The word "skepticism" comes from the French skepticisme and the Greek skeptikos, which means inquiring, contemplating. At the heart of skepticism as a philosophical trend lies doubt in the existence of any truth.
Skepticism becomes most popular in those periods when real social ideals are outdated, and new ones have not yet appeared. It arose in the 4th century. BC e., during the crisis of ancient society. Skepticism was a reaction to previous philosophical systems, which, through reasoning, tried to explain the sensible world to society. At the same time, they often came into conflict with each other. The first skeptics spoke about the relativity of human knowledge, about its formal unprovability and dependence on various conditions (be it life circumstances, health status, the influence of traditions or habits, etc.). Skepticism reached its pinnacle in the teachings of Pyrrho, Carneades, Arxesilaus, Enesidem, and others. Doubts about the possibility of generally accepted evidence-based knowledge formed the basis of the ethical concept of ancient skepticism. Ancient skeptics called for refraining from judgment. Thus, it became possible to achieve the goal of philosophy - peace of mind and happiness. But they themselves did not abstain from judgments. Ancient skeptics wrote works in which they put forward arguments in favor of skepticism and criticized speculative philosophical dogmas. Montaigne, Sharron, Bayle and others in their writings questioned the arguments of theologians, thereby paving the way for the assimilation of materialism. At the same time, Pascal, Hume, Kant and others limited the possibilities of reason in general and cleared the way for religious faith. In modern philosophy, the traditional arguments of skepticism are peculiarly assimilated by positivism, which considers meaningless any judgments, hypotheses and generalizations that cannot be verified by experience. In dialectical materialism, skepticism is considered an element of knowledge and is not absolutized to the value of a philosophical concept.