ABSTRACT
A GOOD deal of discussion about knowledge nowadays incorporates arguments attributed to 'the sceptic'. But as we have seen, this figure is a very different man from the sceptic outlined by Sextus Empiricus. Typically scepticism is treated as a position which, if true, would be fatal for any attempted philosophical justification of ordinary notions of everyday or scientific knowledge. In fact it might not be inaccurate to say that the position has been generated out of the very attempt to provide such a justification; at any rate, the significance of the modern sceptic's arguments lies precisely in their power to demonstrate that no such attempt can succeed. Sextus Empiricus would label those who hold such a position Academicians, people who hold an absolutist kind of view which he clearly distinguishes from the 'way' of the sceptic.
