Skeptic’s paradox. If you’re sure that you know nothing, the claim seems self-refuting. Evidently you do know something after all: namely, that you know nothing. Shouldn’t someone who is in doubt about whether it’s possible to know things also be in doubt about that? Arcesilaus thought so. But the Skeptics may have been misreading Socrates. He never quite says that he knows that he knows nothing. He just says that he knows nothing. Again, the reader can consider how much more modest his actual claim is, and with what consequences.
