Abstract
Mary Douglas, Pascal's Great Wager. ? Starting with Pascal's arguments against skepticism, this essay seeks to locate within the social structure the niche in which radical skepticism tends to flourish. The Brahminical skeptical tradition is compared with Western idealist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and with skeptical trends of today. A social position that combines considerable privilege with lack of influence in an arbitrarily powerful political system gives rise to moral contradictions and insoluble problems. In such a position a denial of the reality of the world indicates a level of thought in which intellectual coherence may be possible. The converse situation, where claiming authority and holding power seem feasible, is more compatible with affirmation of reality than with its negation.
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