The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations

by Jonathan Barnes and Julia Annas

Book Overview

The Modes of Scepticism is one of the most important and influential of all ancient philosophical texts. The texts made an enormous impact on Western thought when they were rediscovered in the 16th... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521276446
• ISBN13: 9780521276443
• Release Date: June 1985
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

a key to lost treasures

This book is a careful and methodical examination of the ten modes of sceptical denial of dogmatism set forth by Sextus Empiricus, Philo and Diogenes Laertius. These ancient writers prove the fact that human struggle with ignorance is not so recent as commonly believed. It turns out that a tradition of wisdom in the form of judiciously withheld belief has been available to us through the ages.The authors provide a key to our human past which is resplendant with careful contemplation. The work holds new significance in light of the most recent finding in physics and cosmology which place immutable limits upon our further scientific progress. Given the fact that we must live with limits to our knowledge, the historical context of humans who struggled with such limits provide a therapeutic consolation-- we simply fit ourselves into the long struggle.