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See also:SCEPTICISM (o-Kesrroµai, I consider, reflect, hesitate, doubt) , a See also:term signifying etymologically a See also:state of doubt or indecision in the See also:face of mutually conflicting statements. It is implied, moreover, that this doubt is not merely a See also:stage in the road to true knowledge, but rather the last result of investigation, the conclusion that truth or real knowledge is unattainable by See also:man. Therefore, in See also:general terms, scepticism may be summarily defined as a thorough-going See also:impeachment of man's See also:power to know—a denial of the possibility of See also:objective knowledge. See also:Trust, not distrust, is the See also:primitive attitude of the mind. What is put before us, whether by the senses or by the statements of others, is instinctively accepted as a dogmatic philosophers to assist in the See also:establishment f their own theses are sceptically turned against See also:philosophy in general. As every See also:attempt to rationalize nature implies a certai See also:process of See also:criticism and See also:interpretation to which the data of sense are subjected, and in which they are, as it were, transcended, the See also:antithesis of See also:reason and sense is formulated See also:early in the See also:history of See also:speculation. The opposition, being taken as See also:absolute, implies the impeachment of the veracity of the senses in the See also:interest of the rational truth proclaimed by the philosophers in question. Among the pre-Socratic nature-philosophers of See also:Greece, Heraclitus and the Eleatics are the See also:chief representatives of this polemic. The diametrical opposition of the grounds on which the veracity of the senses is impugned by the two philosophies (see HERACLITUS, PARMENIDES, ELEATIC SCHOOL) was in itself suggestive of sceptical reflection. Moreover, the arguments by which Heraclitus supported this theory of the universal See also:flux are employed by See also:Protagoras to undermine the possibility of objective truth, by dissolving all knowledge into the momentary sensation or persuasion of the individual. The See also:idea of an objective flux, or See also:law of See also:change constituting the reality of things, is abandoned, and subjective points of sense alone remain—which is tantamount to eliminating the real from human knowledge. Still more unequivocal was the sceptical See also:nihilism expressed by See also:Gorgias (q.v.): (1) nothing exists; (2) if anything existed, it would be unknowable; (3) if anything existed and were knowable, the knowledge of it could not be communicated. His arguments were See also:drawn from the See also:dialectic which the Eleatics had directed against the existence of the phenomenal See also:world. But they are no longer used as indirect proofs of a universe of pure and unitary Being. The prominence given by most of the See also:Sophists to See also:rhetoric, their cultivation of a subjective readiness as the essential equipment for See also:life, their substitution of persuasion for conviction, all See also:mark the sceptical undertone of their teaching. This attitude of indifference to real knowledge passed in the younger and less reputable See also:generation into a corroding moral scepticism which recognized no See also:good but See also:pleasure and no right but might. The scientific impulse communicated by See also:Socrates was sufficient to drive scepticism into the background during the See also:great See also:age of See also:Greek philosophy (i.e. the See also:hundred years preceding Socrates. See also:Aristotle's See also:death, 323 B.C.). The captious See also:logic of the Megarian school (q.v.) was indeed in some cases closely related to sceptical results. The school has been considered with some truth to See also:form a connecting See also:link with the later scepticism, just as the contemporary Cynicism and Cyrenaicism may be held to be imperfect preludes to Stoicism and Epicureanism. The extreme See also:nominalism of some of the See also:Cynics also, who denied the possibility of any but identical judgments, must be similarly regarded as a solvent of knowledge. But with these insignificant exceptions it holds true that, after the sceptical See also:wave marked by the Sophists, scepticism does not reappear till after the exhaustion of the Socratic impulse in Aristotle. Scepticism, as a distinct school, begins with Pyrrho :rrEhlios., who maintained that knowledge of things is impossible athat we must assume an attitude of reserve (Eaoxil). The Pyrrhonists were consistent enough to extend their doubt even to their own principle of doubt. They thus attempted to make their scepticism universal, and to See also:escape the reproach of basing it upon a fresh dogmatism. See also:Mental imperturbability (&rapaia) was the result to be attained by cultivating such a See also:frame of mind. The happiness or See also:satisfaction of the individual • was the end which dominated this scepticism as well as the See also:con-temporary systems of Stoicism and Epicureanism, and all three philosophies See also:place it in tranquillity or self-centred indifference. It is men's opinions or unwarranted judgments about things, say the sceptics, which betray them into See also:desire, and painful effort and disappointment. From all this a man is delivered who abstains from judging one state to be preferable to another. But, as See also:complete inactivity would have been synonymous with death, it appears to have been admitted that the sceptic, while retaining his consciousness of the complete uncertainty enveloping every step, might follow See also:custom in the See also:ordinary affairs of life. The scepticism of the New See also:Academy (more strictly of the See also:Middle Academy, under See also:Arcesilaus and See also:Carneades) differed very little from that of the Pyrrhonists. The See also:differences See also:Historical veracious See also:report, till experience has proved the possi- appear- aucea. bility of deception. In the history of philosophy See also:affirmation precedes negation; dogmatism goes before scepticism. And this must be so, because the dogmatic systems are, as it were, the See also:food of scepticism. Accordingly, we find that sceptical thought did not make its See also:appearance till a See also:succession of mutually inconsistent theories as to the nature of the real had suggested the possibility that they might all alike be false. The The Sophistic See also:epoch of Greek philosophy was, in great sophist, See also:part, such a negative reaction against the self-confident assertion of the nature-philosophies of the preceding age. Though scepticism as a definite school may be said to date only from the See also:time of Pyrrho (q.v.) of See also:Elis, the See also:main currents of Sophistic thought were sceptical in the wider sense of that term. The Sophists (q.v.) were the first in Greece to dissolve knowledge into individual and momentary See also:opinion (Protagoras), or dialectically to deny the possibility of knowledge (Gorgias). In these two examples we see how the weapons forged by the asserted by later writers are not See also:borne out on investigation. But the attitude maintained by the Academics was chiefly that The of a negative criticism of the views of others, in See also:par-Academy. titular of the somewhat crude and imperious dogmatism of the See also:Stoics. They also, in the See also:absence of certainty, allowed a large See also:scope to See also:probability as a See also:motive to See also:action, and defended their See also:doctrine on this point with greater care and skill. The whole position was stated with more urbanity and culture, and was supported, by Carneades in particular, by argumentation at once more copious and more acute. It seems also true that the Academics were less overborne than the Pyrrhonists by the See also:practical issue of their doubts (imperturbability); their interest was more purely intellectual, and they had something of the old delight in mental exercitation for its own See also:sake (see ARCESILAUS, CARNEADES, See also:AENESIDEMUS, See also:AGRIPPA and SEXTUS EMPIRICUS). Both See also:Zeller and See also:Hegel remark upon the difference between the See also:calm of See also:ancient scepticism and the perturbed state of mind evinced by many See also:modern sceptics. Universal doubt was the See also:instrument which the sceptics of antiquity recommended for the attainment of complete See also:peace of mind. By the moderns, on the other See also:hand, doubt is portrayed, for the most part, as a state of unrest and painful yearning. Even See also:Hume, in various passages of his See also:Treatise, speaks of himself as recovering cheerfulness and mental See also:tone only by forgetfulness of his own arguments. His state of universal doubt he describes as a " malady " or as " philosophical See also:melancholy and See also:delirium." The difference might easily be interpreted either as a sign of sentimental weakness on the part of the moderns or as a See also:proof of the See also:limitation of the ancient sceptics which rendered them more easily satisfied in the absence of truth. It seems to prove, at all events, that the ancient sceptics were more thoroughly convinced than their modern successors of the reasonableness of their own attitude. It may be doubted whether the thoroughgoing philosophical scepticism of antiquity has any exact parallel in modern times, with the single exception possibly of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. It is true we find many thinkers who deny the competency of reason when it ventures in any way beyond the See also:sphere of experience, and such men are not unfrequently called sceptics. This is the sense in which See also:Kant often uses the term, and the usage is adopted by others—for example, in the following See also:definition from See also:Ueberweg's History of Philosophy: " The principle of scepticism is universal doubt, or at least doubt with regard to the validity of all judgments respecting that which lies beyond the range of experience." The last characteristic, however, is not enough to constitute scepticism, in the ancient sense. Scepticism, to be complete, must hold that even within experience we do not rationally conclude See also:bet are irrationally induced to believe. " In all the incidents of life," as Hume puts it, " we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe that See also:fire warms, or See also:water refreshes, 'tis only because it See also:costs us too much pains to think otherwise " (Treatise, bk. i. iv. 7). This tone, which fairly represents the attitude of ancient sceptics, is rare among the moderns, at least among those who are professed philosophers. It is more easily matched in the unsystematic utterances of a man of the world like See also:Montaigne. 2. One form of scepticism, however, may be claimed as an exclusively modern growth, namely, philosophical scepticism Scept. in the interests of theological faith. These sceptics cism in the are primarily Apologists. Their scepticism is simply interest of a means to the attainment of a further end. They
faith. find that the dogmas of their See also: This was the See also:long task essayed by See also:Scholasticism; and, though the great Schoolmen of the 13th See also:century refrained from attempting to rationalize such doctrines as the Trinity and the Incarnation, they were far from considering Theory of them as essentially opposed to reason. It was not till the two-towards the See also:close of the middle ages that a sense See also:fold nature of conflict between reason and See also:revelation became "'um-widely prevalent and took shape in the essentially sceptical theory of the twofold nature of truth. Philosophical truth, as deduced from the teaching of Aristotle, it was said, directly contradicts the teaching of the church, which determines truth in See also:theology; but the See also:contradiction leaves the authority of the latter unimpaired in its own sphere. It is difficult to believe that this doctrine was ever put forward sincerely; in the most of those who professed it, it was certainly no more than a See also:veil by which they sought to See also:cover their heterodoxy and evade its consequences. Rightly See also:divining as nuch, the church condemned the doctrine as early as 1276. Nevertheless, it was openly professed during the See also:period of the break up of Scholastic Aristotelianism (see POMPONAllI). The typical and by far the greatest example of the Christian sceptic is See also:Pascal (1623-1662). The form of the Pensees forbids the attempt to evolve from their detached utterances Festal. a completely coherent system. For, though he declares at times " Le pyrrhonisme est le vrai," " Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher," or, again, " Humiliezvous, raison impuissante, taisez-See also:vous, nature See also:imbecile," other passages might be quoted in which he assumes the validity of reason within its own sphere. But what he everywhere emphatic-ally denies is the possibility of reaching by the unassisted reason a satisfactory theory of things. Man is a hopeless See also:enigma to himself, till he See also:sees himself in the See also:light of revelation as a fallen creature. The fall alone explains at once the nobleness and the meanness of humanity; Jesus See also:Christ is the only See also:solution in which the baffled reason can See also:rest. These are the two points on which Pascal's thought turns. Far from being able to sit in See also:judgment upon the mysteries of the faith, reason is unable to solve its own contradictions without aid from a higher source. In a somewhat similar fashion, See also:Lamennais (in the first stage of his speculations, represented by the Essai sur l'indifference en matiere religieuse, 1817—1821) endeavoured to destroy all rational certitude in See also:order to establish the principle of authority; and the same profound distrust of the power of the natural reason to arrive at truth is exemplified (though the allegation has been denied by the author) in See also:Cardinal See also:Newman. In a different direction and on a larger See also:scale, See also: 12), and the See also:emblem he recommends —a See also:balance with the See also:legend, " Que scay-je ? "—might allowably be adduced as See also:evidence of a more thoroughgoing Pyrrhonism. In his tesmoynages de nostre imbecillite " he follows in the main the lines of the ancients, and he sums up with a lucid statement of the two great arguments in which the sceptical thought of every age resumes itself—the impossibility of verifying our faculties, and the relativity of all impressions. In the concluding lines of this See also:essay, Montaigne seems to turn to " nostre See also:foy chrestienne " as man's only succour from his native state of helplessness and uncertainty. But undoubtedly his own habitual frame of mind is better represented in his celebrated saying—" How soft and healthful a See also:pillow are See also:ignorance and incuriousness. . . for a well-ordered See also:head." More inclined than Montaigne to give a religious turn to his reflections was his friend See also:Pierre See also:Charron (1541-1603), who in his book De la sagesse systematized in somewhat scholastic fashion the See also:train of thought which we find in the Essais. See also:Francois See also:Sanchez (1562-1632), See also:professor of See also:medicine and philosophy in See also:Toulouse, combated the Aristotelianism of the See also:schools with much bitterness, and was the author of a See also:hook with the See also:title Quod nihil scitur. Of more or less isolated thinkers may be mentioned Francois de la Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672), whose Cinq Dialogues appeared after his death under the See also:pseudonym of See also:Orosius Tubero; See also:Samuel Sorbiere (1615-1670), who translated the Hypotyposes Pyrrhoneae of Sextus Empiricus; See also:Simon Foucher (1644-1696), See also:canon of See also:Dijon, who wrote a History of the Academics, and combated See also:Descartes and See also:Malebranche from a sceptical standpoint. The work of Hieronymus Hirnhaim of See also:Prague (1637-1679), De typho generic human sive scientiarum humanarum inani ac ventoso tumore, was written in the interests of revelation. This is still more the case with the See also:bitter polemic of See also:Daniel See also:Huet (1630-1721), Censura philosophise Cartesianae, and his later work, Traite philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain. The scepticism of See also:Joseph Gianvill (q.v.), which is set forth in his two See also:works The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661) and Scepsis scientifica (1665), has more interest for Englishmen. More celebrated than any of the above was Pierre See also:Bayle (1647-1706), whose scepticism See also:lay more in his keen negative criticism of all systems and doctrines which came before him as See also:literary historian than in any theoretic views of his own as to the possibility of knowledge. Bayle also paraded the opposition between reason and revelation; but the argument in his hands is a See also:double-edged weapon, and when he extols the merits of submissive faith his sincerity is at least questionable. 3. Hume is the most illustrious and indeed the typical sceptic of modern times. His scepticism is sometimes placed, as we See also:flume. have seen it is by Kant, in his distrust of our ability and right to pass beyond the empirical sphere. But it is essential to the sceptical position that reason be dethroned within experience as well as beyond it, and this is undoubtedly the result at which Hume finally arrives. The Treatise is a reductio ad absurdum of the principles of Lockianism, inasmuch as these principles, when consistently applied, leave the structure of experience entirely " loosened " (to use Hume's own expression), or cemented together only by the irrational force of custom. Hume's scepticism thus really arises from his thoroughgoing See also:empiricism. Starting with " particular perceptions " or isolated ideas let in by the senses, he never advances beyond these " distinct existences." Each of them exists on its own See also:account; it is what it is, but it contains no reference to anything beyond itself. The very notion of objectivity and truth therefore disappears. Hume's See also:analysis of the conceptions of a permanent world and a permanent self reduces us to the sensationalistic relativism of Protagoras. He expressly puts this forward in various passages as the conclusion to which reason conducts us. The fact that the conclusion is in " See also:direct and See also:total opposition " to the apparent testimony of the senses is a fresh See also:justification of philosophical scepticism. For, indeed, scepticism with regard to the senses is considered in the Inquiry to be sufficiently justified by the fact that they See also:lead us to suppose " an See also:external universe which depends not on our See also:perception," whereas " this universal and See also:primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy." Scepticism with regard to reason, on the other hand, depends on an insight into the irrational See also:character of the relation which we chiefly employ, viz. that of cause and effect. It is not a real relation in See also:objects, but rather a mental See also:habit of belief engendered by frequent repetititon or custom. This point of view is applied in the Treatise universally. All real connexion or relation, therefore, and with it all possibility of an objective system, disappears; it is, in fact, excluded by Hume ab initio, for " the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences." Belief, however, just because it rests, as has been said, on custom and the See also:influence of the See also:imagination, survives such demonstrations. " Nature," as Hume delights to reiterate, " is always too strong for principle." " Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable See also:necessity, has determined us to See also:judge as well as to breathe and feel." The true philosopher, therefore, is not the Pyrrhonist, trying to maintain an impossible See also:equilibrium or suspense of judgment, but the See also:Academic, yielding gracefully to the impressions or See also:maxims which he finds, as See also:matter of fact, to have most sway over himself.' The system of Kant, or rather) that part of his system expounded in the Critique of Pure Reason, though expressly distinguished by its author from scepticism, has been included by Sceptkat many writers in their survey of sceptical theories. See also:side of The difference between Kant, with his system of pure Kantianreason, and any of the thinkers we have passed in See also:review is obvious; and his limitation of reason to the sphere of. experience suggests in itself the title of agnostic or positivist rather than that of sceptic. Yet, if we go a little deeper, there is substantial justification for the view which treats See also:agnosticism of the Kantian type as essentially sceptical in its See also:foundations and in its results. For criticism not only limits our knowledge to a certain sphere, but denies that our knowledge within that sphere is real; we never know things as they actually are, but only as they appear to us. But this doctrine of relativity really involves a condemnation of our knowledge (and of all knowledge), because it fails to realize an impossible and self-contradictory ideal. The man who impeaches the knowing faculties because of the fact of relation which they involve is pursuing the phantom of an See also:apprehension which, as See also:Lotze expresses it, does not apprehend things, but is itself things; he is desiring not to know but to be the things themselves. If this See also:dream or See also:prejudice be exploded, then the scepticism originating in it—and a large proportion of See also:recent sceptical thought does so originate—loses its raison d'etre.2 The prejudice, however, which meets us in Kant is, in a somewhat different form, the same prejudice which Prejudices is found in the tropes of antiquity—what Lotze calls on which the " inadmissible relation of the world of ideas to sceptklsm a See also:foreign world of objects." For, as he rightly points rests. out, whether we suppose See also:idealism or See also:realism to be true, in neither case do the things themselves pass into our knowledge. No standpoint is possible from which we could compare the world of knowledge with such an See also:independent world of things, in order to judge of the conformity of the one to the other. But the abstract doubt " whether after all things may not be quite other in themselves than that which by the See also:laws of our thought they necessarily appear " is a scepticism which, though admittedly irrefutable, is as certainly groundless. No arguments can be brought against it, simply because the scepticism rests on nothing more than the empty possibility of doubting. This holds true, even if we admit the " independent " existence of such a world of things. But the See also:independence of things may with much greater reason be regarded as itself a fiction or prejudice. The real " objective " to which our thoughts must show conformity is not a world of things in themselves, but the system of things as it exists for a perfect intelligence. Scepticism is deprived of its persistent argument if it is seen that, while our individual experiences are to be judged by their coherence with the context of experience in general, experience as a whole does not admit of being judged by reference to anything beyond itself. To the attack upon the possibility of demonstration, inasmuch as every proof requires itself a fresh proof, it may quite fairly be retorted that the contradiction really lies in the demand ' Much the same conclusion is reached in what is perhaps the ablest See also:English exposition of pure philosophic scepticism since Hume —A. J. See also:Balfour's See also:Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879). 2 It may he as well to add that the sceptical side of Kantianism is mainly confined to the Critique of Pure Reason, but this side of Kantian thought has been most widely influential. The remarks made above would not apply to the coherent system of idealism which may be evolved from Kant's writings, and which many would consider alone to deserve the name of Kantianism or Criticism. for proof of the self-evident, on which all proof must ultimately depend. It is of course always possible that in any particular case we may be deceived; we may be assuming as self-evidently true what is in reality not so. But such incidental lapses are found to correct themselves by the consequences in which they involve us, and they have no power to shake our trust in the general validity of reason. It may, however, be granted that the possibility of See also:lapse throws us open to the objections, ingenuous or disingenuous, of the sceptic; and we must remain exposed to them so long as we See also:deal with our first principles as so many isolated axioms or intuitions. But the process of self-correction referred to points to another proof—the only ultimately satisfactory proof of which first principles admit. Their evidence lies in their mutual interdependence and in the coherence of the system which they jointly constitute. Of a scepticism which professes to doubt the validity of every reasoning process and every operation of all our faculties it is, of course, as impossible as it would be absurd to offer See also:Function any refutation. This absolute scepticism, indeed, of scepti- cism, can hardly be regarded as more than empty words; the position which they would indicate is not one which has ever existed. In any case, such scepticism is at all times sufficiently refuted by the imperishable and justifiable trust of reason in itself. The real function of scepticism in the history of philosophy is relative to the dogmatism which it criticizes. And, as a matter of fact, it has been seen that many so-called sceptics were rather critics of the effete systems which they found cumbering the ground than actual doubters of the possibility of knowledge in general. And even when a thinker puts forward his doubt as absolute it does not follow that his successors are See also:bound to regard it in the same light. The progress of thought may show it to be, in truth, relative, as when the See also:nerve of Hume's scepticism is shown to be his thoroughgoing empiricism, or when the scepticism of the Critique of Pure Reason is traced to the unwarrantable See also:assumption of things-in-themselves. When the assumptions on which it rests are proved to be baseless, the particular scepticism is also overcome. In like manner, the apparent antinomies on which such a scepticism builds will be found to resolve themselves for a system based on a deeper insight into the nature of things. The serious thinker will always repeat the words of .Kant that, in itself, scepticism is " not a permanent resting-place for human reason." Its justification is relative, and its function transitional. AUTxoxlTIEs.—Ancient scepticism is fully treated in the relative parts of Zeller's Philosophie der Griechen. See also works quoted in the See also:biographical articles; Brochard, See also:Les Sceptiques grecs (1887); Ed. See also:Caird, See also:Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904) ; See also:Norman See also:MacColl, Greek Sceptics from Pyrrha to Sextus (1869) ; Haas, De philosophorum scepticorum successionibus (1875). Among other works may be mentioned Staudlin, Geschichle and Geist d. Scepticismus, vorzdglich in Rucksicht auf Moral u. See also:Religion (1794) ; Tafel, Geschichte d. Scepticismus (1834); E. See also:Saisset, Le Scepticisme: fEnesideme, Pascal, Kant (1875). For a modern view see A. J. Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879). All histories of philosophy deal with scepticism, and general accounts will be found in J. See also:Robertson's See also:Short History of See also:Free Thought and A. W Benn's History of Modern See also:Rationalism. See also AGNOSTICISM, RATIONALISM. (A. S. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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