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D. GOLDSTICK Four Forms of Philosophical Scepticism People often invoke the word 'scepticism' to cover any challenge to a particular branch of knowledge, or purported knowledge. In this sense we speak of scepticism regarding parapsychology, scepticism regarding evolution, and even religious scepticism or unbelief. But here I want to reserve the expression 'philosophical scepticism' for propositions and arguments which more or less comprehensively militate against all human efforts to find out what is the case, or any claims to have succeeded. When it is put like this, it is hard to see how anybody could actually be a philosophical sceptic- a point no one has urged more eloquently than the famous eighteenth-century Scottish champion of scepticism, David Hume: ... a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: Of, if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargyI till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence,l Indeed, more philosophers, Humeincluded,2 have found philosophical scepticism useful than, in all seriousness and candour, possible. But that still leaves the question of explaining such scepticism's popularity outside the ranks of philosophical specialists. Probably we shall not go far wrong if we concentrate our sociological scrutiny on historical periods of maximum ideological tension - periods when intellectuals' confidence in traditional ways of thinking and acting has been shaken but not broken. This surely applies to the heyday of ancient Greek scepticism and likewise to the two great modern epochs of scepticism, the one which ended, letus say, in the eighteenth century, and the one which is still proceeding now. Doubtless it is impossible really to be a comprehensive sceptic in one's daily life: but people usually appeal to philosophical considerations only at points of ideological tension in any case. At such points philosophical scepticism can provide some with a welcome rationale for switching off UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 52, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1983 0042-°247/83/0500-0235-0240$01.5010 a (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1979). In the prefaces to the early editions of his book Popkin had even expressed the ambition of later carrying the story forward 'to the reconversion 240 D. GOLDSTICK of scepticism into fideism in Hamann, Kierkegaard and Lamennais'; 2nd ed (Assen, Netherlands 1')64), p xiii. 4 Many theorists also, such as Thomas Hobbes defending the absolute monarchy in Britain, relied on an essentially sceptical position in theology when arguing for Erastian statism with regard to the practice of reHgion. 5 G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures ot! the History of Philosophy, part one, section one, chapter I, D, paragraph 1. See also his Encyclopedia 'Logic: section 81, paragraph 3: 'Often, indeed, Dialectic is nothing more than a subjective seesaw of arguments pro and con': The Logic of Hegel, trans William Wallace (Oxford 1892), p '47. 6 'Apology for Raymond Sebond: book II, chapter 12, of Montaigne's Essays in The Essays ofMontaigne, trans E.). Trechmann (New York and London ]927), II, 21 . 7 A Treatise of Humau Nature, book 1, part III, section XVI; An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, section IX. B This interpretation of Hume is in essential agreement with Sheldon S. Wolin's observation that in general 'he turned against the Enlightenment its own weapons. And herein lies his importance as a conservative thinker ... [He undertook] to whittle down the claims of reason by the use of rational analysis': 'Hume and Conservatism,' American Political Science Review, 48:4 (December 1954), 1001;see also the same observation in his amended version of the paper published in Hume: ARe-evaluation, ed Donald W. Livington and James King (New York 1976), p 24'. F.A. Hayekapprovingly quotes from these words of Wolin in his paper 'The Legal and Political Philosophy of David Hume: reprinted in Hume: A Col/ectiot! of Critical Essays, ed V.c. Chappell (Garden City, NY 1966), P 335. The soundness of Wolin's and Hayek's judgment here...

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