Pragma, Karma, and Pyrrho

Recent studies on Pyrrhonism have taken seriously the mention in Diogenes Laertius (9.61) that its eponymous founder, Pyrrho, studied with Indian Gymnosophists while he travelled in the retinue of Alexander the Great. Most notably Christopher Beckwith (2015) argued that Pyrrhonism is one of the earliest documented representations of Buddhism, but more generally scholars (Flintoff, Hanner, Kuzminski, McEvilley) have noted similarities in Buddhist skepticism and the Pyrrhonist version of the same school of thought. This paper tries to reify the connections between Pyrrhonism and Indian thought by suggesting a specific similarity between two semantically-related terms both meaning ‘act’—Pyrrhonic pragma and Indian karma.

The key passage for exegesis is attributed to Aristocles but found in Eusebius (Praep. Ev. 14.18.1-5). Aristocles’ epitomizes Pyrrho’s concerns about pragmata ‘thing(s) done’ as follows:

…one intending to be fortunate (εὐδαιμονήσειν) must consider three things: (1) of what sort are pragmata by nature; (2) in what way we must be disposed to them; and finally (3) what is the result for those so disposed.

Beckwith correctly notes that pragmata do not generally refer to material things, so the understanding required is not one of physics. πράγματα are ‘things done’ from the verb πράσσω ‘do, act’ as opposed to ‘things made’ ποιήματα from the verb ποιέω ‘do, make’. Yet even with the recognition that the philosopher refers to deeds and thus ethics rather than creations and thus physics, we are still left with some curious questions about deeds.

The inscrutability of these questions may begin to fall away by returning to an Indic context. Karma(n) and pragma are semantic and morphologic parallels. Just as pragma derives from a Greek verb to do, so does karmanderive from the Sanskrit verb kṛ ‘to do’. Both even use the same Indo-European neuter nominal extension -ma. That linguistic similarity would hardly be sufficient to accept a Greek translation of the Indic concept here, but the Greek inscriptions of the Emperor Aśoka demonstrate a practice of translating Indic philosophical concepts. In the digest of Edicts XII and XIII, the verb δια + πράσσω is used in two instances to convey moral actions. Our study starts by an examination of the terms and related vocabulary in the Greek inscriptions of the Indian ruler and then moves to the concepts as they are presented in the Bhagavad Gītā and, for Pyrrhonism, in the works of Sextus Empiricus and the fragments of Pyrrho’s student Timon. In the examined sources the ethical actors are to separate themselves from their own acts, pragmata and karmāṇi, because the determination of the ultimate good or evil is not possible or irrelevant. Actors are instead guided by social convention or dharmic order, and, by assuming these attitude towards ethical actions, they may achieve a peace described as calm or stillness.