Robert Pirsig, Pyrrho, and the Buddha versus Socrates

Zen and the Art of the Least Understood Pyrrhonist Spiritual Exercise

The problem of Socrates is far worse than how he looked. The problem is how he thought.

The spiritual exercises of the ancient Pyrrhonists can be classified into three categories. The category we know least about from ancient sources is the zetetic exercises. These exercises are the focus of this article. The term “zetetic” is derived from the Greek term for “searching” or “inquiring.” The zetetic exercises direct the mind towards continued searching and away from arriving at conclusions.

Our surviving sources largely just imply their existence. Perhaps this is because the sources didn’t think there was much to say about the instruction to keep investigating and eschew drawing conclusions about non-evident matters. However, there are many interesting things to unpack here.

A good place to start with this unpacking is with Pyrrho’s summary of his philosophy. In that summary, Pyrrho says that pragmata are adiaphora and unstable. First, we need to understand what the two untranslated terms mean, as they don’t translate well into English.

Pragmata is typically translated into English as “things,” but it means something narrower than that. It’s something closer to “issues.” For example, a well-known quote from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus uses this term in the same way that Pyrrho uses it, not to…