Suspending judgment › Does the Practice Refute Itself?

If skepticism asserts that every claim is unjustified, that assertion seems to need justification too. Sextus' response depends on declining to assert such a doctrine. His skeptical expressions describe how the inquirer is affected. They include themselves within their scope rather than establishing a set of truths exempt from their own scrutiny.

At I.206, he compares the expressions to purgative medicines that remove themselves along with what they expel. The comparison suggests an argumentative use that does not require retaining the argument as an ultimate doctrine. At the end of the work, he also compares arguments of different strengths with medicines adjusted to different patients' conditions (III.280–281). These passages present a therapeutic purpose for argument. They do not establish that any false or manipulative argument becomes acceptable whenever it makes someone feel better.

A critic can still press the distinction between a report and an assertion. If Sextus expects us to learn from his account, why should its repeated usefulness not count as a reason to believe it? If he is only describing his present experience, how far should anyone else follow it? Those questions test whether his self-qualification can preserve the explanatory ambitions of the book. Restating the medicine image does not settle them.