Subsequently, the words Academic and Pyrrhonist were often be used to mean skeptic.
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Whether Aenesidemus re-founded the Pyrrhonist school or merely revitalized it is unknown.
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The Pyrrhonian/Pyrrhonist skeptic need not hold this principle and so eschews all contradiction.
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Ataraxia is the central aim of Pyrrhonist practice. Pyrrhonists view ataraxia as necessary for bringing about eudaimonia (happiness) for a person, representing life's ultimate purpose. The Pyrrhonist method for achieving ataraxia is through achieving epoché (i.e., suspension of judgment) regarding all matters of dogma (i.e.
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Epoché plays an important role in Pyrrhonism, the skeptical philosophy named after Pyrrho. Pyrrhonism provides practitioners with techniques for achieving epoché through the use of the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus, the Five Modes of Agrippa, and the Pyrrhonist maxims.Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.18. Pyrrhonism is mostly known today through the writings of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus whose surviving works appear to be an encyclopedia of Pyrrhonist arguments for inducing epoché across a breadth of philosophical and other intellectual issues of antiquity.
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In Pyrrhonism the term used for equanimity is ataraxia, which means to be unperturbed. Ataraxia is the goal of Pyrrhonist practice.
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Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book 1, Chapter 33, Section 232 Numenius of Apamea concurred, saying "Arcesilaus accompanied Pyrrho. He remained Pyrrhonist in his rejection of everything, except in name. At least the Pyrrhonists Mnaseas, Philomelos and Timon call him a Pyrrhonist, just as they were themselves, because he too rejected the true, the false, and the persuasive."Numenius, fr.
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McEvilley notes a correspondence between the Pyrrhonist and Madhyamaka views about truth: Thus in Pyrrhonism "absolute truth" corresponds to acatalepsy and "conventional truth" to phantasiai.
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One method Pyrrhonists use to suspend judgment is to gather arguments on both sides of the disputed issue, continuing to gather arguments such that the arguments have the property of isostheneia (equal strength). This leads the Pyrrhonist to the conclusion that there is an unresolvable disagreement on the topic, and so the appropriate reaction is to suspend judgement. Eventually the Pyrrhonist develops epoché as a habitual response to all matters of dispute, which results in ataraxia.
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Pyrrhonism was founded by Pyrrho (c. 360 – c. 270 BCE), and was the first Western school of philosophical skepticism. The goal of Pyrrhonist practice is to attain the state of ataraxia (ataraxia, Greek: ἀταραξία) – freedom from perturbation.
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Aenesidemus ( or Αἰνεσίδημος) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher, born in Knossos on the island of Crete. He lived in the 1st century BC, taught in Alexandria and flourished shortly after the life of Cicero. Photius saysA. A. Long,D.
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The argument is usually attributed to the Pyrrhonist philosopher Agrippa the Skeptic as part of what has become known as "Agrippa's trilemma". The argument can be seen as a response to the suggestion in Plato's Theaetetus that knowledge is justified true belief. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus described Agrippa's trope as follows: > According to the mode deriving from dispute, we find that undecidable > dissension about the matter proposed has come about both in ordinary life > and among philosophers. Because of this we are not able to choose or to rule > out anything, and we end up with suspension of judgement.
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The works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus contain the oldest surviving questioning of the validity of inductive reasoning. He wrote:Sextus Empiricus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book II, Chapter 15 Section 204 trans. Robert Gregg Bury (Loeb ed.) (London: W. Heinemann, 1933), p. 283.
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Regal, Brian. (2009). Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Greenwood. p. 55. In antiquity it was attacked by philosophers such as the Academic skeptic Cicero in De Divinatione and the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus in Against the Astrologers. The satirist, Lucian, devoted a witty essay to Alexander the false prophet.
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Agrippa () was a Pyrrhonist philosopher who probably lived towards the end of the 1st century CE. He is regarded as the author of "The Five Tropes (or Modes, in ) of Agrippa", which are purported to establish the necessity of suspending judgment (epoché). Agrippa's arguments form the basis of the Agrippan trilemma.
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In this case—and according to independent claims by Graham Priest—trivialism is considered the complete opposite of skepticism. However, insofar as the trivialist affirms all states of affairs as universally true, the Pyrrhonist neither affirms nor denies the truth (or falsity) of such affairs.Empiricus, S. (2000). Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism.
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Sextus Empiricus (; c. 160 – c. 210 AD) was a Pyrrhonist philosopher and a physician. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and because of the arguments they contain against the other Hellenistic philosophies they are also a major source of information about those philosophies.
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Heraclides of Tarentum (; fl. 3rd – 2nd century BC), was a Pyrrhonist philosopher and Greek physician of the Empiric school who wrote commentaries on the works of Hippocrates. Diogenes Laërtius said that he taught Pyrrhonism to Aenesidemus, who revitalized the school. He came from Tarentum, was a pupil of Mantias,Galen, De Compos. Medicam. sec. Gen.
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Timon of Phlius ( ; , , ; BC – c. 235 BC) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher, a pupil of Pyrrho, and a celebrated writer of satirical poems called Silloi (). He was born in Phlius, moved to Megara, and then he returned home and married. He next went to Elis with his wife, and heard Pyrrho, whose tenets he adopted.
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The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus (approx. 160-210 CE) compiled a large number of ancient arguments against the existence of gods, recommending that one should suspend judgment regarding the matter.Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book III, Chapter 3 His relatively large volume of surviving works had a lasting influence on later philosophers.Stein, Gordon (Ed.) (1980).
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Menodotus of Nicomedia (; 2nd century CE), in Bithynia, was a physician and Pyrrhonist philosopher; a pupil of Antiochus of Laodicea; and tutor to Herodotus of Tarsus. He belonged to the Empirical school, and lived probably about the beginning of the 2nd century CE.Diogenes Laërtius, ix. §116; Galen, De Meth. Med. ii. 7, Introd. c. 4.
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The Empiric school of medicine had substantial overlap with the Greek philosophical school of Pyrrhonism. Galen noted that the Empirics approached medicine exactly as the Pyrrhonists approached the whole of life.Galen, "An Outline of Empiricism" sections 43 and 82. Many of the well-known Empirics were also Pyrrhonist teachers, including: Sextus Empiricus, Herodotus of Tarsus, Heraclides, Theodas, and Menodotus.
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The ancient Greek Pyrrhonists developed sets of arguments to demonstrate that claims about reality cannot be adequately justified. Two sets of these arguments are well known. The oldest set is known as the ten tropes of Aenesidemus – although whether he invented the tropes or just systematized them from prior Pyrrhonist works is unknown. The tropes represent reasons for epoché (suspension of judgment).
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Robertson 1999:58f, note 5. One passage of the Aetia, the so-called Coma Berenices, has been reconstructed from papyrus remains and the celebrated Latin adaptation of Catullus (Catullus 66). The extant hymns are extremely learned, and written in a style that some have criticised as labored and artificial. The Fourth Hymn appears to have been heavily influenced by Pyrrhonist philosophy.
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Spoudaiogeloion was often used in satirical poems or folktales, which were funny, but had a serious, often ethical, theme. The serio-comic style became a rhetorical mainstay of the Cynics. It was also used by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius. The Romans gave it its own genre in the form of satire, contributed to most notably by the poets Horace and Juvenal.
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Endoxa is a more stable belief than doxa, because it has been "tested" in argumentative struggles in the Polis by prior interlocutors. The term endoxa is used in Aristotle's Organon, Topics and Rhetoric. In Pyrrhonism, doxa and dogma that pertain to non-evident matters form the target of Pyrrhonist practice. In regard to such matters, practitioners 'suspend judgment' (epoché) to induce 'unperturbed-ness' (ataraxia).
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Because of the high degree of similarity between the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus and those of the Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher, NagarjunaAdrian Kuzminski, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism 2008 Thomas McEvilleyThomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought 2002 pp499-505 and Matthew Neale suspect that Nagarjuna and Sextus Empiricus were referencing some of the same earlier Pyrrhonist texts in developing their works.
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His chief work, known in Ancient Greek as Pyrrhoneioi logoi (Πυρρώνειοι λóγοι) and often rendered into English as the Pyrrhonian Discourses or Pyrrhonian Principles, dealt primarily with man's need to suspend judgment due to our epistemological limitations. It was divided into eight books, but it has not survived. We have this summary of its contents from Photius (in his Myriobiblion). > I read Aenesidemus' eight Pyrrhonist Discourses.
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Many philosophers and social theorists have observed and considered the phenomenon of belief in a just world, going back to at least as early as the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, writing circa 180 CE, who argued against this belief.Sextus Empiricus, "Outlines of Pyrrhonism", Book 1, Chapter 13, Section 32 Lerner's work made the just-world hypothesis a focus of research in the field of social psychology.
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Although philosophers at least as far back as the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus have pointed out the unsoundness of inductive reasoning,Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Trans. R.G. Bury, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1933, p. 283. the classic philosophical critique of the problem of induction was given by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Although the use of inductive reasoning demonstrates considerable success, the justification for its application has been questionable.
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In Pyrrhonist philosophy "dogma" refers to assent to a proposition about a non- evident matter.Sextus Empiricus, 'Outlines of Pyrrhonism', I. 13 The main principle of Pyrrhonism is expressed by the word acatalepsia, which connotes the ability to withhold assent from doctrines regarding the truth of things in their own nature; against every statement its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification. Consequently, Pyrrhonists withhold assent with regard to non-evident propositions, i.e., dogmas.
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A disputed passage in his writings has been used to suggest that it was Nicaea in Bithynia.. Specifically, Diogenes refers to "our Apollonides of Nicaea". This has been conjectured to mean either "my fellow-citizen" or "a Sceptic like myself". It has been suggested that Diogenes was an Epicurean or a Pyrrhonist. He passionately defends Epicurus in Book 10, which is of high quality and contains three long letters attributed to Epicurus explaining Epicurean doctrines.
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Pyrrhonist philosophy views relativity as a reason for philosophical skepticism, as it is one of the reasons that truth cannot be grasped. All perception is relative to a perceiver, and perception differs according to position. Hence, no particular perception can be judged as representing the truth about what is perceived. Arguments from relativity form the basis of trope 8 of the ten modes of Aenesidemus and trope 3 of the five modes of Agrippa.
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329x329px A phenomenon (; plural phenomena) is "an observable fact or event." The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which cannot be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in this part of his philosophy, in which phenomenon and noumenon serve as interrelated technical terms. Far predating this, the ancient Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus also used phenomenon and noumenon as interrelated technical terms.
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Interpretations of Sextus's philosophy along the above lines have been advocated by scholars such as Myles Burnyeat,Burnyeat, M., "Can The Sceptic Live His Scepticism" in Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede (ed.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Hackett, 1997): 25–57. Cf. Burnyeat, M., "The Sceptic in His Place and Time", ibid., 92–126. Jonathan Barnes,Barnes, J., "The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist" in Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede (ed.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Hackett, 1997): 58–91.
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The Pyrrhonists developed the concept of "epoché" to describe the state where all judgments about non-evident matters are suspended in order to induce a state of ataraxia (freedom from worry and anxiety). The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus gives this definition: "Epoché is a state of the intellect on account of which we neither deny nor affirm anything."Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.4. This concept is similarly employed in Academic Skepticism, but without the objective of ataraxia.
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Aristotle (384–322 BC) was the first philosopher who distinguished arguments attacking a thesis or attacking other persons. The various types of ad hominem arguments have been known in the West since at least the ancient Greeks. Aristotle, in his work Sophistical Refutations, detailed the fallaciousness of putting the questioner but not the argument under scrutiny. Many examples of ancient non- fallacious ad hominem arguments are preserved in the works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus.
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Parody was used in early Greek philosophical texts to make philosophical points. Such texts are known as spoudaiogeloion, a famous example of which is the Silloi by Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius which parodied philosophers living and dead. The style was a rhetorical mainstay of the Cynics and was the most common tone of the works made by Menippus and Meleager of Gadara. In the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata created a parody of travel texts such as Indica and The Odyssey.
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Euphantus, a philosopher of the Megarian school, taught King Antigonus "and dedicated to him a work On Kingship which was very popular".Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions, Euclides We're also told that Antigonus consulted Menedemus of Eretria, a distinguished member of Phaedo's school of philosophy, about whether to attend a drinking party.Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions, 'Menedemus' Antigonus also knew the Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius.Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions, 'Timon' Menedemus and Timon had both previously studied with the Megarian school.
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The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus described Pyrrhonism as "a way of life that, in accordance with appearances, follows a certain rationale, where that rationale shows how it is possible to seem to live rightly ("rightly" being taken, not as referring only to virtue, but in a more ordinary sense) and tends to produce the disposition to suspend judgment...."Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book I Chapter 8 Sections 16–17. In other words, by eschewing beliefs (i.e., dogmas) one would live in accordance with virtue.
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Gorgias is the author of a lost work: On Nature or the Non- Existent (also On Non-Existence). Rather than being one of his rhetorical works, it presented a theory of being that at the same time refuted and parodied the Eleatic thesis. The original text was lost and today there remain just two paraphrases of it. The first is preserved by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus in Against the Professors and the other by Pseudo-Aristotle, the author of On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias.
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Antisthenes founded the school that would come to be known as Cynicism and accused Plato of distorting Socrates' teachings. Zeno of Citium in turn adapted the ethics of Cynicism to articulate Stoicism. Epicurus studied with Platonic and Pyrrhonist teachers before renouncing all previous philosophers (including Democritus, on whose atomism the Epicurean philosophy relies). The philosophic movements that were to dominate the intellectual life of the Roman empire were thus born in this febrile period following Socrates' activity, and either directly or indirectly influenced by him.
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Aenesidemus is a German book published anonymously by Professor Gottlob Ernst Schulze of Helmstedt in 1792. Schulze attempted to refute the principles that Karl Leonhard Reinhold established in support of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781). The title is a reference to Aenesidemus, an ancient Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher. Its complete title, in English translation, was Aenesidemus or Concerning the Foundations of the Philosophy of the Elements Issued by Professor Reinhold in Jena Together with a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critique of Reason ().
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So, too, the Pyrrhonists > were hoping to achieve ataraxia by resolving the anomaly of phenomena and > noumena, and, being unable to do this, they suspended judgment. But then, by > chance as it were, when they were suspending judgment the ataraxia followed, > as a shadow follows the body. We do not suppose, of course, that the > Pyrrhonist is wholly untroubled, but we do say that he is troubled only by > things unavoidable. For we agree that sometimes he is cold and thirsty and > has various feelings like those.
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During this era trade between India and the Roman Empire flourished and Greek ideas became influential in India. Although there is no direct proof that Nāgārjuna had access to Greek Pyrrhonist texts, there's ample evidence of other Greek texts that were imported into India and that ideas from those texts were incorporated into Indian thought. According to David Pingree, there is substantial similarity between ancient Indian and pre- Ptolomaic Greek astronomy. Pingree believes that these similarities suggest a Greek origin for certain aspects of Indian astronomy.
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484–420 BC) observed that each society regards its own belief system and way of doing things as better than all others. Sextus Empiricus and other ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers denied the existence of objective morality.Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism Book III, Chapter 21 In the early modern era Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) notably held that nothing is inherently good or evil. The 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) serves in several important respects as the father both of modern emotivism and of moral relativism, though Hume himself did not espouse relativism.
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In the field of epistemology, the problem of the criterion is an issue regarding the starting point of knowledge. This is a separate and more fundamental issue than the regress argument found in discussions on justification of knowledge. In Western philosophy the earliest surviving documentation of the problem of the criterion is in the works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus. In Outlines of Pyrrhonism Sextus Empiricus demonstrated that no criterion of truth had been established, contrary to the position of dogmatists such as the Stoics and their doctrine of katalepsis.
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In this poem, Lucretius declares that popular religious practices not only do not instill virtue, but rather result in "misdeeds both wicked and ungodly", citing the mythical sacrifice of Iphigenia as an example. Lucretius argues that divine creation and providence are illogical, not because the gods do not exist, but rather because these notions are incompatible with the Epicurean principles of the gods' indestructibility and blessedness. The later Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus ( 160 – 210 AD) rejected the teachings of the Epicureans specifically because he regarded them as theological "Dogmaticists".
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It is asserted by both Priest and Kabay that it is impossible for a trivialist to truly choose and thus act. Priest argues this by the following in Doubt Truth to Be a Liar: "One cannot intend to act in such a way as to bring about some state of affairs, s, if one believes s already to hold. Conversely, if one acts with the purpose of bringing s about, one cannot believe that s already obtains." Ironically, due to their suspension of determination upon striking equipollence between claims, the Pyrrhonist has also remained subject to apraxia charges.
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Dionysios Vegias (1820–84) Portrait of a woman (1870) The gallery has a permanent collection of about 500 works of art by Greek artists, including paintings, prints and sculptures. The pictures range from the pyrrhonist academic style of the Munich School through impressionism and humanism to modern Greek art. Artists include Nikolaos Gyzis, Georgios Jakobides, Spyridon Vikatos, Sophia Laskaridou, Georgios Roilos, Thalia Flora- Karavia, Konstantinos Parthenis, Konstantinos Maleas, Nikiforos Lytras, Demetrios Galanis, Yannis Tsarouchis, Spyros Vassiliou, Giorgios Gounaropoulos, George Bouzianis, Panayiotis Tetsis, Alekos Fassianos, Aglaia Papa, Demetrios Galanis, Vaso Katraki, Michael Tombros, Theodoros Papagiannis and Athanase Apartis.
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Antigonus surrounded himself at court with a circle of notable intellectuals and philosophers. He was mentioned several times by Diogenes Laertius in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, in relation to various philosophers, particularly those linked with the Megarian, Pyrrhonist, Cynic, and Stoic schools. We're told that "many persons courted Antigonus and went to meet him whenever he came to Athens" and that after an unnamed sea battle, many Athenians went to see Antigonus or wrote him flattering letters.Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions, 'Arcesilaus' Many of the philosophers linked with Antigonus were associated with the Megarian school.
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But the same thing is, it might be said, no more > true than false, convincing than unconvincing, or existent or non-existent; > or sometimes the one, sometimes the other; or of such a kind for one person > but not for another. For the Pyrrhonist determines absolutely nothing, not > even this very claim that nothing is determined. (We put it this way, he > says, for lack of a way to express the thought.) But the Academics, he says, > especially those from the present-day Academy, are sometimes in agreement > with Stoic beliefs, and to tell the truth turn out to be Stoics fighting > with Stoics. Moreover, they are doctrinaire about many things.
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One of the oldest forms of epistemic skepticism can be found in Agrippa's trilemma (named after the Pyrrhonist philosopher Agrippa the Skeptic) which demonstrates that certainty can not be achieved with regard to beliefs. Pyrrhonism dates back to Pyrrho of Elis from the 4th century BCE, although most of what we know about Pyrrhonism today is from the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus. Pyrrhonists claim that for any argument for a non-evident proposition, an equally convincing argument for a contradictory proposition can be produced. Pyrrhonists do not dogmatically deny the possibility of knowledge, but instead point out that beliefs about non-evident matters cannot be substantiated.
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But the person who takes no position as to what is by > nature good or bad neither avoids nor pursues intensely. As a result, he > achieves ataraxia. Indeed, what happened to the Pyrrhonist is just like what > is told of Apelles the painter. For it is said that once upon a time, when > he was painting a horse and wished to depict the horse's froth, he failed so > completely that he gave up and threw his sponge at the picture – the sponge > on which he used to wipe the paints from his brush – and that in striking > the picture the sponge produced the desired effect.
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The philosophical schools of Aristotle (the Peripatetics of the Lyceum) and Plato (Platonism at the Academy) also remained influential. Against these dogmatic schools of philosophy the Pyrrhonist school embraced philosophical skepticism, and, starting with Arcesilaus, Plato's Academy also embraced skepticism in the form of Academic Skepticism. The spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world, followed by the spread of Islam, ushered in the end of Hellenistic philosophy and the beginnings of Medieval philosophy (often forcefully, as under Justinian I), which was dominated by the three Abrahamic traditions: Jewish philosophy, Christian philosophy, and early Islamic philosophy. In spite of this shift, Hellenistic philosophy continued to influence these three religious traditions and the Renaissance thought which followed them.
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Most knowledge of his teachings comes from later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, and with hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero. For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to help people attain a happy, tranquil life characterized by ataraxia (peace and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of pain). He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self- sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that the root of all human neurosis is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy.
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Arcesilaus (; ; 316/5–241/0 BC) was a Greek Hellenistic philosopher. He was the founder of Academic Skepticism and what is variously called the Second or Middle or New Academy—the phase of the Academy in which it embraced philosophical skepticism. Arcesilaus succeeded Crates of Athens as the sixth scholarch of the Academy around 264 BC. He did not preserve his thoughts in writing, so his opinions can only be gleaned second-hand from what is preserved by later writers. In Athens Arcesilaus interacted with the Pyrrhonist philosopher, Timon of Phlius, whose philosophy appears to have influenced Arcesilaus to become the first Academic to adopt a position of philosophical skepticism, that is, he doubted the ability of the senses to discover truth about the world, although he may have continued to believe in the existence of truth itself.
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Wiley-Blackwell According to Reinhold F. Glei, it is settled that the argument of theodicy is from an academical source which is not only not Epicurean, but even anti-Epicurean. The earliest extant version of this trilemma appears in the writings of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus.Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 175: "those who firmly maintain that god exists will be forced into impiety; for if they say that he [god] takes care of everything, they will be saying that god is the cause of evils, while if they say that he takes care of some things only or even nothing, they will be forced to say that he is either malevolent or weak" Parallels may be drawn to Jainism and Buddhism, which similarly emphasize a lack of divine interference and aspects of its atomism. Epicureanism also resembles Buddhism in its temperateness, including the belief that great excess leads to great dissatisfaction.
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Aenesidemus is considered the creator of the ten modes of Aenesidemus (also known as ten tropes of Aenesidemus)—although whether he invented the tropes or just systematized them from prior Pyrrhonist works is unknown. The tropes represent reasons for epoché (suspension of judgment). These are as follows: # Different animals manifest different modes of perception; # Similar differences are seen among individual men; # For the same man, information perceived with the senses is self-contradictory # Furthermore, it varies from time to time with physical changes # In addition, this data differs according to local relations # Objects are known only indirectly through the medium of air, moisture, etc. # These objects are in a condition of perpetual change in colour, temperature, size and motion # All perceptions are relative and interact one upon another # Our impressions become less critical through repetition and custom # All men are brought up with different beliefs, under different laws and social conditions In other words, Aenesidemus argues that experience varies infinitely under circumstances whose importance to one another cannot be accurately judged by human observers.
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Pyrrhonism denies that the existence and value of phronesis has been demonstrated. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus explained the problem of phronesis as follows: > Thus, insofar as it is up to his phronesis, the wise man does not acquire > self-control, or if he does, he is the most unfortunate of all, so that the > art of living has brought him no benefit but the greatest perturbation. And > we have shown previously that the person who supposes that he possesses the > art of living and that through it he can recognize which things are good by > nature and which evil, is very much perturbed both when be has good things > and when evil. It must be said, then, that if the existence of things good, > bad, and indifferent is not agreed upon, and perhaps the art of life, too, > is nonexistent, and that even if it should provisionally be granted to > exist, it will provide no benefit to those possessing it, but on the > contrary will cause them very great perturbations, the Dogmatists would seem > to be idly pretentious in what is termed the "ethics" part of their so- > called "philosophy".
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