Skepticism
Pyrrho of Elis is usually considered the founder of the school of Skepticism. There are no extant writings of Pyrrho, and most of what is known of his ideas comes from his disciple Sextus Empiricus, who wrote Outlines of Pyrrhonism in the third century. The Skeptics’ main target of attack was dogma- tism. Sextus Empiricus, who was a physician as well as a Skeptic, saw dogmatism as a form of disease that needed to be cured. For the Skeptics, a dogmatist was any- one claiming to have arrived at an indisputable truth. The Skeptics believed that the their Skepticism assured them that this behaviour could not be proved wrong, and their common sense … assured them that it was convenient.
Conventions that the Skeptics were willing to accept included “Instruction of the Arts”. Here, arts refers to the trades and professions available for economic survival within a culture. However, for the Skep- tic, work was work, and he or she sought in it no ultimate meaning or purpose. Interestingly, the early Christians were able to use the widespread Skepticism of the Roman world to their advantage: “If the philosopher says that nothing is true or false and that there are not reliable standards of judg- ing, then why not accept Christian revelation and why not revert to faith and custom as the sources of inspiration?”. The theme of doubt concerning the universal truths exemplified by both the Sophists and Skeptics will manifest itself again in romanticism
