The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle

by Richard H. Popkin

Overview

This is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of Richard Popkin's classic The History of Scepticism, first published in 1960, revised in 1979, and since translated into numerous foreign languages.

This authoritative work of historical scholarship has been revised throughout, including new material on: the introduction of ancient skepticism into Renaissance Europe; the role of Savonarola and his disciples in bringing Sextus Empiricus to the attention of European thinkers; and new material on Henry More, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, G.W. Leibniz, Simon Foucher and Pierre-Daniel Huet, and Pierre Bayle. The bibliography has also been updated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195107685
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/20/2003
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	9.22(w) x 6.32(h) x 0.84(d)
Lexile:	1590L (what's this?)

About the Author

Richard H. Popkin is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, Adjunct Professor f History and Philosophy at UCLA, and editor of the Columbia History of Western Philosophy.

Table of Contents

1. The Intellectual Crisis of the Reformation2. The Revival of Greek Scepticism in the Sixteenth Century3. Michel de Montaigne and the Nouveaux Pyrrhoniens4. The Influence of the New Pyrrhonism5. The Libertins Erudits6. The Counter-Attack Begins7. Constructive or Mitigated Scepticism8. Herbert of Cherbury and Jean de Silhon9. Descartes: Conqueror of Scepticism10. Descartes: Sceptique Malgré Lui11. Some Spiritual and Religious Answers to Scepticism and Descartes: Henry More, Blaise Pascal and the Quietists12. Political and Practical Answers to Scepticism: Thomas Hobbes13. Philosophers of the Royal Society: Wilkins, Boyle, and Glanvill14. Biblical Criticism and the Beginnings of Religious Scepticism15. Spinoza's Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism16. Scepticism and Late Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics17. The New Sceptics: Simon Foucher and Pierre Daniel Huet18. Pierre Bayle: Super-Scepticism and the Beginnings of the Enlightenment Dogmatism

Editorial Reviews

"One of the aspects that makes Popkin's book (and his work in general) of special value is its taking into consideration major and minor thinkers whose views are not well-known."—Phil. Jahrbuch

"I regard it as one of the seminal books in the history of ideas."—Miles Burnyeat, All Souls, Oxford University

"Richard H. Popkin's path-finding work on the history of scepticism has made a deep and lasting impression on the study of early modern philosophy."—The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher