Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"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
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 379-407) and index.
Synopsis
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.
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 Reformation
2. The Revival of Greek Scepticism in the Sixteenth Century
3. Michel de Montaigne and the Nouveaux Pyrrhoniens
4. The Influence of the New Pyrrhonism
5. The Libertins Erudits
6. The Counter-Attack Begins
7. Constructive or Mitigated Scepticism
8. Herbert of Cherbury and Jean de Silhon
9. Descartes: Conqueror of Scepticism
10. Descartes: Sceptique Malgré Lui
11. Some Spiritual and Religious Answers to Scepticism and Descartes: Henry More, Blaise Pascal and the Quietists
12. Political and Practical Answers to Scepticism: Thomas Hobbes
13. Philosophers of the Royal Society: Wilkins, Boyle, and Glanvill
14. Biblical Criticism and the Beginnings of Religious Scepticism
15. Spinoza's Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism
16. Scepticism and Late Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics
17. The New Sceptics: Simon Foucher and Pierre Daniel Huet
18. Pierre Bayle: Super-Scepticism and the Beginnings of the Enlightenment Dogmatism