What Epicurus Learned From Pyrrho

And What He Didn't

You are on a long and difficult journey. You’re traveling with the largest and most unbeatable army ever, but you aren’t a soldier. Your purpose in joining the expedition is to expand the scope of knowledge and bring it back to your own world. Over the years of your long voyage you see and learn many things, studying and discovering fascinating insights that no one from your culture ever conceived of. 

After many long years, you return to your country and enjoy the respect of your friends and neighbors who treat you with admiration for the deep wisdom they believe you to hold. But you know something they don’t. You didn’t accomplish the goal you set out to. You went off in search of knowledge and instead returned home carrying with you nothing but doubt. 

Pyrrho of Elis was the progenitor of the Ancient Greek school of Skepticism. Pyrrhonism was unique among the Greek schools in that it did not promulgate any theories of its own but instead tried to refute the beliefs of other schools. Pyrrho was not its founder, that honor goes to the Roman Skeptic Sextus Empirucus.* But it was named in honor of Pyrryho because of what he saw while in his travels in West Asia and India. 

From speaking with Indian mystics, naked gurus who he called “gymnosophists,” Pyrrho came into contact with an ancient culture totally alien to his own. For the Greeks, all others were barbarians. They took for granted that theirs was the superior culture and that it was for them to spread their culture to all the world. It was this mission, as well as conquest, that Alexander marched from Macedon with his arm to achieve. Pyrrho went with them. 

We don’t know exactly what Pyrrho learned in his travels, but we can be confident that whatever he found on his sojourn shook his understanding of the world to its core. Rather than expanding the extent of Greek knowledge of the natural world, Pyrrho instead became convinced that nothing can be known with certainty. 

Very possibly, he was exposed to Buddhist ideas transmitted to him by the naked mendicants who would have been wandering India. For more on this subject, I’d recommend Doug Bates’ book Pyrrho’s Way and his newsletter Ataraxia or Bust. I’ve also included a suggested reading list on this subject at the end of the essay. 

Student and Teacher

When the young Epicurus arrived at Nausiphanes' school, he encountered a teacher who straddled two worlds. Nausiphanes had studied with Pyrrho but unlike Pyrrho, Nausiphanes believed that knowledge was possible and even necessary. He followed the atomist tradition of Democritus, teaching that the world was composed of invisible particles moving through void.

What did the young Epicurus make of this curious synthesis? We know that he attended Nausiphanes' lectures, though he would later try to minimize this connection. In fact, Epicurus would eventually launch savage attacks on his former teacher, calling him "the mollusc" and mocking him in his writings. Such vehement denunciation suggests that Nausiphanes' influence ran deeper than Epicurus wanted to admit.

The story takes an interesting turn when we consider what exactly Epicurus rejected and what he retained. From Nausiphanes, he inherited an appreciation for Democritean atomism, though he would significantly modify it. He also seems to have absorbed something of Pyrrho's pursuit of tranquility, though he would seek it through very different means. What he emphatically rejected was any hint of skepticism about our ability to know reality.

For Epicurus, tranquility could only come through reliable knowledge. He insisted that our senses never deceive us – it is only our judgments about sensory evidence that can go wrong.** This was a direct refutation of skepticism. Yet curiously, the end goal remained similar. Like Pyrrho, Epicurus sought ataraxia – freedom from disturbance. He simply believed that such peace of mind could only come through understanding reality, not through suspending judgment about it.

Perhaps we can imagine the young Epicurus studying with Nausiphanes and formulating his own synthesis. He might have recognized in his teacher's accounts of Pyrrho's remarkable equanimity something profound and worth emulating. But he would have rejected the path Pyrrho took to reach that state. For Epicurus, the route to tranquility lay not through doubt, but through certainty.

The tension between these approaches would persist long after both philosophers were gone. Later Epicureans and Pyrrhonists would engage in lengthy debates about whether true peace of mind could come through knowledge or through its suspension. But that's a story for another essay.

Rejecting Uncertainty 

Epicurus's rejection of skepticism was, for him, both deeply personal and practical. After his formative years of study, during which he encountered various philosophical traditions, Epicurus came to a striking conclusion: uncertainty itself was a source of human suffering. Where Pyrrho saw peace in suspending judgment, Epicurus saw only another form of anxiety.

Consider the person lying awake at night, terrified of death or divine punishment. Would telling them "perhaps we can't know anything for certain about these matters" ease their fears? For Epicurus, such skepticism would only compound their distress. He believed people needed clear, reliable answers about the nature of reality. His empiricism – his trust in sense impressions – wasn't just an epistemological position; it was a therapeutic tool.

This helps explain the dogmatic character of Epicurean philosophy that can seem strange to modern readers. When Epicurus taught that death was nothing to us, that the gods didn't interfere in human affairs, that pleasure was the highest good – these weren't tentative suggestions open to endless debate. They were pronouncements meant to liberate people from their fears and anxieties.

His approach after establishing his philosophical system is telling. Unlike the skeptics who continued to question everything, Epicurus focused on teaching and defending a fixed set of doctrines. The Garden wasn't a place for open-ended philosophical speculation – it was a school for living, based on what Epicurus considered demonstrated truths about nature and human happiness.

In this light, his hostile reaction to skepticism becomes more comprehensible. From his perspective, the skeptics weren't just wrong – they were doing active harm. By undermining people's confidence in their ability to know reality, skepticism left them vulnerable to all the fears and superstitions that Epicurus sought to dispel. What use was ataraxia achieved through doubt if it left people unable to distinguish truth from falsehood in matters of vital importance?

This position aligned perfectly with his larger philosophical project. Epicurus believed that understanding the natural world – through careful observation and reasoning – was the key to eliminating the fears that plague human life. Atoms and void weren't just theoretical constructs; they were tools for understanding reality and achieving peace of mind. To suggest that such knowledge was impossible was, for Epicurus, to abandon humanity to its fears.

Value in Dogmatism? 

It's tempting to view Epicurus's dogmatism as a limitation, especially from our contemporary vantage point. We live in a world where cultural exchange happens at the speed of light, where competing worldviews collide daily on our screens, where the ability to navigate multiple perspectives seems essential to modern life. Pyrrho's experience – the philosophical vertigo induced by encountering radically different ways of thinking – is now practically universal.

But perhaps we're missing something crucial about Epicurus's position. His "close-mindedness" wasn't the result of isolation or ignorance. He had studied extensively, encountered numerous philosophical traditions, and made a deliberate choice to stop questioning and start answering. This wasn't the closure of someone who had never opened their mind – it was the considered position of someone who believed he had found something worth holding onto.

Consider the modern parallel: in an age of endless information and competing claims, don't we sometimes long for solid ground? When every truth seems contingent, every position debatable, every certainty undermined, don't we risk a kind of paralysis? Epicurus might argue that our celebration of open-mindedness, while valuable in many ways, carries its own hidden costs.

For Epicurus, the goal wasn't to maintain an endless openness to all possibilities, but to find reliable answers that could guide human life. He believed he had found such answers through careful observation and reasoning. His subsequent "dogmatism" was thus not a failure of intellectual curiosity but a practical commitment to what he saw as demonstrated truth.

This raises an uncomfortable question for our own time: Is there a point at which open-mindedness becomes a barrier to action? When does the willingness to question everything become its own kind of dogma? Epicurus would suggest that there comes a time to stop questioning and start living according to what we have learned.

Yet here's the irony: Epicurus's "dogmatic" insistence on the reliability of sense experience and the possibility of knowledge might actually offer a valuable counterweight to our contemporary struggles with truth and certainty. In a world where skepticism sometimes seems to shade into nihilism, his confidence that reliable knowledge is both possible and necessary for human flourishing could be surprisingly relevant.

So did Epicurus miss out by not being more skeptical? Perhaps. But we might also be missing out by not being more Epicurean – by not recognizing that at some point, the pursuit of wisdom requires not just questioning our certainties, but establishing new ones.

Ειρήνη και Ασφάλεια

Peace and Safety

*I’ve been informed that Sextus Empiricus was not the founder of Pyrrhonism. Nor was he Roman, although he lived in the Roman Empire. Thanks to Doug Bates for this clarification.

**Actually, Principal Doctrine #24 does leave open the possibility that our sense impressions are not always reliable in certain situations. He believed in suspending impressions, but not in the face of self-evident truths. Thanks to Hiram Crespo for this.

Suggested Reading: 

Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia by Christopher I. Beckwith 

The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies by Thomas McEvilley