---
title: "Philosophical skepticism"
chunk: 8/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The historical Buddha asserted certain doctrines as true, such as the possibility of nirvana; however, he also upheld a form of skepticism with regards to certain questions which he left "un-expounded" (avyākata) and some he saw as "incomprehensible" (acinteyya). Because the Buddha saw these questions (which tend to be of metaphysical topics) as unhelpful on the path and merely leading to confusion and "a thicket of views", he promoted suspension of judgment towards them. This allowed him to carve out an epistemic middle way between what he saw as the extremes of claiming absolute objectivity (associated with the claims to omniscience of the Jain Mahavira) and extreme skepticism (associated with the Ajñana thinker Sanjaya Belatthiputta).
Later Buddhist philosophy remained highly skeptical of Indian metaphysical arguments. The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna in particular has been seen as the founder of the Madhyamaka school, which has been in turn compared with Greek Skepticism. Nagarjuna's statement that he has "no thesis" (pratijña) has parallels in the statements of Sextus Empiricus of having "no position". Nagarjuna famously opens his magnum opus, the Mulamadhyamakakarika, with the statement that the Buddha claimed that true happiness was found through dispelling 'vain thinking' (prapañca, also "conceptual proliferation").
According to Richard P. Hayes, the Buddhist philosopher Dignaga is also a kind of skeptic, which is in line with most early Buddhist philosophy. Hayes writes:

...in both early Buddhism and in the Skeptics one can find the view put forward that man's pursuit of happiness, the highest good, is obstructed by his tenacity in holding ungrounded and unnecessary opinions about all manner of things. Much of Buddhist philosophy, I shall argue, can be seen as an attempt to break this habit of holding on to opinions.
Scholars like Adrian Kuzminski have argued that Pyrrho of Elis (ca. 365–270) might have been influenced by Indian Buddhists during his journey with Alexander the Great.

==== Cārvāka philosophy ====

The Cārvāka (Sanskrit: चार्वाक) school of materialism, also known as Lokāyata, is a classically cited (but historically disputed) school of ancient Indian philosophy. While no texts or authoritative doctrine have survived, followers of this system are frequently mentioned in philosophical treatises of other schools, often as an initial counterpoint against which to assert their own arguments.
Cārvāka is classified as a "heterodox" (nāstika) system, characterized as a materialistic and atheistic school of thought. This school was also known for being strongly skeptical of the claims of Indian religions, such as reincarnation and karma.

==== Jainism ====

While Jain philosophy claims that is it possible to achieve omniscience, absolute knowledge (Kevala Jnana), at the moment of enlightenment, their theory of anekāntavāda or 'many sided-ness', also known as the principle of relative pluralism, allows for a practical form of skeptical thought regarding philosophical and religious doctrines (for un-enlightened beings, not all-knowing arihants).
According to this theory, the truth or the reality is perceived differently from different points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth. Jain doctrine states that, an object has infinite modes of existence and qualities and, as such, they cannot be completely perceived in all its aspects and manifestations, due to inherent limitations of the humans. Anekāntavāda is literally the doctrine of non-onesidedness or manifoldness; it is often translated as "non-absolutism". Syādvāda is the theory of conditioned predication which provides an expression to anekānta by recommending that epithet "Syād" be attached to every expression. Syādvāda is not only an extension of Anekānta ontology, but a separate system of logic capable of standing on its own force. As reality is complex, no single proposition can express the nature of reality fully. Thus the term "syāt" should be prefixed before each proposition giving it a conditional point of view and thus removing any dogmatism in the statement. For Jains, fully enlightened beings are able to see reality from all sides and thus have ultimate knowledge of all things. This idea of omniscience was criticized by Buddhists such as Dharmakirti.

=== Ancient Chinese philosophy ===

==== Zhuang Zhou (c. 369 – c. 286 BCE) ====
Zhuang Zhou (莊子, "Master Zhuang") was a famous ancient Chinese Taoism philosopher during the Hundred Schools of Thought period. Zhuang Zhou demonstrated his skeptical thinking through several anecdotes in the preeminent work Zhuangzi attributed to him:

"The Debate on the Joy of Fish" (知魚之樂) : In this anecdote, Zhuang Zhou argued with his fellow philosopher Hui Shi whether they knew the fish in the pond were happy or not, and Zhuang Zhou made the famous observation that "You are not I. How do you know that I do not know that the fish are happy?"  (Autumn Floods 秋水篇, Zhuangzi)
"The Butterfly of the Dream"(周公夢蝶) : The paradox of "Butterfly Dream" described Zhuang Zhou's confusion after dreaming himself to be a butterfly: "But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou." (Discussion on Making All Things Equal 齊物篇, Zhuangzi)
Through these anecdotes in Zhuangzi, Zhuang Zhou indicated his belief in the limitation of language and human communication and the inaccessibility of universal truth.  This establishes him as a skeptic. But he was by no means a radical skeptic: he only applied skeptical methods partially, in arguments demonstrating his Taoist beliefs.  He held the Taoist beliefs themselves dogmatically.

==== Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 CE) ====
Wang Chong (王充) was the leading figure of the skeptic branch of the Confucianism school in China during the first century CE. He introduced a method of rational critique and applied it to the widespread dogmatism thinking of his age like phenomenology (the main contemporary Confucianism ideology that linked all natural phenomena with human ethics), state-led cults, and popular superstition. His own philosophy incorporated both Taoism and Confucianism thinkings, and it was based on a secular, rational practice of developing hypotheses based on natural events to explain the universe which exemplified a form of naturalism that resembled the philosophical idea of Epicureans like Lucretius.