This paper explores the common ground in the views on natural law, justice and sociopolitical development in Hume and Spinoza. Spinoza develops a radically revisionary position in the natural law debate, building upon the bold equation of right and power. Hume is best interpreted as offering a skeptical–empirical reworking of traditional natural law theories, which maintains much of the practical purport of these theories, while providing it with a new, metaphysically less firm, but also less problematic, foundation. What the two (...) philosophers have in common is that they formulate realist revisions of the natural law tradition in the light of their more general naturalistic, secular philosophical commitments. Both philosophers, moreover, point to the slow development of man’s insight in the laws of nature, arising through a gradual accumulation of experiential insights. These insights are never wholly ‘liberated’ from the historical and imaginative perspective in which they arise. Accordingly, although rational progress brings the systems of justice and politics of different groups of people closer to each other, they necessarily retain, sometimes fundamentally incompatible, divergences. In the tradition of Machiavellian political realism, therefore, both Spinoza and Hume plead for judging political orders according to their own merits: do they, in their own specific ways, bring about a sufficient degree of order and liberty? (shrink)

The history of philosophy would not have needed to wait for Heidegger if Hegel had taught us that the transformation from hypokeimenon to subiectum introduced by Descartes is due to the transformation from truth to certainty, which he introduces too. So, taking for subject this certainty, which makes the certainty of subject, we aim to understand that before the truth of man was distorted, the truth itself – the ontological and antepredicative truth, i.e. aletheia – was with him.

Atheism is skeptical towards gods, and atheology advances philosophical positions defending the reasonableness of that rejection. The history of philosophy encompasses many unorthodox and irreligious movements of thought, and these varieties of unbelief deserve more exegesis and analysis than presently available. Going back to philosophy’s origins, two primary types of atheology have dominated the advancement of atheism, yet they have not cooperated very well. Materialist philosophies assemble cosmologies that leave nothing for gods to do, while skeptical philosophies find conceptions of (...) god to be too unintelligible or unsupported by evidence to warrant credibility. The origins and genealogies of these two atheologies are sketched and compared over many centuries down to present-day atheism, which still displays signs of this internecine divide between confident naturalists and agnostic skeptics. (shrink)

The importance of Pyrrhonism to Hobbes's political philosophy is much greater than has been recognized. He seems to have used Pyrrhonist arguments to support a doctrine of moral relativity, but he was not a sceptic in the Pyrrhonist sense. These arguments helped him to develop his teaching that there is no absolute good or evil; to minimise the purchase of natural law in the state of nature and its restrictions on the right of nature; virtually to collapse natural law into (...) civil law; and to make the sovereign the political, moral and theological epicenter of his political system. (shrink)

Did Descartes manage to overcome the skeptics? If we understand “overcome” in the sense of “refute,” the answer is no, since his hyperbolic doubt harbors several blind spots and is, therefore, not as radical as is commonly argued. In this way, the victory of the cogito is perhaps less decisive and fruitful than it is claimed. If we understand “overcome” in the sense of “remove” or “move beyond,” the answer is yes. Descartes has overcome skepticism, but at the cost of (...) a decision, a sort of bet made in favor of reason based on a confidence in the human mind that is never really subverted. This faith in reason, truth, and specific epistemological principles in Descartes’ philosophy constitute what Wittgenstein calls “hinges,” which are indispensable for doubting and searching for truth. In this sense, Descartes’ anti-skepticism is more a confidence in reason in order to save the possibility of science than the result of a logical refutation. (shrink)

The article reconsiders a historical example of thinking about otherness. The example is the Essays by Michel de Montaigne, a piece of work from the early modern times which undermines the interpretation of the contemporary times as a modern age, i.e. supposedly more open, less dogmatic, and less hostile towards strangers. Four figures of otherness are taken into account: an infidel, a “savage,” a woman, and an animal, proving Montaigne’s particular openness. It turns out that the Essays induce a contemporary (...) man to revise his sense of historical superiority in regard to men from the previous centuries; they also let him develop a more just relationship with others of the present times. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 20 Philosophical scepticism is sometimes thought to presuppose doxastic voluntarism, the claim that we are able to believe or disbelieve propositions at will. This is problematic given that doxastic voluntarism itself is a controversial position. I examine two arguments for the view that scepticism presupposes voluntarism. I show that they rely on different versions of a depiction of scepticism as a conversion narrative. I argue that one version of this narrative does presuppose voluntarism, but the other (...) does not. Moreover, alternative versions of the narrative are available. I conclude that scepticism does not presuppose voluntarism. (shrink)

This article presents a reconstruction of the so-called classical, formal or Mendelian genetics, which is intended to be more complete and adequate than existing reconstructions. This reconstruction has been carried out with the instruments, duly modified and extended with respect to the case under consideration, of the structuralist conception of theories. The so-called Mendel’s Laws, as well as linkage genetics and gene mapping are formulated in a precise manner while the global structure of genetics is represented as a theory-net. These (...) results are of methodological, philosophical and didactical relevance. (shrink)

The works of Joseph Glanvill, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, are complex : indeed, the most radical scepticism can be found to go hand in hand with the deepest trust in the advancement of knowledge. This apparent paradox bespeaks a new conception of science : a science that is definitely free from any claim to an intuitive comprehension of the nature of things. Scepticism thus becomes the condition of scientific progress as well as the very method of (...) science itself. In so far forth, Glanvill has an important place, however unconspicuous, in the modern history of critical philosophy. In his answer to Descartes’s argument of theDeus deceptor(a deceptive god), Glanvill makes a distinction between “infallible certainty” and “indubitable certainty”, which indeed marks the moment when science, aware of its own rules, acknowledges its relativity. (shrink)

Medieval epistemology begins as ideal theory: when is one ideally situated with regard to one's grasp of the way things are? Taking as their starting point Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, scholastic authors conceive of the goal of cognitive inquiry as the achievement of scientia, a systematic body of beliefs, grasped as certain, and grounded in demonstrative reasons that show the reason why things are so. Obviously, however, there is not much we know in this way. The very strictness of this ideal (...) in fact gives rise to a body of literature on how Aristotle's framework might be relaxed in various ways, for certain specific purposes. In asking such questions, scholastic authors are in effect pursuing the project of social epistemology, by trying to adapt their ideal theory to the circumstances of everyday life. (shrink)

This article presents and analyses a social-practice contextualist version of meaning holism, whose main root lies in American pragmatism. Proposing that beliefs depend on systems of language-use in social practices, which involve communities of people and worldly objects, such meaning holism effectively breaks down the Enlightenment tradition’s philosophical subject–object dualism (and scepticism). It also opens the human mind up for empirical research – in a ‘sociologizing’, ‘anthropologizing’ and ‘historicizing’ vein. The article discusses the implications of this approach for the human (...) sciences, for instance certain parallel developments in anthropology and archaeology. (shrink)

El tratado De la sagesse de Pierre Charron es una obra difícil de clasificar y, como tal, ha recibido diversas interpretaciones en la historia de la filosofía. En este trabajo partimos de la interpretación "fideísta" propuesta por Richard Popkin y, luego de señalar sus limitaciones, prestamos atención a otras dos exégesis que guardan varios rasgos en común: la "libertina" y la "deísta". A propósito de esta última, en un cuarto momento, llamamos la atención sobre las semejanzas que presenta la Profession (...) de foi du vicaire savoyard de Rousseau con el tratado de Charron y evaluamos la influencia que éste pudo haber tenido en aquel texto fundamental en el pensamiento teológico del siglo XVIII. Nuestra conclusión es que Charron sería un antecedente importante del Vicario y que, en tal sentido, podría ser entendido como un protodeísta. Pierre Charron's De la sagesse is a work quite difficult to classify and, as such, has received various interpretations in the History of Philosophy. In this paper, we depart from the "fideist" reading proposed by Richard Popkin and, after pointing out its limitations, we focus on to two other exegesis, the "libertine" and the "deist", that have several traits in common. Finally, in a fourth section, we pay attention to the similarities that presents Rousseau's Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard with De la sagesse and evaluate the influence that Charron could have had on that fundamental text in Eighteenth Century theological thought. Our conclusion is that Charron could be considered an important antecedent of the Vicar, and in this sense, as a protodeist. (shrink)

The Renaissance sceptic and medical doctor Francisco Sanchez has been rather unduly neglected in scholarly work on Renaissance scepticism. In this paper I discuss his scepticism against the background of the ancient distinction between Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism. I argue that Sanchez was a Pyrrhonist rather than, as has been claimed in recent years, a mitigated Academic sceptic. In keeping with this I shall also try to show that Sanchez was crucially influenced by the ancient medical school of empiricism, a (...) school closely allied with Pyrrhonism. (shrink)

Kirja-arvio: Malin Grahn-Wilder : Skeptisismi: Epäilyn ja etsimisen filosofia. Gaudeamus, Helsinki 2016. 453 sivua. Mitä on tieto ja kellä sitä on? Voimmeko tietää miten asiat todella ovat? Voimmeko ylipäätään tietää mitään? Malin Grahn-Wilderin toimittama teos Skeptisismi on kattava läpileikkaus skeptisismin historiasta antiikin juuriltaan aina nykyajan keskusteluihin saakka. Samalla se sisältää ensimmäistä kertaa suomeksi käännettynä useammankin filosofian historialle ehdottoman olennaisen kirjoituksen.

Resumen En las siguientes páginas adoptaremos la perspectiva que concibe la reforma de las ciencias de Francis Bacon como un método terapéutico del cultivo de las facultades intelectuales. Ampliaremos la perspectiva de esta línea de investigación del pensamiento baconiano con la distinción de tres terapias renacentistas del alma : la terapia de Eros, sostenida por filósofos platónicos del Renacimiento; la terapia del escepticismo, propuesta por Michel de Montaigne, y la terapia del propio Bacon, tal y como se encuentra en su (...) The Advancement of Learning y en el libro I del Novum organum. Describiremos cada una de estas teorías, expondremos sus principales propuestas filosóficas y exploraremos cómo se oponen entre sí. Por último, con la comparación de estas tres terapias renacentistas del alma buscamos lograr una mejor comprensión del nuevo método de Bacon para el conocimiento humano, dentro de sus propios contextos intelectuales.In the following pages we view Francis Bacon's Reform of sciences as a therapeutic method for the improvement of the intellectual faculties. We broaden the scope of this interpretive line of Bacon's thought by distinguishing three competing therapies of the soul during the Renaissance : the Therapy of Eros, maintained by Renaissance platonic philosophers; the Therapy of skepticism, proposed by Michel de Montaigne, and the Therapy of Bacon himself, as stated in his The Advancement of Learning as well as in the Novum organum, Book I. We describe each of these theories, showing their main philosophical tenets and how they oppose to each other. Finally, by comparing these three Renaissance therapies of the soul we aim to achieve a better comprehension of Bacon's new method for human knowledge in its own intellectual contexts. (shrink)

This essay argues that Antony and Cleopatra’s pitting of Egypt against Rome is a cipher of aesthetic resistance to modern rationality. The coordinates are Adornian. Antony’s and Cleopatra’s complex identities elude the disenchanting, nominalist machinery in which diffuse indeterminacy necessitates conceptual imposition. Here, the individuals are essentially dramatized: sensate, embodied selves composed and expressed in relations of passionate recognition. The lovers’ deaths, and especially Cleopatra’s self-conscious theatre, rewrite the ascetic, dominative, and pseudo-theatrical rationality of Octavian Rome. The protest, the passion (...) and singularity, lives mainly through its expressive emphases – such as hyperbole – and the re-functioning of the very dominative roles and norms being opposed. This reflects the restricted but critical – aesthetic – status of early modern drama, and specifies its opposition to the deepening attack on sensate knowing in its world. (shrink)

This paper presents the main features that Sextus Empiricus draws from those he designates as his predecessors and, at the same time, explains how this reading influences his own skeptical ideal. Specifically, we will point out the main characteristics of the way that Pyrrho and Timon are portrayed in the Sextan writings. We consider that a study of these figures in the Sextan corpus will result in a better understanding of the philosopher’s own skeptical ideal. In this way, our main (...) objective will be to show that Sextus uses different argumentative strategies to model much of his own skeptical stance. At the same time, we intend to claim Sextus as an authentic writer, since he has often been called a copyist without originality when he performs exegesis of this type on the aforementioned figures. (shrink)

In 1938 Max Horkheimer published an article entitled “Montaigne and the Function of Skepticism” trying to clarify and criticize the role of skepticism at his times, close to World War II. According to Horkheimer there are two essential features of skepticism: radical reactionarism and defense of individuals. Following the German philosopher both were key elements in the rise of bourgeois society in Montaigne´s epoch and, in that sense, his skepticism was progressive. However, at the time of Horkheimer both traits were, (...) as the skeptical position, reactionaries, and the only valid alternative to the danger of authoritarian states would be his own Critical Theory. Our paper aims to question the essential character of both traits and, at the same time, the interpretation of skepticism provided in Horkheimer´s article. (shrink)

Pedagogical situations require white lies: in teaching philosophy we make decisions about what to omit, what to emphasise, and what to distort. This article considers when it is permissible to distort the historical record, arguing for a tempered respect for the historical facts. It focuses on the rationalist/empiricist distinction, which still frames most undergraduate early modern courses despite failing to capture the intellectual history of that period. It draws an analogy with Michael Strevens's view on idealisation in causal explanation to (...) distinguish between myths and caricatures. Myths are distortions of the historical record that undermine students' understanding of the past, despite having other pedagogical benefits. Caricatures are distortions that either increase or are indifferent to understanding of the past. Mythmaking, the article argues, is unjustified. (shrink)

The employment by seventeenth-century natural philosophers of stock theological notions like creation, immensity, and eternity in the articulation and justification of emerging physical programs disrupted a delicate but longstanding balance between transcendent and immanent conceptions of God. By playing a prominent (if not always leading) role in many of the major scientific developments of the period, God became more intimately involved with natural processes than at any time since antiquity. In this discussion, I am particularly concerned with the causal and (...) spatio-temporal relations between God and nature in the seventeenth century as recent scholarship has revealed how dramatically traditional conceptions of these relations were transformed by philosophers and scientists like Descartes, Malebranche, More, and Newton. (shrink)

Reflection on the history of skepticism shows that philosophers have often conjoined as a single doctrine various theses that are best kept apart. Some of these theses are incredible – literally almost impossible to accept – whereas others seem quite plausible, and even verging on the platitudinous. Mixing them together, one arrives at a view – skepticism – that is as a whole indefensible. My aim is to pull these different elements apart, and to focus on one particular strand of (...) skepticism that deserves sustained and respectful attention. The strand I have in mind I will refer to as epistemic defeatism. Roughly, in its most global form, it is the view that, in the final analysis, we have no good evidence for the truth of any proposition. Working through various historical texts, I attempt to untangle epistemic defeatism from neighboring views, and in particular to establish its independence from questions about knowledge. Having thus established the view's autonomy, I turn to the options for self-consciously accepting defeat. One may despair or one may have faith. But I will ultimately propose that the most attractive option – the option that preserves the most of our epistemic integrity – is to have hope. (shrink)

En 1627, el funcionario estatal francés Gabriel Naudé escribió un texto titulado _Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque_. El tratado, considerado con frecuencia obra fundacional de la biblioteconomía, pone a la vista ideas muy propias de dos concepciones del conocimiento erudito: la enciclopedística y el escepticismo. El presente trabajo examina las posibles afinidades filosóficas que los dos fenómenos epistemológicos mencionados presentarían en el texto de Naudé, todo ello en el marco del absolutismo francés del siglo XVII.

Among the problems that contemporary research has had to deal with when analyzing the recovery of skepticism in the Renaissance, there is not only the question of the sources, but also the type of skepticism that these sources transmitted. In these pages we propose to revisit the question of the sources that influenced the writing of one of the fundamental works of Renaissance skepticism, Francisco Sanchez’s book That nothing is known.

Scepticism and negative theology are best understood not as theoretical positions, but rather as forms of philosophical practice that performatively undermine our knowledge claims or our seeming understanding of God. In particular, I am arguing that both scepticism and negative theology invoke the failure of the attempt to understand the absolute, be it God or the notion of absolute objectivity. However, with reference to L. A. Paul’s notion of epistemically transformative experience, I am arguing that we still understand something about (...) the absolute through the experience of failing to think it. This, of course, is a non-propositional form of understanding, and I am arguing that there is something about the finitude of the human condition that can only be understood through a transformative philosophical experience with respect to the absolute. (shrink)

O artigo se propõe a esclarecer a hesitante relação de Foucault com a teoria estruturalista da década de 1960 a partir da recondução histórica e política dessa questão ao debate intelectual que procurou, com maior ou menor sucesso, no modelo linguístico de Saussure, uma nova grade de inteligibilidade para as ciências humanas ciências humanas. A descrição das transformações que ocorreram no interior deste debate e o modo como elas levaram Foucault a repensar sua participação nele nos ajudam a esclarecer como (...) a simpatia explícita pelo estruturalismo do início dos anos 1960 cede lugar a uma recusa insistente de filiar-se a ele no final dessa década. This paper intends to elucidate the hesitating relation between Foucault and structuralist theory at the 1960s by recasting it, in a historical and political way, within the intellectual debate that tried to build, more or less successfully, a new grid of comprehensibleness to humanities from the linguistic model of Ferdinand de Saussure. The descritption of transformations that took place within this debate and the way they compelled Foucault to rethink his participation in it could help us to understand how explicit affinities towards structuralism in the beginning of the 1960s gives place to an insistent refusal of affiliation at the end of this decade. (shrink)

While Hume is famous for his development and defence of various arguments for radical scepticism, Hume was bothered by the tension between his ‘abstruse’ philosophical reflections and ordinary life: If he often felt intensely sceptical in his study, he nonetheless felt genuinely unable to take these sceptical views seriously when he returned to the concerns and activities of everyday life. Hume's published work shows a deep and ongoing preoccupation with this tension, and I believe it also shows that Hume's view (...) about the ‘durability’ of scepticism (that is, the extent to which sceptical insights can have an abiding impact on our cognitive lives) underwent an evolutionary development throughout the course of his publishing career. In this paper I propose to trace these textual developments in detail. In particular, I will argue that Hume's concern for intellectual stability is what drives the evolution, as he struggled to understand the ‘durable value’ in scepticism. (shrink)

This essay compares Robert John Russell's work in his recent book Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science (2008) to that of the authors known collectively as "the new atheists." I treat the latter as recent contributors to the modern tradition of scientific naturalism. This tradition makes claims to legitimacy on the basis of its close relations to the natural sciences. The purpose of this essay is to show up the poverty of the naturalist (...) tradition's scientific credentials by contrasting it with Russell's careful account of positive relations between science and Christian theology. (shrink)

The history of philosophy would not have needed to wait for Heidegger if Hegel had taught us that the transformation from hypokeimenon to subiectum introduced by Descartes is due to the transformation from truth to certainty, which he introduces too. So, taking for subject this certainty, which makes the certainty of subject, we aim to understand that before the truth of man was distorted, the truth itself? the ontological and antepredicative truth, i.e. aletheia? was with him.

Michel de Montaigne, el reconocido autor de Los ensayos, ha sido interpretado como un escéptico y, más en concreto, como un defensor del fideísmo escéptico; lectura que tiene su origen principal en la interpretación de B. Pascal. El artículo pretendereexaminar tanto la cuestión del fideísmo como la del escepticismo presente en Los ensayos, para concluir que quizá la interpretación de Pascal, que todavía perdura, se basa en un “desvío” involuntario o intencionado, pero en todo caso creativo y fértil.

ABSTRACT In section XII of the First Inquiry, Hume refers to the two Hellenistic schools of skepticism to present his own view of skepticism, which, however, depends on the ancient skeptics mainly indirectly. Hume's view of skepticism depends crucially on Descartes and post-Cartesian philosophers such as Pascal, Huet, Foucher and Bayle, who reacted skeptically to major Cartesian doctrines but followed one version or other of Descartes's methodical doubt. Although all these post-Cartesian philosophers are relevant in section XII, I focus on (...) the topics in which Descartes himself-besides his skeptical followers-seems directly relevant. After an introductory section on Julia Annas' and Richard Popkin's views of Hume's relation to, respectively, ancient and modern skepticism, I turn to section XII and examine what Hume calls "consequent skepticism about the senses," "antecedent skepticism," and "Academic skepticism." RESUMO Na seção XII da Primeira Investigação, Hume refere-se a duas escolas céticas antigas ao apresentar sua própria visão do ceticismo que, entretanto, depende do ceticismo antigo somente secundária e indiretamente. A compreensão humiana do ceticismo depende principalmente de Descartes e de filósofos pós-cartesianos como Pascal, Huet, Foucher e Bayle que reagiram ceticamente às principais doutrinas cartesianas, mas seguiram uma versão ou outra da dúvida metódica de Descartes. Embora todos estes filósofos sejam relevantes na seção XII, examinarei os tópicos da seção nos quais Descartes parece ser diretamente visado. Após uma seção introdutória sobre as leituras de Julia Annas e Richard Popkin da relação de Hume com, respectivamente, o ceticismo antigo e o moderno, examino o que Hume chama na seção XII da Investigação de "ceticismo consequente sobre os sentidos", "ceticismo antecedente" e "ceticismo acadêmico". (shrink)

A partir de uma leitura comparada da relação entre ceticismo e dogmatismo segundo Pascal e o jovem Hegel, o artigo defende que a interpretação segundo a qual a dialética pascaliana é trágica e não sintética, como a de Hegel, parece ainda mais evidente. Para tanto, o artigo procura mostrar que, em vez de dissolver a oposição entre dogmáticos e céticos, Pascal evidencia a impossibilidade de um polo dar cabo do outro, trabalhando antes a tensão da oposição que a superação dela.