Abstract

This chapter lays out Agrippa's Five Modes Leading to the Suspension of Belief as they are found in Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism. The five modes are discrepancy, regress ad infinitum, relativity, hypothesis, and circular reasoning. In the Pyrrhonist's hands, these five modes are used to show that any effort at justifying philosophical beliefs is bound to fail. On the contemporary scene, three of these modes, arbitrary assumption, infinite regress, and circular reasoning are set up as a challenge to be met by a theory of justification. We get various kinds of theories of justification depending on how this challenge is met.