Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, Robert Gregg Bury (Translator), 3.5.17

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View: By Chapter

← Previous Next →

[17] That Cause exists is plausible; for how could there come about increase, decrease, generation, corruption, motion in general, each of the physical and mental effects, the ordering of the whole universe, and everything else, except by reason of some cause?¹ For even if none of these things has real existence,² we shall affirm that it is due to some cause that they appear to us other than they really are.

Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes. Sextus Empiricus. Robert Gregg Bury (Translator). London. 1933.

Funding provided by Tisch Library, Tufts University.

Current edition First1KGreek

Outlines of Pyrrhonism (English) (Sextus Empiricus, Vol. 1. Bury, Robert Gregg, translator. London: William Heinemann Ltd.; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1933.)

Editions (1)

Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes First1KGreek (Sextus Empiricus. Sexti Empiricii Opera, Volume 1. Mutschmann, Hermann, editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912.) — 3.5.17 focus

[17] Πιθανόν ἐστιν εἶναι τὸ αἴτιον· πῶς γὰρ ἂν αὔξησις γένοιτο, μείωσις, γένεσις, φθορά, καθόλου κίνησις, τῶν φυσικῶν τε καὶ ψυχικῶν ἀποτελεσμάτων ἕκαστον, ἡ τοῦ
παντὸς κόσμου διοίκησις, τὰ ἄλλα πάντα, εἰ μὴ κατά τινα αἰτίαν; καὶ γὰρ εἰ μηδὲν τούτων ὡς πρὸς τὴν φύσιν ὑπάρχει, λέξομεν ὅτι διά τινα αἰτίαν πάντως φαίνεται ἡμῖν τοιαῦτα, ὁποῖα οὔκ ἐστιν.

Notes on the current edition

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

1. To mark the distinction between αἴτιον and αἰτία, I render the former by ‟Cause,” the latter by ‟cause.” The latter seems used mostly of the particular instance, the former of the general notion; or (as in §§ 19, 23, 24) the former of the cause of existence, the latter of the cause of cognition.

2. Cf. Adv. Phys. i. 201. ‟These things,” being ‟appearances” (or phenomena), may not really exist in the form in which they ‟appear” to us: the ‟real” may differ from the ‟phenomenal,” but even so a ‟Cause” of that difference must be assumed.

Sextus Empiricus Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes 3.5.17

Robert Gregg Bury (Translator)

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

Current edition First1KGreek

Notes on the current edition

Stable identifiers