The Nature of Things: Undifferentiated, Unstable, Undecidable

This chapter starts the reading of Pyrrho’s surviving fragments. These first statements propose a specific approach to the nature of reality and the attitude to adopt in relation to it. For Pyrrho, reality cannot be “apprehended” using human logic. If one does, then one imposes onto reality endless differentials that are circular and dogmatic in nature because they tirelessly refract one another without end in sight. Against this all-too-prevailing conceptualisation of reality, Pyrrho proposes instead to “apprehend” reality in such a way that it sets human logic aside, thus leaving it “undifferentiated, unstable, and undecidable.” Such an unusual approach does not imply an epistemic impotence. It only recognizes that there are two inextricably linked logics at work, that of things, which is naturally non-differential and that of humans, which is often differential. Without recognizing this two-fold aporetic logic, reality can only be conceived through human differentiae, which is of no use on its own because it can never match the way reality occurs.