Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus (writing some time in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD), physician and philosopher, and probably lived at Alexandria and at Athens. Many of his sceptic arguments bear resemblance to the arguments used by the 1st century CE philosopher Nagarjuna.

In his medical work he belonged to the "methodical" school (see Asclepiades), as a philosopher, he is the greatest of the later Greek Sceptics. He studied under one Herotodus, a doctor in Rome. His claim to eminence rests on the facts that he developed and formulated the doctrines of the older Sceptics, and that he handed down a full and, on the whole, an impartial, account of the members of his school. There are five known works by Sextus, the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Πυῤῥώνειοι ὑποτύπωσεις), Against the Logicians, Against the Physicists, Against the Ethicists and Against the Professors (See Bury, 1933-49).

He argued that to reach the state of artaxia (approximately 'peace of mind'), philosophers must first learn to 'suspend judgement', and reject the concept of absolute truth. He distinguished, however, between those who infer that the search for truth is futile and those who 'go by the appearances' (i.e. observe the world), claiming that to assert the unknowability of the world was a dogma in itself and as such should be rejected.

Although his work played an inflential role in the formation of empirical philosophy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, particularly in the work of David Hume, he is little read today.

See Brochard, Les Sceptiques grecs (1887); Pappenheim, Lebensverholtnisse des Sextus Empiricus (Berlin, 1875); Jourdain, Sextus Empiricus (Paris, 1858); Patrick, Sextus Empiricus and the Greek Sceptics (1899). The last English translation of the complete works was Bury, R.G. Sextus Empiricus, in four volumes (Loeb Classical Library: London and Cambridge, Mass., Vol.I 1933, II 1935, III 1936, IV 1949). More recently; The skeptic way : Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Benson Mates (trans.) (Oxford : University Press, 1996).

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)