism). Other writers/scholars with relevant expertise include C. W. Huntington, Jr., Charles Goodman, Stephen Batchelor, Dan Lusthaus, Rupert Gethin, and Mark Siderits. -/- . (shrink)

There are some tantalizing suggestions that Pyrrhonian skepticism has its roots in ancient India. Of them, the most important is Diogenes Laertius’s report that Pyrrho accompanied Alexander to India, where he was deeply impressed by the character of the “naked sophists” he encountered (DL IX 61). Influenced by these gymnosophists, Pyrrho is said to have adopted the practices of suspending judgment on matters of belief and cultivating an indifferent composure amid the vicissitudes of ordinary life. Such conduct, and the (...) attitudes that it embodied, became inspirations to later skeptical thinkers. It is a fact that practices of the sort attributed to Pyrrho are richly evident in a number of ancient Indian philosophical and ascetic movements. On this basis, attempts have been made to determine the identity of these gymnosophists and, further, to pinpoint the dialectical tropes within Pyrrhonism that may have their basis in Indian thought. But despite these attempts, and in the absence of any new discoveries, these suggestions will likely remain just that. The paucity of the historical data and the problematic nature of the data itself prevent us from reconstructing a solid bridge between ancient India and Greek skepticism that may serve as the basis of robust historical theorizing. Classical India does, however, lay claim to a sophisticated and diverse culture of epistemological reflection, which includes a number of innovative skeptical thinkers deserving study on their own merits. This chapter is meant to provide such a study, or perhaps more accurately, a prolegomena for such. After some initial ground-laying, I will discuss three leading Indian skeptics and situate them historically and conceptually within the network of competing schools that comprise classical Indian philosophy. They are Nāgārjuna (c. 150 CE), the founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Jayarāśi (c. 800), associated with the Indian materialist tradition, and Śrīharṣa (c. 1150), a thinker connected to the school of Nondual (Advaita) Vedānta. (shrink)

While trying to preserve the autonomy of their playful activity consisting in a game of ‘questioning and answering’, the Gymnosophists defy Alexander the Great and, more importantly, go against their own chances of survival (since giving a wrong answer to the king’s question amounts to losing their life). Thankfully, we do not need to face such dilemmas when philosophising with children. Nevertheless, the Gymnosophists’ example helps construct a notion of philosophy for/with children as an autonomous playful activity that (...) albeit (implicitly) purposive it is, however, without (explicit) purpose (something akin to Kant’s aesthetic judgement). Alluding to an Aristotelian sense of ‘telos’ in its connection with Platonic ‘paideia’ I understand philosophy for/with children as an activity that we carry out for its own sake. This does not mean that we are to abolish elements such as antagonism, competition, excellence, etc.―there is no question: the competitive element is there. But what does it mean? We could fix its meaning according to a purpose (we compete to excel or persuade and win) or we might entertain the idea of keeping its meaning rather vague or undetermined, implicit. (shrink)

While trying to preserve the autonomy of their playful activity consisting in a game of ‘questioning and answering’, the Gymnosophists defy Alexander the Great and, more importantly, go against their own chances of survival. Thankfully, we do not need to face such dilemmas when philosophising with children. Nevertheless, the Gymnosophists’ example helps construct a notion of philosophy for/with children as an autonomous playful activity that albeit purposive it is, however, without purpose. Alluding to an Aristotelian sense of ‘'telos'’ (...) in its connection with Platonic ‘'paideia'’ I understand philosophy for/with children as an activity that we carry out for its own sake. This does not mean that we are to abolish elements such as antagonism, competition, excellence, etc.―there is no question: the competitive element is there. But what does it mean? We could fix its meaning according to a purpose or we might entertain the idea of keeping its meaning rather vague or undetermined, implicit. (shrink)

The philosophical debate presented in these pages is extracted from a 13th-century Coptic Arabic summa ecclesiastica. The venue is alleged to have taken place in Alexandria under the aegis of its proper founder. In a gathering of five philosophers or sages coming from India to the Maghreb, passing of course through Greece, amongst whom was present the great Aristotle, Alexander's preceptor and the undisputed authority that summed up the debate and put an end to it. The disputation turns on the (...) existence or not of a supreme creator and organizer, reminding the public sessions convened by the Sassanid and Muslim Rulers. However, the mise en scène here is linked without contest to the famous encounter of 325 b.C. between the Macedonian Conqueror and the Brahmans or Indian gymnosophites. We know how this episode was glossed in different ways in the Greek literature until it was “recovered” in an apologetic monotheistic view by the new Christian imperial order from the 4th century a.C. onward. Although our Coptic writer from the Middle Ages intends to prove with the text he offers to us the rightness of the “miaphysite” teaching of his Church, he, or his source, stands fully in line with that tradition, despite the fact that we could not trace a specific source from the rich variety of linguistic traditions on the matter. All the same, the ideological and linguistic analysis of the text brings us to suggest a Greek original that goes back to Late Antiquity.RésuméTiré d'une somme ecclésiastique copto-arabe du XIIIe siècle, le débat philosophique que nous présentons ici, est prétendu avoir eu lieu à Alexandrie, sous l'égide de son propre fondateur. S'y trouvent réunis cinq sages ou philosophes, venus depuis l'Inde jusqu'au Maghreb, passant bien sûr par la Grèce, dont la délégation ne manque pas d'inclure le grand Aristote, le précepteur d'Alexandre le Grand et l'autorité incontestée qui récapitule et clôt le débat. La ‘dispute’ porte sur l'existence ou non d'un créateur-ordonnateur suprême, rappelant les sessions publiques convoquées par les souverains sassanides ou musulmans. Mais la mise en scène ici se rattache incontestablement à la célèbre rencontre du Conquérant macédonien avec les brahmanes ou gymnosophistes indiens en 325 av. J.-C. On sait comment cet épisode a été glosé de différentes manières dans la littérature grecque, jusqu'à sa cristallisation dans le Roman d'Alexandre, avant d'être “récupéré”, dans une perspective monothéiste apologétique, par la nouvelle donne impériale chrétienne depuis le IVe siècle ap. J.-C. Si notre auteur copte du Moyen Âge arabe veut voir dans le texte qu'il nous livre une confirmation de la doctrine “miaphysite” de son Église, il se situe néanmoins, lui ou sa source, dans cette ligne-là, sans qu'on ait pu, pour autant, en retracer la source dans les différentes traditions linguistiques existantes. Ceci dit, l'analyse idéologique et linguistique du texte du débat nous mène à suggérer, comme source immédiate, un original grec de la Basse Antiquité. (shrink)

The philosophical debate presented in these pages is extracted from a 13th-century Coptic Arabic summa ecclesiastica . The venue is alleged to have taken place in Alexandria under the aegis of its proper founder. In a gathering of five philosophers or sages coming from India to the Maghreb, passing of course through Greece, amongst whom was present the great Aristotle, Alexander's preceptor and the undisputed authority that summed up the debate and put an end to it. The disputation turns on (...) the existence or not of a supreme creator and organizer, reminding the public sessions convened by the Sassanid and Muslim Rulers. However, the mise en scène here is linked without contest to the famous encounter of 325 b.C. between the Macedonian Conqueror and the Brahmans or Indian gymnosophites. We know how this episode was glossed in different ways in the Greek literature until it was “recovered” in an apologetic monotheistic view by the new Christian imperial order from the 4th century a.C. onward. Although our Coptic writer from the Middle Ages intends to prove with the text he offers to us the rightness of the “miaphysite” teaching of his Church, he, or his source, stands fully in line with that tradition, despite the fact that we could not trace a specific source from the rich variety of linguistic traditions on the matter. All the same, the ideological and linguistic analysis of the text brings us to suggest a Greek original that goes back to Late Antiquity. Résumé Tiré d'une somme ecclésiastique copto-arabe du XIII e siècle, le débat philosophique que nous présentons ici , est prétendu avoir eu lieu à Alexandrie, sous l'égide de son propre fondateur. S'y trouvent réunis cinq sages ou philosophes , venus depuis l'Inde jusqu'au Maghreb, passant bien sûr par la Grèce, dont la délégation ne manque pas d'inclure le grand Aristote, le précepteur d'Alexandre le Grand et l'autorité incontestée qui récapitule et clôt le débat. La ‘dispute’ porte sur l'existence ou non d'un créateur-ordonnateur suprême, rappelant les sessions publiques convoquées par les souverains sassanides ou musulmans. Mais la mise en scène ici se rattache incontestablement à la célèbre rencontre du Conquérant macédonien avec les brahmanes ou gymnosophistes indiens en 325 av. J.-C. On sait comment cet épisode a été glosé de différentes manières dans la littérature grecque, jusqu'à sa cristallisation dans le Roman d'Alexandre , avant d'être “récupéré”, dans une perspective monothéiste apologétique, par la nouvelle donne impériale chrétienne depuis le IV e siècle ap. J.-C. Si notre auteur copte du Moyen Âge arabe veut voir dans le texte qu'il nous livre une confirmation de la doctrine “miaphysite” de son Église, il se situe néanmoins, lui ou sa source, dans cette ligne-là, sans qu'on ait pu, pour autant, en retracer la source dans les différentes traditions linguistiques existantes. Ceci dit, l'analyse idéologique et linguistique du texte du débat nous mène à suggérer, comme source immédiate, un original grec de la Basse Antiquité. (shrink)

The Greek identification of certain Indian people as philosophoi at the end of the fourth century bce provides unique information about the meaning of the term philosophia, especially with respect to its reference to a certain kind of “way of life” (bios), at the time of its greatest maturity (at the start of the Hellenistic period). The Indica of Megasthenes, an ambassador to northern India after the death of Alexander, is our most important evidence; fragments from earlier works by Nearchus (...) and Onesicritus, intellectuals in Alexander’s cortege, provide corroboration. This essay argues that late classical Greeks did largely think of philosophia as a way of life. (shrink)

The Greek identification of certain Indian people as philosophoi at the end of the fourth century bce provides unique information about the meaning of the term philosophia, especially with respect to its reference to a certain kind of “way of life” (bios), at the time of its greatest maturity (at the start of the Hellenistic period). The Indica of Megasthenes, an ambassador to northern India after the death of Alexander, is our most important evidence; fragments from earlier works by Nearchus (...) and Onesicritus, intellectuals in Alexander’s cortege, provide corroboration. This essay argues that late classical Greeks did largely think of philosophia as a way of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s “Treatise” from the Inside Out by Jay L. GarfieldJohn Christian LaursenJay L. Garfield. The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s “Treatise” from the Inside Out. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 302. Hardback. ISBN: 978-0-19-093340-1, $82. This book has at least two original and great merits. One is that it is one of the first in the Hume literature to be truly global. (...) The other is that it gives custom and habit the place they deserve in Hume’s philosophy. Concerning the first of these, I think it would be widely admitted that most of the study of Western philosophy is done in blissful ignorance of non-Western philosophy. We follow what our thinkers are doing, and pay little or no attention to the rest of the world. In contrast, this book peppers the footnotes, and even some of the text, with comparisons to Buddhist schools and figures such as Madhyamaka, Candrakirti, Nagarjuna, and the like. We are not used to the idea that Western philosophers may have drawn some of their ideas from non-Western philosophy, although we have long known that Pyrrho traveled to India and may have taken ideas from the gymnosophists, and that later philosophers like Bayle and Leibniz were very interested in Chinese ideas. In Hume’s case, it is possible that there was some influence through Pyrrho and his followers, or that these were simply parallel developments. The latter are still of philosophical interest because they show how similar philosophies can develop from different roots. Of course, one of the reasons that most of us cannot compare a figure like Hume to Indian or Chinese philosophy is that we do not know the languages and have not been trained in those areas. In this case, Jay Garfield is the author of many works on Indian philosophy, including Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy (2015), so he has authority in the matter. A work like this, drawing attention to many similarities and parallels in philosophy, could be followed up by some methodological work on how to compare philosophies from such different intellectual traditions. What do the parallels mean? Are there any deeper or wider conclusions that we can make about parallels that appear in very different philosophical traditions? Is convergence of ideas a confidence builder in their solidity and truth, or rather a reminder of common human tendencies to fallacy? If philosophy is ever going to join the ranks of truly global human enterprises, it will have to ask and answer these questions about far-flung philosophical traditions. The main argument of this book is that Hume is best understood as a Pyrrhonian philosopher who maintains that the foundations of our knowledge, ethics, and political practices may be found only in custom and habit. Book 2 of Hume’s Treatise is the key, providing a social account of the passions and our constructions of ourselves. “Custom is essential to the story,” the author writes (82). Nature makes [End Page 179] us develop customs together that start from passions and sympathy, and are drawn together by the imagination. On the basis of these social constructions of most elements of our lives, by the end of the book, Garfield is talking about Hume’s place in the “communitarian tradition” (279–80). If Book 2 is read before Book 1, one will realize that what Hume says about reason and ontology in Book 1 is rooted in his theory of the passions in Book 2, and thus always social. What Hume is doing is more like philosophical psychology (or the psychology of philosophy?) than epistemology, metaphysics, or moral philosophy, according to Garfield. Hume is asking why we believe what we believe in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy, not proving that any of these beliefs are true. Taking the title of Hume’s Treatise seriously, it is a book about human nature, not about Hume’s understanding of those philosophical subfields. Hume’s work is more descriptive than prescriptive. We can learn from it how we live, not how we should live, which is a matter for the development of customs over time... (shrink)