VICTOR DANILO BESSA ROQUE DE MORAES

The goal of this project is to carry out a comparative examination between interpretations of how different authors of ancient Skepticism responded to the famous apraxia objection. This examination will take two directions. Firstly, regarding each of the authors studied in particular, we seek to compare the relative strenghts of different interpretations offered by contemporary commentators. Two debates in particular will be the focus of the discussion: on the one hand, the debate between "dialectical" and "fallibilist" interpretations of Academic philosophy (focusing on the thought of Carneades and, to a lesser extent, Philo of Larissa) and, on the other hand, the debate between "rustic" and "urbane" interpretations of Pyrrhonism (based on the writings of Sextus Empiricus). Secondly, we intend to evaluate what each of these interpretations represents to the approach of ancient skepticism as a whole, that is, to what extent each interpretation approximates or distances Academics and Pyrrhonists and how much room is given to take ancient Skepticism as a single tradition, weighing the similarities and differences thus elucidated between the two schools.