Sextus Empiricus

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Through history, philosophers have sought to define, understand, and delineate concepts important to human well-being. One such concept is "knowledge". Many philosophers believed that absolute, certain knowledge is possible. Sextus Empiricus stands as an example of the "skeptic" school of thought whose members believed that knowledge was either unattainable or, if a genuine possibility, the conditions necessary to achieve it were next to impossible to satisfy.

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Sextus Empiricus was a physician and philosopher in the 2nd century who wrote several works in Greek. He was a representative of Pyrrhonism. Sextus Empiricus is the last representative of the skeptical school tradition that is tangible to us. The writings preserved by him are, along with the Platonic and Aristotelian, the most extensive original sources of Greek philosophy. He left 14 books on skepticism, published under three titles.

Sextus Empiricus applied the basic assumption of "Pyrrhonian" skepticism, namely that certain knowledge is impossible, to virtually all fields of knowledge. Thus, his work represents a kind of "negative compendium" of the knowledge of his time: The author deals with a plethora of alleged findings in many fields, using a wide variety of arguments to deny that secured knowledge exists. In this way, many ancient theorems and doctrines are referred to; many of them are only preserved in Sextus Empiricus writings.

Sextus Empiricus

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

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