Sextus Empiricus Against the Logicians [Hardcover]

A new and accurate translation of an important work of ancient Greek scepticism.Sextus Empiricus' Against the Logicians is a prime example of the ancient Greek sceptical method at work. It addresses a perennial question in philosophy--the question of how we can know things--by critically examining the pretensions of non-sceptical philosophers to be able to answer this question. This volume presents the text in a new and accurate translation, together with a detailed introduction that sets the work in its philosophical context.Sextus Empiricus' Against the Logicians is a prime example of the ancient Greek sceptical method at work. It addresses a perennial question in philosophy--the question of how we can know things--by critically examining the pretensions of non-sceptical philosophers to be able to answer this question. This volume presents the text in a new and accurate translation, together with a detailed introduction that sets the work in its philosophical context.By far the most detailed surviving examination by any ancient Greek sceptic of epistemology and logic, this work critically reviews the pretensions of non-sceptical philosophers, to have discovered methods for determining the truth, either through direct observation or by inference from the observed to the unobserved. A fine example of the Pyrrhonist sceptical method at work, it also provides extensive information about the ideas of other Greek thinkers, which in many instances, are poorly preserved in other sources.Book I; Book II. ...this is an excellent work. It is a valuable new tool for the study both of Sextan Pyrrhonism and of the logical and epistemological doctrines expounded in AD I-II, and will no doubt become the standard English translation of these books in the years to come. Bett has proved, once again, that he is one of the leading specialists in Pyrrhonian skepticism.
--Diego E. Machuca, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cient?ficas y T?cnicas (Argentina), Bryn MalCÔ