Once again on Maia Neto, Machado, Montaigne, Pascal and Sextus

Abstract

I am glad to have received Maia Neto's very careful and ingeniously argued reply to my review of his book, Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Pyrrhonian, in the April issue of this jour nal. And let me concede right away that it is true, as he points out there numerous times, that he never actually asserts, in the book, what I call his "main thesis" - namely, that Machado's novels exhibit a scepticism "of the ancient Pyrrhonian variety" (257). What I should have said, and what I am still prepared to say despite everything Maia Neto offers in reply, is that he is in effect committed to this thesis by the extensive use he makes of the writings of Sextus Empiricus.