Is Pyrrho’s Thesis From the Aristocles Passage Truly of the Tetralemmatic Kind? (A Preliminary Point of Analysis Deciding a Buddhist Influence)

Abstract

Recently there has been a debate on whether Pyrrho’s philosophy could be influenced by Indian Buddhist philosophy. Discussions revealing striking similarities between them often point out Pyrrho’s complicated sentence, referred to as tetralemma, as one of the most striking similarities. The central question of this paper is whether Pyrrho’s sentence is of the tetralemmatic kind. Authors argue that if Pyrrho’s sentence is not fourfold in structure it could scarcely be classified as similar to the Buddhist tetralemma. A careful analysis of the question is provided, arguing that the approach to the problem of tetralemmatic structure cannot be carried out solely on syntactic grounds. An aspect of a deeper philosophical meaning of the formula is applied, which alone enables us (if at all) to link Pyrrho’s philosophy to Buddhism.

Keywords

• pyrrho of elis
• tetralemma
• οὐ μᾶλλον
• buddhism
• the greek buddha