Most Famous Skepticism Philosophers

Pyrrhonian Skepticism is an ancient Greek philosophical school founded by Pyrrho of Elis in the late fourth century BC and given its definitive surviving expression in the writings of Sextus Empiricus in the second century AD. It teaches that for every claim an equally strong opposing claim can be raised, and that the appropriate response is the suspension of judgement (epoche), which in turn produces tranquillity of mind (ataraxia). Distinct from Academic Skepticism, which held that nothing can be known, Pyrrhonian Skepticism withholds judgement even on whether knowledge is possible, neither asserting nor denying. The recovery of Sextus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism in the 16th century launched the modern Skeptical tradition through Montaigne, Bayle, and Hume. Skeptical strategies remain central to contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science.

Philosophers in this tradition

Michel de Montaigne 1533 – 1592 · French
Michel de Montaigne was a French Renaissance philosopher and the inventor of the modern essay. Withdrawing in middle age to his tower library, he composed the three books of the...
Philo of Larissa c. 159 BC – c. 84 BC · Greek
Philo of Larissa was the last head of the skeptical Platonic Academy and the teacher of Cicero in Rome. The successor of Clitomachus, he gradually moderated the radical skeptici...
Pierre Charron 1541 – 1603 · French
Pierre Charron was a French Catholic priest, preacher, and philosopher and the principal successor of Montaigne in the late Renaissance tradition of Christian skepticism. After ...
Arcesilaus 316 BC – 241 BC · Greek
Arcesilaus of Pitane was a Greek philosopher and the founder of the New, or skeptical, Academy. As head of Plato's school he turned its dialectical method against the dogmatic c...
Sextus Empiricus c. 160 – c. 210 · Greek
Sextus Empiricus was a Greek physician and philosopher of the second and early third centuries AD, the principal extant source for ancient Pyrrhonian Skepticism. His major works...
Pierre Bayle 1647 – 1706 · French
Pierre Bayle was a French Huguenot philosopher and encyclopedist who lived in exile in Rotterdam after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His Historical and Critical Diction...
Pyrrho of Elis c. 360 BC – c. 270 BC · Greek
Pyrrho of Elis was an ancient Greek philosopher of the late fourth and early third centuries BC, the founder of the philosophical school of Skepticism that bears his name as Pyr...
Agrippa the Skeptic c. 10 – c. 80 · Greek
Agrippa the Skeptic was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher of the first century AD, traditionally the author of the famous Five Modes of skeptical argument, preserved in Sextus Empi...
Anaxarchus c. 380 BC – c. 320 BC · Greek
Anaxarchus of Abdera was a Greek philosopher of the late fourth century BC, a Democritean who accompanied Alexander the Great on his eastern campaigns and the principal teacher ...
Carneades 214 BC – 129 BC · Greek
Carneades of Cyrene was a Greek philosopher and the most important head of the New Academy, the skeptical phase of Plato's school. He was famous for his ability to argue with eq...
Nicholas of Autrecourt c. 1299 – c. 1369 · French
Nicholas of Autrecourt was a French scholastic philosopher of the early fourteenth century, sometimes called the medieval Hume for the radical skeptical critique of Aristotelian...
Aenesidemus c. 100 BC – c. 40 BC · Greek
Aenesidemus of Cnossos was a 1st-century BC Greek philosopher who revived the Pyrrhonian school of Skepticism after a period in which Skepticism had been dominated by the New Ac...