Skepticism

Every claim meets an equally strong counter-claim — so suspend judgment, and receive tranquility in exchange.

Pyrrho traveled with Alexander as far as India and came back teaching a strange skill: the suspension of judgment (epoché). Since every claim can be matched by an equally credible opposite, the wise stay silent about how things are in themselves — and that silence yields tranquility (ataraxia). Skepticism was thus a therapy, not an epistemological game. Two millennia later Hume turned the skeptical scalpel on causation and the self, and Kant said Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber — the old suspension of judgment became modern philosophy’s pacemaker.

Who belongs to it

🌫️Pyrrhoc. 360 BC–270 BCAncient Greek Philosopher, Founder of the Skeptic School 🌊Hume1711–1776Scottish Philosopher, the Great Synthesizer of Empiricist Skepticism

Whom it opposed — and who opposed it

📐 RationalismIts standing target — whoever claims reason reaches reality itself