The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume and Kant

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