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Concept
Pyrrhonism
Summary
Pyrrhonism is an Ancient Greek school of philosophical skepticism which rejects dogma and advocates the suspension of judgement over the truth of all beliefs. It was founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE, and said to have been inspired by the teachings of Pyrrho and Timon of Phlius in the fourth century BCE. Pyrrhonism is best known today through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, writing in the late second century or early third century CE. The publication of Sextus' works in the Renaissance ignited a revival of interest in Skepticism and played a major role in Reformation thought and the development of early modern philosophy.
Pyrrhonism is named after Pyrrho of Elis, a Greek philosopher in the 4th century BCE who was credited by the later Pyrrhonists with forming the first comprehensive school of skeptical thought. However, ancient testimony about the philosophical beliefs of the historical Pyrrho is minimal, and often contradictory: his teachings were recorded by his student Timon of Phlius, but those works have been lost, and only survive in fragments quoted by later authors, and based on testimonies of later authors such as Cicero, Pyrrho's own philosophy as recorded by Timon may have been much more dogmatic than that of the later school who bore his name. While Pyrrhonism would become the dominant form of skepticism in the early Roman period, in the Hellenistic period, the Platonic Academy was the primary advocate of skepticism until the mid-first century BCE, when Pyrrhonism as a philosophical school was founded by Aenesidemus.
The goal of Pyrrhonism is ataraxia, an untroubled and tranquil condition of soul that results from a suspension of judgement, a mental rest owing to which we neither deny nor affirm anything.
Pyrrhonists dispute that the dogmatists – which includes all of Pyrrhonism's rival philosophies – claim to have found truth regarding non-evident matters, and that these opinions about non-evident matters (i.e., dogma) are what prevent one from attaining eudaimonia.
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