Comment peut-on être sceptique? hommage à Didier Deleule ed. by Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Hélène L’Heuillet (review)

son mobile exclusif dans l’imagination, en dehors de tout lien épistémologique avec le monde. Et c’est bien dans cet oubli “poétique” du monde que s’inscrit, d’après l’auteur, la modernité baudelairienne. On ne trouvera guère dans cet essai d’analyse détaillée des styles adoptés par les critiques d’art dans leurs commentaires des œuvres, ni d’aperçu sur l’évolution des formes picturales allant de Diderot à Baudelaire; mais bien une réflexion théorique sur les moyens dont s’est dotée—historiquement—l’écriture pour rendre compte de la faculté du regard, jusqu’à supplanter ce dernier, et avec lui le “monde”, dans un mouvement qui détermine, en définitive, la “Modernité”. Indiana University, Bloomington Nicolas Valazza COHEN-HALIMI, MICHÈLE, et HÉLÈNE L’HEUILLET, éd. Comment peut-on être sceptique? hommage à Didier Deleule. Paris: Champion, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7453-1972-2. Pp. 322. 60 a. While festschrifts generally do not rank very high on a scale of scholarly prestige, this one has much to recommend it. This homage assembles the contributions of nineteen former students who commemorate the seminar on Hume’s empirical skepticism that Didier Deleule offered at Paris-X-Nanterre. The essays thus speak to the seminar’s lasting influence and illustrate the continued relevance of a critical paradigm elaborated in the eighteenth century. The merit of Deleule’s seminar has been to further elaborate the ambiguity and complexities inherent in a skeptical bent of mind by encouraging an extraordinary heterogeneity of critical approaches, and by providing an opportunity to pursue investigations in all directions and all domains of human thought and experience. This openness to unlimited possibilities is also what makes Hume’s legacy so relevant to contemporary concerns because, as the editors note, we live in an era of a pervasive skepticism, a time when “il est extrêmement difficile de trouver encore une philosophie qui ne soit pas d’une manière ou d’une autre taxable de scepticisme ou en tout cas qui ne cherche pas à se défendre de son accusation” (284). This skeptical contagion is evident in “la philosophie contemporaine d’inspiration anglo-saxonne” as well as in the writings of such French icons as Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Deleuze (284–85). One of the recurring themes in these essays, which is also a reflection of/on contemporary concerns, is the relation between skepticism and politics. As Deleule points out, “le scepticisme, en matière politique, consiste bien, comme dans les autres domaines, à jeter la suspicion sur toutes les formes de dogmatisme qui dans ce cas précis, ne sont jamais éloignées des velléités despotiques” (20). It is an attitude suspicious of any claim based on such transcendent motifs as nature, history, or divine will. There is no original or natural order to be discovered , no a priori human essence: the starting point is chaos and humans construct the meaning of their own nature as they construct the meaning of the world. Typically, these meanings are myths that are useful for sustaining a particular order of things. For example, the notion of an autonomous individual that is at the core of a liberal ideology has been shown to be a fiction that has elided the reality of dependence supporting and defining the individual in any political system. In this regard, feminist theories have been particularly effective in discrediting liberalism as “un système pervers qui, tout en invoquant la liberté Reviews 1163 humaine, a continué d’asservir les femmes au profit des hommes” (138). Or, in other instances, it has enabled discrimination against the poor or people of color. On the other hand, women’s liberation movements in developing countries must inevitably invoke “le langage du libéralisme politique pour justifier le combat des femmes” (138). This seeming contradiction points out the constant need to avoid skeptical dogmatism; critique must therefore find its justification in concrete situations of injustice or discrimination “plutôt que d’invoquer abstraitement l’égalit é, la justice” (143). In other words, the skeptical outlook must be seen as an essential component of life itself. The theme of Hume...