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13 - Pyrrhonism and the specialized sciences

from Part II - Topics and Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2010

By
Emidio Spinelli
Edited by
Richard Bett
Richard Bett
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Summary

A PRELIMINARY AGENDA

“Having said this much against the principles of music as well, basing ourselves effectively on factual data (pragmatikôs), at this point we bring to an end our disquisition against the objects of instruction in the liberal arts (mathêmata).” These are the closing lines of the compact set of treatises Sextus Empiricus devotes to the demolition of the so-called liberal arts (M 1-6, or more precisely: M 1, Against the Grammarians; M 2, Against the Rhetoricians; M 3, Against the Geometers; M 4, Against the Arithmeticians; M 5, Against the Astrologers; M 6, Against the Musicians ). Before confronting problems of some importance concerning the placing of this work and its type of scepticism, it is worth at least touching on two questions.

The first has to do with whether or not it is possible to attribute to Sextus an already systematized version of the “canon” of liberal arts, divided into a trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and a quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music).

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The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism , pp. 249 - 264
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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