The Philosophy of the Hellenistic Period

Skeptics adopted a permanent pose of skepticism, greeting the claims of other philosophers with deft counter-arguments. Other skeptics followed Socrates' example by remaining open to argument but always able to pick holes in each positive argument as it came along. Epicureans do not seem particularly socratic; their atomism seems to hark back to pre-Socratic theories such as those expressed by Democritus and Lucippus. But this may be misleading: even Plato presents Socrates on one occasion, as assuming that pleasure is the good.