Scepticism in the Enlightenment, and: The Skeptical Tradition

around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society

(review)
Heiner Klemme

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 37, Number 1, January

1999, pp. 171-174 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/hph.2008.0816

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v037/37.1klemme.html

Access provided by Linköpings universitet (16 Jun 2013 16:32 GMT)

 BOOR REVIEWS 171

sometimes had in m i n d a technicalnotion of sympathy a n d other times a colloquialnotion.

The technical notion typically makes a psychological point, such as the discussion at T
3 8 4 - 3 8 9 . We find the technical notion largely in the Treatiseand the Moral Enquiry, with
more isolated discussions in the Natural History ofRelifion, "Of Tragedy," the "Disserta-
tion on the Passions," a n d a letter to A d a m Smith on July 28, 1759.
By contrast, H u m e ' s more colloquial uses of "sympathy" and "compassion" usually
appear alongside other terms, such as fellow-feeling, cordial affection, humanity,
friendship, mutual attachment, and fidelity. The colloquial use is also sometimes desig-
nated in the phrases "sympathy of m a n n e r s " and "sympathy of character." H u m e ' s use
of the terms "sympathy" and "compassion" in the History are virtually all colloquial,
such as these: "the q u e e n was engaged, by a sympathy of manners, to take adulterers
and fornicators u n d e r her protection" (volume 4, chapter 38); "The executioner him-
self was touched with sympathy" (volume 6, chapter 68); "Lewis received him with the
highest generosity, sympathy, and regard" (volume 6, chapter 71).Just as these uses of
the "sympathy" a n d "compassion" are colloquial, m a n y of the more implied sympathy
elements of H u m e ' s History are also colloquial, a n d not technical in the ways the H e r d t
suggests. Further, m a n y of the other sentimentalist c o m p o n e n t s of H u m e ' s History
noted by H e r d t may only be a function of lively writing style, as H u m e himself pre-
scribes in the lengthy e x p u n g e d portion of the first Enquiry, section three. Thus, H e r d t
may exaggerate the idea that sympathy is a philosophical theme of the History'.
Nevertheless, Herdt's book is a well-written and original work of scholarship that
breaks new g r o u n d both in its analysis of H u m e ' s technical n o t i o n of sympathy, a n d in
its social emphasis of H u m e ' s religious critique.
JAMES FIESER
Universitv of Tennessee at Martin

Richard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso a n d Giorgio Tonelli, editors. Scepticism in the

Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. PP. xiii + 192. Cloth,
$99.oo.
J o h a n van der Zande and Richard H. Popkin, editors. The Skeptical Tradition around
r 8oo: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub-
lishers, x998. Pp. xix + 462. Cloth, $15o.oo.

Who could reasonably question the importance of skepticism for the philosophical
achievements of the period known as the E n l i g h t e n m e n t ? Skepticism seems to be the
most appropriate means for illuminating a philosophical landscape shrouded in fog.
T h e relatively restrained m e t a p h o r of "Aufkldren" was used first by G e r m a n philoso-
phers to describe their project of removing prejudice a n d obscurity. British philoso-
phers instead used the concept of "improvement," a n d in France, the endeavours of
the philosophes were largely associated with a d e t e r m i n e d fight against the dogmatic
teachings of an all-powerful church and for religious a n d political freedom. But n o t
every philosopher who employed skeptical a r g u m e n t s or the method of skepticism was
therefore a skeptic, or someone who i n t e n d e d to establish a form of skepticism. A n d
172 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3 7 : 1 JANUARY 1 9 9 9

some who sought to provide philosophy with a firm anti-skeptical f o u n d a t i o n found

themselves being accused of being skeptics themselves. Berkeley's dogmatic Immate-
rialism was accused immediately of leading right away to the most abstruse kind of
skepticism ever heard of, and Kant's critical philosophy was forbidden in Hessia be-
cause of its alleged skepticism. F u r t h e r m o r e , m a n y philosophers were indebted to some
form of skepticism while not being skeptics themselves. T h u s Reid's common-sense-
philosophy owed as m u c h to H u m e ' s skeptical philosophy as didJ. G. H a m a n n and F.
H. Jacobi.
Modern skepticism goes back to ancient Academic and Pyrrhonian Skepticism,
which m a n y philosophers of the E n l i g h t e n m e n t for one reason or a n o t h e r still consid-
ered as a live option. But exactly what kind of skepticism their own writings entail and
to what extent they were influenced by more m o d e r n types of skepticism--like that to
be f o u n d in the works of Montaigne, Bayle, and o t h e r s - - i s not always easy to decide. In
addition, skepticism was sometimes viewed as a kind of systematic philosophy and the
skeptic was considered to be a specific kind of philosopher, different from a Platonist,
Stoic, or Epicurean, as in H u m e for instance. But the vast majority of philosophers
used skeptical arguments as instruments, or as the first step in laying the foundation
for a new philosophical system. Finally, there are m a n y much more subtle traces of
skepticism in E n l i g h t e n m e n t thought, which cannot always be put together easily in a
comprehensive picture. The many-sided history of skepticism in the eighteenth cen-
tury is accordingly difficult to tell.
Richard H. Popkin's work has been decisive for a further investigation of eigh-
teenth century skepticism. His early "Scepticism in the E n l i g h t e n m e n t " (x963) was
seminal. Popkin pointed out in this article H u m e ' s central position. H u m e marked the
b e g i n n i n g of an increasing debate about different a n d variable types and contents of
E n l i g h t e n m e n t skepticism. Scepticism in the Enlightenment contains articles by Popkin
himself, as well as articles by the late Giorgio Tonelli, known to m a n y as an expert in
Kant's precritical philosophy, and by the late Ezequiel de Olaso, which were directly or
indirectly occasioned by Popkin's work. Only two of the ten articles are new (de Olaso
on "Scepticism Old and New," and Popkin's very useful contribution on "Berkeley in
the History of Scepticism"). But Tonelli's "Kant a n d the Ancient Skeptics," which
appeared in 1967 in German, appears here for the first time in English translation.
Although Tonelli's scholarly article is still of interest today, H u m e ' s influence on Kant's
thought in the middle of the 176o's should not be underestimated. Tonelli also seems
to be too sceptical about Kant's first-hand knowledge of ancient skepticism. For in-
stance, J o h a n n Matthias Gesner's Chrestomathia Graeca (Leipzig, 1731), the school book
used in the Greek class Kant attended as a y o u n g boy, contained excerpts from Sextus
Empiricus' Outlines of P~rrhonism.
T h e value of the collection consists in its b r i n g i n g together some of the work of
three scholars whose lifelong interests in the history of skepticism b r o u g h t them into
close contact both on a personal and on a scholarly level. Although each article deals
with skepticism, each stands on its own as well. T h e exception is Popkin's "New Views
on the Role of Scepticism in the Enlightenment" (1992), which offers a s u m m a r y of the
 BOOK REVIEWS 173

debate. Although Popkin repeats his conviction that H u m e was the major presenter of
skeptical arguments, he withdraws his former assessment that the influence of skepti-
cism decreased considerably within the last decades of the century.
T h e extensive volume on The Skeptical Tradition around z8oo, containing the Pro-
ceedings of a Conference on Skepticism held in Leipzig a n d G6ttingen in 1995, is, so
to speak, a reflection of this new insight into the liveliness of skepticism at the e n d of
the eighteenth century. Its seven sections cover French a n d Scottish skepticism (I),
G e r m a n skepticism u p to and before Kant (II and IID, the impact of skepticism on
the natural sciences (IV), political theory (V) and the G e r m a n historian of skepticism,
Carl Friedrich St/iudlin (VII), whose n a m e is mispelled t h r o u g h o u t in Scepticism in the
Enlightenment. Each section consists of three or four articles and, with only one excep-
tion, a commentary. T h e volume is completed by a helpful lengthly a n n o t a t e d skepti-
cism bibliography for the years 1989 to 1991 by J. R. Maia Neto. Although the
volume deals in an interdisciplinary way with a wide variety of topics reaching from
mathematical skepticism (L. Floridi) to the debate about capital p u n i s h m e n t (O.
Ulbricht), it clearly emphasizes the varieties of skepticism before the publication of
Kant's first Critique, a n d the impact Kant's attempt to refute H u m e had on the philo-
sophical landscape in G e r m a n y at the e n d of the century. Kant was accused by G. E.
Schulze, known as Aenesidemus-Schulze, of being unsuccessful in doing so. Schulze's
critique aroused an extensive discussion itself and gave rise to n u m e r o u s attempts,
most notably Reinhold's Elementarphilosophie, to find a new Kantian f o u n d a t i o n for
epistemology, which resists H u m e ' s skepticism. T h e essays dealing with these topics
byJ. van der Zande, M. Kuehn, D. Breazeale and A. Engstler, to n a m e just a view, are
indispensable reading.
But Kant's philosophy in general a n d his taxonomy of dogmatism, skepticism a n d
criticism in particular as the only three possible forms of philosophy also influenced
much of the work done at that time about the history of philosophy. A famous example
is St/iudlin's History and Spirit of Skepticism (1794) said to be the first history of skepticism.
Stfiudlin, however, was not a skeptic himself, although he was, followingJ. G. Sulzer's
famous statement in his preface to the G e r m a n translation of H u m e ' s Enquiry concerning
Human Understanding (Hamburg a n d Leipzig, 1755), of the o p i n i o n that skeptical ques-
tioning stimulates or should stimulate true philosophy. J. C. Laursen describes
St/iudlin's skepticism as "a Kantian a n d Christian skepticism." As an a d m i r e r of Kant,
he was of the o p i n i o n that extreme forms of skepticism were refuted by his Copernican
Revolution, and he saw the need to inform the G e r m a n audience about one of its main
targets. I n doing so, he also informs his reader on a large scale about H u m e ' s work.
However, the contributers to the section dealing with Stfiudlin fail to note that he also
translated H u m e ' s essay "Of Suicide" for the very first time into G e r m a n , whose conclu-
sion he treats with contempt. But this observation does n o t diminish in any degree the
importance of the main essays of this section dealing with Stfiudlin by Popkin, C. W. T.
Blackwell, Laursen a n d U.J. Schneider. To my knowledge, this is the first c o m p r e h e n -
sive attempt to c o m p r e h e n d Stfiudlin's work.
W i t h o u t doubt these volumes are indispensable for everybody interested in the
a74 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY o r PHILOSOPHY 3 7 : 1 JANUARY ~ 9 9 9

E n l i g h t e n m e n t in general a n d in the history of skepticism from the 176o's to the

b e g i n n i n g of the n i n e t e e n t h century in particular.
H ~ r N E R F. KLEMME
Otto-von-Guericke Universitdt Magdeburg

Robert R. Williams. Hegel's Ethics of Recognition. Los Angeles: University of California

Press, a998. Pp. xviii +433- Cloth, $6o.oo.

T h e e m i n e n t Hegel scholar, Vittorio Hoesle, perceived the major weakness of Hegel's

philosophy in its seeming failure to adequately deal with the issue of interpersonal
relations. Hardly a new objection, as Hoesle's critique has a lineage that reaches at least as
far back as Schleiermacher. Against this thesis, Robert Williams had earlier developed a
coun ter-argument which he presented in his work, Recognition:Fichte andHegel on the Other
(1992). I n this foundational work, Williams drew out and clarified Hegel's concept of
recognition from its inchoate source in Fichte; and by so doing defended "Hegel against
charges that his thought violates intersubjectivity a n d difference by reducing the other to
the same."(l) I n the present work, the conceptual a n d textual g r o u n d s established by
Williams in his first work on the topic allow for a more extensive extrapolation of Hegel's
doctrine, and argues that "The story of recognition is a story about Fichte and Hegel.
Fichte introduced the concept but did not make it the basis of either his ethics or his
politics. Hegel appropriated a n d transformed the concept of recognition and regarded it
as the f u n d a m e n t a l intersubjective structure of ethical life." (26)
After a brief introductory critical survey of some of the more or less misleading
contemporary views of both Hegelians and non-Hegelians regarding Hegel's concept
of interpersonal recognition, Williams proceeds to present its historical genesis, of how
it emerged from its early and unfocused appearances in the philosophies of Fichte and
Schelling. Williams then traces the further development and elaboration of this con-
cept as it gains expression in the course of Hegel's own ethical theory, not only as it is
f o u n d in such major works as the Phenomenology of Mind and The Philosophy of Spirit, but
also as it appears in his earlier and lesser known Jena Manuscripts of x8o 5. After this
preliminary doctrinal and historical introduction, Williams turns to the most substantial
section of his study, that work of Hegel's in which the concept of recognition would be
expected to and does indeed play its most evident ethical role: The Philosophy of Right.
Almost every category within The Philosophy of Right is examined not only for the
appearance of the concept, but for the defining role which it plays in the construction
of that category. Such an examination is necessary for Williams, since "Reciprocal
recognition in its various determinate types and instances is the general structure of
ethical life and the e m b o d i m e n t of social reason that underlies and supports the con-
cepts of law and state." (364) A m o n g the categories considered, categories that Wil-
liams discusses within the context of contemporary issues and each of which is taken up
in a separate chapter of his work, are Family, Crime and Punishment, Poverty, and the
State. In every instance considered he argues that an u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the defining
role of recognition is a necessary prerequisite not only for a clear a n d correct compre-