Pros mathēmatikous (Against The Professors)

Pros mathēmatikous (Against The Professors)

A manuscript covering the subject of education and state of learning

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Russia, Isidore of Kiev, copied the second century Pros mathēmatikous (Against the Professors) originally written by the Pyrrhonist and Empiric philosopher Sextus Empiricus. The manuscript critiques learning at the time and all of its standard curriculum such as rhetoric, geometry, music, physics, logic, and ethics, etc.. Pros mathēmatikous is written in a Greek minuscule script and has a twenty-seven long lined layout upon 269 folios. In its critique of standardized knowledge acquisition. This manuscript embodies Sextus Empiricus' Pyrrhonian skepticism and suspension of judgment surrounding the degree of whether anything is truly knowable.

Isidore of Kiev, (1385-1463 CE) ; Sextus Empiricus, (ca.160 - ca.210 BCE)

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

1438-1445 CE

Jules Olszewski

Ink, Parchment

Greek

Manuscript

LJS 380