[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"archetype-name-map":3,"thinker-sextus-empiricus":100,"$fEHZUtZhHtqz7Q0xGNz1jr-8aSNNN2hLhJRO0_A5Ip6c":258},[4,7,10,13,16,19,22,25,28,31,34,37,40,43,46,49,52,55,58,61,64,67,70,73,76,79,82,85,88,91,94,97],{"slug":5,"name":6},"anarcho-capitalist","Anarcho-Capitalist",{"slug":8,"name":9},"establishment-progressive","Establishment Progressive",{"slug":11,"name":12},"progressive-activist","Progressive Activist",{"slug":14,"name":15},"techno-progressive","Techno-Progressive",{"slug":17,"name":18},"patriotic-progressive","Patriotic Progressive",{"slug":20,"name":21},"conservative-democrat","Conservative Democrat",{"slug":23,"name":24},"moderate-conservative","Moderate Conservative",{"slug":26,"name":27},"reform-conservative","Reform Conservative",{"slug":29,"name":30},"religious-conservative","Religious Conservative",{"slug":32,"name":33},"traditionalist","Traditionalist",{"slug":35,"name":36},"national-populist","National Populist",{"slug":38,"name":39},"left-nationalist","Left Nationalist",{"slug":41,"name":42},"moderate-liberal","Moderate Liberal",{"slug":44,"name":45},"pragmatic-centrist","Pragmatic Centrist",{"slug":47,"name":48},"authoritarian-left","Authoritarian Left",{"slug":50,"name":51},"authoritarian-right","Authoritarian Right",{"slug":53,"name":54},"welfare-nationalist","Welfare Nationalist",{"slug":56,"name":57},"democratic-socialist","Democratic Socialist",{"slug":59,"name":60},"christian-socialist","Christian Socialist",{"slug":62,"name":63},"market-socialist","Market Socialist",{"slug":65,"name":66},"trad-socialist","Trad Socialist",{"slug":68,"name":69},"civil-libertarian","Civil Libertarian",{"slug":71,"name":72},"compassionate-libertarian","Compassionate Libertarian",{"slug":74,"name":75},"left-libertarian","Left Libertarian",{"slug":77,"name":78},"traditional-libertarian","Traditional Libertarian",{"slug":80,"name":81},"classical-liberal","Classical Liberal",{"slug":83,"name":84},"social-liberal","Social Liberal",{"slug":86,"name":87},"national-conservative","National Conservative",{"slug":89,"name":90},"neoconservative","Neoconservative",{"slug":92,"name":93},"techno-authoritarian","Techno-Authoritarian",{"slug":95,"name":96},"market-liberal","Market Liberal",{"slug":98,"name":99},"independent-thinker","Independent Thinker",{"thinker":101,"archetypes":113,"traditions":114,"traditionLinks":128,"homeOut":132,"homeIn":133,"works":184,"homeTradition":117,"siblings":196},{"id":102,"slug":103,"name":104,"one_line":105,"bio":106,"birth_year":107,"death_year":108,"nationality":109,"primary_role":110,"era":111,"portrait_url":112,"figure_class":112},1130,"sextus-empiricus","Sextus Empiricus","The physician whose handbooks of Pyrrhonian scepticism, recovered in the sixteenth century, supplied Europe with the arguments that made Montaigne, Descartes and Hume possible.","Sextus Empiricus was a doctor of the Empiric school, and everything else about his life is conjecture. What he left is the only substantial surviving account of Pyrrhonian scepticism, written as a set of handbooks: the Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and a longer series against the dogmatists and the professors of the various disciplines.\n\nThe position he sets out is more disciplined than the modern word suggests. The Pyrrhonist does not assert that nothing can be known — that would itself be a dogma. He is someone who, having found the arguments on either side of every question to be of equal weight, suspends judgement, and then discovers that suspension is followed unexpectedly by tranquillity. The method is the systematic production of equipollence, and Sextus catalogues it: ten modes turning on the variability of appearances across animals, people, senses, circumstances and positions, and five later modes turning on the structure of justification itself — that every proof requires a further proof, that stopping arbitrarily is arbitrary, and that arguing in a circle proves nothing. That last set is the ancestor of every modern regress argument about the foundations of knowledge.\n\nThe sceptic still acts. He follows appearances, custom, the guidance of nature and the instruction of the arts, without believing that any of it reveals how things really are. Scepticism is presented as therapy rather than as a theory: the disturbance that makes people miserable comes from believing that things are good or bad by nature, and suspending that belief relieves it.\n\nThe Latin translation of 1562 is one of the genuinely detonating events in European intellectual history. Montaigne read it and built the Apology for Raymond Sebond around it, taking the motto What do I know. The revival of scepticism it caused is the problem Descartes set out to solve, and the method of doubt in the Meditations is Sextus's modes deployed in order to be defeated. Bayle turned the arguments into a dictionary that the Enlightenment quarried. Hume's account of causation and induction reworks the regress in a new key, and he adopted the Pyrrhonist's conclusion that nature relieves us of doubts reason cannot. Almost every modern discussion of what justifies belief still moves in the channels Sextus cut.",160,210,"Greek","philosopher","Ancient",null,[],[115,122],{"is_primary":116,"traditions":117},false,{"id":118,"name":119,"slug":120,"short_description":121},30,"Ancient Philosophy","ancient-philosophy","The philosophical tradition that emerged in Greece and Rome between roughly 600 BCE and 500 CE, asking the foundational questions about reality, knowledge, virtue, and the good life.",{"is_primary":116,"traditions":123},{"id":124,"name":125,"slug":126,"short_description":127},41,"Skepticism","skepticism","The philosophical tradition of doubting whether we can have certain knowledge of the world, the self, or moral truths.",[129],{"source_tradition_id":124,"target_tradition_id":118,"relation_type":130,"description":131},"descends_from","Pyrrho founded the practice and Sextus Empiricus recorded it: a branch of the ancient schools rather than a modern invention.",[],[134,138,142,146,150,154,158,162,166,170,172,176,180],{"relation_type":130,"traditions":135},{"name":136,"slug":137},"Natural Law","natural-law",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":139},{"name":140,"slug":141},"Republicanism","republicanism",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":143},{"name":144,"slug":145},"Comparative Politics","comparative-politics",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":147},{"name":148,"slug":149},"Political Rhetoric","political-rhetoric",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":151},{"name":152,"slug":153},"Platonism","platonism",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":155},{"name":156,"slug":157},"Scholasticism","scholasticism",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":159},{"name":160,"slug":161},"Objectivism","objectivism",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":163},{"name":164,"slug":165},"Communitarianism","communitarianism",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":167},{"name":168,"slug":169},"Islamic Political Thought","islamic-political-thought",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":171},{"name":125,"slug":126},{"relation_type":130,"traditions":173},{"name":174,"slug":175},"Moral Philosophy","moral-philosophy",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":177},{"name":178,"slug":179},"Political Philosophy","political-philosophy",{"relation_type":130,"traditions":181},{"name":182,"slug":183},"Renaissance Humanism","renaissance-humanism",[185,192],{"title":186,"year":187,"year_display":188,"description":189,"kind":190,"sort_order":191},"Outlines of Pyrrhonism",200,"c. 200","The handbook of sceptical method: the modes that produce equal weight on either side, and the suspension of judgement that follows.","work",1,{"title":193,"year":187,"year_display":188,"description":194,"kind":190,"sort_order":195},"Against the Mathematicians","The longer polemic against the dogmatists and the professors of the individual disciplines, from logic and physics to grammar and astrology.",2,[197,201,205,209,213,217,221,225,229,233,237,241,245,246,250,254],{"name":198,"slug":199,"birth_year":200},"Socrates","socrates",-470,{"name":202,"slug":203,"birth_year":204},"Thucydides","thucydides",-460,{"name":206,"slug":207,"birth_year":208},"Xenophon","xenophon",-430,{"name":210,"slug":211,"birth_year":212},"Plato","plato",-428,{"name":214,"slug":215,"birth_year":216},"Aristotle","aristotle",-384,{"name":218,"slug":219,"birth_year":220},"Epicurus","epicurus",-341,{"name":222,"slug":223,"birth_year":224},"Polybius","polybius",-200,{"name":226,"slug":227,"birth_year":228},"Marcus Tullius Cicero","cicero",-106,{"name":230,"slug":231,"birth_year":232},"Lucretius","lucretius",-99,{"name":234,"slug":235,"birth_year":236},"Seneca","seneca",4,{"name":238,"slug":239,"birth_year":240},"Epictetus","epictetus",50,{"name":242,"slug":243,"birth_year":244},"Marcus Aurelius","marcus-aurelius",121,{"name":104,"slug":103,"birth_year":107},{"name":247,"slug":248,"birth_year":249},"Plotinus","plotinus",204,{"name":251,"slug":252,"birth_year":253},"Avicenna","avicenna",980,{"name":255,"slug":256,"birth_year":257},"Averroes","averroes",1126,{"cards":259,"influenced":260,"shapedBy":270,"outbound":271},[],[261,264,267],{"slug":262,"name":263},"david-hume","David Hume",{"slug":265,"name":266},"michel-de-montaigne","Michel de Montaigne",{"slug":268,"name":269},"rene-descartes","René Descartes",[],3]