Showing papers on "Pyrrhonism published in 2000"

Contextualism and Externalism: Trading in One Form of Skepticism for Another

Abstract: Let me begin by explaining, first, the title of this essay, then its scope. When contemporary philosophers speak of skepticism, they almost invariably have in mind some version or descendent of Cartesian skepticism. Setting aside scholarly questions of accuracy, Cartesianism is usually thought of as containing two key elements: first, a strong commitment to internalism, and, second, a strong commitment to pure (or unfettered) inquiry-that is, inquiry that protects no propositions from interrogation, A brief word about what I understand by Pyrrhonism-at least for the purposes of this essay. Pyrrhonism is often associated with a radical doubt involving the total suspension of belief. Following Michael Frede, I do not think that Sextus Empiricus's texts support this reading.1 The target of Pyrrhonian doubt was not common, innocently held, beliefs, but the beliefs of dogmatic philosophers and other "professors" who engaged in dogmatic enterprises of a similar kind. The Pyrrhonists found that suspending judgment on these topics yields, as it turns out, peace of mind, or blessedness.

Temporizing as Pyrrhonizing in Marston's the Malcontent

Abstract: Critics often allude to the skepticism of John Marston's drama. Robert Ornstein calls Marston the first Jacobean to exploit dramatically the skepticism about Stoic self-sufficiency expressed by Erasmus and Montaigne and implicit in the moral philosophy of the Elizabethan age."(1) Jonathan Dollimore interprets the close of Antonio's Revenge (1600-1) as "a subversion of providentialist orthodoxy."(2) And Keith Sturgess argues that The Dutch Courtesan (1605) is informed throughout by "Montaigne's skepticism and moral realism," thereby encouraging Marston "to explode any simple moral structures of right/wrong, black/white by engaging with the genuine complexity of human experience."(3) The Malcontent (1603), however, despite its status as Marston's best known play, has received virtually no attention along these lines; rather, critics have generally focused on its brilliant exploration of role-play and its closely-related doubleness of theme, mood, and structure.(4) Yet given the fin de siecle intellectual milieu in which the play was composed, not to mention Marston's evident familiarity with Pyrrhonism, it seems worthwhile to ask what relations may obtain between, on the one hand, The Malcontent's examination of role-play and duality and, on the other, its participation in the forms of skepticism--henceforth termed "skeptical paradigms"--available to an intellectually curious English poet or playwright at the outset of the seventeenth century.(5) That Marston had been exposed to the skeptical lexicon and to commonplace skeptical ideas is clear. Both at Oxford, where epistemological quaestiones were commonly posed for disputation,(6) and subsequently at London's Inns of Court, notorious in the 1590s for the cultivation of radical ideas in philosophy and art,(7) Marston would have had access to copies of the Latin translations of Sextus Empiricus published in the 1560s, as well as to other works--French, Italian, Latin, and English--which summarized, applauded, countered, or lampooned the skeptical arguments of Sextus with varying degrees of accuracy and persuasiveness.(8) He would, in addition, during his dozen-year tenure at the Middle Temple (1595-1606), have been acquainted with Sir John Davies, John Webster, John Ford, and possibly Fulke Greville and Sir Walter Ralegh, each of whom played a part in the English dissemination of ancient skeptical thought.(9) And he may well have read the English translation of Sextus mentioned by Thomas Nashe in his 1591 preface to Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, or else The Sceptick (c. 1590-1618), also a translation of Sextus, and often (though probably spuriously) attributed to Ralegh.(10) It thus comes as little surprise that in his satirical Scourge of Villanie (1598), Marston chastises a fictional interlocutor as follows: "Fye Gallus, what, a skeptick Pyrrhomist?"(11) Besides offering the earliest known instance of the word "Pyrrhonist" in English, this speech, in context, demonstrates a relatively accurate understanding of a central Pyrrhonian idea: Marston's satiric persona refuses to withhold belief in the fashion advocated by skeptics. Rather, he assures Gallus that he is a plain speaker--"Ile not faine / Wresting my humor, from his natiue straine"--and intends to stay that way. In contrast, then, to a writer such as Nashe, who also alludes to the "Pironiks" and to Sextus Empiricus in various works of the 1590s,(12) Marston demonstrates a much sharper understanding of Pyrrhonism--an understanding closer to that evinced by John Donne (also an Inns-of-Court student), who asserts in his third "Paradox" that "the Sceptique which doubts all is more contentious then eyther the Dogmatique which affirmes, or Academique which denyes."(13) Unlike Donne, however, Marston did not read Montaigne until after the 1603 publication of John Florio's English translation, and thus his initial understanding of Pyrrhonism depends upon his knowledge of sources other than the Essayes.(14) But Marston's acquaintance with elements of the skeptical lexicon is only part of the story. …

Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat: History and Imagination in Baroque Italy

Abstract: That modern historiographical methods emerged from the depths of late seventeenth- century Pyrrhonism has long been well known. In his 1950 article on 'Ancient History and the Antiquarian', Arnaldo Momigliano showed how an avalanche of diatribes against the historians, culminating in those of La Mothe Le Vayer and Pierre Bayle, inspired Jean Mabillon and Bernard de Montfaucon to formulate more rigorous paleographical techniques and, following the Bollandists, to initiate some of the most ambitious projects in modern times for the editing and publishing of historical documents.1 Meanwhile, the likes of Ezechiel Spanheim and Jacob Spon turned away entirely from fallacious documentary sources and toward what they regarded as the much more certain traces of the past in non-literary evidence, joining the discipline of erudite antiquities to that of historiography for the first time. So far, this trend of scepticism has been treated as the byproduct of an intellectual tradition dating to the humanist recovery of the texts of Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius, reinforced by three half-centuries of religious disputation. In order to destroy the very foundations of the Protestant position, it is argued, Roman Catholic apologists put in doubt the accomplishments of all the arts and sciences, urging believers to repose their trust unquestioningly in the truths of faith. Learned writers of every persuasion, seeking a firmer footing in the shifting sands of religious doubt, agreed.2 And when Bayle complained that 'there is no mischief so great as what can be exercised upon the monuments of history', he was chiefly referring to bias and distortion due to religious enthusiasm.3What has not yet been examined in sufficient detail is the role played by sheer historical charlatanry in creating the climate of scepticism against which the critics railed. What is more, the charlatanry that exercised the most profound impact during the course of the century did not circulate in the realm of pure erudition, where it might more properly be incorporated into the history of forgery.4 It circulated in the realm of political commentary and contemporary history. And among the places in Europe where this charlatanry was to be found perhaps in the greatest abundance was Italy. This article is a preliminary attempt to restore the lost connection between hired political historiography and Pyrrhonism.Indeed, from the preliminary episodes of the Thirty Years' War to the conclusion of the War of Castro, from the revolt of Palermo to the revolt of Fermo, from the negotiations between the dukes of Savoy and the Spanish monarchy in 1617 to the negotiations between the Venetians and the Turks in 1699, seventeenth-century Italy afforded to the aspiring historian an extraordinary spectacle. However, what brought the attention of a new group of writers to the momentous events of the time was more than mere curiosity. The parties in the conflicts demanded interpretations calculated to shore up damaged loyalties, repair breaches of trust and impress foreign powers. Upon any writer who could provide the necessary material they were disposed to lavish money and favours, including preferment to the most exclusive court circles. Writers who were attracted to this high-stakes game included professional historians as well as charlatans; former diplomats as well as blackmailers. They based their work on eyewitness reports and diplomatic correspondence as well as on newsletters, news books, newspapers, and simple hearsay. By freely mixing historiography with adulation, deceit, sensationalism and pure fantasy, these writers turned hired historiography from an occasional strategy into a cultural industry and set the formation of public myths on an entirely new footing. In doing so, they provoked a reaction that was eventually to shake the emerging discipline to its foundations.Careful cultivation of a particularly edifying view of the recent or remote past, capable of inspiring patriotism and loyalty among the forty percent or so of urban dwellers who could read, and flattering the vanity of the exalted was, of course, nothing new in the mid-seventeenth century. …