The Luxury of Skepticism: Politics, Philosophy, and Dialogue in the English Public Sphere, 1660-1740 (review)

Timothy Dykstal, The Luxury of Skepticism: Politics, Philosophy, and Dialogue in the English Public Sphere, 1660-1740 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 256 pp.

Remarking on the way in which the printed dialogue contributed to debate while imitating it, Dykstal concludes: "This is why it has to be considered the prototypical organ of the public sphere." The close relationship that Dykstal thus posits between the public sphere and the philosophical dialogue enables him to trace the fortunes of the former through a close reading of the latter: a legible literary form becomes a reliable index to an elusive, if not phantasmal, social reality. Dykstal's local readings, many of them excellent, together form a narrative about the decline of the philosophical dialogue and the concurrent split between philosophy and politics that transformed the public sphere around 1740. Whether or not this revision of Habermas convinces, Dykstal's thoughtful account of the way in which various writers exploited the literary dialogue to different ends provides an illuminating and important perspective on the increasingly common notion that dialogue, in whatever form or context, is an obvious virtue.