Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought

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Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

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mathematical physics. Descartes, starting from Scepticism, claimed to have

found a new basis for certitude and for knowledge of reality. Throughout the

17th century sceptical critics – Mersenne, Gassendi, the reviver of Academic

philosophy Simon Foucher, and Pierre-Daniel Huet, one of the most learned

men of the age – sought to show that Descartes had not succeeded, and that, if

he sincerely followed his sceptical method, his new system could only lead to

complete Scepticism. They challenged whether the cogito proved anything, or

whether it was indubitable; whether Descartes’ method could be successfully

applied, or whether it was certain; and whether any of the knowledge claims

of Cartesianism were really true. Nicolas Malebranche, the developer of

occasionalism, revised the Cartesian system to meet the sceptical attacks only

to find his efforts challenged by the new sceptical criticisms of Foucher and

by the contention of the Jansenist philosopher Antoine Arnauld that

Malebranchism led to a most dangerous Pyrrhonism.

Various English philosophers culminating in Locke tried to blunt the

force of Scepticism by appealing to common sense and to the “reasonable”

man’s inability to doubt everything. They admitted that there might not be

sufficient evidence to support the knowledge claims extending beyond

immediate experience. But this did not actually require that everything be

doubted; by using standards of common sense, an adequate basis for many

beliefs could be found. Blaise Pascal, who presented the case for Scepticism

most forcefully in his Pensées, still denied that there can be a complete

Scepticism; for nature prevents it. Lacking rational answers to complete

Scepticism, man’s only recourse lies in turning to God for help in overcoming

doubts.

The culmination of 17th-century Scepticism appears in the writings of

Pierre Bayle, especially in his monumental Dictionnaire historique et critique

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(1697-1702). Bayle, a superb dialectician, challenged philosophical, scientific,

and theological theories, both ancient and modern, showing that they all led to

perplexities, paradoxes, and contradictions. He argued that the theories of

Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche, when sceptically analyzed,

cast in doubt all information about the world, even whether a world exists.

Bayle skillfully employed sceptical arguments about such things as sense

information, human judgments, logical explanations, and the criteria of

knowledge in order to undermine confidence in human intellectual activity in

all areas. Bayle suggested that man should abandon rational activity and turn

blindly to faith and revelation; he can therefore only follow his conscience

without any criterion for determining true faith. Bayle showed that the

interpretations of religious knowledge were so implausible that even the most

heretical views, like Manichaeism, known for its cosmic dualism of good and

evil, and Atheism, made more sense. As a result Bayle’s work became “the

arsenal of the Enlightenment,” and he was regarded as a major enemy of

religion.

In the 18th Century

Most 18th-century thinkers gave up the quest for metaphysical

knowledge after imbibing Bayle’s arguments. George Berkeley, an Empiricist

and Idealist, fought sceptical doubts by identifying appearance and reality and

offering a spiritualistic metaphysics. He was immediately seen as just another

sceptic since he was denying the world beyond experience.

Bayle’s chief 18th-century successor was David Hume. Combining

empirical and sceptical arguments, Hume charged that neither inductive nor

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deductive evidence could establish the truth of any matter of fact. Knowledge

could only consist of intuitively obvious matters or demonstrable relations of

ideas but not of anything beyond experience; the mind can discover no

necessary connections within experience nor any root causes of experience.

Beliefs about the world are based not upon reason or evidence or even upon

appeal to the uniformity of nature but only on habit and custom. Beliefs

cannot be justified. Belief that there is an external world, a self, a God is

common; but there is no adequate evidence for it. Although it is natural to

hold these convictions, they are inconsistent and epistemologically dubious.

“Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not Nature too strong

for it.” The beliefs that a man is forced to hold enable him to describe the

world scientifically, but when he tries to justify them he is led to complete

Scepticism. Before he goes mad with doubts, however, Nature brings him

back to common sense, to unjustifiable beliefs. Hume’s fideism was a natural

rather than a religious one; it is only animal faith that provides relief from

complete doubt. The religious context of Scepticism from Montaigne to Bayle

had been removed, and man was left with only his natural beliefs, which

might be meaningless or valueless.

The central themes in Hume’s sceptical analysis – the basis of induction

and causality, knowledge of the external world and the self, proofs of the

existence of God – became the key issues of later philosophy. Hume’s

contemporary Thomas Reid hoped to rebut Hume’s Scepticism by exposing it

as the logical conclusion of the basic assumptions of modern philosophy from

Descartes onward. Such disastrous assumptions should be abandoned for

commonsensical principles that have to be believed. As Hume and Kant saw,

Reid had not answered Hume’s Scepticism but had only sidestepped the issue

by appealing to commonsensical living. This provided, however, neither a

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theoretical basis for beliefs nor a refutation of the arguments that questioned

them.

Kant saw that Hume had posed a most fundamental challenge to all

human knowledge claims. To answer him, it had to be shown not that

knowledge is possible but how it is possible. Kant combined a Scepticism

toward metaphysical knowledge with the contention that certain universal and

necessary conditions are involved in having experience and describing it. In

terms of these it is possible to have genuine knowledge about the forms of all

possible experience, space and time, and about the categories in which all

experience is described. Any effort to apply this beyond all possible

experience, however, leads into contradictions and Scepticism. It is not

possible to know about things-in-themselves or about the causes of

experience.

Though Kant thought that he had resolved the sceptical problems, some

of his contemporaries saw his philosophy as commencing a new sceptical era.

G.E. Schulze (or Schulze-Aenesidemus) a notable critic of Kantianism,

insisted that, on Kant’s theory, no one could know any objective truths about

anything; he could only know the subjective necessity of his views. The

Jewish critic Salomon Maimon contended that, though there are such things as

a priori concepts, their application to experience is always problematical, and

whether they apply can only be found through experience. Hence, the

possibility of knowledge can never be established with certainty. Assured

truth on the basis of concepts is possible only of human creations, like

mathematical ideas, and it is questionable whether these have any objective

truth. The thesis that human creativity is the basis of truth, however, was soon

to be developed by Johann G. Fichte, a leading German Idealist, as a new way

of transcending Scepticism.

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Another sceptical critic of Kant, J.G. Hamann, saw in Hume’s and

Kant’s work a new basis for fideism. If knowledge of reality cannot be gained

by rational means, then one must turn to faith. Based on Hume’s efforts,

Hamann advanced an antirational Scepticism in an effort to convince Kant to

become a fideistic Christian. Hamann’s kind of fideism was also developed in

France by Catholic opponents of the French Revolution and liberalism – like

Joseph de Maistre and H.-F.-R. de Lamennais.

In Recent and Contemporary Philosophy

Irrational Scepticism was developed into Existentialism by Søren

Kierkegaard in the 19th century. Using traditional sceptical themes to attack

Hegelianism and liberal Christianity, Kierkegaard stressed the need for faith.

Only by an unjustified and unjustifiable “leap into faith” could certainty be

found – which would then be entirely subjective rather than objective. Modern

neo-orthodox and Existentialist theologians have argued that Scepticism

highlights man’s inability to find any ultimate truth except through faith and

commitment. Nonreligious forms of this view have been developed by

Existentialist writers like Albert Camus, combining the epistemological

Scepticism of Kierkegaard with the religious and value Scepticism of

Nietzsche. The rational and scientific examination of the world shows it to be

unintelligible and absurd; and if God is dead, as Nietzsche proclaimed, then

the world is ultimately meaningless. But it is necessary to struggle with it. It is

thus through action and commitment that one finds whatever personal

meaning one can, though it has no objective significance.

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Other kinds of Scepticism appear in various forms of recent and

contemporary philosophy. The English Idealist F.H. Bradley used classical

sceptical arguments in his Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay to

contend that the world could not be understood empirically or

materialistically; true knowledge could be reached only by transcending the

world of appearance.

George Santayana, an American critical Realist, in Scepticism and

Animal Faith, presented a naturalistic Scepticism. Any interpretation of

immediate or intuited experience is open to question. To make life

meaningful, however, men make interpretations by “animal faith,” according

to biological and social factors. The resulting beliefs, though unjustified and

perhaps illusory, enable them to persevere and find the richness of life.

Types of Scepticism also appear in Logical Positivism and various forms

of linguistic philosophy. The attack on speculative metaphysics developed by

the physicist and early Positivist Ernst Mach, by Bertrand Russell, and by

Rudolf Carnap, a leader in the Vienna Circle, where Logical Positivism was

nourished, incorporated a Scepticism about the possibility of gaining

knowledge beyond experience or logical tautologies. Russell and the

important philosopher of science Karl Popper have further stressed the

unjustifiability of the principle of induction, and Popper has criticized theories

of knowledge based upon empirical verification. A founder of linguistic

analysis, Fritz Mauthner, has set forth a Scepticism in which any language is

merely relative to its users and thus subjective. Every attempt to tell what is

true just leads one back to linguistic formulations, not to objective states of

affairs. The result is a complete Scepticism about reality – a reality that cannot

even be expressed except in terms of what he called godless mystical

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contemplation. Mauthner’s linguistic Scepticism bears some affinities to the

views expressed in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Criticism and Evaluation

In Western thought Scepticism has raised basic epistemological issues.

In view of the varieties of human experience, it has questioned whether it is

possible to tell which are veridical. The variations that occur in different

perceptions of what is presumed to be one object raise the question of which is

the correct view. The occurrence of illusory experiences raises the question of

whether it is really possible to distinguish illusions and dreams from reality.

The criteria employed can be questioned and require justification. On what

basis does one tell whether one has the right criteria? By other criteria? Then,

are these correct? On what standards? The attempt to justify criteria seems

either to lead to an infinite regress or to just stop arbitrarily. If an attempt is

made to justify knowledge claims by starting with first principles, what are

these based upon? Can it be established that these principles cannot possibly

be false? If so, is the proof itself such that it cannot be questioned? If it is

claimed that the principles are self-evident, can one be sure of this, sure that

one is not deceived? And can one be sure that one can recognize and apply the

principles correctly? Through such questioning, sceptics have indicated the

basic problems that an investigator would have to resolve before he could be

certain of possessing knowledge; i.e., information that could not possibly be

false.

Critics have contended that Scepticism is both a logically and a humanly

untenable view. Any attempt to formulate the position will be self-refuting

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since it will assert at least some knowledge claims about what is supposed to

be dubious. Montaigne suggested that the Sceptics needed a nonassertive

language, reflecting the claim of Sextus that the sceptic does not make

assertions but only chronicles his feelings. The strength of Scepticism lies not

in whether it can be stated consistently but upon the effects of its arguments

on dogmatic philosophers. As Hume said, Scepticism may be self-refuting,

but in the process of refuting itself it undermines dogmatism. Scepticism,

Sextus said, is like a purge that eliminates itself as well as everything else.

Critics have claimed that anyone who tried to be a complete sceptic,

denying or suspending all judgments about ordinary beliefs, would soon be

driven insane. Even Hume thought that the complete sceptic would have to

starve to death and would walk into walls or out of windows. Hume, therefore,

separated the doubting activity from natural practical activities in the world.

sceptical philosophizing went on in theory, while believing occurred in

practice. Sextus and the contemporary Norwegian sceptic Arne Naess have

said, on the other hand, that Scepticism is a form of mental health. Instead of

going mad, the sceptic – without commitment to fixed positions – can

function better than the dogmatist.

Some recent thinkers like A.J. Ayer and John Austin have contended

that Scepticism is unnecessary. If knowledge is defined in terms of satisfying

meaningful criteria, then knowledge is open to all. The sceptics have raised

false problems, because it is, as a matter of fact, possible to tell that some

experiences are illusory since we have criteria for distinguishing them from

actual events. We do resolve doubts and reach a state of knowledge through

various verification procedures, after which doubt is meaningless. Naess, in

his book Scepticism, has sought to show, however, that, on the standards

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offered by Ayer and Austin, one can still ask if knowledge claims may not

turn out to be false and hence that Scepticism has still to be overcome.

Scepticism throughout history has played a dynamic role in forcing

dogmatic philosophers to find better or stronger bases for their views and to

find answers to the sceptical attacks. It has forced a continued reexamination

of previous knowledge claims and has stimulated creative thinkers to work out

new theories to meet the sceptical problems. The history of philosophy can be

seen, in part, as a struggle with Scepticism. The attacks of the sceptics also

have served as a check on rash speculation; the various forms of modern

Scepticism have gradually eroded the metaphysical and theological bases of

European thought. Most contemporary thinkers have been sufficiently

affected by Scepticism to abandon the search for certain and indubitable

foundations of human knowledge. Instead, they have sought ways of living

with the unresolved sceptical problems through various forms of naturalistic,

scientific, or religious faiths.

Sophists

The Sophists were certain Greek lecturers, writers, and teachers in the

5th and 4th centuries BCE, most of whom travelled about the Greek-speaking

world giving instruction in a wide range of subjects in return for fees.

History of the Name

The term sophist (Greek sophistes) had earlier applications. It is

sometimes said to have meant originally simply “clever” or “skilled man,” but

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the list of those to whom Greek authors applied the term in its earlier sense

makes it probable that it was rather more restricted in meaning. Seers,

diviners, and poets predominate, and the earliest Sophists probably were the

“sages” in early Greek societies. This would explain the subsequent

application of the term to the Seven Wise Men (7th-6th century BCE), who

typified the highest early practical wisdom, and to Pre-Socratic philosophers

generally. When Protagoras, in one of Plato’s dialogues (Protagoras, 317 a-b)

is made to say that, unlike others, he is willing to call himself a Sophist, he is

using the term in its new sense of “professional teacher,” but he wishes also to

claim continuity with earlier sages as a teacher of wisdom. Plato and Aristotle

altered the meaning again, however, when they claimed that professional

teachers such as Protagoras were not seeking the truth but only victory in

debate and were prepared to use dishonest means to achieve it. This produced

the sense “captious or fallacious reasoner or quibbler,” which has remained

dominant to the present day. Finally, under the Roman Empire the term was

applied to professors of rhetoric, to orators, and to prose writers generally, all

of whom are sometimes regarded as constituting what is now called the

Second Sophistic movement.

The 5th-Century Sophists

The names survive of nearly 30 Sophists properly so called, of whom the

most important were Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, and

Thrasymachus. Plato protested strongly that Socrates was in no sense a

Sophist – he took no fees, and his devotion to the truth was beyond question.

But from many points of view he is rightly regarded as a rather special

member of the movement. The actual number of Sophists was clearly much