PYRRHON OF ELIS

Pyrrhon of Elis was an ancient Greek philosopher who is generally accepted as the father of Skepticism. The philosophical school of Pyrrhonism takes its name from him. Pyrrhon was a pupil of Anaxarchus of Abdera and in about 330 established himself as a teacher at Elis. Believing that equal arguments can be offered on both sides of any proposition, he dismissed the search for truth as a vain endeavour. While travelling with an expedition under Alexander the Great, Pyrrhon saw in the fakirs of India an example of happiness flowing from indifference to circumstances. 

He concluded that humans must suspend judgment (practice epochē) on the reliability of sense perceptions and simply live according to reality as it appears. Pyrrhonism permeated the Middle and New Academy of Athens and strongly influenced philosophical thought in 17th-century  Europe  with  the  republication  of  the Skeptical works of Sextus Empiricus, who had codified Greek Skepticism in the 3rd century CE. Pyrrhon’s teaching was preserved in the poems of Timon of Phlius, who studied with him.