Skepticism
Historical and Contemporary Inquiries

Skepticism is one of the most enduring and profound of philosophical problems. With its roots in Plato and the Sceptics to Descartes, Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein, skepticism presents a challenge that every philosopher must reckon with. In this outstanding collection philosophers engage with skepticism in five clear sections: the philosophical history of skepticism in Greek, Cartesian and Kantian thought; the nature and limits of certainty; the possibility of knowledge and related problems such as perception and the debates between objective knowledge and constructivism; the transcendental method as a response to skepticism and the challenge of naturalism; overcoming the skeptical challenge.

Skepticism: Historical and Contemporary Inquiries is essential reading for students and scholars in epistemology and the history of philosophy and will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as religion and sociology.

Introduction G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford

Part 1: Forms of Skepticism

1. Homeric Contributions to Skepticism Michael Forster

2. Hume and the Sceptical Malady Donald C. Ainslie

3. Skepticism and Intellectual Freedom: A Post-Kantian Perspective

Brady Bowman

Part 2: Skepticism and Certainty

4. Facts and Certainty, with Afterword Crispin Wright

5. Facts and Certainty: A Retrospective Crispin Wright

6. Pyrrhonian Scepticism and the Agnostic State of Mind Casey Perin

Part 3: Skepticism and Knowledge

7. Skeptical Arguments in the Later Middle Ages Martin Pickavé

8. Leaps in the Dark: Epistemological Skepticism in Kripke’s Wittgenstein Hannah Ginsborg

9. Empirical Knowledge as Contradiction Sebastian Rödl

Part 4: Skepticism and Transcendental Method

10. Kant on Self-Conscious Knowledge and the Idea of a Capacity for Judgment Andrea Kern

11. Skepticism, Deduction, and Reason’s Maturation G. Anthony Bruno

Part 5: Anti-Skeptical Strategies

12. Unnatural Doubts Duncan Pritchard

13. Overcoming Locality Skepticism by Abandoning the World Markus Gabriel.

Index

G. Anthony Bruno is Lecturer in philosophy at Royal Holloway University, UK. He has published numerous articles on Kant, German idealism, and phenomenology.

A.C. Rutherford is a doctoral student at the University of Bonn, Germany. Her current research focuses primarily on ancient epistemology and philosophy of mind.