Philosophy
c. 360 to 270 BC, Elis
The founder of Greek skepticism: suspend judgement, and tranquillity follows.
Start learning Pyrrho →Pyrrho of Elis founded Greek skepticism not as an intellectual game but as a route to ataraxia - unshakeable calm. Disturbed by the endless, irresolvable disputes of the philosophers, he concluded that the cure for anxi…
The earliest summary of Pyrrho’s philosophy, preserved through Timon and Aristocles, frames it as answers to three questions: what are things like? how should we relate to them? and what do we gain? The answers are: und…
The central act of Pyrrhonism is epochē - the suspension of judgement. Confronted by considerations of equal strength on both sides of any question, the skeptic finds he cannot assent to either, and rests in that balanc…
The hardest question for skepticism is practical: how do you live if you suspend judgement about everything? Pyrrho’s answer is that the skeptic lives by appearances, guided by nature’s feelings, the customs of his coun…
Pyrrho left no writings, but his way of thinking was systematised five centuries later by Sextus Empiricus, whose surviving works carried Pyrrhonism into the modern world - igniting the skeptical crisis of the Renaissan…
More in Philosophy
AristotlePlatoImmanuel KantFriedrich NietzscheConfuciusSenecaEpictetusMarcus Aureliusepoché — a humanities education that remembers you.