Talk:Sextus Empiricus

---

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alfredofee.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:04, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Does Sextus belong to the methodological tradition?

On what grounds is Sextus said to have belonged to the methodological school in medicine? To the contrary, his name would seem to indicate that he belonged to the empiric school. And indeed this is the conclusion of Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes in the introduction to their translation of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Cambridge UP, 2000), xii-xiii, as well as of Richard Bett in the introduction to his translation of and commentary on Against the Ethicists (Oxford UP, 1997), ix. Bett does refer to the passage in the Outlines (I.236-41), where Sextus would seem to imply that he belonged to the methodological tradition, and rejects the implication. (Annas and Barnes don't seem to even take the passage to imply that Sextus wasn't an empiric.) These scholars are some of the foremost authorities on Sextus today. So in light of what the foremost scholars agree on, shouldn't the article say that he belonged to the empiric tradition in medicine? --165.123.138.170 09:38, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

No, since other eminent scholars disagree (Frede, House, Mates), and, most importantly, Sextus himself (at the place you cite, I.236f.) says: "it would not befit a skeptic to take up that system [the empiric medical system]. He might better adopt the so-called Method, it seems to me, for it alone of the medical systems seems not to make precipitate assertions ... in accord with the skeptic practice." Annas, Barnes, and Bett have their arguments, but unless we want to expand the article to include the fine points, the safest route is to suspend judgment. After all, on what grounds is Sextus said to have belonged to the empiric school in medicine, aside from the name tradition attaches to him? 4.232.123.140 22:45, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Hookway discusses this point at length in his Scepticism (Routledge, 1992) at Chapter 2 part 3. Hookway suggests that the stance Sextus took as a practicing doctor in relation to the Rationalist, Empiricist and Methodological schools of medicine gave primary impetus to his thinking on scepticism. That is to say, it is possible that neither his medical experience nor his thinking on scepticism were entirely formed at the time he was associated with the Empiricist school, and that it may be argued (by Hookway) that Sextus may have eventually developed a synthesis of Empirical and Methodological approaches that were consistent with a mature form of scepticism (or turning this 'on its head' say that he developed a sceptical approach that was consistent with his experience synthesising Empirical and Methodological approaches to medicine - and his rejection of the abstract theories of Rational medicine). I believe Annas and Barnes 'hang too much' on the Sextus being named Empiricus in defining him exclusively as an Empiricist, given that (a) the name may have been attached to him early in his career (perhaps as a student of that school) before he drifted away from Empirical orthodoxy, and (b) being named after something is not the same as having something named after you (the former suggests an 'association' the latter suggests 'encapsulation'(eg 100% similarity)). Galens observation that Sextus made a great contribution to Empiricism suggests Sextus valued that approach, but it does not prove that he held views entirely consistent with the central tenets of Empiricism (whatever they might be as defined from time to time). It seems to me that in the case where a chap 'founds' a school we might expect a very tight link between the chap's thinking and the philosophy of the school, but where someone like Sextus makes a substantial contribution to an existing school (which has a significant number of adherents) it seems to be a bit of a leap to assume that he must have been 100% in accord with every aspect of that school's philosophy or that that he would have recast that schools philosophy to be 100% in accord with his own. I suspect we may fall into the trap of seeing these chaps as nothing more than vessels carting about those fragments of their philosophies that luck has brought down to us, without any shades of grey and fully formed and absolutely rock solid consistent in their thinking from circa birth to circa death. How many I wonder said (unrecorded) on their death bed, "ah %#! it, it's all rubbish" and promptly expired. Tban (talk) 07:05, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Nagarjuna

The article compares Sextus to 'the 1st century AD Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna'.

The Nagarjuna article puts him later. 131.111.8.104 11:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed the sentence which compares Sextus and Nagarjuna since it is extremely misleading from what I could see in the article on Nagarjuna. --D. Webb 15:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

empiricism

The school of empiricism is listed on this page but there is no discussion of the relation between Empiricus and empiricism. Could someone comment? Tkuvho (talk) 13:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The link on the page should be to empiric school rather than empiricism. The latter is linked to Sextus through the former, but the former is the direct link to Sextus. The link between the Empiric School and Sextus is touched on above. I should have added that Galen's comment on Sextus contributing to the Empiric School is at Galen Med XIV p683 (so I'm told but I'll check later.) Tban (talk) 07:24, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Birth and death dates

The article gives definite years for Sextus's birth and death, but the actual dates are disputed by scholars. Where are these dates coming from?2601:B:C580:2D9:CAF7:33FF:FE77:D800 (talk) 21:38, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

nothing at wikisource

Following the wikisource link to the works of Sextus Empiricus produces only...

"There are no works listed on Wikisource for this author. If you'd like to add a new text, please review" --23.119.204.117 (talk) 23:30, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Unexplained change of Style

About the change of style, please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. I remember that unexplained changes of styles are subject to the arbitration committee. Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 11:25, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Why should one think it is appropriate to use "AD" for an author who gave extensive arguments against the existence of god? Teishin (talk) 01:20, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Era

As Sextus was not only not Christian but is our major source of arguments from antiquity against the existence of gods, it would seem inappropriate to use BC/AD era dating for articles about him (or Pyrrhonism in general).Teishin (talk) 21:25, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for writing. I, on the other hand, think that all articles concerning Greek and Roman civilization, as Western civilization is based on them, and is essentialy christian, should follow the notation BC, AD. I find it correct instead that all the rest of the world cultures follow the notation CE/BCE. In the case of Sextus, being a skeptic, it would be indifferent for him to have AD rather than CE. So, we might as well leave AD in place. :-) In any case, I follow the WP:BCE guideline, and I restore the BCE/CE notation too, if someone from the opposing party has changed it for no very good reason. The guideline of keeping the existing notation is surely not optimal, but it saves us a lot of edit wars and administrator interventions. I suggest you focus on the substance of the articles (I've read several of your contributions and you do a really excellent job) and leave those details alone. Thank you, Alex2006 (talk) 05:39, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Alex2006 While Sextus was a skeptic, neither form of ancient Greek skepticism entails being indifferent about all matters. Most obviously, Sextus was not indifferent in his opposition to dogma. As Sextus' works were denounced and condemned by later Christian writers, and as Sextus said that people who misrepresent Pyrrhonism should be scorned, it would seem logical for him to scorn being subjected to a dating system based on dogma held by people he would scorn. Also, as Sextus is a key figure in the history of Western atheism, and Western atheism is essentially anti-Christian, it would seem that we should follow the BCE/CE notation instead. Teishin (talk) 14:38, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

First of all I congratulate you for your preparation in the field of philosophy. However, I would like to remind you that the guideline in question (summarized at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Retaining_existing_styles) cites a "substantial reason". The facts that Sesto would be unhappy to have the dates in his article in the BC/AD style, or that his thought was later used by atheist philosophers (but are we sure he would have been happy about that?) sincerely do not seem to me to qualify as such. A substantial reason is to avoid offending a large readership (as for example by using BC/AD in the article on the Prophet Muhammad), but not to do a supposed wrong to a dead person. The reason why the two styles are considered equivalent (see WP:BCE) and change them is strongly discouraged is precisely to avoid meaningless edit wars, but if we were to spend time interpreting the supposed wishes of the hundreds of thousands of deceased people who have an article on wikipedia to assign the style that suits them best, I think the result would be exactly the opposite. Consider only Nero, who despite his persecution of the Christians has a pure BC/AD style article...We are here to build an encyclopaedia, not to settle questions of hairsplitting. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 10:32, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, you're right that arguing about six being wildly preferable to half a dozen wastes a lot of time for little good purpose. And thank you also for your kind words about my contributions here since 2005. As there's now a discussion going on about banning me, over a situation I find quite Kafkaesque, it seems quite possible that I will soon be unable to contribute or perhaps even to respond. Teishin (talk) 17:28, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

remarkably, I think there *is* a substantial reason not to use AD for Sextus - which has nothing to do with his presumably non-Christian religious affiliation; one of his works, Against the Dogmatists, is commonly referred to in scholarly literature (and also in this article, currently) as AD, so using BCE/CE is a more clear disambiguator. Psychastes (talk) 14:32, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Change of Main Image

I propose changing/deleting the main image of this page, as it, most probably, does not represent Sextus Empiricus and the misidentification is largely unmotivated. I ellaborate:

Currently this page has the traditional profile engraving that is often associated to Sextus Empiricus (as the picture itself suggest).

The coin engraved is a sample of a series produced at Mytilene, Lesbos, around II CE to commemorate great figures and patrons of Lesbos . There are currently twelve different samples of this coin . Sextus' profile is easily recognisable in all samples in the linked page, with the inscription 'heroe', which is an interesting thing to say of a medic/philosopher. On the other side of the coin, there is a young woman, Flavia Nichomachis, who has been suggestively identified as the daughter of another woman, Julia Proclua, featuring in the same series. In any case, it is reported that both women have been identified as benefactors of Mytilene in an inscription in the city . The same linked page identifies this 'Sextus Heroe' as Flavia's father, that is, Sextus Nichomachus. (These identifications are based on a work by archaeologist's W. Wroth work 'famous citizens of Metylene' which is particularly elusive).

Additionally, there is also another coin where the bearded profile and 'Sextus heroe' appears . The other side of the coin is described as 'nude male hero (bearded Sextos?), seated on rock, left, holding sceptre'and reads 'of the Mytileneans.'

Moreover, there is another ealier series of coins from Mytilene that depicts another Sextus profile, only unbearded . This Sextus is nicknamed 'the new Makar', and Makar is Macarenus of Lesbos, the mythological founder of the island. The linked page , thus, suggests reasonably that this Sextus, the new Makar, must have been some 'significant benefactors of the island', pointing the user to the bearded coins of 'Sextus hero' as later examples.

I am not going to make the claim that these two Sextuses were the same person or precisely identify them, my point simply is that the range of possibilities and the contexts around which the engraved coin allegedly depicting Sextus have little to do with the philosopher-medic in every sense.

W. Vollgraff, 'La vie de Sextus Empiricus', Revue de Philologie (1902), pp. 195-210 (this text is difficult to access, there is a full Spanish translation in the Spanish edition of Outlines of Pyrrhonism translated by Lucio Gil Fagoaga published by REUS, 1926 , which I have access to) discusses the origin of the identification between the coin's Sextus and a philosopher. Curiously enough, it goes back to the XVIIth century, but the Sextus identified is not the Pyrrhonist, but the Stoic Sextus of Chaeronea, whose picture in the wikipedia page is also identified as such because of its resemblance to the coin! (so maybe that one should be reconsidered too). Now, Vollgraff thinks Sextus of Chaeronea was no Stoic, but the Pyrrhonist author, but this is nowadays largely rejected.

Of course, there is a point to be made that, since now it is now common to identify Sextus with this image, we might as well keep it (à la Pseudo-Seneca). I would acknowledge this point's strength if (like in pseudo-Seneca's case) there had been philosophical-aesthetic considerations that had led to this identification, however, the connection was made entirely on the shared name, originally, with a Stoic in mind and, as I tried to show, this connection is unmotivated anyway.

Thus, I suggest that we depart from commercial publishers in continuing to use this misattributed portrait of Sextus. Instead, I propose we replace the main image with this one , representing a latin cover of Adversus Mathematicos that highlights his name. Jpergrc (talk) 20:58, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

I followed WP:BOLD and changed it for the reasons above. Please undo if deemed inappropriate, but I would appreciate engagement with the points raised above. Best Jpergrc (talk) 21:36, 11 December 2025 (UTC)