Abstract

This article examines Nietzsche’s evaluations of silence and laughter as Pyrrho’s two responses to the dilemma caused by doubts about truth in aphorism 213 of ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ (WS 213). Contrary to the common belief that speechlessness leads Pyrrho to tranquillity (ataraxia), in WS 213, it is a symptom of his intellectual impotence caused by logical impasse. Silence proves to be subject to the same traps as speeches. In his later period, Nietzsche deems Pyrrho’s impotent will to truth and pursuit of tranquility nihilism. He contends that Pyrrho’s impotence triggers his ressentiment of dogmatists and labels Pyrrho as a Greek Buddhist in unpublished sections writtenin 1888. For Nietzsche, the only antidote to dogmatism and even nihilism is laughter, a way of overcoming Pyrrho’s obstinate will to truth embodied in the form of logical argumentation. Nietzsche seems to attribute the Democritean cheerfulness (euthumia) to Pyrrho, a manifestation of healthy skepticism and a dynamicconstellation of drives that embrace and overcome suffering. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche claims that laughter is a sign of recovery from a spirit of excessive seriousness, which is embodied by the free-spirited Zarathustra, an antipode to Pyrrho ‘the fanatic of mistrust.’