The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle

by Richard H. Popkin

This is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of Richard Popkin's classic The History of Scepticism, first published in 1960, revised in 1979, and since translated into numerous foreign languages.

This authoritative work of historical scholarship has been revised throughout, including new material on: the introduction of ancient skepticism into Renaissance Europe; the role of Savonarola and his disciples in bringing Sextus Empiricus to the attention of European thinkers; and new material on Henry More, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, G.W. Leibniz, Simon Foucher and Pierre-Daniel Huet, and Pierre Bayle. The bibliography has also been updated.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Religion, Skepticism

440 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2003

Reviews

[Buciu Petre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is an amazing and very comprehensive book from the renowned historian of philosophy, Richard Popkin. His contribution in documenting the influence of ancient skepticism on the modern thought in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries is well acknowledged today, and served an important role in rethinking the status of some great key thinkers of the past: for example, Descartes is seen in a more conservative light today than previously, when he was considered the founder of the modern philosophy. Popkin sees Descartes as just another dogmatic thinker trying to conquer the „skeptical dragon” that has dragged the European thought into „la crise pyrrhonienne”. Of course, his attempt was considered a failure even in his own time by people like Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gasendi, Hobbes and many others, the first two whom Popkin considers the first exponents of „mitigated skepticism” a view that will become the standard „scientific outlook” from the next century till our present times. These two thinkers were very active at the outset of the Scientific Revolution, advocating the role of experiment as essential in the conduct of scientific process. There is also a lot of material in the book discussing various philosophers which had none but little mingling with the skeptical problems of their time such as Thomas Hobbes, whose social contract theory is seen by Popkin as a kind of „political answer” to the skeptical challenge (if people cannot find the answers for their problems by rational means and yet the disputes in question tend to disturb the whole society, the State has to come in and take the charge. What the sovereign declare as truth will be seen by anyone as such). There are others philosophers like Spinoza, who seem to dismiss the whole point being discussed, included only for the role he had in initiating a kind of religious skepticism in regard to the authenticity of the Bible, borrowing arguments from the notorious scholar Issac La Peyrere - a skepticism which was to degenerate into outright denial of the biblical claims as revealed knowledge. It is very interesting to see the history of European thought in a whole new light, as attempts made to conquer the challenges posed by ancient skepticism, which was to be rediscovered early in the XVIth century, also playing a significant role in the Reformation disputes with the Catholic church, disputes which raised fundamental questions such as ”what is the criterion of truth?”. This is how ”la crise pyrrhonienne” emerged, according to Popkins. And it shaped the whole thought, scientific and religious, by the late XVIIth century.

[Hugh Coverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing introduction to 16th and 17th century Western philosophy, especially with regard to the limitations and limits of human knowledge and the search for certainty. What had started out as an epistemological exercise, the sceptical crisis branched out to undermine claims for certainty concerning human knowledge regarding both the natural world and religious revelation. This third and expanded edition, completed shortly before Popkin’s death, provides evidence for earlier use of Ancient Greek Scepticism as presented in Sextus Empiricus’ writings, and adds further material from the later sceptics after Spinoza, including Leibniz, Foucher, Huet, and Bayle.

[Doctor Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Popkin’s book is a classic for those studying skepticism, in either its ancient or modern forms. I wish I’d read this book decades ago.

Popkin’s history is a bit of a time slice, but a well chosen one. He begins at the end of the fifteenth century, with the re-emergence of ancient Greek skepticism. Pyrrhonism, particularly the writings of Sextus Empiricus, spread through the intellectual world of the Reformation and the birth of modern science. Pyrrhonism, or “la crise pyrrhonienne” became a core element in the broad disputes among Protestant movements, the Catholic church, alleged heresies, and the foundations of modern scientific knowledge.

The close of Popkin’s history comes with the end of the seventeenth century, the seemingly all-encompassing skepticism of Pierre Bayle, on the eve of David Hume’s own classical treatments of skepticism and epistemology.

Sextus Empiricus’ skeptical arguments hit the sixteenth century like an intellectual and cultural grenade. Those arguments attacked knowledge and authority in all directions. Lutherans and other reformers questioned the authority of the Catholic church. The church itself questioned the foundations of unsanctioned interpretations of scripture. Secular figures, or those whose allegiance was to empirical knowledge, questioned all foundations of religious belief and interpretations of scripture. Religious believers questioned the foundations of empirical knowledge. All on the basis of, or at the very least inspired by the Pyrrhonist arguments.

The skeptical arguments themselves are treated fairly briefly by Popkin. You won’t get detailed analyses of the arguments here. For the most part, he only refers to arguments grounded in the unreliability of the senses, the “problem of the criterion”, and then later developments of skepticism, particularly by Montaigne, Charron, and then Descartes.

The problem of the criterion may have been the most compelling and devastating skeptical argument of the Pyrrhonist revival. In order to establish that some claim to truth or knowledge is valid, we need a criterion of validity. But in order to claim that our criterion of validity is valid, we need another criterion by which to judge our criterion of validity. And so on in at least seemingly infinite regress.

What’s especially striking about the problem of the criterion is that unlike, for example, the argument from the unreliability of the senses, it has no bounds. Anything — religious beliefs, empirical knowledge, mathematics, even logic itself — fall into its maw. Not until Descartes’ “evil demon” argument, which itself might be interpreted as an instantiation of the problem of the criterion, do we get so all-encompassing grounds for doubt.

The problem that runs through the entire history that Popkin recounts is this uncontrollable scope of doubt. This scale of skepticism resists any attempts to aim it at selected targets. It destroys everything, including itself. The church may point it against secular knowledge, but it will get out of control and consume theological knowledge and authority along with it. It applies universally. The reformers may apply it to church authority, but it will ricochet against any reformist theology as well. .

As Popkin writes, “The new ‘machine of war’ appeared to have a peculiar recoil mechanism that had the odd effect of engulfing the target and the gunner in a common catastrophe.”

What about fideism, faith or religious belief that is independent of, even opposed to, reason? But is fideism itself sustainable? How do we know that this or that is the word of God? Do we “just believe”? But what do we “just believe” and what do we “just not believe”? How do we know the difference?

As the various parties scramble for shelter, some positions emerge:

- Absolute Skepticism: concerning knowledge or belief based on any foundations at all — our senses, reason alone, or on grounds of simple indubitability or faith.
- Contained or Limited Skepticism: allowing for knowledge based on our senses (when properly employed, as argued by Aristotle and others during the time) but limited metaphysically within the perceived world, holding out the possibility that a “real” world differs from our perceptions. A foreshadowing of nineteenth and twentieth century positivism.
- Fideism: belief in religious truths based on faith, unaided by reason or sense perceptions. Think in medieval times of Tertullian, or of Kierkegaard in more modern times.
- Absolute Certainty: based on infallible reasoning and/or perceptions (Descartes held such a position after resolving the doubts of his first meditation)
- Revealed Knowledge: either of religious truths, or based on our senses as validated by a perfect (and beneficent) God.
- Dogmatism: a term that is used a bit loosely, or at least contrary to my understanding of the term. I would use the term to categorize those who hold to a position without argument or reason. Popkin (and others contemporary to Descartes) labels Descartes a dogmatist.

But none find secure cover from the skeptical arguments retrieved from Sextus Empiricus.

Pierre Bayle serves as a fitting finale to Popkin’s history. Bayle seems almost a performance artist, attacking without mercy any claims to knowledge, certainty, or justified belief. Firing in all directions at once.

What started, with Pyrrho himself, as a positive vision for a way of life, “ataraxia” or a kind of humble quietism and withdrawal from opinion and claims to know anything with certainty, becomes with Bayle a nihilistic force, an intellectual doomsday machine.

We are still here trying to pick up the pieces.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This extraordinary book traces conflicts over justifications for knowledge statements through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If Luther wasn't going to take the Pope's word for it, how was he going to justify statements about religious truth? And once that genie was out of the bottle, people began asking whether and how we can have certain knowledge about the natural world. Popkin writes clearly and maintains the thread of his argument so well that even reading just those chapters that discussed the thinkers that I am interested in I felt that I had acquired a wholly new appreciation for the history of philosophy in these centuries.

[Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book's chapters are leisurely accounts of the plethora of sceptics who emerged since the early modern period. I am quite taken by Richard Popkin's chapter on the mitigated sceptics. I can relate immensely with the beliefs and the principles held by them especially those of Francisco Sánchez.

[Gerald Greene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very comprehensive history of the subject.

[Mateo Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

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