Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus (flourished at some time in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD), physician and philosopher, lived at Alexandria and at Athens.

In his medical work he belonged to the "methodical" school (see Asclepiades), as a philosopher, he is the greatest of the later Greek Sceptics. He studied under one Herotodus, a doctor in Rome. His claim to eminence rests on the facts that he developed and formulated the doctrines of the older Sceptics, and that he handed down a full and, on the whole, an impartial, account of the members of his school. His works are two, the Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes and Against the Mathematici (ed. Fabricius, Paris, 1621, and Bekker, Berlin, 1842).

See Brochard, Les Sceptiques grecs (1887); Pappenheim, Lebensverholtnisse des Sextus Empiricus (Berlin, 1875); Jourdain, Sextus Empiricus (Paris, 1858); Patrick, Sextus Empiricus and the Greek Sceptics (1899).

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.