Philosophical teachings, common in the time of our era, were replete with various terms, common names and so on. Some of them have "survived" to the present and are often used in everyday life. For example, who is a skeptic, the meaning of the word “positive” and other expressions even children know. However, not everyone knows where this or that name or statement comes from. Consider what the word “skeptic” means in more detail.
Philosophical doctrine
Skepticism originated at the turn of the 4th – 3rd centuries BC. e., almost at the same time with such teachings as the Stoic school and Epicureanism.
The founder of this philosophical trend is considered to be the Greek artist Pirron, who introduced such alien elements for the Hellenistic school as a whole, such as the "position of indifference", "detachment", "the practice of non-judgment."
If we consider who a skeptic is from the point of view of that time, then we can say that this was a person who did not seek to achieve the truth of nature, did not try to know the world, but accepted things as they were. And this was the main idea of the teachings of Pirron, who occupied a leading place among the philosophers of that era.
Stages of development
The doctrine of skeptics has gone through three periods of development:
- Elder Pyronism (3rd century BC). This teaching was characterized as practical, based on "ethics". The founders are Pirron and his student Timon, whose doctrine influenced the worldview of the Stoics and epicureanism.
- Academism (3–2 centuries BC). Representatives of this branch proclaimed critical skepticism in theoretical form.
- Junior pyronism. The main philosophers of this direction are Agrippa and Enesidem, and the supporters were doctors, among whom Sext Empiricus is known. This period is characterized by a systematization of the arguments of the doctrine. So, in the paths presented by Enesidem, the basic principles about the impossibility of knowing everything around with the help of the senses are explained. Later, these arguments were brought into a single position on the relativity of perception.
