An interesting philosophy book

I have been reading an interesting book that I had my wife give me for Christmas: Hellenistic Philosophy by John Sellars. 

If you aren't familiar with the term, "Hellenistic" doesn't simply mean "Greek." The Hellenistic period is a specific time of ancient history, from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) to the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C. In other words, it covers the time after the heyday of the Greek city state and figures such as Pericles and before the complete Roman takeover of the Mediterranean. The period is when the successors of Alexander ruled a huge swath of territory in southeast Europe, northern Africa and Asia, imposing a Greek speaking elite.

As Sellars explains in his book, the Hellenic period saw the rise of Epicureanism and Stoicism, and a revival and reinvention of skepticism, also known as Pyrrhonism. There were other philosophies active, too, although Sellars concentrates on those three. Plato's Academy kept going during this period, although it went through a skeptical phase, Cynics were active and Aristotle also still attracted scholars. Sellars, if you don't know him, is an expert on ancient Greek philosophy who has written quite a few books. Most are about Stoicism, although he also wrote a good, short book about Epicurean ethics, Fourfold Remedy, which I read last year.

My main motive in wanting to read the book is my strong interest in Epicureanism; I wanted to learn more about the milieu from which it emerged. But the book also offers an outline of Stoicism, which has experienced a recent revival of interest, giving Sellars a market for  his books that goes beyond college students studying philosophy.

But a nice bonus for RAW fans is the focus on skepticism. Robert Anton Wilson had many influences, but in a sense he also was a modern skeptic. His model agnosticism and "maybe logic" was opposed to certainty and ideological dogmatism. 

So it's interesting to read about philosophers  of skepticism and how some of their thoughts seem to prefigure some of RAW's.

Here is one of the passages in the book, in the chapter  on "Knowledge," where Sellars is talking about how Metrodorus interpreted Carneades. (They were two figures in the Academy in this period, when it was going through its skepticism phase.) "On that view, Carneades was thought to have held that a wise person could hold opinions about some things so long as they do not assent to the truth of those opinions." To my ears, this sounds a bit like RAW's saying, "I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."

If you want to read a book that focuses solely on ancient Greek skepticism, Sellars suggests reading Ancient Skepticism by H. Thorsrud.