The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle

by Richard H. Popkin

Overview

This is the third edition of a classic book first published in 1960, which has sold thousands of copies in two paperback edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. Popkin's work has generated innumerable citations, and remains a valuable stimulus to current historical research. In this updated version, he has revised and expanded throughout, and has added three new chapters, one on Savonarola, one on Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and one on Pascal. This authoritative treatment of the theme of scepticism and its historical impact will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history now as much as ever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199880409
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/20/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

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