History Of Scepticism Research Articles

‘O Plato! Plato!’: Don Juan versus the Philosophers

Critics who take Byron seriously as a thinker tend to locate his personal philosophy within the history of scepticism. In Cantos I and II of Don Juan , Byronic doubting takes the form of a critique of idealism, with a particular focus on Plato. This essay argues that Byron’s scepticism has philosophical implications beyond the critique of Platonism, that it works also to undermine the major idealist movement of his day – German absolute idealism. Byron’s embodied ethic is evident both in the narrator’s comments and within the narrative of Juan’s affair with Haidée. The form this critique of idealism takes anticipates Nietzsche’s ‘revaluation of values’ as well as Derrida’s deconstruction in that it isolates a traditionally hierarchised pair of oppositions and revalues the hierarchy.

Abnormal Central Venous Oxygen Saturation as a Predictor of Mortality in Patients with Sepsis and Polytrauma in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Background: In postoperative heart surgery patients and patients with sepsis, pathological (low and supranormal) central venous oxygen satura- tion (ScvO2) was shown to be associated with lower mortality. The objective is we want to examine the effect of sepsis and polytrauma infection on our surgical ICU and the incidence of morbidity and death in the population. Subjects and Methods: In such patients who met the qualifying criteria and had a history of scepticism and multi-trauma, a retrospective observational review was conducted. We investigated and evaluated the association between SCV02 and mortality and other variables, such as lactate and baseline excess and period of the ICU stay and inotropic assistance within the first 6 hours, using a multivariate model review. Their entry was measured and 6 hours later. Result: The incidence of deaths in the hyperoxia group was 2.4 times higher in comparison to the general population, and the death rate in the hypoxia category was 1.25 times higher. The risk of death for the hyperoxic population was 2.4 times higher. There was no statistically relevant discrepancy of ICU, inotropic treatment, coagulopathy, dialysis, apache-11 score, baseline excess and lactate between the three levels of Scv02. Conclusion: The base excess and Scv02 were not significant when the lactates were calculated to a mortality point, but the j curve revealed that both the hypoxia group and the hyperoxia mortality had improved in contrast with the normal oxy group. Since the small sample size was sufficient to predict a trend, secondary targets were not

The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment

Michael Hunter’s new history of scepticism takes as its starting point the end point of Keith Thomas’s classic Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971). In a succinct Preface, Hunter points out tha...

Enlightenment philosophy and scepticism

The article discusses the role of scepticism in the Enlightenment. For many historians of philosophy, Enlightenment was a hiatus in the history of scepticism. Ideas often attributed to the Enlightenment, such as the cult of reason, optimism and the belief in progress, seem to be contrary to scepticism. I argue that this simplistic view of the Enlightenment is far from reality. The Enlightenment not only brought forth such great followers of scepticism as Hume, but also influenced other thinkers in many different ways. The influence of scepticism is not always clearly visible in the philosophical works of that time. Moreover, few philosophers would describe themselves as sceptics. Nevertheless, if one considers different ways in which scepticism influenced Enlightenment philosophy, it becomes apparent that the assertion that scepticism was allegedly absent in the Enlightenment is untenable.

La invención de una “escuela escéptica” pirrónica y radical

The history of skepticism is obscure and confusing. While recognizing the existence, mysterious and controversial, a Platonic academic skepticism, there are some doubts about the reality of a school Pyrrhonist unequivocal radical. In this article we will discuss, first, to what extent can we speak of school, sect or philosophical group Pyrrhonian, and second, if, as we shall see, no doubt recognizing this homogeneous group why it is spoken of as ‘school’, or ‘system’ ‘secta’ Pyrrhonian?

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Creationism

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Creationism

DUP Discourses on Violence and their Impact on the Northern Ireland Peace Process

This paper analyses the Democratic Unionist Party‟s (DUP) discourses about paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland. Drawing on narrative analysis of DUP discourses reported in Northern Ireland‟s largest unionist newspaper, the News Letter (1998–2006), it explores the relationship between the party‟s identity, its discourses about republican and loyalist paramilitaries, and the impact of these words on the DUP‟s electoral success and on the peace process. The paper argues that these discourses may haunt the progress of peace-building, not least because the DUP will find it hard to disentangle itself from a history of scepticism and nay-saying even as it takes a leading role in a devolved Executive designed by an Agreement it long-scorned.

:The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle

1: The Intellectual Crisis of the Reformation 2: The Revival of Greek Scepticism in the Sixteenth Century 3: Michel de Montaigne and the Nouveaux Pyrrhoniens 4: The Influence of the New Pyrrhonism 5: The Libertins Erudits 6: The Counter-Attack Begins 7: Constructive or Mitigated Scepticism 8: Herbert of Cherbury and Jean de Silhon 9: Descartes: Conqueror of Scepticism 10: Descartes: Sceptique Malgre Lui 11: Some Spiritual and Religious Answers to Scepticism and Descartes: Henry More, Blaise Pascal and the Quietists 12: Political and Practical Answers to Scepticism: Thomas Hobbes 13: Philosophers of the Royal Society: Wilkins, Boyle, and Glanvill 14: Biblical Criticism and the Beginnings of Religious Scepticism 15: Spinoza's Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism 16: Scepticism and Late Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics 17: The New Sceptics: Simon Foucher and Pierre Daniel Huet 18: Pierre Bayle: Super-Scepticism and the Beginnings of the Enlightenment Dogmatism

Richard H. Popkin 1923-2005

Richard H. Popkin 1923-2005 Harry M. Bracken and Richard A. Watson Richard H. Popkin, founding editor of the journal of the History of Philosophy, died on April 14, 2005. He was 81 years old and had continued his research and writing to the last moment before he entered the hospital on march 21st with extreme respiratory difficulties. Popkin's The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (1960) revolutionized the study and understanding of early modern philosophy. Popkin entered the minds and world of thinkers from Erasmus to Descartes in a way few other scholars had done, and he showed how the development of philosophy and science was far from an easy series of steps from success to success. Instead, philosophers and scientists pursued a dozen lines from the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus through religious belief, atheism, numerology, astrology, alchemy, eschatology, magic, and millenarianism—a maelstrom of ideas out of which emerged the major figures and ideas of Modern philosophy and science. Dick once explained that actually he lived in the 17th century, and certainly he knew as many of those thinkers and their thoughts as did many people who actually lived at that time. Of course Popkin did not originate the notion of exploring the history of philosophy in the context of its times, but he made that approach central today. It led him not only through the Early Modern period, but also from medieval jewish philosophy to a critical analysis of the Kennedy assassination. Popkin received his PhD at Columbia University, and in his career he taught at the universities of Connecticut, Iowa, California (San Diego and Los Angeles), Washington University in St. Louis, and Harvey Mudd College. He served as the first editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and as president of JHP, Inc. For many years, and was active in its operation for over four decades, having attended the annual meeting of the Board of Directors a little over a month before he died. After retirement, he lived in close association with the Clark Library in Los Angeles. He was well known to scholars and librarians throughout the world. Whatever library he visited, he was likely to find some obscure or hidden document that would either clear up some mystery, or give rise to a new problem. His memory was extraordinary. During his final years when he was virtually blind, he would sift through his mind, send assistants off to look for something that had to be in this or that library and write papers in his head for later dictation. Besides his memory, indispensable throughout his lifetime he had Julie, his co-worker and wife of 60 years, without whom, the Popkin we knew could not have existed. These few paragraphs are meant to be neither an obituary nor an adequate memorial. We were Dick's first two PhDs, and we were barely five years his junior. He treated us from the beginning as colleagues and he became a lifelong friend. He changed our lives, as he did the lives of many other aspiring scholars. We miss him. Copyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.

Sextus Empiricus: The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism

The subject is Sextus Empiricus, one the chief sources of information on ancient philosophy and one of the most influential authors in the history of skepticism. Sextus' works have had an extraordinary influence on western philosophy, and this book provides the first exhaustive and detailed study of their recovery, transmission, and intellectual influence through Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. This study deals with Sextus' biography, as well as the history of the availability and reception of his works. It also contains an extensive bibliographical section, including editions, translations, and commentaries.

The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle (review)

The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle (review)

The history of scepticism: from Savonarola to Bayle

The history of scepticism: from Savonarola to Bayle

:The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture

:<i>The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture</i>

The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture

The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture

Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. xi + 378 pp. $35.00 cloth.

The first reaction of a perhaps overly jaded reviewer with a long history of skepticism about the Communist Party of the United States is to ask whether this work is really necessary. A volume in the Annals of Communism series, it consists of ninety-five documents from Moscow archives relating to American Communism's relationship with the Communist International (Comintern) and its successor organizations. The documents, ranging from detailed instructions for American Communists to arrest and death certificates for unfortunates caught up in the purges of the 1930s, have powerful exemplary value. They tend to be arranged in small clusters of two or three and to be introduced by clearly written narratives that summarize them and explain their significance. The decision to organize the book topically rather than chronologically leads to some repetition but does not detract from its considerable impact.

Histoire du fidéisme, histoire du scepticisme?

Il s'agit d'interroger la pertinence de l'identification entre scepticisme et fidéisme faite par Richard H. Popkin dans son ouvrage intitulé Histoire du scepticisme d'Érasme à Spinoza. La remise en cause de l'articulation opérée par cet auteur entre doute et croyance, et de manière plus générale entre scepticisme et religion, conduit à contester le rôle de la foi religieuse dans ce qui est présenté par Popkin comme la quête sceptique de la vérité. Cette critique a pour fin de proposer une approche plus conceptuelle du scepticisme moderne qui, à la différence de l'approche historique de Popkin (fondée sur la considération de l'origine du scepticisme moderne, la crise religieuse de la Renaissance), prend en compte la dimension éthique, trop souvent inaperçue, de cette philosophie.

L'articulation du scepticisme religieux et du scepticisme profane dans l'Histoire du scepticisme d'Érasme à Spinoza, de Richard H. Popkin

l'Histoire du scepticisme d'Érasme à Spinoza de Richard H. Popkin n'est pas seulement le récit des diverses doctrines sceptiques qui traversent le XVIe et le XVIIe siècle: un fil conducteur confère à l'ensemble sa cohérence. Mieux, une conception générale de la philosophie moderne sous-tend ses analyses. Selon Popkin en effet, toute la philosophie, depuis la Renaissance jusqu'aux lumières, s'est trouvée confrontée à la tâche de surmonter la «crise pyrrhonienne», née en contexte de querelle religieuse, et qui très vite s'étend à tout le savoir. Popkin a ainsi proposé une interprétation originale mais peut-être aussi parfois contestable de la modernité, en particulier dans la mesure où il ne distingue pas assez nettement le scepticisme ancien du moderne, et où il ne prend pas en compte la spécificité du fidéisme.

Reflections on the history of scepticism

Suite a la journee R. Popkin organisee par le Centre Alexandre Koyre, le Centre d'etudes en rhetorique, philosophie et histoire des idees (CERPHI) et la Fondation Pour la Science- Centre international de synthese, en janvier 1997, l'A. presente, sous la forme d'un article inedit, quelques reflexions sur l'histoire du scepticisme issues de ses recherches en histoire de la philosophie et de ses multiples rencontres avec la pensee europeenne, lors de sejours a Paris dans les annees 1950. Defendant la these d'une redecouverte des textes de Sextus Empiricus lors de la crise sceptique du XVI e siecle, l'A. repere dans le relativisme postmoderne contemporain une forme de scepticisme irrationnel (nihilisme), a la fois theologique et naturaliste, qui n'a plus rien a voir avec l'engagement dialectique du scepticisme et du dogmatisme

The Grafted Branches of the Sceptical Tree

The Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus’ ‘Outlines of Pyrrhonism’, published by Henri Estienne in 1562, are amongst the most influential texts in the history of scepticism. And yet, we still lack a complete and detailed study of their reception in modern times. Through investigation of the emblem on the frontispiece of the book, this paper argues that Estienne’s motivations for the publication should be interpreted as essentially anti-dogmatic and humanistic in nature.

Healthy Scepticism

Like Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics, or Communism in California, scepticism about the external world is a doctrine that maintains its health not by being held by many, but by being attacked often. Though there were actual sceptics in ancient times, in various degrees, the history of scepticism in medieval and modern times has been entirely a history of arguments, not of schools.