Abstract
The opening chapter of this book presents the skepticism of Sextus Empiricus as far more interesting than any of the varieties of skepticism typically discussed today. It is claimed that the skeptic in Sextus’s understanding quite generally “denies our claim to have rationally justified beliefs” ; by contrast, contemporary skeptical worries about whether we can really have knowledge—whatever exactly that amounts to—are stigmatized as absurdly trivial, and also out of touch with skepticism’s historical origins. The remainder of the book promises to justify this interpretation of Sextus’s skepticism, and to show that such a skepticism is not subject to the standard objections that it would be self-refuting and unlivable.