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Scepticism in the Enlightenment Archives Internationales D'histoire Des Idees SCEPTICISM IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 152 SCEPTICISM IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT EDITED BY RICHARD H. POPKIN EZEQUIEL DE OLASOt AND GIORGIO TONELLIt Founding Directors: P. Dibont (Paris) and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis & UCLA), Sarah Hutton (The University of Hertfordshire , United Kingdom), Richard Popkin (Washing­ ton University, St Louis & University of California, Los Angeles, USA) Editorial Board: J.E Battail (Paris); E Duchesneau (Montreal); J. Force (Lexington); A. Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory (Rome); C. Laursen (Riverside); J.D. North (Gronin- gen); M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington); Th. Verbeek (Utrecht) Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); B. Copenhaven (Los Angeles); A. Crombie (Oxford); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop (Melbourne); P.O. Kristeller (Columbia University); E. Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Malarczyk (Lublin); J. Orcibal (Paris); W. ROd (Miinchen); G. Rousseau (Los Angeles); H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P. Schobinger (ZUrich); J. Tans (Groningen) SCEPTICISM IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT Edited by RICHARD H. POPKIN Washington University, St Louis and University ofCalifornia Los Angeles, USA EZEQUIEL DE OLASO (DECEASED) San Andreas University, Buenos Aires, Argentina GIORGIO TONELLI (DECEASED) State University ofNew York, USA Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-90-481-4877-6 ISBN 978-94-015-8953-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8953-6 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997. Sof'tcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1997 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. DEDICATION Dedicated to the memories of Giorgio Tonelli, 1928-1979 and Ezequiel de 0laso, 1932-1996 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements viii Introduction ix 1. Scepticism in the Enlightenment Richard H Popkin 2. Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism in the Latter Part of the Eighteenth Century Richard H Popkin 17 3. The "Weakness" of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment Giorgio Tonelli 35 4. Pierre-Jacques Changeux and Scepticism in the French Enlightenment Giorgio Tonelli 51 5. Kant and the Ancient Sceptics Giorgio Tonelli 69 6. Leibniz and.Scepticism Ezequiel de Olaso 99 7. The Two Scepticisms of the Savoyard Vicar Ezequiel de Olaso 131 8. Scepticism, Old and New Ezequiel de Olaso 147 9. New Views on the Role of Scepticism in the Enlightenment Richard H Popkin 157 10. Berkeley in the History of Scepticism Richard H Popkin 173 Index of Names 187 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank two of my research assistants, Kimberley Garmoe and Russell Ives Court of UCLA for their help in preparing this text for publication. I also wish to thank the Foundation for Intellectual History in London for financing the translation of Giorgio Tonelli's article on Kant and the ancient sceptics. RICHARD H. POPKIN INTRODUCTION This volume contains a discussion between three scholars in the history of philosophy, myself, the late Giorgio Tonelli and the late Ezequiel Olaso. What started the discussion was a brash paper I gave on "Scepticism in the Enlight­ enment" at the first international congress on the Enlightenment, held in Geneva in the summer of 1963. Soon thereafter two brilliant younger scholars, Giorgio Tonelli and Ezequiel de Olaso, started publishing studies leading from what I had said, and showing areas that I had not probed, and offering interpretations that went much further than what I had originally presented. Tonelli, in one of the essays published here, said, "The only survey of Enlightenment scepticism we have is a well known article by R.H. Popkin , which provides a broad frame of reference, but which neglects many details". Olaso called my study a pioneering one, "the first all-embracing survey of [scepticism] of the period". But both of these scholars pointed out right away that there was much more to said on the subject than what I had presented. "Scepticism" is a loose term that has been used to apply to any kind of doubts , and particularly, doubts about certain aspects of the Judeo-Christian religion. It also applies to a rigorous epistemological doubt about the possibility of attaining knowledge that cannot be questioned. It is this latter sense that we were concerned with, the legacy of the Greek sceptical traditions of the Pyrrhonists and the Academics during the eighteenth century. We had many discussions in person and in writing on this subject. For a decade I continued my original view, that eighteenth century scepticism was primarily and almost exclusively the view of David Hume and those he influenced. However, over time I was overwhelmed by the strength of the arguments and new materials and interpretations that Tonelli and Olaso offered, showing a much richer canvas of epistemological sceptical discussions than I had considered. In 1992 I was invited to present a plenary session paper at the meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies in Seattle. I there gave a talk on "New Views on the Role of Scepticism in the Enlightenment" in which I embraced much of what Tonelli and Olaso had written, and carried the story on to the last philosophes, Condorcet and Brissot. ix R.B. Popkinet al. (eds.), Scepticism in the Enlightenment, ix-xiii. © 1997 KluwerAcademicPublishers. x Richard H Popkin The papers gathered here together, of which eight have appeared previously, [Tonelli's paper on "Kant and the ancient sceptics" appeared in German, and here appears in English translation for the first time] and two are published for the first time, have a unifying theme of following out a new way of looking at the kind of philosophical scepticism that developed during the eighteenth century, a way that I believe is most illuminating in understanding the course of philosophy at the time and thereafter. The discussion between myself and my two cohorts in this enterprise, began immediately on my presentation in Geneva in 1963. Giorgio Tonelli was present at the occasion and began a research project on eighteenth century scepticism. He first published a lengthy review of my History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes of 1960 in, Filosofia XV, 2, 1964 (also appearing separately under the title Un libro sullo scetticismo da Erasmo a Descartes, Torino 1964) dealing in great detail with the special methodological problems of this theme, and thereafter publishing a series of ground breaking articles which were intended to lead to a volume on the history of scepticism in the eighteenth century, unfortunately not completed because of Tonelli's untimely death in 1979. Ezequiel de Olaso, whom I first met in 1965 when he was finishing his doctoral studies at Bryn Mawr College with Jose Ferrater Mora , was working out Leibniz's place in this new outlook on eighteenth century scepticism. He published many important studies on the matter, including the one in this volume. He also undertook to analyze Jean-Jacques Rousseau's place in our story of scepticism in the Enlightenment, and in one of the unpublished papers he sought to delineate some of the differences between ancient and modern scepticism. My two collaborators in this venture both sadly died in the bloom of their scholarly achievements. I hope that this volume will make their most original work on this subject better known, and better used in further studies by scholars. Before getting to the contents of this volume let me first given some biographical facts about the authors. I was born in New York in 1923, and did most of my university studies at Columbia University, plus one year of graduate study at Yale. I earned my Ph.D. in 1950. I have taught in many American universities, including the University of Connecticut, the State University of Iowa, the Claremont Colleges, the University of California, San Diego, Washington University, S1. Louis, and UCLA. I am now professor emeritus from Washington University in S1. Louis and adjunct professor of History and Philosophy at UCLA. I have been publishing about matters concerning the history of scepticism since 1950. My book, which greatly influenced both Tonelli and Olaso, The History ofScepticism from Erasmus to Descartes was first published in 1960. A revised edition covering from Erasmus to Spinoza appeared in 1979, and I hope to complete a final version of the volume covering the subject from Savonarola to Bayle's article on Savonarola in the next couple of years. Oxford University has contracted to publish this volume. Giorgio Tonelli was born in 1928 in Italy. He did his undergraduate and Introduction xi graduate studies at the University of Pisa, where he received his doctorate in 1947. He supplemented his studies at the Sorbonne, Basel, Naples and many German institutions. He became professor of German literature at Pisa, and later moved to the United States in 1969 where he became a professor of the history of philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He published extensively on Kant and on the background of his philosophy, on the German intellectual world of the eighteenth century, and on the philosophical views of many of the philosophes. He sometimes published in French, German, Italian or English. He was also a great initiator of projects to further the study of the history of philosophy. He founded the journal, now called, International Studies in Philosophy: he founded the important series Studien und Materialen zur Geschichte der Philosophie. He was very active in committees and confer­ ences in America and Europe on topics in the history of philosophy and the history of the Enlightenment.
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