What is "aenesidemus"

Aenesidemus ( Greek: Αἰνησίδημος Ainēsidēmos) was a Greek sceptical philosopher, born in Knossos on the island of Crete. He lived in the 1st century BC, taught in Alexandria and flourished shortly after the life of Cicero. He was probably a member of Plato's Academy, but due to his rejection of their theories he revived the principle of epoché (εποχή), or suspended judgement, originally proposed by Pyrrho and Timon, as a solution to what he considered to be the insoluble problems of epistemology. His school is most commonly referred to as Pyrrhonism, but also as the third sceptic school. His chief work, the Pyrrhoneia (Πυρρώνειοι λóγοι) discussed four main ideas: the reasons for scepticism and doubt, arguments against causality and truth, a physical theory and an ethical theory. Of these, the former are the most significant and his reasons for the suspension of judgment were organized into ten "tropes", or modes. Very little is known about him as none of his works have survived, though he has been mentioned and discussed in detail by Photius (in his Myriobiblion) and Sextus Empiricus, and also to a lesser extent by Diogenes Laertius and Philo of Alexandria.

Aenesidemus is a German book published anonymously by Professor Gottlob Ernst Schulze of Helmstedt in 1792. Schulze attempted to refute the principles that Karl Leonhard Reinhold established in support of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781). The title is a reference to Aenesidemus, an ancient Greek skeptical philosopher. Its complete title, in English translation, was Aenesidemus or Concerning the Foundations of the Philosophy of the Elements Issued by Professor Reinhold in Jena Together with a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critique of Reason .