Does Every Genuine Philosophy Have a Skeptical Side?

Abstract

Does Every Genuine Philosophy Have a Skeptical Side? Michael Neil Forster I have spent a number of years now mining Hegel’s writings for insights into skepticism. 1 Among those that I have identified and broadly endorsed, the following three are perhaps most important: (1) Hegel argues convincingly that ancient skepticism and modern skepticism are sharply different in character (ancient skepticism being typified by the general method of “equipollence,” or arguing with equal plausibility on both sides of each question, modern skepticism instead by such specific problems as the “veil of perception” problem), and that as a result ancient skepticism is philosophically superior to modern, in particular because free of an essential dogmatism, and resulting vulnerability to skepticism, that afflict the latter and blessed with a sort of generalness of applicability that the latter lacks.2 (2) Hegel argues, in opposition to Kant and other philosophers influenced by him, such as Gottlob Ernst Schulze, who conceive ancient skepticism as limited in the scope of its attack, that, on the contrary, ancient skepticism is a radical position that attacks all beliefs. This interpretive dispute has recently been replayed at a high philological and philosophical level by Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, respectively. I have argued that it is the radical Hegel-Burnyeat reading of ancient skepticism rather than the moderate Kant-Frede reading that is more exegetically correct.3 (3) [End Page 219] Hegel argues, again in opposition to Kant and those influenced by him, that such a radical form of ancient skepticism is, moreover, philosophically viable. In particular, he argues that it can plausibly attack even judgments of subjective experience and logical principles. I have argued that on this point too Hegel is correct.4 In the present article I would like to identify and defend a fourth important Hegelian insight into skepticism: a thesis he articulates in his seminal essay The Relation of Skepticism to Philosophy: A Presentation of Its Various Modifications and a Comparison of Its Newest Form with Its Ancient from 1802, to the effect that every genuine philosophy has a skeptical side—or, as he puts it there, “that skepticism itself is most intimately one with every true philosophy . . . that a true philosophy necessarily itself . . . has a negative side.”5 I In order to appropriate and defend this Hegelian thesis, I first need to clarify and disambiguate it in certain ways. In particular, the following three points should be noted. First, as Hegel articulates the thesis in his 1802 essay, it is often concerned with “true philosophy” in the very narrow sense of “philosophy that is true”—which would restrict the bearing of the thesis to just his own philosophy and a few alleged anticipations of it by favored predecessors such as Plato. On the other hand, in the very context of the remarks that were quoted above, Hegel rejects the idea that philosophy should be equated with dogmatism, and he implies that it also includes a broad range of skeptically minded thinkers, among them not only Plato but also certain poets, Xenophanes, Zeno, and Democritus.6 Moreover, at other points in the essay he identifies Pyrrho and the older set of Pyrrhonian tropes, or methods for bringing about suspension of judgment, as examples of philosophy as well.7 So there [End Page 220] are also good textual grounds for construing “true philosophy” in his thesis in the broader sense, not of “philosophy that is true,” but of something more like “genuine philosophy” (whether true or not). While the former, narrow sense of his thesis is undeniably present in the essay, I do not find it very philosophically promising and shall therefore simply set it aside here. It is the latter, broader sense of the thesis that seems to me to have good prospects of being correct, and that interests me here. Second, somewhat surprisingly, Hegel in the 1802 essay identifies as the paradigm of “skepticism” the second half of Plato’s Parmenides— which he interprets as a destructive dialectic both preparatory and integral to Plato’s positive philosophy (very much as his own destructively dialectical Logic was at this early period of his career both preparatory and integral to his own positive philosophy). However, Hegel...