BOOK REVIEWS 383

of philosophy reflection on habit relates to and informs, and just how impor­
tant it is that we pursue it.

Jeremy William Dunham

University of Sheffield
© 2014, Jeremy William Dunham
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2014.970512

Sébastien Charles and Plínio J. Smith (eds.): Scepticism in the Eighteenth

Century: Enlightenment, Lumiéres, Aufklärung. Dordrecht: Springer,
2013, pp. xxvii + 381. £90 (hb). ISBN 9789400748095.
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Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century consists of twenty-two articles pre­

ceded by a preface and an ‘Introduction’ by Sébastien Charles that
amounts to a twenty-third article. The papers, including the ‘Introduction’
(xi), were either presented at or grew out of two conferences on ‘Scepticism
and the Enlightenment’, one held at São Paulo in 2009, the other at Montreal
in 2010 (xix). Of the twenty-three articles, all but five are in English; the rest
are in French. Several of the papers, both English and French, are trans­
lations, some done well (e.g. Massimiliano Biscuso’s ‘Hegel on Scepticism
and Irony’), others done badly (e.g. Luc Peterschmitt’s ‘The “Wise Pyrrhon­
ism” of the Académie Royale Des Sciences of Paris’).
As its subtitle suggests, the collection is an international affair. This is true
of both the geography of its subject-matter and the composition of its contri­
butors. Stylistic infelicities are not wholly unexpected, then. Yet a distracting
number of grammatical and typographical errors appear even in papers that
have not been translated and whose authors are writing in their native
languages (e.g. Peter Kail’s ‘Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Moral Scepti­
cisms’). This gives the collection an air of shoddiness that mars what is in
fact a fine set of papers that represent important contributions to the ever-
growing literature on scepticism’s role in guiding and shaping modern
philosophy.
The collection proposes to fill what the editors initially characterize as a
century-shaped hole in this literature, which, they suggest, tends to leap
from Bayle (1647–1706) to the post-Kantian scepticisms of Schulze
(1761–1833), Jacobi (1743–1819), and others, with a pit stop only for
Hume. We are told that ‘the conjunction of scepticism and Enlightenment
in the title of this volume might well seem surprising as much as it conflicts
with the image of the eighteenth century we continue to hold’, an image
according to which there is a ‘contradiction’ between scepticism and ‘[t]he
Age of Enlightenment’, where the latter is understood as ‘a dogmatic
period’ during which scepticism could be ‘no more than an epiphenomenon’
(v). It is suggested that we continue to hold this view at least in part because
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of the failure of the relevant literature to engage with Enlightenment figures.

Oddly, Charles’s ‘Introduction’ begins by airing precisely the opposite sen­
timent: ‘“Scepticism and the Enlightenment”: the phrase has the allure of the
obvious, and the linking of the two terms seems to pose no problem’, at least
in part because ‘recent studies of modern scepticism ... have given the inac­
curate impression [that] the Enlightenment was a sceptical era’ (1).
Which is it? Beneath the confusion or even contradiction, the editors’ view
seems to be that (a) twentieth-century historians of scepticism (specifically
Richard Popkin) initially treated eighteenth-century philosophy as virtually
devoid of scepticism (with the exception, again, of Hume); (b) gradually, the
importance for this history of other figures, such as Berkeley and Kant (vii),
began to emerge, until (c) the view arose that ‘[w]hile dogmatism is present
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in the Enlightenment, it must be understood above all as a response to scepti­

cism’ (viii), meaning that scepticism was a constant presence balancing the
Enlightenment’s rationalistic optimism. Ultimately, then, the collection’s
task is not to span a sheer gap, but to buttress what the editors consider a
rickety or incomplete bridge. We are told that ‘the precise function of
Enlightenment scepticism remains for the most part terra incognita’ (xi)
and that this volume ‘[offers] a comprehensive vision of the nature and func­
tion of scepticism during the eighteenth century’ (xviii).
One could justifiably dispute both of these claims. Even so, there is no
doubt that this collection represents a valuable contribution to the existing
literature. After the stage-setting of Charles’s ‘Introduction’, the articles
are broken into five groups. The first group covers various forms of scepti­
cism in early-eighteenth-century France, as well as Leibniz’s relation to
them. The second group crosses the Channel to England to discuss the
moral-sense theorists; Hume; Reid; and William Enfield, who published a
tendentiously edited English edition of Jacob Brucker’s Critical History of
Philosophy. The third group returns to France, to Voltaire and his contem­
poraries; Rousseau; the relation between scepticism and atheism (which
introduces Jacques-André Naigeon, whose interpretation of Pyrrhonism I
find quite compelling); and Jacque-Pierre Brissot de Warville, who, it is
argued (contra Popkin), transitioned from an early Pyrrhonism to a ‘“Revo­
lutionary scepticism”’ (243). The fourth group moves inland to Germany,
turning to Kant, Maimon, and Hegel, before ending with a discussion of
the unlikely trio of Fichte, Schopenhauer, and ‘Aenesidemus’ Schulze.
The fifth and final group returns again to France and the post-Revolutionary
interpretation of the Enlightenment (indeed, of all modern philosophy) as
irredeemably sceptical.
Anyone interested in these figures, this time period, or the history of scep­
ticism will find some or all of these papers revealing, insightful, and sugges­
tive of avenues for further research. That said, each paper struggles to a
greater or lesser extent – and the collection as a whole struggles mightily
– to offer a philosophically or historically satisfying account of the single
most important concept with which they are working, namely scepticism.
 BOOK REVIEWS 385

As we have seen, the editors boast that this collection will clarify ‘the nature
and function’ of ‘Enlightenment scepticism’. In the event, however, it fails
even to clarify what is meant by ‘Enlightenment scepticism’.
Current scholarly interest in philosophical scepticism can be divided into
three nonexclusive categories: first, scepticism as a contemporary philoso­
phical problem, whether in ethics, epistemology, or other subfields;
second, the history of scepticism qua history of ideas; third, historical
forms of scepticism (esp. ancient scepticism) qua philosophy. The first cat­
egory is dominated by those who approach scepticism in a broadly ‘Carte­
sian’ way, as a negative philosophical doctrine or position that, if left
unrefuted, would undermine our knowledge (or our ‘warrant’ to assert, or
our ‘justification’ in believing), either locally or globally. The second cat­
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egory, to which this collection belongs, is dominated by those labouring

in the shadow of Richard Popkin, whose work continues to serve as the
genre’s primary reference-point. The third category, which began to take
shape in the late 1970s and early 1980s around a series of articles by
Michael Frede and Myles Burnyeat, focuses on reconstructing ancient scep­
tical positions and assessing their philosophical merits. The first category
tends to treat scepticism as a ‘timeless’ philosophical problem. The second
tends, following Popkin, to focus on ancient scepticism’s influence on
modern philosophy, largely because (a) it is argued that modern scepticism
(Cartesian, Humean, etc.) is itself best understood in relation to the ancient
tradition, and (b) the only significant body of ancient sceptical texts that have
come down to us (those of Sextus Empiricus) do not appear to have had any
appreciable impact in the ancient world; it was only with his ‘rediscovery’ in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that Sextus began to play a major role in
the history of philosophy (in Western Europe, at least). The third tends to
treat ancient scepticism (usually with a focus on Sextus’s Pyrrhonism) as a
series of more or less static historical artefacts.
All of these approaches benefit from crosspollination, but none more so
than the second, for the dynamic historical orientation of such work brings
with it interpretive burdens that are absent or at least less acute in work
that falls into the other two categories. Ideally, the ‘historians’ of the
second group ought to illuminate the continuities and discontinuities in
subject-matter that link the ‘classicists’ of the third group with the ‘philoso­
phers’ of the first. Often, however, a narrow focus on the views of particular
historical figures and a correlative dearth of philosophical engagement with
those views leaves it unclear what connection, if any, exists between the
ancient sceptical tradition and scepticism as it is treated in contemporary
philosophy. The result is that it is frequently unclear just what the authors
mean by the term ‘scepticism’. They are often, of course, simply reporting
what various Enlightenment-era figures referred to as ‘scepticism’; but
without at least a rough, preliminary fixing of the meaning(s) of the term,
such discussions can actually obscure rather than clarify their subject-matter.
 386 BOOK REVIEWS

In Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century, the reader is confronted by a diz­

zying parade of scepticisms, few of which are given precise meanings. In the
‘Introduction’, Charles contrasts ‘authentic scepticism’ with ‘reasonable
scepticism’ (7), which is ‘scepticism adapted to the discoveries of the
moderns’ (8) – whatever exactly that means. ‘Methodological Pyrrhonism’
rubs shoulders with ‘useful scepticism’ and ‘pernicious scepticism’ (9).
Arnaud Pelletier speaks of ‘the different faces of scepticism: Academic,
negative, meta-dogmatist; Simon Foucher’s middle way ... the Bayle-style
fideist ... and ... the neo-pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus’ (59). Luc Peterschmitt
contrasts ‘methodological scepticism’ with ‘radical and thorough scepti­
cism’ (89), and Claire Etchegaray associates ‘mitigated scepticism’ with ‘a
kind of dispositional scepticism’ (152). Nicolas Correard seems to equate
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‘reasonable pyrrhonism’ with ‘tame scepticism’, and ‘pyrrhonisme outré’

with ‘wild scepticism’ (177, 187). Marc-André Nadeau, in discussing Rous­
seau, refers to ‘scepticisme involontaire’, ‘scepticisme apparent’, ‘premier
pyrrhonisme’, ‘scepticisme final’, and ultimately ‘scepticisme existentiel’
(209–10, 217). In his article on Brissot, Charles concludes with a reference
to ‘a “scepticism of human rights”’ (244), while Italo Testa speaks of ‘scep­
ticisme religieux’, ‘scepticisme républicain’, and ‘scepticisme épistémologi­
que’ (287, 296). Acknowledging that readers might wonder about the
differences between religious and epistemological scepticism, Testa is
content simply to point to the entirety of the second edition of Popkin’s
History of Scepticism (295 fn. 54).
Peter Kail acknowledges the seriousness of the problem (95), yet he goes
too far in trying to salvage for the eighteenth century the ‘ancient’ (Pyrrho­
nian) sense of scepticism (as anti-dogmatic) from the corruption inherent in
the ‘modern’ sense, according to which scepticism is a negative-dogmatic
position (104). It is quite clear that many moderns (not to mention many
ancient critics) understood Pyrrhonism as negative-dogmatic (cf. 176, 210,
235, 292, 301, 320, 330–1). ‘Pyrrhonism’ and ‘scepticism’ were often
treated as synonyms throughout the modern period (46, 55, 96), with the
result that paradigmatically ‘modern’ forms of scepticism were labelled
(usually by their dogmatic opponents) ‘Pyrrhonian’. One need only to
think of Hume’s desperate, misguided attempt in the Enquiry to distance
himself from a ‘Pyrrhonism’ that bears scarce resemblance to what is
found in Sextus’s texts – though Charles (5) and Todd Ryan (137) seem
to endorse Hume’s view of Pyrrhonism. (To her credit, Etchegaray takes
both Hume and Reid to task, albeit in a footnote, for misrepresenting Pyr­
rhonism (139 fn. 2).) More surprisingly, even the paradigmatically
‘modern’ problem of our knowledge of the external world, as presented by
Descartes, was associated with Pyrrhonism (12, 39).
Others go too far in severing possible links between Pyrrhonism and
‘modern’ scepticism. Plínio Smith argues that Kant’s source for his antimo­
nies was not Hume, but Bayle and Montaigne (255). But what if Bayle and
Montaigne were themselves Pyrrhonians? The antinomic method is deeply
 BOOK REVIEWS 387

reminiscent of Sextus’s equipollence method, and we know, especially from

his lectures on logic, that Kant was familiar with the ancient sceptics. Else­
where, Gianni Paganini suggests that Donald Livingston’s characterization
of Hume as ‘post-Pyrrhonian’ is better thought of as ‘post-Baylean’ (123).
For his part, Ryan argues that Baylean scepticism is not Pyrrhonian (131).
Still, the affinities between Bayle and Sextus are striking and non-coinciden­
tal, which raises one of the many questions left unanswered (indeed,
unasked) in this collection: What does it mean to say of a modern philoso­
pher that he or she is a ‘Pyrrhonian’? Many striking misrepresentations
of Pyrrhonism are canvassed without critical comment (cf. 66, 201),
which raises an even more fundamental question: What do the authors them­
selves mean by ‘Pyrrhonism’? The issue is never addressed in any detail. For
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the most part, readers must satisfy themselves with hints that often contradict
one another. A number of the authors decapitalize ‘pyrrhonism’ and its cog­
nates, but the significance of this typographical convention is never
explained.
Such problems are all the more striking given the importance placed on
conceptual and terminological clarity by the editors, who, as we have
seen, promise readers ‘a comprehensive vision of the nature ... of scepticism
during the eighteenth century’ (xviii). In his ‘Introduction’, Charles criticizes
Popkin’s early claim that the eighteenth century was hardly a sceptical era
(save for Hume) and Popkin’s later claim that scepticism was rife throughout
the period. In the end, though, Charles qualifiedly endorses both views in a
way that emphasizes the need for conceptual clarity.

Popkin highlights only one particular form of Enlightenment scepticism,

namely reasonable or mitigated scepticism... On this score, it is hard to fault
him and fail to recognize that just such a methodological scepticism was of
primary significance to the period. But ... must we reduce eighteenth-
century scepticism to the watered-down version that Popkin seems ultimately
to accept? If it were only a question of that, and if at the same time we retained
the original meaning of the concept of scepticism, we should have to conclude
that the Enlightenment was not, properly speaking, sceptical; and this would
mean that, despite the denials of the later Popkin, the early Popkin was right to
call Hume the only authentic Enlightenment sceptic. (13)

Central to this passage is a distinction, alluded to throughout the volume

but never addressed in any detail, between ‘mitigated’ and ‘authentic’ scep­
ticism. In Charles’s view, authentic scepticism is Pyrrhonism, with the result
that ‘the question of whether the Enlightenment really was sceptical’
becomes a matter of ‘whether the spirit of the Enlightenment corresponded ...
to the Pyrrhonism of Antiquity’ (12), that is, to ‘the spirit of Pyrrhonism’
(12). (It should be noted that this is in tension with Charles’s claim that
‘there is no such thing as scepticism in itself’ (12), for he clearly thinks
that Pyrrhonism is scepticism ‘properly speaking’.) But what is the spirit
 388 BOOK REVIEWS

of Pyrrhonism? Given the contrast Charles sets up, it must be the case that
Pyrrhonism is unmitigated (not ‘watered-down’), that is, it must be that
Charles subscribes to something like the interpretation advanced by Myles
Burnyeat (and Hume before him). If so, then it appears that Charles is claim­
ing that (a) ‘authentic’ scepticism is radical, whether epistemic (‘We know
nothing’) or doxastic (‘We are not justified in believing anything’), (b) Pyr­
rhonism is radical in this way, and (c) Hume was such a ‘radical Pyrrhonian’.
Needless to say, all of these claims are deeply controversial. Simply put,
there is no solid hermeneutical ground upon which to build a history of scep­
ticism in the modern era, as attested to by the conflicting views advanced
(however elusively) by the contributors to this volume regarding such funda­
mental issues as ‘What is the nature of Pyrrhonism?’ Such issues require
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detailed and nuanced treatment, not only for their own sakes, but also to
clarify the historico-conceptual space in which research of the sort collected
in Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century operates. In the absence of such
treatment (or of an engagement with the work of the ‘classicists’ and ‘philo­
sophers’ mentioned above), the very concept the contributors collectively
attempt to clarify becomes only more obscure. I do not mean to suggest
that everyone writing on the history of scepticism is obliged to start from
the ground up; but it is hard not to feel, especially when faced with these
articles as a group, that interpretive burdens inherent to the subject-matter
are too often being ignored, lightly passed off, or even overlooked entirely.

Roger Eichorn
University of Chicago
© 2014, Roger Eichorn
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2014.970511

Simon Podmore: Struggling with God: Kierkegaard and the Temptation of

Spiritual Trial. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013, pp. 294. £25.00
(pb). ISBN 978-0227173435.

In this thoroughly researched volume, Simon D. Podmore reiterates Kierke­

gaard’s claim in Concluding Unscientific Postscript ‘[N]owadays one almost
never hears spiritual trial mentioned or, if it is mentioned at all, hears it sum­
marily limped together with temptations, indeed, even with adversities’ (eds.
Hong and Hong, 458). Podmore explores the concept of spiritual trial and
struggle, an area of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre which has never been explored
in such detail. Beginning with Jacob’s struggle in Genesis 32, Podmore
goes on to trace the theme of spiritual trial through the works of Tauler,
Luther, Arendt and Boehme, before giving an insightful and detailed study
of spiritual trial through Kierkegaard’s works (both pseudonymous and
not) which will be of interest to any serious Kierkegaard scholar, philosopher