Robert Pirsig, Pyrrho, and the Buddha versus Socrates

Zen and the Art of the Least Understood Pyrrhonist Spiritual Exercise

The spiritual exercises of the ancient Pyrrhonists can be classified into three categories. The category we know least about from ancient sources is the zetetic exercises. These exercises are the focus of this article. The term “zetetic” is derived from the Greek term for “searching” or “inquiring.” The zetetic exercises direct the mind towards continued searching and away from arriving at conclusions.

Our surviving sources largely just imply their existence. Perhaps this is because the sources didn’t think there was much to say about the instruction to keep investigating and eschew drawing conclusions about non-evident matters. However, there are interesting things to unpack here.

A good place to start this unpacking is with Pyrrho’s summary of his philosophy. In that summary, Pyrrho says that pragmata are adiaphora and unstable.

First, we need to understand what these two untranslated terms mean, as they don’t translate well into English.

Pragmata is typically translated into English as “things,” but it means something narrower than that. It’s something closer to “issues.” For example, a well-known quote from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus uses this term in the same way that Pyrrho uses it, not to refer to “things” in the sense of physical objects, but to instead refer to a concept that includes events, issues, and disputes:

Men are disturbed, not by pragmata, but by the dogma which they form concerning pragmata.[1]

Those familiar with this famous quote from Epictetus may be surprised to see dogma in it. It’s exactly the word Epictetus used, but almost no translation of Epictetus uses the term. Usually, one sees dogma here translated as “judgment” or “opinion,” but by using dogma, Epictetus was saying something narrower than those words. He was referring to the philosophical principles used in making judgments.

Adiaphora is a term frequently used in Stoic texts. It does not translate well into English, and the Stoics use it as a technical term. The common translation is “indifferents.” The term is applied to things such as wealth and health — things which the Stoics say have no bearing on moral virtue (the one thing they consider to be good) but which may be preferred or dispreferred depending on the circumstances. The translation “indifferent” is obviously clunky here. In English, indifference is a property of subjects. For example, I may be indifferent as to whether I will eat dinner at 6:00 pm or 7:00 pm. In ancient Greek, however, adiaphora is a property of the object. If cooking dinner is going to take until 6:30 pm, dinner will not be adiaphora about my dinner time.

Adiaphora is the negation of the term diaphora. Diaphora means “difference,” or “distinction.” To say that something is adiaphora means that it is not different, or not distinguishable, or not divisible. Hence, the Stoic usage of adiaphora to mean that something such as wealth has no property that distinguishes it when evaluated on the basis of virtue.

Pyrrho is applying the term adiaphora here not about virtue, but about pragmata. He’s saying that pragmata have no properties that distinguish them. They cannot securely be differentiated or divided into this and that. In addition, Pyrrho says they’re unstable. They’re constantly changing. As such, there is no firm way of evaluating them.

Now, apply these ideas to inquiring and searching — the zetetic spiritual exercise. Let’s start with what is perhaps the simplest, most basic question involved in inquiry: “what is it?”

“What is it?” asks for some sort of definition. However, if pragmata are indistinguishable and unstable, can any firm definition be given?

Here are a few simple questions about minor pragmata to practice with. Spend a couple of minutes thinking about them.

• Is chess a sport?

• Is a hot dog a sandwich?

• Is a tomato a fruit? If so, do you put it in a fruit salad?

If you took the time to consider different perspectives on those questions, you probably found them difficult. Now try the exercise with questions about more contentious pragmata, such as:

• What is fair?

• What is a woman?

• Which current politicians are fascists?

If you thought much about these questions and keep up in the slightest with the news, you probably experienced some emotional disturbance — an unfortunate side-effect of the exercise. The point of the exercise, however, is to show you how definitions fail to give us firm ground to stand on so that we can resolve the pragmata. Doesn’t it seem that if we could agree on answers to these questions so much of our disturbing problems would go away? Why can’t we do this?

These are problems of definition, and they are caused by our ideas on what definition is supposed to be. These are ideas that come from Socrates, as Aristotle tells us in Metaphysics 13.1078b. Particularly interesting parts I have put in bold text:

The theory of Forms occurred to those who enunciated it because they were convinced as to the true nature of reality by the doctrine of Heraclitus, that all sensible things are always in a state of flux; so that if there is to be any knowledge or thought about anything, there must be certain other entities, besides sensible ones, which persist. For there can be no knowledge of that which is in flux. Now Socrates devoted his attention to the moral virtues, and was the first to seek a general definition of these (for of the Physicists Democritus gained only a superficial grasp of the subject and defined, after a fashion, “the hot” and “the cold”; while the Pythagoreans at an earlier date had arrived at definitions of some few things — whose formulae they connected with numbers — e.g., what “opportunity” is, or “justice” or “marriage”); and he naturally inquired into the essence of things; for he was trying to reason logically, and the starting-point of all logical reasoning is the essence. At that time there was as yet no such proficiency in Dialectic that men could study contraries independently of the essence, and consider whether both contraries come under the same science. There are two innovations which, may fairly be ascribed to Socrates: inductive reasoning and general definition. Both of these are associated with the starting-point of scientific knowledge.

Let’s start with that statement about Socrates: his innovations were induction and definition.

What do we now think about induction?

Induction is a mess. Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes in his book The Black Swan the flaws in inductive reasoning that he exploited to become wealthy. A couple of centuries earlier, David Hume famously pointed out the flaws of inductive reasoning. The Pyrrhonists, however, were pointing out the unsoundness of inductive reasoning back in the Greco-Roman era.[2]

While it has taken a long time for it to become well understood that the ancient Pyrrhonists were correct about induction — and that Socrates was wrong — it still isn’t well understood that Socrates’ other innovation — definition — is as faulty as induction is.

Pyrrho pointed out that pragmata are unstable. Aristotle concedes this point: there can be no knowledge of that which is changing.

Aristotle thinks this problem of change can be worked around. His workaround is based on his claim that things have essences. The problem is that things do not have essences. We project essences onto things. Things themselves are adiaphora.

Aristotle’s cryptic criticism of Democritus’ approach to definition is important to unpack here. Pyrrho began his career as a Democritean philosopher, causing Pyrrhonism to be, in many respects, an evolution of Democritean thought. Pyrrhonian and Democritean philosophies are similar enough that in Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Book II, Sections 212–214) Sextus Empiricus finds it necessary to explain the differences.

Aristotle says that Democritus “defined, after a fashion, ‘the hot’ and ‘the cold.’” What can be interpreted from this is that Democritus’ system of definition was based on relativity. Hot and cold exist only relative to each other. Corroborating this interpretation is that the philosopher Protagoras, who was Democritus’ student, based his philosophical system on relativity. His book, Truth, famously opened with the assertion, “man is the measure of all things” as a summary of his relativistic philosophy. For the practical application of Protagorean relativism, we have this ancient comment about Protagoras:

When a competitor in the pentathlon unintentionally struck Epitimus of Pharsalus with a javelin and killed him, [Pericles] spent a whole day with Protagoras examining the difficulty whether, according to the most correct reasoning, it was the javelin, or the man who throw it, or the umpires, that should be considered responsible for this unfortunate event.[3]

Protagoras’ way of reasoning here is that the basic facts are indisputable: a competitor has unintentionally killed a man using a javelin. However, the judgment of these facts is relative, as the same facts may be viewed from different perspectives. From the physician’s perspective, the javelin is responsible for the man’s death. From the umpire’s perspective, the javelin-thrower is responsible. For the person who organized the contest, the umpire is responsible. Hence, evaluations of moral responsibility are like evaluations of hot and cold: they are relative.

Socrates’ system of definition, which he used to attempt to define the moral virtues, was absolute, not relative like that of Democritus.

Socrates’ system also made definitions essential for comprehension and instruction. Accordingly, if one cannot recognize the object of a definition, then one is unable to define that object. The Pyrrhonist critique of this is that if a person can recognize an object and can compose a definition of it, then that person has comprehended the object not from a definition, but from the object itself. This appears to be what people actually do. Based on this evidence, Socrates was wrong. Things can be understood without definition.

Not only that, but Socrates is also wrong in other ways about definition. In Socrates’ system, each definition depends on the terms used in that definition. Those terms also require definition. If definitions were essential for comprehension, this would mean that there would be an infinite regress: everything would have to be defined before anything could be defined. This is impossible. Therefore, if Socrates were right about definitions being necessary for understanding, we could understand nothing at all.

For further evidence of the deficiencies of Socrates’ system for definitions, let’s inquire about that system has performed. Have he and his followers ever succeeded in producing absolute definitions of the moral virtues? If the moral virtues were correctly defined in this way, wouldn’t that mean we could all agree on what is good and what is bad? Wouldn’t that mean we could agree on what is morally right? Wouldn’t that mean people could just figure out disputes by investigation and discussion, rather than resorting to conflict and war?

Just as experience has shown that Socrates was wrong about induction, he was also wrong about definition.

This is not to say that induction and definition don’t have utility. They do. We use them all the time, with many positive results. The problem is that we are prone to falling into the error that Socrates fell into, of placing too much confidence in these techniques, making us think they lead to truth. Instead, they just lead us to things that work under certain circumstances.

Pyrrho and the other ancient Pyrrhonists were not the only ones who noticed this error in Socratic thinking. The philosopher Robert Pirsig has addressed it as well, taking a different approach in his Metaphysics of Quality, discussed in his books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. His discussion illuminates Socrates’ error in a different way.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig describes an encounter his alter ego, Phaedrus, had with the flaws of Socratic definitional thinking while taking a class on the Gorgias, one of the Platonic dialogues. In this dialogue, Socrates asks the rhetorician Gorgias a large number of questions about rhetoric, for the purpose of defining rhetoric. What happens is:

Gorgias’ description of what people called Sophists have tended to do, now becomes subtly rendered by Socrates’ dialectic into something else. Rhetoric has become an object, and as an object has parts. And the parts have relationships to one another and these relations are immutable. One sees quite clearly in this dialogue how the analytic knife of Socrates hacks Gorgias’ art into pieces…. Socrates had been one of Phaedrus childhood heroes and it shocked and angered him to see this dialogue taking place. He filled the margins of the text with answers of his own. These must have frustrated him greatly, because there was no way of knowing how the dialogue would have gone if these answers had been made. At one place Socrates asks to what class of things do the words which Rhetoric uses relate. Gorgias answers, “The Greatest and the Best.’’ Phaedrus, no doubt recognizing Quality in this answer, has written “True!’’ in the margin. But Socrates responds that this answer is ambiguous. He is still in the dark. “Liar!’’ writes Phaedrus in the margin, and he cross-references a page in another dialogue where Socrates makes it clear he could not have been “in the dark.’’

This hacking into pieces is in ancient Greek logic known as “division,” i.e., the division of terms into their meanings. The ancient Pyrrhonists pointed out that division was impossible (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book II Sections 213–227). Phaedrus’ exploration of division led him to an even harsher conclusion.

His mind races on and on, through the permutations of the dialectic, on and on, hitting things, finding new branches and sub-branches, exploding with anger at each new discovery of the viciousness and meanness and lowness of this “art’’ called dialectic…. Phaedrus’ mind races on and on and then on further, seeing now at last a kind of evil thing, an evil deeply entrenched in himself, which pretends to try to understand love and beauty and truth and wisdom but whose real purpose is never to understand them, whose real purpose is always to usurp them and enthrone itself. Dialectic…the usurper. That is what he sees. The parvenu, muscling in on all that is Good and seeking to contain it and control it. Evil.

This does seem to be a reasonable conclusion about a method that insists that it is the correct way to understand things but is instead faulty. This is the intellectual and moral flaw of the dogmatists that the Pyrrhonists are keen to point out.

Pirsig leaves the key term in his philosophy — Quality — undefined, and thereby undefiled by Socratic definition and division. In doing so, he seems to be on a more sound path than that set forth by Socrates and his followers. Definitions are not essential. Definitions of good and bad may not even be possible, except relatively so. As the opening lines of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance say: “And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good. Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

In other words, there’s no definition anyone can give us of good and bad. We can only judge these things relatively. This is the same thing that Democritus, Pyrrho, and Protagoras pointed out long ago, but like with the Pyrrhonist critique of induction, it’s taking a long time for the problems of definition to be well understood.

At this point, it’s useful to note that there’s a common misunderstanding that the Pyrrhonists suspend judgment about everything. While suspension of judgment is a central feature of Pyrrhonism, it is not applied to everything. Our surviving ancient Pyrrhonist texts show plenty of judgments. People tend to overlook these because they fail to grasp the Pyrrhonist logos, i.e., the Pyrrhonist way of thinking, the basis for judgment. One of these judgments is that everything is relative. The Pyrrhonists provide a proof for this claim (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book II, Sections 134–140). It’s something one should not suspend judgment about. Instead, it is the very foundation of suspension of judgment. As Sextus Empiricus puts it:

…we have shown that all things are relative. The obvious result is that as concerns each external object we shall not be able to state how it is in its own nature and absolutely, but only how, in relation to something, it appears to be. It follows that we must suspend judgment about the nature of the objects.

About this matter, Pirsig notes:

Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has. The Sophists are the enemy.

And yet, Phaedrus understands, what he is saying about Quality is somehow opposed to all this. It seems to agree much more closely with the Sophists.

“Man is the measure of all things.’’ Yes, that’s what he is saying about Quality. Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists and materialists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things…it fits. And they taught rhetoric…that fits.

The Sophists are just the easy targets. Socrates never tried (as far as we know) to take on his contemporary, the philosopher Democritus. Instead, Plato worked to get all of Democritus’ books burned.[4] Now we have none of them. The result is that most of the West has spent over two thousand years in a delusion induced by Socrates’ mistakes. Only a few voices in the wilderness, such as those of Pirsig and the Pyrrhonists, can be found crying out about this delusion.

The Buddhists try to point it out, too, but the clarity of their critique suffers from the fact that Buddhism is not a reaction to Socratic thought but to Indian, and later, Chinese thought. Clarity of meaning is a function of relativity. As Buddhism and Socratic thought are historically, culturally, and linguistically separated, they are mutually difficult to comprehend. As Pyrrhonism and Buddhism are philosophically similar, and Pyrrhonism has long been directly in dialogue with Socratic thinking, it’s useful to use Pyrrhonism as a bridge between the two.

The heart of zetetic practice is the exploration of definitions, the exploration of labeling, and the exploration of what words and concepts mean. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap Socrates fell into, thinking that there’s some firm ground to stand on, that induction produces truth, that definitions produce meaning, and that meaning can be divided up into constituent parts. Zetetic practice leads us to become intimately acquainted with the flaws of this kind of thinking.

The Pyrrhonist zetetic practice shares similarities with the Zen huatou practice. Both are forms of concentrated, open-ended searching. Both involve variants of the question, “what is it?” Both focus on creating a kind of doubt, a kind of uncertainty that invites further exploration. Both refuse to settle on answers, but continue searching. Both go beyond definitions — beyond words, beyond concepts. Both can be carried out by non-specialists in the midst of their daily activities. Huatou is a way of exhausting and silencing rational thinking. Pyrrhonist practice is also a way to do this. As Sextus Empiricus concludes his book, Against the Logicians:

…just as it is not impossible for the man who has ascended to a high place by a ladder to overturn the ladder with his foot after his ascent, so also it is not unlikely that the Pyrrhonist, after he has arrived at the demonstration of his thesis by means of the argument proving the non-existence of proof, as it were by a step-ladder, should then abolish this very argument.

Three of the common questions used in huatou practice have close parallels in Pyrrhonism. The huatou, “what is it?” is about the problem of definition. Compare this question with the discussion of definitions in Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book II Sections 204–214. The huatou, “who is dragging this corpse around?” is about the problem of understanding what we are. Compare this question with the discussion of souls in Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book II Sections 21–47.

What is the result of the Pyrrhonist zetetic and the Zen huatou enquiries?

The Pyrrhonists “say that everything is relative… nothing is in itself, but everything is viewed relative to other things. Neither color nor shape nor sound nor taste nor smells nor textures nor any other object of perception has an intrinsic character.”[5] The Zen Buddhists say “all Dharmas are empty of characteristics. They are not produced, not destroyed, not defiled, not pure; and they neither increase nor diminish. Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, cognition, formation, or consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch.”

The Huatou method was invented by the Chinese Rinzai Zen teacher Dahui Zonggao for teaching Zen to educated Chinese scholar-officials who were unable to regularly meet with a Zen teacher. Greek philosophies such as Pyrrhonism represented the advanced education of the Greco-Roman ruling classes.

While today's average person is no more likely to be in the ruling class than they were in ancient China and Rome, they are now likely to have had similar levels of education and to be dealing with as many complex issues. Now, more than ever, we need to understand the flaws of Socratic thinking, which has formed part of the foundation of common Western thought.

The problem of Socrates is far worse than how he looked. The problem is how he thought.

Footnotes:

[1] Enchiridion 5

[2] Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book II, Section 204

[3] 80A10 DK

[4] Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, ix. 40: “Aristoxenus in his Historical Notes affirms that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect.”

[5] Ancient Anonymous Commentary on the Theaetetus