Pyrrhonian Skepticism

Pyrrhonian skepticism begins with the proposition that human reason is frail and continually misdirects human experience and behavior. In AR, Montaigne introduces the conceit that a theologian named Sebonde developed a discourse around the idea that the experience of God is not something that can be determined with certainty but can only be experienced as an exercise in faith. To insist that one may reason one's way toward certainty is folly because reason has always led mankind astray. If human reason cannot be trusted, how is it possible for human reason to arrive at any truth whatever?

Montaigne explicates that starting-point of discourse by referencing the certainty with which multiple and mutually hostile religions are adopted by mankind. Yet it is God's creation, not the artifice of religions, that must elicit faith and trust in the divine.

Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as this miserable and wretched creature, which is not so much as master of himselfe, exposed and subject to offences of all things, and yet dareth call himselfe Master and Emperour of this Universe? (Montaigne)

"Presumption," he continues, "is our naturall and originall infirmitie," which means that valorization of reason is an exer-cise in vanity. Philosophers who declare that they have found the secret of knowledge are just fooling themselves. Certainty being a trap, the "profession" of Pyrrhonian skeptics is "ever to waver, to doubt, and to enquire; never to be assured of any thi

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es skepticism as a state of contingency, with the mind, or judgment, not fully settled on one truth or another. Now of course some things are more certain than others, but the skeptic must not acquiesce in dogmatic assertions for which there is not evidence but only opinion, or judgment. The term state of quietude, which is the objective of skeptical philosophy, may seem problematic because it is difficult to reconcile with the idea of mental suspense. However, Sextus explains that if judgment/opinion is suspended on matters that cannot be proved, then quietude issues from acknowledgment that proof is elusive. The skeptic is not married to his opinions. By contrast, "the man who opines that anything is by nature good or bad is forever being disquieted . . . and in his dread of a change of fortune he uses every endeavour to avoid losing the things which he deems good" (Sextus 12). The skeptical discipline, which insists on evidence for what can be proved, provides a method for sorting out assertions of truth and certainty, by way of opposition. Thus one perception is opposed by another, or one opinion by another or by an appearance, and so on. Sextus gives the example of a cosmic-order argument for the existence of God being oppos

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