Neither philosophy nor politics? The ancient Pyrrhonian approach to everyday life

Sextus Empiricus does not give us an extended account of the implications of skepticism for politics. Nevertheless, as this paper explains, he did sketch out what a skeptic might do if ordered by a tyrant to carry out some horrible task: either obey or disobey, depending upon “ancestral customs and habits”, not on dogma. It is here argued that it is not obvious that skeptics would behave very differently from non-skeptics, who might obey or disobey depending upon their dogmatic principles and their ability to act consistently with them.