SKEPTICISM AND POLITICS
Claims to know something are ubiquitous in politics and government.
Among other purposes, such claims are used on the one hand
to support positions, policies, and personalities, and on the other
hand to undermine institutions, ideologies, and particular individuals.
One time-honored way of fighting such claims has been to
draw attention to the philosophical problems associated with any
claim to knowledge. A major source of such problems has been the
various skeptical traditions. This is a book about the relationship
between certain important skeptical traditions and politics.
Skepticism is widely understood to entail doubt, distrust, criticism,
a negative attitude, and especially religious unbelief and
atheism. It is sometimes treated as a timeless perspective that needs
no historical or philosophical analysis and is immediately obvious
to anyone who uses the language. But it turns out that there has
been an identifiable and vigorous set of closely related traditions of
skepticism throughout the history of ideas that merits consideration
as skepticism properly understood. It should be clear from the
outset that this book is about certain historical traditions of
skepticism, and not about every conceivable skepticism. Although
these traditions have been closely associated with the history of
philosophy, it is not quite accurate to characterize most of them as
philosophical skepticism because on most interpretations these
traditions were more anti-philosophical than philosophical.
The historical traditions of skepticism have been traced to