Scepticism and Idealism in Antiquity

By now it is considered a fact that modern epistemology discovered the problem of solipsism, whereas classical philosophy, being based on a »healthy« realism, is assumed to never have doubted the existence of a non-mental environment. This assumption is wrong, as Markus Gabriel proves in this groundbreaking study.

His hypothesis is that classical scepticism deliberated the problem of an external world in a much more radical way than early modern thinkers did. By going through the sceptical antiphilosophy of Sextus Empiricus, Plotinus’s idealistic metaphysics and in light of contemporary philosophy, Gabriel shows that classical scepticism has put up for debate a lifeform that shows a way out of the paradoxes of contemporary epistemology.