Pyrrhonism
[2] The publication of Sextus' works in the Renaissance ignited a revival of interest in Skepticism and played a major role in Reformation thought and the development of early modern philosophy.
Pyrrhonism is named after Pyrrho of Elis, a Greek philosopher in the 4th century BCE who was credited by the later Pyrrhonists with forming the first comprehensive school of skeptical thought.
[1][4] The goal of Pyrrhonism is ataraxia,[5] an untroubled and tranquil condition of soul that results from a suspension of judgement, a mental rest owing to which we neither deny nor affirm anything.
[9] An aporetic skeptic, in contrast, works more actively towards their goal, engaging in the refutation of arguments in favor of various possible beliefs in order to reach aporia, an impasse, or state of perplexity,[10] which leads to suspension of judgement.
[13] The five tropes of Agrippa are: According to the mode deriving from dispute, we find that undecidable dissension about the matter proposed has come about both in ordinary life and among philosophers.
We have the mode from hypothesis when the Dogmatists, being thrown back ad infinitum, begin from something which they do not establish but claim to assume simply and without proof in virtue of a concession.
[13] The three additional ones show a progress in the Pyrrhonist system, building upon the objections derived from the fallibility of sense and opinion to more abstract and metaphysical grounds.
[32] Scholars who argue for such influence mention the fact that even the ancient author Diogenesis Laërtius states as much, when he wrote that Pyrrho “foregathered with the Indian Gymnosophists and with the Magi.
"[31] According to Christopher I. Beckwith's analysis of the 'Aristocles Passage', adiaphora (anatta), astathmēta (dukkha), and anepikrita (anicca) are strikingly similar to the Buddhist three marks of existence,[32] indicating that Pyrrho's teaching is based on Buddhism.
Conversely, while critical of Beckwith's ideas, Kuzminsky sees credibility in the hypothesis that Pyrrho was influenced by Buddhism, even if it cannot be safely ascertained with our current information.
The concepts of good and bad karma must have been an impossibility in the Pyrrhonist universe, if "things" were ἀδιάφορα, 'without a logical self-identity', and, consequently, could not be differentiated from each other by labels such as 'good' and 'bad' or 'just' and 'unjust'.
[46] Scholars including Barua, Jayatilleke, and Flintoff, contend that Pyrrho was influenced by, or at the very least agreed with, Indian skepticism rather than Buddhism or Jainism, based on the fact that he valued ataraxia, which can be translated as "freedom from worry".
[50] The recovery and publication of the works of Sextus Empiricus, particularly a widely influential translation by Henri Estienne published in 1562,[51] ignited a revival of interest in Pyrrhonism.
Major philosophers such as Michel de Montaigne, Marin Mersenne, and Pierre Gassendi later drew on the model of Pyrrhonism outlined in Sextus Empiricus' works for their own arguments.
[citation needed] It has also been suggested that Pyrrhonism provided the skeptical underpinnings that René Descartes drew from in developing his influential method of Cartesian doubt and the associated turn of early modern philosophy towards epistemology.
