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Timon of Phlius has yet to receive his full due within the broad context of Greek intellectual history and literary study. Those who may have little or no interest in early Pyrrhonism are missing a lot if they are unfamiliar with Timon's extremely artful parodies of Homer and his Aristophanic versatility in coining new words. The neglect of Timon was the more surprising because his subject matter, the philosophy of Pyrrho, has never been short of attention. The study of Pyrrho must begin with the study of Timon; he stands even closer to Pyrrho than does Plato to Socrates.

This essay invokes a technical framework of contrast classes within which Pyrrhonians can accept (or deny) knowledge claims that are relativized to specific contrast classes, but avoid all unrelativized knowledge claims and all presuppositions about which contrast classes are really relevant. Pyrrhonians can then assert part of the content of everyday knowledge claims without privileging the everyday perspective or any other perspective. This framework provides a precise way to understand the central claims of neo-Pyrrhonism while avoiding most, if not all, of the problems and objections raised by its critics.

This essay argues that ancient Pyrrhonists did not decide to suspend judgment, but rather claimed to have found themselves unable to arrive at any judgment. By giving up the attempt, they also claimed to have unexpectedly reached tranquility, then followed the customs of ordinary life without ever claiming to have found the truth. This anti-rational attitude is not likely to be typical of ordinary people, nor would it seem desirable to modern defenders of ordinary practices like Fogelin.

This essay contrasts Descartes with three skeptical figures: the Doubting Pyrrhonist, the Agrippan Pyrrhonist, and the Cartesian Skeptic. It argues that the meditator in Descartes’s Meditations is different from all three of these skeptics. Seeing the distinctive character of the meditator helps us understand how Descartes could have hoped to meet the challenge of skepticism.

This essay traces the roots of Wittgenstein’s Pyrrhonism to Mauthner, and argues that Wittgenstein’s later views moved even closer to those of Mauthner, although Wittgenstein never became as thoroughgoing a Pyrrhonian as Mauthner had been. It is argued that Mauthner’s neo-Pyrrhonian view of language was “responsible for the linguistic turn in Wittgenstein’s thinking and thereby indirectly also for the whole linguistic turn in 20th-century analytic philosophy”.

This chapter compares the twelfth-century Tibetan thinker Patsab’s interpretation of Madhyamaka with certain readings of ancient skepticism, focusing on the central question that skeptical accounts face: Can the skeptic advance a thesis, or is it merely therapeutic? This chapter argues that Patsab’s approach is similar to that of Sextus in that it offers a radical answer to this question, and the chapter then asks whether his approach is compatible with constructive philosophy.

This chapter explores the relation between two doxographic distinctions—between Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika Madhyamaka in India and Tibet on the one hand and Academic and Pyrrhonian skepticism in ancient Greece on the other. It points out that each of these distinctions is contested and that sorting out the doxographic questions yields important insights into philosophical method and its role in both traditions.

This chapter begins with a review of the classical (Reid‐Beattie) skeptical interpretation of Hume's Treatise followed by an account of Norman Kemp Smith's influential naturalistic interpretation of Hume's fundamental intentions. Other more recent interpretations, falling on either side of the skeptical/naturalist divide, are also described, including several interpretations that have paid more careful attention to the historical context in which the Treatise was composed and published. This account of the various alternative interpretations provides a framework for explaining the fundamental “riddle” of the Treatise: namely, that Hume's (radical) skeptical commitments appear to undermine and discredit his effort to make a contribution to “the science of man.”

The early responses to the Treatise show that the issue of “atheism” was neither peripheral nor irrelevant to the way that Hume's own contemporaries understood his aims and objectives. Most contemporary Hume scholars maintain, however, that this label, not only misrepresents Hume's intentions in the Treatise but that it also misrepresents his position on the subject of religion as presented in his later writings (which are understood to be more “directly” or “explicitly” concerned with religion). The immediate aim of this chapter is to develop a clearer understanding of the way that Hume and his contemporaries interpreted “atheism” and the specific doctrines that were associated with it. Once this standard is (back) in place, we will be in a position to determine the extent to which the charge of “atheism” fits the actual content of the Treatise.

This chapter provides a general interpretation of the irreligious character of Hume's sceptical intentions in the Treatise. Although the Treatise remains the primary concern, the discussion also covers Hume's later philosophical works. Hume's basic aim is to reveal the “weakness and uncertainty of mere human reason" so that he can show that all speculations that reach beyond “the common affairs of life"—specifically, those that are encouraged by “superstition"—should be abandoned. This is the principal lesson of the Conclusion of Book I (T, 1.4.7). This general account of Hume's skeptical commitments serves as the foundation for a solution to the problem of the “riddle” of the Treatise.

Pyrrhonian skepticism has roots in metaphysical discussions relevant to relativism. The chapter reconstructs these discussions in Plato's Theaetetus, and explores how different versions of Pyrrhonian skepticism—the skepticism of Pyrrho, of Aenesidemus, and of Sextus Empiricus—compare to Protagorean relativism. The chapter begins with a sketch of why Plato interprets Protagoras' Measure Doctrine as global relativism rather than relativism about a particular domain. Pyrrhonian skepticism, it is argued, inherits this global scope. But Pyrrhonian responses to disagreement differ importantly from the responses Protagorean relativism envisages. Skepticism suggests that, when encountering disagreement, it is rational to step back from one's view and investigate, rather than simply hold on to one's view, as presumably the relativist does. The chapter defends skepticism's response to disagreement as construed by Sextus Empiricus as superior to earlier proposals.

The Concluding Remarks offer an overview of ingredients relevant to Pyrrhonian skepticism and its history—and thus, ingredients relevant to a perspective that is defended as plausible throughout the book: a commitment to Socratic investigation and epistemic caution, engagement with metaphysical questions about a world that might be indeterminate, and the question of how one can think and investigate without forming beliefs.

The introductory chapter states the book's primary ambition—to settle the question of whether and in what sense Nietzsche is a skeptic by taking Pyrrhonism, a powerful form of skepticism that originated in ancient Greece, as a model for understanding his philosophical project. The chapter locates this reading within the landscape of recent attempts to characterize Nietzsche's views of truth and knowledge, and previews some of the reasons in favor of constructing a skeptical reading of his work. It anticipates some resistance to reading him as a skeptic and contends that such resistance may turn on a confusion about ancient and modern varieties of skepticism and on a general neglect of the former variety by scholars of Nietzsche's thought. Finally, it indicates some of the power and potential of this skepticism for Nietzsche's project.

This chapter opens with a discussion of “historical influence” that intends to clarify the sense in which Nietzsche can be said to have been influenced by Pyrrhonism. Then, it presents the biographical and historical evidence for Nietzsche's own familiarity with the Greek skeptics and their principal texts and arguments, and to familiarize non-specialists with the fundamental and distinctive features of Pyrrhonian skepticism, including its opposition to dogmatism, its suspension of judgment (epochē) and the equipollence of arguments, and its ultimate aim (ataraxia). Finally, a lengthy discussion of the scope of Pyrrhonian suspension of judgment is included, to clarify the interpretive possibilities and to argue for a restricted reading that does not compromise the radical nature of Nietzsche's critical philosophy.