Abstract

The skeptic demolition of trust or certainty [pistis, (dia-)bebaiotês], likewise taking aim at the possibility of cognition and knowledge asserted by all dogmatical theories (first of all by the dogmata of the stoics) and the dogmatical statements of ordinary life (bios) abolishes the foundations of assents and (philosophical) judgments. While the academic skeptics set forth criteria – especially the convincing or the persuasion – demanded for conductance of life, owing to the objection of apraxia (as argumentum ad hominem or in propria persona?), the pyrrhonists’ attack against the dogmata and opinions or beliefs (which make a claim to be true and false) because of the epochê, which amounts to the claim, that this goal will be attained by the equipollence as to the equilibrium of trust and distrust.