Pyrrho of Elis
c. 365 – c. 275 BCE · Elis, Greece
The founder of Greek scepticism, who taught that suspending judgement about how things really are brings peace of mind.
Key ideas
Pyrrho held that we cannot know the real natures of things: every appearance can be matched by an opposite appearance, and nothing settles which is right. The response is to suspend judgement and stop insisting that things are one way rather than another. What follows, he claimed, is not anxiety but tranquillity.
He left no writings, and his views reach us mainly through his student Timon and through the much later Sextus Empiricus, whose school took Pyrrho's name. Pyrrhonian skepticism became one of the two great sceptical traditions of the ancient world, and lies behind the skepticism entry.
Life, briefly
Pyrrho began as a painter. He travelled east with the army of Alexander the Great and is said to have met ascetic sages in India, an encounter some scholars think shaped his outlook. Later stories that he had to be saved by friends from walking off cliffs and into carts are almost certainly jokes by critics; ancient sources also describe him living calmly and being honoured by his city.
Major works
- None; known through Timon of Phlius and later reports
Schools of thought
Appears in
Further reading
- WikipediaPyrrho