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The scepticism with which this work is concerned is a philosophical doctrine known as Pyrrhonism, and was formulated by Sextus Empiricus in the second century A.D. It involves a psychological attitude which should be of interest to readers of this Journal.
A sceptic neither affirms nor denies that the truth may be found; he reserves his judgment. With whatever argument he is faced, he is always ready with a counter-argument. But he neither accepts nor rejects the one or the other. He is not passive. He may even be a seeker yet never finds. He maintains his stability and peace of mind in a state of mental suspense. He has no convictions, for he has never met with a belief which is immune to objections.
But suspense and lack of conviction are not put forward as a conscious policy. Any conscious policy is definite and implies a claim for its truth. But to each claim there are counter-claims, so the sceptic waits and sees. He has the ideal open mind—exasperatingly so! His intellectual indecision does not, however, extend to his practical life. As Professor Naess remarks, the sceptic is guided by nature, traditions, laws and customs. It therefore appears that the sceptic buys his peace of mind by a radical divorce of theory from practice. He may act on impulse but never on reflection. He may unthinkingly evince an attitude of trust or mistrust. But he dare not say: I trust X, I mistrust X. His attitude emerges when he verbalizes. But at one point or other we all must verbalize.
Professor Naess devotes one chapter to ‘Scepticism and positive mental health’. He distinguishes the sceptical attitude from compulsive doubt—the sceptic does not doubt, he refuses to declare (perhaps cannot declare?), and insists that the attitude of the ‘mature sceptic’ would be wrongly classed by analysts as defence mechanism. He applies certain criteria taken from a book by Marie Jahoda. He finds self-actualization compatible with scepticism but, while championing the sceptic, has himself some do