International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 2 (2012) 79–82 brill.

nl/skep

Book Review

Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. By Jessica N. Berry. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 230. ISBN: 978-0-19-536842-0

The work of Richard Popkin sparked a resurgence of scholarly interest in ancient skepticism
and its influence on modern and contemporary thought, a resurgence that shows no signs
of abating. In addition to a number of works applying Pyrrhonian arguments to going
concerns in contemporary analytic epistemology, recent decades have seen the production
of a variety of book-length studies exploring the affinities between Pyrrhonism and various
modern figures. With Jessica N. Berry’s new book, we can finally add Nietzsche to the list.
The goal of Berry’s book is “to settle the question of whether and in what sense Nietzsche
is a skeptic by taking Pyrrhonism, a powerful form of skepticism that originated in ancient
Greece, as a model for understanding his philosophical project” (5). On Berry’s view,
Nietzsche’s project is unified not around a doctrine, such as the will to power, but around a
set of problems or worries: “the corrosive effects of morality upon culture… the epidemic
spread of nihilism in contemporary Europe, and ultimately… the health and sickness—the
flourishing or foundering—of human beings” (6). She argues that these worries remained
with Nietzsche throughout his career and that Pyrrhonism both grounds his “outlook”
toward them and places “methodological constraints on what could count as good
responses” to them (6). Though Pyrrhonism is not a doctrine, “it does provide a sort of
structure and systematicity to Nietzsche’s philosophy” (6).
The book is divided into six chapters. Following the Introduction, in which Berry distin-
guishes ancient from modern forms of skepticism, the first chapter contains the book’s only
sustained discussion of the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus. After arguing for Nietzsche’s
familiarity with the ancient skeptical tradition, Berry proclaims the preferability of an
‘urbane’ (as opposed to a ‘rustic’) interpretation of Pyrrhonism, according to which the
skeptic’s suspension of judgment is restricted to “matters of concern to the Dogmatist”
(37), leaving him free to hold “at least some beliefs of the ordinary, everyday variety” (42).
(The ‘rustic’ Pyrrhonian, on the other hand, is said to hold no beliefs.) She then considers
one such interpretation, that of Tad Brennan. The majority of the remainder of the book is
given over to Nietzsche interpretation.
Chapter 2 looks at the early Nietzsche, focusing on the unpublished essay “On Truth
and Lie in the Extramoral Sense.” In opposition to readings that see Nietzsche as here deny-
ing the existence of truth, Berry argues persuasively that the essay should be read as anti-
dogmatic. She compares several of the arguments in “On Truth and Lie” to strikingly
similar arguments set out by Sextus in Against the Grammarians. Chapter 3, “The Question
of Nietzsche’s ‘Naturalism,’” moves ahead to Human, All Too Human, arguing that it is
skeptical in the same way as “On Truth and Lie” and is therefore continuous with (at least

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/221057011X590250

80 Book Reviews / International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 2 (2012) 79–82

some of ) Nietzsche’s early work (70). Berry argues that, far from being incompatible with
skepticism, Nietzsche’s naturalism—like Montaigne’s, to whom she devotes a section—
arose from his skepticism. As a concomitant of skepticism, ‘naturalism’ (note the scare
quotes in Chapter 3’s title) is a position arrived at negatively, by systematically suspending
judgment on claims that “take us beyond the level of straightforward empirical
observation” (84–5). Berry argues that Nietzsche approved of the scientific method not
because of its ability to furnish us with new beliefs, but because of its ability to rid us of
“another, wholly pernicious sort” of belief (86), namely, metaphysical beliefs, which both
“cannot be justified without running afoul of one of the modes of Skepticism” (84) and “are
utterly idle epistemically” (73) in the sense that, even if they could be justified, they “would
do nothing to change our experience of the world” (73).
Centered around a discussion of §12 of the third essay of the Genealogy, Chapter 4
makes a similar argument, in this case that Nietzsche’s perspectivism and his skepticism are
two sides of the same coin. Berry argues against metaphysical readings of perspectivism;
rather, “we should understand it as a position that undermines the attempt to secure justi-
fication for all such theses” (111). Chapter 5 turns to the problem of reconciling the
Pyrrhonian objective of tranquility or freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) with Nietzsche’s
disdain for those who valorize ease and comfort. Berry argues that skeptical ataraxia “runs
afoul” of Nietzsche’s apparent rejection of tranquility as an end only if one has “overesti-
mated Nietzsche’s rejection of tranquility and underestimated its complexity in the ancient
sources” (155). Though she repeatedly points to important differences between the two
concepts (cf., 159, 163, 164), Berry proposes that we understand Democritus’s euthumia
(cheerfulness) as “a conceptual forerunner of ataraxia” (142), one that both better conduces
to what Nietzsche says about health and enjoys doxographical (159) as well as historico-
philosophical (167–71) connections to the ancient skeptical tradition. The sixth and final
chapter argues that Nietzsche is a moral skeptic not in the sense of a moral antirealist, but
in the sense of a Pyrrhonian: like Sextus before him, he “promotes suspicion, on a grand
scale, about the kinds of prior commitments and presuppositions without which there
could be no morality” (206). The suspension of judgment advocated by Pyrrhonian skepti-
cism is “not only necessary for Nietzsche’s revaluation… it is also itself sufficient to afford
him the title of an ‘immoralist’” (208).
Whether “taking Pyrrhonism… as a model for understanding [Nietzsche’s] philosophi-
cal project” (5) yields valuable insights crucially depends on Pyrrhonism’s ability to help
settle disputes over how best to interpret Nietzsche. One such dispute concerns the nature
of Nietzsche’s skepticism about truth. Some interpreters read him as a radical skeptic who
denies the very idea of truth, whereas others read him as skeptical only of a strong philo-
sophical conception of truth (e.g., truth as correspondence to some Platonic realm of
Ideas). Unfortunately, a parallel ‘scope’ dispute plagues interpretations of Pyrrhonism.
‘Urbane’ readings claim that Sextus’s arguments target only philosophical beliefs, whereas
‘rustic’ readings view Sextus’s arguments as undermining everyday beliefs as well. Berry
follows Hankinson in holding that Pyrrhonism attacks belief rather than knowledge or
justification (13–4), recognizes that it cannot tenably be maintained that Nietzsche holds
no beliefs (42–3), and concludes that “if [Nietzsche] is a skeptic of the Sextan variety, he is
an urbane one” (43). Despite its pedigree, however, the rustic–urbane dichotomy does not
exhaust credible interpretations of Pyrrhonian epochē—which is fortunate, since both ‘rus-
ticity’ and ‘urbanity’ have every appearance of neglecting important features of Sextus’s
 Book Reviews / International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 2 (2012) 79–82 81

texts. By limiting herself to understanding Pyrrhonism as ‘urbane,’ Berry has also, I suspect,
prevented her interpretation from answering to important features of Nietzsche’s texts.
The Pyrrhonian ‘scope’ dispute centers on how to read the much-debated passage at
Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH) 1.13, in which Sextus distinguishes between beliefs (dogmata)
such that the skeptic assents to some and suspends judgment on others. The rustic is said
to suspend judgment on all beliefs, the apparent meaning of PH 1.13 notwithstanding,
whereas the urbane suspend judgment only on those beliefs possessing a certain content,
generally otiose metaphysics concerning “the essence of things” (cf., 61, 68, 102–3, 123).
In recent years, however, a number of scholars, building on the work of Michael Frede,
have begun to develop a subtler and more satisfactory view, one that reconciles elements of
urbanity and rusticity. In his book on Sextus, Alan Bailey convincingly argues that the
target of Pyrrhonism is not belief, but rational justification. Casey Perin helpfully suggests
that we understand Pyrrhonism as undermining belief only contingently, given a commit-
ment to what I call the philosophical epistemic norm, i.e., the principle according to which
one ought to assent only to that which has been rationally (philosophically) justified.
In this way, we can begin to see PH 1.13 as specifying two distinct kinds of belief—or ways
of believing—one which the skeptic suspends judgment on (dogmatic belief ), the other to
which he assents (non-dogmatic belief ), where these classes are distinguished not by content
but by the believer’s doxastic attitude, which arises from his ambivalence toward philoso-
phy’s epistemic norm.
Interpretations of PH 1.13 open onto important questions regarding the skeptic’s way of
life (agogē) that, if they are raised at all, hang in the background of Berry’s book. I suspect
that it is precisely here—not in epochē, but in what is supposed to follow from it—that the
most significant connections between Nietzsche and Pyrrhonism are to be found. The
‘Pyrrhonian’ who figures in Berry’s book is simply a person who suspends judgment on
metaphysical claims, thereby achieving a sort of tranquility whose nature and connection
to epochē goes largely unexplored by Berry in favor of a discussion of Democritus’s notion
of euthumia. This limited picture forces her to conclude, in effect, that although Nietzsche
is a Pyrrhonian (a critiquer of values), the philosophers of the future, for whom he is
“clear[ing] a path,” will be dogmatists (creators of values) (210fn). Such a view not only
prevents Nietzsche from directly engaging the worries that Berry thinks unify his philo-
sophical project; it also casts Pyrrhonism (albeit on a longer-than-usual timescale) in the
same role it played for Descartes and Kant, i.e., as a wholly negative preparatory to the
rising of a new dogmatism. A fuller exploration of the upshot of epochē in both Sextus and
later Pyrrhonians such as Montaigne would, I suspect, uncover profounder affinities
between the ancient skeptical tradition and Nietzsche’s philosophical project. The
Pyrrhonian way of life can be understood as one that seeks to make the skeptic at home in
a particular cultural tradition given a thoroughgoing awareness of competing alternatives.
Having suspended judgment on ultimate justificatory grounds, the skeptic lacks a princi-
pled rationale for privileging one set of customs or beliefs over another. Pyrrhonism raises
the problem (a problem that exercised Nietzsche throughout much of his career) of how we
are to live, both as individuals and as communities, once the dogmatic bonds of religion
and philosophy have been cut.
It is in the scope of their concerns that Sextus, Montaigne, and Nietzsche differ most
obviously from one another. Sextus sought to treat the negative effects of dogmatism on
a case-by-case basis. Montaigne hoped to counteract the dogmatic spirit animating the
82 Book Reviews / International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 2 (2012) 79–82

religious wars of early-modern Europe. Nietzsche’s thought, the most far-reaching of the
three, ranged across the entire span of history—and beyond. Robert Pippin has argued that
Nietzsche sought to emulate Montaigne’s cheerful skepticism and that his failure to do so
resulted from the depth of the cultural crisis facing Europe in his day, a crisis whose origin
Nietzsche traced back to prehistory. Sextus and Montaigne undertook to cut the bonds of
dogmatism, but Nietzsche recognized that, in his time, the bonds were falling away on their
own. ‘God is dead’ because modern secular society, not Nietzsche, killed (belief in) God, an
occurrence as fraught with peril as with hope. (“What were we doing when we unchained
this earth from its sun?” the madman asks.) At the crisis’s center stands the inexorable
advance of modern science, which, qua ascetic, scrubs the world of meaning wherever it
turns, undermining the sorts of value central to cultural grounding (indeed, central to
grounding its own practice)—without supplying alternatives. As a result, nihilism looms.
Pyrrhonism, however, offers a response to nihilism: a way of life that does not avert to the
dogmatisms underwriting the traditional sources of value called into question by our
relentless will to truth. It remains an open question how far one can interpret Nietzsche’s
call for value-creation—and, more generally, his project of combating the “floundering…
of human beings” (6)—along Pyrrhonian lines, but it would be interesting to see these and
related issues explored in greater detail.
Berry sets out “[a] to settle the question of whether and in what sense Nietzsche is a
skeptic by [b] taking Pyrrhonism… as a model for understanding his philosophical project”
(5). The question of Nietzsche’s skepticism can be settled in favor of a Pyrrhonian reading
only if we have before us a reasonably complete view of Pyrrhonism, one as concerned with
the skeptic’s agogē (her life) as with her epochē (her philosophizing). Consequently, regarding
(b), Berry’s analyses are not so much mistaken as they are incomplete and therefore tenta-
tive. Even so, Berry offers numerous illuminating discussions of important features of
Nietzsche’s thought, and by drawing the connection to Pyrrhonism, she does so in a novel
way. Her book should be greeted enthusiastically by anyone interested in Nietzsche or in
the ongoing project of discerning the thumbprint of ancient skepticism in modern and
contemporary philosophy.

Roger E. Eichorn
University of Chicago
reichorn@uchicago.edu