# Skepticism

- Id: `skepticism`
- Canonical url: `https://prokopton42.com/en/intellectual-traditions/skepticism/`
- Language: `en`
- Editorial status: `reviewed`
- Content checksum: `7f71945bfc1eacb0c054ef4aa9dcf0a8c3d8607ebe263393d33d5cea32056a51`

## Summary

Methods for suspending judgement, weighing reasons, and resisting premature certainty.

## Overview

Ancient skeptical traditions challenge our ability to reach secure truth too quickly. Carneades’ Academy asks what can guide action without certainty, while Sextus Empiricus sets opposing arguments against each other in order to suspend judgement.

This discipline is not a flat denial of everything. It asks us to measure the actual force of evidence, distinguish appearance from assertion, and live without turning every impression into dogma. Montaigne carries this tension into the modern essay.

## Statistics

```json
{
    "thinkers": 3,
    "works": 7,
    "passages": 2941,
    "concepts": 141
}
```

## Thinkers

```json
[
    {
        "id": "sextus_empiricus",
        "name": "Sextus Empiricus",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/thinkers/sextus-empiricus/"
    },
    {
        "id": "montaigne",
        "name": "Michel de Montaigne",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/thinkers/montaigne/"
    },
    {
        "id": "carneades",
        "name": "Carneades",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/thinkers/carneades/"
    }
]
```

## Works

```json
[
    {
        "id": "carneades.ancient_testimonia",
        "title": "Ancient testimonia on Carneades",
        "author": "Carneades",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/carneades/ancient-testimonia/"
    },
    {
        "id": "montaigne.essais",
        "title": "The Essays",
        "author": "Michel de Montaigne",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/montaigne/essais/"
    },
    {
        "id": "sextus_empiricus.against_ethicists",
        "title": "Against the Ethicists, Book XI of Against the Learned",
        "author": "Sextus Empiricus",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/sextus-empiricus/against-ethicists/"
    },
    {
        "id": "sextus_empiricus.against_logicians",
        "title": "Against the Logicians, Books VII-VIII of Against the Learned",
        "author": "Sextus Empiricus",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/sextus-empiricus/against-logicians/"
    },
    {
        "id": "sextus_empiricus.against_physicists",
        "title": "Against the Physicists, Books IX-X of Against the Learned",
        "author": "Sextus Empiricus",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/sextus-empiricus/against-physicists/"
    },
    {
        "id": "sextus_empiricus.against_professors",
        "title": "Against the Professors, Books I-VI of Against the Learned",
        "author": "Sextus Empiricus",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/sextus-empiricus/against-professors/"
    },
    {
        "id": "sextus_empiricus.outlines",
        "title": "Outlines of Pyrrhonism",
        "author": "Sextus Empiricus",
        "url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/sextus-empiricus/outlines/"
    }
]
```