structural:reformatting, information:filtering
Views

Lucian's philosophical views are difficult to categorize due to his persistent use of irony and sarcasm. In The Fisherman, Lucian describes himself as a champion of philosophy and throughout his other writings he characterizes philosophy as a morally constructive discipline, but he is critical of pseudo-philosophers, whom he portrays as greedy, bad-tempered, sexually immoral hypocrites. Lucian was not known to be a member of any of the major philosophical schools. In his Philosophies for Sale, he makes fun of members of every school. Lucian was critical of Stoicism and Platonism, because he regarded them as encouraging superstition. His Nigrinus superficially appears to be a "eulogy of Platonism", but may, in fact, be satirical, or merely an excuse to ridicule Roman society.

Nonetheless, at other times, Lucian writes approvingly of individual philosophies. According to Turner, although Lucian makes fun of Skeptic philosophers, he displays a temperamental inclination towards that philosophy. Edwyn Bevan identifies Lucian as a Skeptic, and in his Hermotimus, Lucian rejects all philosophical systems as contradictory and concludes that life is too short to determine which of them comes nearest to the truth, so the best solution is to rely on common sense, which was what the Pyrrhonian Skeptics advocated. The maxim that "Eyes are better witnesses than ears" is echoed repeatedly throughout several of Lucian's dialogues.

Lucian was skeptical of oracles, though he was by no means the only person of his time to voice such skepticism. Lucian rejected belief in the paranormal, regarding it as superstition. In his dialogue The Lover of Lies, he probably voices some of his own opinions through his character Tychiades, perhaps including the declaration by Tychiades that he does not believe in daemones, phantoms, or ghosts because he has never seen such things. Tychiades, however, still professes belief in the gods' existence:

Dinomachus: 'In other words, you do not believe in the existence of the Gods, since you maintain that cures cannot be wrought by the use of holy names?' Tychiades: 'Nay, say not so, my dear Dinomachus,' I answered; 'the Gods may exist, and these things may yet be lies. I respect the Gods: I see the cures performed by them, I see their beneficence at work in restoring the sick through the medium of the medical faculty and their drugs. Asclepius, and his sons after him, compounded soothing medicines and healed the sick, – without the lion's-skin-and-field-mouse process.'

According to Everett Ferguson, Lucian was strongly influenced by the Cynics. The Dream or the Cock, Timon the Misanthrope, Charon or Inspectors, and The Downward Journey or the Tyrant all display Cynic themes. Lucian was particularly indebted to Menippus, a Cynic philosopher and satirist of the third century BC. Lucian wrote an admiring biography of the philosopher Demonax, who was a philosophical eclectic, but whose ideology most closely resembled Cynicism. Demonax's main divergence from the Cynics was that he did not disapprove of ordinary life. Paul Turner observes that Lucian's Cynicus reads as a straightforward defense of Cynicism, but also remarks that Lucian savagely ridicules the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus in his Passing of Peregrinus.

Lucian also greatly admired Epicurus, whom he describes in Alexander the False Prophet as "truly holy and prophetic". Later, in the same dialogue, he praises a book written by Epicurus:

What blessings that book creates for its readers and what peace, tranquillity, and freedom it engenders in them, liberating them as it does from terrors and apparitions and portents, from vain hopes and extravagant cravings, developing in them intelligence and truth, and truly purifying their understanding, not with torches and squills and that sort of foolery, but with straight thinking, truthfulness and frankness.

Lucian had a generally negative opinion of Herodotus and his historiography, which he viewed as faulty.