Scepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 447 eleven "virtues" that Machiavelli supplies in chapter 15 of The Prince does not include prudence. Is this not a significant omission? To be fair to Garver, however, he himself notes that Machiavelli "says very little about prudence at all, instead enacting a conception of prudence and giving his audience the means of acquiring it" (20). The ability to relate rules to cases, principles to consequences--this is Garver's working definition of prudence--seems to depend, for Machiavelli, on luck, or more precisely, on the time of the action and on the temperament of the actor. There is not the slightest hint of practical reason being a requirement for connecting rules to cases. To take just one example, his famous analysis of Julius II's successes is based on the theory of luck, not prudence. Certainly, there is a theory of action here. But can that theory be credibly called a theory of prudential action? Is Machiavelli, at this crucial level of analysis, making explicit what is implicit in Aristotle? Hardly. There is an unbridgeable gap between action as Aristotle saw it and action as Machiavelli saw it. How is the nature of this gap to be understood, philosophically or historically? Garver seems to opt for the latter. But a history of prudence can only note that a change has occurred, it cannot pronounce on whether that change constitutes a break. That is why a history of prudence without an adequate philosophical understanding of the nature of prudence is in danger of falling into the trap of ethical relativism. The most rewarding part of the book deals with problems arising from Machiavelli 's use of rhetoric. There is little in the vast secondary literature on Machiavelli that is concerned with such problems. By raising them for analysis, and by developoing a new interpretation of The Prince and the Discourses, Garver has put all Machiavelli scholars in his debt. A. J. PAREL The University of Calgary Richard H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt, eds. Scepticismfrom the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Wolfenbiitteler Forschungen, Band 35. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz , 1987. Pp. 2o6. Paper, DM 128. In their introduction to this fine volume, Richard H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt comment that "according to Sextus, scepticism should have led to mental health, or sanity; the opposite of dogmatism which is always on the brink of mental collapse and anguish .... On the other hand we have many testimonies from Montaigne onward [that] people go through une crisepyrrhonienne, and are on the brink of madness .... [T]o be completely sceptical is to be mad. We are saved from this consequence not by our own efforts, but by the Grace of God, the Honesty and Integrity of God, or the foibles of Nature and human nature" (9). Much of the present volume is concerned with how and why scepticism turned from benign to vicious. Both historical studies such as Schmitt's survey of historiography and scepticism, and current philosophical writings are making it increasingly obvious that the central concern in Western philosophy is the question of knowledge. Sceptics and cryptoscepdcs from Sextus Empiricus to Richard Rorty have challenged its possibility. As 448 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:3 JULY ~99 o Popkin says, "Maybe each age will have to relive the sceptical crisis in order to cope with it" (181). The reasonable, common-sense view that Ezequiel de Olaso quotes from l.,eibniz is that if first proofs were denied, "there would be no means of knowing anything at all" (148), which is absurd. De Olaso attributes to Leibniz a very modern use of scepticism, which is that it forces us to "go back to first principles, propound definitive justifications, lay sound foundations for science, and thus perfect it" (159). Both Sextus and Rorty are content to be without knowledge or certainty. Sextus provides arguments that prevent our reaching it; Rorty argues that even if we could, it doesn't matter what the answers to the major philosophical questions are anyway. Both of them say we're better off forgetting about certainty and will be happier just getting along with our ordinary lives. Is this true? Why would anyone want to have...