I wonder how long he practiced for that? — Echarmion

To that end I'm collecting a flow chart of the different avenues. I'm not really looking for a deep dive on any particular one — frank

1. Pyrrhonism: that Witt believed that all philosophy is nonsense because it can't be about anything of this world. — frank

Witt wanted to abandon philosophy because he knew that it's all nonsense, but he couldn't stop, so the PI is confusing because he was stuck in this struggle when he wrote it. — frank

You continue to make that assumption, though at this point I cannot fathom why. You seem to think that when I use the term "first philosophy" I have a particular historical tradition in mind, despite my constant denials. — Leontiskos

My thesis is that when first philosophy is abandoned as impossible philosophy has died. — Leontiskos

Today there seems to be no "first philosophy," and therefore we have philosophies rather than philosophy. It's not clear to me that philosophy can prescind from metaphysics without either becoming irrelevant or else transforming itself into something else. — Leontiskos

The primeval notion of "custom" or "way" is split up into the notions of "nature", on the one hand, and "convention," on the other. The distinction between nature and convention, between physis and nomos, is therefore coeval with the discovery of nature.Nature would not have to be discovered if it were not hidden. Hence "nature" is necessarily understood in contradistinction to something else, namely , to that which hides nature in so far as it hides nature. There are scholars who refuse to take "nature" as a term of distinction, because they believe that everything which is , is natural. But they tacitly assume that man knows by nature that there is such a thing as nature or that "nature" is as unproblematic or as obvious as , say, "red — Strauss, Natural Rights and History, page 90

Socrates: I know what you mean. Do you realize that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not know what he is to look for.

Meno: Well, do you think it is a good argument?

Socrates: No.

Meno: Can you explain how it fails?

Socrates: I can. I have heard from men and women who understand the truths of religion.... — Plato, Meno, 81, translated by W.K.C. Guthrie

Socrates: It is a method quite easy to indicate, but very far from easy to employ. It is indeed the instrument through which every discovery ever made in the sphere of the arts and sciences has been brought to light. Let me describe it for your consideration.

Protarchus: Please do.

Socrates: There is a gift of the gods---so at least it seems evident to me---which they let fall from their abode, and it was through Prometheus, or one like him, that it reached mankind, together with a fire exceeding bright. The men of old, who were better than ourselves and dwelt nearer the gods, passed on this gift in the form of a saying. All things, so it ran, that are ever said to be consist of a one and a many, and have in their nature a conjunction of limit and unlimitedness. This then being the ordering of things we ought, they said, whatever it be that we are dealing with, to assume a single form and search for it, for we shall find it there contained; then, if we have laid hold of that, we must go on from one form to look for two, if the case admits of there being , otherwise for three or some other number of forms. And we must do. And we must do the same again with each of the 'ones' thus reached, until we come to see not merely that the one that we started with is a one and an unlimited many, but also just how many it is. But we are not to apply the character of unlimitedness to our plurality until we have discerned the total number of forms the thing in question has intermediate between its one and its unlimited number. It is only then, when we have done that, that we may let each one of all these intermediate forms pass away into the unlimited and cease bothering about them. There then, that is how the gods, as I told you, have committed to us the task of inquiry, of learning, and of teaching one another, but your clever modern man, while making his one----or his many, as the case may b----more quickly or more slowly than is proper, when has got his one proceeds to his unlimited number straightaway, allowing the intermediates to escape him, whereas it is the recognition of those intermediates that makes all the difference between a philosophical and a contentious discussion. — Plato, Philebus, 16c, translated by R. Hackforth

It seems to me that if the becoming has no end then there can be no ultimate convergence. — Leontiskos

Even if you just listen to your thoughts, you are still having a one way conversation. — believenothing