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chicken_nugget08 t1_j7e61d1 wrote

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of a philosopher. Here’s what I got: he was an older philosopher (from Greece possibly?) that got popular during the medieval era and essentially sent people into tailspins because of his belief that “you can’t truly know anything”. I also remember that the way the medievals found out about him was that some dude published his works cause he thought the belief was ridiculously stupid.

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MeatballDom t1_j7m7eo5 wrote

Are you thinking of Gorgias? We don't have that text anymore, just people discussing it, and there's some debate on whether it was something he believed or if it was just a mind exercise.

You could be thinking of "the only thing I know is that I know nothing" which is commonly believed to have been said by Socrates, but it's really not the case (though a bit complicated) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing

You might have luck at r/askphilosophy/ as well

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LateInTheAfternoon t1_j7xabq6 wrote

There are not many works by ancient sceptics that have survived intact, but one that did is by the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus. Problem is he was not an older Greek philosopher but a younger one (2nd century AD) and he was not translated and published in the west until the early modern era (late 16th century) so after the middle ages. You might want to look into it in case you've misremembered...

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chicken_nugget08 t1_j7xsbex wrote

Ah you’re right!! I was not sure at all what era he was from originally tbh I just guessing lol so it is totally likely that I misremembered. The class I took that he was mentioned in covered late antiquity all the way to Age of Enlightenment so yeah I was definitely just taking a shot in the dark at the time frame. The fact that you were able to figure out who I was talking about from that is impressive considering I got most of it wrong 🤪

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