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Skeptical and Natural Philosophy

Michel De Montaigne

Were Pyrrhonic skeptics anxious about the impossibility of knowledge?

No. Pyrrhonic skeptics were reluctant to commit themselves on either opposing side of an issue and instead cultivated ataraxia, a mental state of peace and quiet. Pyrrhonic skepticism was supposed to be a cure for the disease of dogmatism in which positions on truths that were not evident were taken up and defended, causing distress. Third century Pyrrhonists organized this process into sets of two, five, or ten tropes, each one of which suggested how to suspend judgments about matters that went beyond appearances.