Skepticism

Imagine dropping a stone a thousand times, and a thousand times it falls. You are utterly certain it will fall on the thousand-and-first. But pause and ask: what, exactly, justifies that certainty? You have never seen the “necessity” of the stone’s falling — you have only seen stones falling. The leap from what has happened to what will happen seems obvious, yet when we examine it, no logical proof holds it up. This small abyss, opened by David Hume in the eighteenth century, has never quite been closed. It swallows causation, induction, the self, and much of metaphysics — and it is the best place to start understanding why Hume is perhaps the most unsettling of modern philosophers. ...

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–1592) is one of those rare thinkers whose influence is measured not by the construction of a philosophical system but by the invention of a form. By creating the essay — a word he coined himself, from the French essai, meaning attempt or trial — he inaugurated a way of thinking that refuses any claim to final truth and makes the thinking subject both the object and the instrument of inquiry. His Essais, published between 1580 and 1595, remain among the most widely read texts in Western literature, and their philosophical significance has only grown with time. ...

Few distinctions have been as decisive for the history of Western philosophy as the one that separates doxa (δόξα, opinion) from episteme (ἐπιστήμη, knowledge). Since the Pre-Socratics, the effort to move beyond the plane of appearances toward well-grounded understanding has constituted the central impulse of philosophical inquiry. Doxa designates the unjustified judgment, the belief that rests on sensory appearances or social convention; episteme, by contrast, aspires to justified truth — to knowledge sustained by necessary reasons. ...

Few philosophical gestures are as radical — and as productive — as the deliberate decision to withhold judgment. Epoché (ἐποχή), the suspension of assent, runs through the history of Western philosophy like a thread connecting ancient skepticism to contemporary phenomenology, passing through Cartesian doubt and British empiricism along the way. Born as a practice of life among the Pyrrhonian skeptics, who sought in it the tranquility of the soul, epoché was reclaimed twenty-three centuries later by Edmund Husserl as the founding method of phenomenology — the path to “the things themselves.” ...

Blaise Pascal French mathematician, physicist and philosopher. A precocious genius (invented the mechanical calculator at age 19); converted to Jansenism after his “night of fire” (1654). His philosophy is an existential wager and a confrontation with the reason of the libertines. Key Concepts The wager (Pascal’s wager): pragmatic argument about belief in God. If God exists and you believe — infinite gain; if he does not exist and you believe — finite loss. If he exists and you do not believe — infinite loss. Prudent reason bets on God — even without rational proof “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of”: there is an order of the heart — intuition, love, feeling — irreducible to the demonstrative logic of Descartes Misery and grandeur of man: man is a roseau pensant (thinking reed) — fragile as nature, but his greatness lies in thinking; more noble than the universe because he knows that he dies The two infinities: between the great infinity (cosmos) and the small infinity (atom), man stands in the middle — without firm foundation either in sciences or in metaphysics Diversion (divertissement): man flees from confrontation with himself through agitation — boredom reveals the human misery that diversion hides. Critique of social superficiality Critique of Cartesianism: Descartes’ method is useful in the sciences, but illusory as a foundation for faith or morality; “Descartes useless and uncertain” Jansenism: Catholic current that emphasized the irresistible grace of Augustine; Pascal defended Port-Royal in the Provincial Letters against the Jesuits Influenced by Saint Augustine — grace, sin, predestination Montaigne — skepticism, human misery (point of departure and adversary) Descartes — rationalism (critique) Ancient Pyrrhonism — skepticism as apologetic weapon Influenced Kierkegaard — wager, paradox, subjectivity of faith Existentialism — anguish and human condition Modern Christian apologetics Decision theory and game theory (wager as precursor) Works Provincial Letters (1656–1657); Pensées (posthumous, 1670 — fragments of an unfinished apologetic); Treatise on the Arithmetic of the Triangle (1654). ...

David Hume A central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711. While still very young he published his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), a work that, in his own words, “fell dead-born from the press” and would be recognized only much later. His reputation as a skeptic in matters of religion cost him the university chairs he sought; he made his living as a librarian, a diplomatic secretary, and above all as a highly successful essayist and historian. A man of serene and amiable temperament — “le bon David” — he died in 1776, facing death with the tranquility of a sage. ...

Gorgias A native of Leontini, in Sicily, Gorgias lived, according to tradition, more than a hundred years (c. 483–375 BCE). He came to Athens in 427 BCE as ambassador of his city and dazzled the Athenians with a new oratorical style, full of figures and rhythms — becoming the most celebrated and highly paid master of rhetoric of Antiquity. Alongside Protagoras, he is the great figure of the first generation of the Sophists. ...

Michel de Montaigne Born in 1533 at his family’s château in the Périgord, Michel de Montaigne received a refined humanist education — raised to speak Latin as his first language. He served as a magistrate in the Parlement of Bordeaux, where he formed a profound friendship with Étienne de La Boétie, whose death would mark him forever. Around 1571 he withdrew to the tower of his château, surrounded by books, and there, amid the bloody Wars of Religion, he began to write a work of an entirely new genre: the Essays. He is one of the fathers of modern thought and the inventor of the essay as a literary and philosophical form. ...

Pyrrho Founder of Ancient Skepticism. Accompanied Alexander the Great to India and encountered ascetics who influenced his thought. Left no writings; lived coherently with epoché. Tranquility (ataraxia) arrives naturally when one suspends all judgment: since we cannot know whether something is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, there is no reason for disturbance. Key Concepts Epoché: suspension of all judgment Aphasia: refraining from making assertions about reality Ataraxia as a consequence of epoché Phenomenalism: only phenomena (appearances) are accessible Influenced by Democritus — relativity of perceptions Gorgias — radical skepticism Indian ascetics (gymnosophists) Influenced Timon of Phlius — disciple New Academy (Arcesilaus, Carneades) Sextus Empiricus — systematization of Pyrrhonism Montaigne, Descartes (method of doubt) Works None. Sources: Diogenes Laërtius, Lives, IX; Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonian Outlines. ...

Sextus Empiricus Greek physician and philosopher, the principal systematizer of Pyrrhonian skepticism. His works are the most complete source on the ancient skeptical tradition founded by Pyrrho. While the dogmatists (Stoics, Epicureans, Platonists) claimed to reach definitive truth, Sextus defends the suspension of judgment (epoché) as the path to tranquility (ataraxia). His influence was decisive on modern philosophy, especially on Montaigne, Descartes, and Hume. Key Concepts Epoché (suspension of judgment): faced with equipollent arguments, the skeptic suspends assent — neither affirming nor denying Isostheneia (equipollence): equal strength of contrary arguments — for every argument in favor, there is one of equal force against Tropes (modes of suspension): systematization of skeptical arguments — 10 tropes of Aenesidemus (relativity of perceptions), 5 tropes of Agrippa (disagreement, infinite regress, relativity, hypothesis, circularity) Phenomenon (phainomenon): the skeptic accepts appearances as a practical guide to life, without affirming that they correspond to reality Practical criterion: the skeptic lives according to nature, customs, laws, and arts — without claiming absolute truth Anti-dogmatism: systematic critique of all philosophical schools that claim to know the ultimate nature of things Influenced by Pyrrho — founder of Pyrrhonian skepticism Aenesidemus — renewal of Pyrrhonism; 10 tropes Timon of Phlius — disciple of Pyrrho Influenced Montaigne — skepticism of the Essays (Apology for Raymond Sebond) Descartes — methodical doubt as a response to skepticism Hume — skepticism about causation and induction Pascal — limits of human reason Francisco Sanches — Quod nihil scitur (1581) Works Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Pyrrhōneioi Hypotypōseis, 3 books) — systematic exposition of the skeptical method; Against the Mathematicians (Adversus Mathematicos, 11 books) — refutation of dogmatic disciplines (grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, music, logic, physics, ethics). ...

Xenophanes of Colophon Itinerant Greek poet-philosopher. Traveled throughout the Greek world for decades singing his philosophical verses. Considered a precursor to the Eleatic School (influenced Parmenides). Notable for his critique of anthropomorphic religion and proto-epistemological observations. Key Concepts Critique of religious anthropomorphism: Homer and Hesiod attributed human crimes to the gods (theft, adultery, betrayal); the Ethiopians make their gods black and flat-nosed, the Thracians make theirs blonde and blue-eyed — if oxen and horses could paint gods, they would make them bovine and equine Philosophical monotheism: there is a single God, the greatest among gods and men, who resembles mortals in nothing — neither in body nor in thought; immobile, he governs all things by his thought Epistemology of moderate skepticism: the gods did not reveal everything to men from the beginning; mortals discover the best progressively — but no man attains total truth about the gods and the cosmos; even if one spoke the truth, one could not be certain Geology and fossils: found marine fossils on mountains and concluded that earth and sea alternate; used empirical observations to speculate about cosmic changes Influenced by Milesian School — naturalism and critique of myth Greek poetic tradition — uses philosophical hexameters and elegies Influenced Parmenides — monism and concept of the One Ancient Skepticism (through epistemological humility) Plato — critique of the representation of gods in Homer (Republic) Works Fragments in verse (elegies, silloi, didactic poem On Nature) preserved through citations by other authors. ...