Leibniz’s Anti-scepticism

Abstract

Leibniz never addressed systematically the sceptical issue in its various historical and conceptual dimensions. Nevertheless he progressively met different challenges and arguments throughout his innumerable readings, correspondences and writings displaying different faces of scepticism: the Academic negative meta-dogmatism of Francisco Sanches; Simon Foucher’s middle way; the three related figures of the libertine misosopher, of the fideist after Bayle’s manner, and of a fictitious ‘Sceptician’; and eventually, at the end of his life, Sextus Empiricus’ neo-pyrrhonism. Yet the meaning of his opposition to scepticism is not the same in all those cases: on the one hand, he claims that metaphysical and epistemological sceptical challenges can be refuted by rational arguments; on the other hand, he acknowledges the practical difficulties to overthrow the more dangerous moral and religious scepticism.