"Cauterising the Tumour of Pyrrhonism": Blackloism versus Skepticism

Abstract

In 1663 English Catholic priest Thomas White (1593-1676) proclaimed a need for some cauterisation to be apply'd to that Tumour of Glanvill's, which has rag'd now full two years.' The tumour, as physically manifested, can be identified as The Vanity of Dogmatizing,2 and underlying malaise as philosophical position expounded in that work-namely, skeptical philosophy of Pyrrhonism, which confirmed (in words of Glanvill's subtitle) the Shortness and Uncertainty of our Knowledge. The growth of that Pyrrhonian attitude to knowledge, characterized by White as a destructive contagion, had, as he goes on to note, long since ... begun to take fresh heart-encouraged no doubt by Thomas Stanley's new English translation of Sextus Empiricus. Standing determinedly against this intellectual fashion, White and his followers continued to propound an essentially anti-skeptical philosophy during latter half of seventeenth century. It is not least as a result of this intellectual unorthodoxy that White himself and Blackloist philosophy associated with him virtually disappeared from history books.4 During his own lifetime he enjoyed close relations with members of Mersenne-circle and with such subsequently canonical figures as Hobbes and Descartes. He also acted effectively as leader of English Catholic clergy during 1650s, heading domi-