Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The doctrines of Pyrrho and his followers; absolute skepticism; universal doubt.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Skepticism; universal doubt.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Neither dogmatism nor pyrrhonism will solve the enigma: the one explains the greatness of man, the other his misery; but neither explains both.

    Blaise Pascal de Brantigny........................ 2008

  • Neither dogmatism nor pyrrhonism will solve the enigma: the one explains the greatness of man, the other his misery; but neither explains both.

    Archive 2008-06-15 de Brantigny........................ 2008

  • Neither dogmatism nor pyrrhonism will solve the enigma: the one explains the greatness of man, the other his misery; but neither explains both.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11: New Mexico-Philip 1840-1916 1913

  • And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that if we are true, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God.

    IX. Essays. Circles. 1841 1909

  • This were the true cosmopolitanism, destroying those distressful variations which make your clock vary with your climate, and which throw the shadow of pyrrhonism over truths which should be clear as daylight.

    Without Prejudice Israel Zangwill 1895

  • From whatever source such a tenet springs, whether from materialism, stoicism, pyrrhonism, epicureanism, atheism even, is of small matter; it is a tenet which is honorable to the holder.

    Imperial Purple Edgar Saltus 1889

  • I may mention that this insight into an immaterial world (he having been inclined before to pyrrhonism) quite altered his career, and that soon after he took holy orders.

    My Life as an Author Tupper, Martin F 1886

  • It may be said that critical scepticism carried to the length suggested is historical pyrrhonism; that if we are altogether to discredit an ancient or a modern historian, because he has assumed fabulous matter to be true, it will be as well to give up paying any attention to history.

    Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays Thomas Henry Huxley 1860

  • It may be said that critical scepticism carried to the length suggested is historical pyrrhonism; that if we are altogether to discredit an ancient or a modern historian, because he has assumed fabulous matter to be true, it will be as well to give up paying any attention to history.

    Lectures and Essays Thomas Henry Huxley 1860

  • And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine pyrrhonism, [713] at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that _if we are true_, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God.

    Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson 1842

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  • (Philos.) The doctrine of the impossibility of attaining certainty of knowledge; absolute or universal skepticism.

    May 12, 2008