Abstract
Richard Popkin once wondered why modern skepticism from Montaigne to Camus has been so “existentially frightening whereas ancient skepticism was such a relaxed, laid back view, a therapy to create ataraxia, peace of mind, not terrifying fear.”1 It is my contention that this ancient tradition of ataraxia was not completely lost in modern times and that in particular the so-called popular philosophers in late eighteenth-century Germany exhibited a moderate form of skepticism in marked contrast to the trepidation of which Popkin speaks. Indeed, if popular philosophy is distinguished by one thing, it is that its adherents were not tormented by epistemological angst even when they were not Pyrrhonists. In the following I will position popular philosophy as a moderately skeptical movement between Kant and the Kant student Carl Friedrich Staudlin on one hand, and the philosopher of faith, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, on the other.
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