As in the other systems here described, the central aim was one of offering the maximum of happiness. It must be admitted at the outset that their
conception of happiness is decidedly negative and owes a good deal to Epicureanism-a philosophy by no means dead, at least to judge from the massive
inscription put up at the close of the second century A.D. by Diogenes of Oenoanda in his native city to instruct his fellow citizens in the Epicurean
system. The aim of life is ataraxia or freedom from disturbance. The way to this state of mind is through suspension of judgement, which is arrived at by
a realization that certainty is impossible and no argument incontrovertible. The main interest of the whole system is the way in which they thought this
state of realization was to be achieved. It was supposed to happen through the ten celebrated 'tropes' of Aenesidemus.
The aim of the tropes is to challenge the value, and even more the bare possibility, of going beyond the appearances and arriving at what Stoics and
Platonists alike would have termed knowledge. Antisceptic though he was, Plotinus thought it necessary to refute their objections to the possibility of
knowledge. In fact Ennead 5.5.1 can be read as accepting their critique of Stoic sensualism, before he propounds his own theory. The principal type of
argument proposed by Aenesidemus and Sextus is that, because the way in which objects appear to us differs from person to person, it is impossible to
make absolute claims about the nature of the thing in itself. The first trope argues that, as the same object produces differing impressions on different
living creatures, no valid inference about the actual object may be drawn from the report of our senses, and therefore that the only proper and possible
attitude towards them is one of suspension of judgement, epoche. In his treatise On the Drunkenness of Noah Philo writes: 'These and similar phenomena
are clear proofs of the impossibility of apprehension'.
There is a certain rigour evident in the arguments of the Sceptics, which is in striking contrast to the somewhat incoherent dogmatism of the founders of
Middle Platonism, notably Antiochus of Ascalon. As far as we know, no refutation was provided of the arguments of Sextus and Aenesidemus;
nevertheless the school did not last. Perhaps it was thought of as too uncompromisingly destructive for an age which needed the support of a
metaphysical or religious vision.
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