What kind – or kinds – of thinker was Byron? What were his philosophical sources and how did these shape the peculiar structures of thought exhibited in his poems, letters and more formal prose? Those who have discussed such questions have usually identified philosophical scepticism, something about which the poet was demonstrably informed, as an important point of reference. M. G. Cooke somewhat reluctantly concluded that Byron ‘is so strongly disposed to mistrust strictly clean categories that the primary bent of his philosophy must be termed skeptical’. For Cooke, scepticism is something to be admitted rather than celebrated: it ‘becomes a question’, Cooke worries, ‘and indeed a vexed question, whether we can find in Byron's verse some affirmative philosophic position, befitting a poet of his rank and of his years’. Donald H. Reiman was less concerned about the fittingness of Byron's scepticism, finding in it a philosophical correlate for the situation of Byronic exile: ‘as a universal outsider, Byron self–consciously employed Academic or Pyrrhonist skepticism to distance himself from the creeds that competed for his allegiance’. Hoagwood goes further to claim this universal distancing as an intellectually coherent and sophisticated response to the world:

Byron does more than toy with the ideas of philosophical scepticism; he articulates, rather, a distinct critical practice or ‘method’, one that allows us to place him in intellectual history with more confidence than has traditionally been the case. Contrary to Cooke's sense of Byron's scepticism as problematic, moreover, Hoagwood associates it, via the Pyrrhonist's ataraxia, with ‘delight’ and the ‘enrichment of human experience’.

While there can be no doubt about Byron's interest in philosophical scepticism or its importance for his writing, no clear consensus has emerged about how best to describe this aspect of the poet's thought. Not helpful here is the fact that ‘scepticism’ is a rather nebulous term, both in its popular (ranging through various senses of wariness, cynicism and pessimism) and technical uses; it is not always clear, in this respect, that critics have used it to mean the same thing.