OUTLINES OFPYRRHONISM 253
As for its impact, elements of Pyrrhoist skepticism are echoed in Hegel’s con-
cept of the dialectic (with the claim that every statement can be contradicted by its
opposite) and in Husserl’s use of <epoche->. Thinkers such as Montaigne, Hume,
and Santayana have used skepticism to attack the dogmatic philosophies of their
day. While it has rarely been an established school of thought, skepticism has
raised questions for all systematic philosophers since the time of Pyrrho.For general accounts of Greek skepticism, see Mary Mills Patrick,The Greek
Skeptics(New York: Columbia University Press, 1929); Charlotte L. Stough,Greek
Skepticism: A Study in Epistemology(Berkeley: University of California Press,
1969); Leo Groarke,Greek Scepticism: Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990); R.J. Hankinson,The Skeptics
(Oxford: Routledge, 1995); Myles Burnyest and Michael Frede,The Original
Sceptics(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996); and a collection of essays, Malcolm
Schofield, Myles Burnyeat, and Jonathan Barnes, eds.,Doubt and Dogmatism:
Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). For a study of
Pyrrho, see Richard Bett,Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy(Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000). For works on Sextus Empiricus, see Mary Mills
Patrick,Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism(Cambridge: D. Bell, 1899) and
Benson Mates,The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Edwyn Robert Bevan,Stoics and Skeptics
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913); Benson Mates,Stoic Logic(Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1953); and Adrian Kuzminski,Pyrronism: How the Ancient
Greeks Reinvented Buddhism(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008) provide
more specialized studies.OUTLINES OF PYRRHONISM (in part)
BOOKI
- Of the Main Difference Between Philosophic Systems. The natural result of
any investigation is that the investigators either discover the object of their search or
deny that it is discoverable and confess it to be inapprehensible or persist in their search.
So, too, with regard to the objects investigated by philosophy, this is probably why
some have claimed to have discovered the truth, others have asserted that it cannot be
apprehended, while others again go on inquiring. Those who believe they have discov-
ered it are the “Dogmatists,” specially so called—Aristotle, for example, and Epicurus
SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, VOL I: OUTLINES OF PYRRHONISM, translated by R. G. Burry, Loeb Classical
Library Volume 273, First published 1933. Loeb Classical Library is registered trademark of the Pre -
sident and Fellows of Harvard College.
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