Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wtssw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-21T23:02:12.195Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

28 - Skepticism

from IV - Soul and knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

Dominik Perler
Affiliation:
Humboldt Universität
Robert Pasnau
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
Christina van Dyke
Affiliation:
Calvin College, Michigan
Get access

Summary

Searching for skepticism in medieval philosophy seems to be a vain enterprise, because no philosopher in the Christian tradition radically doubted or even denied the possibility that human beings can have knowledge. Nor did thinkers in the Jewish or Islamic tradition categorically refute the claim that human knowledge is possible, despite their criticisms of the incompleteness and fallibility of our cognitive faculties. All of them agreed that our faculties enable us to acquire a wide range of knowledge – of material things as well as of mental, mathematical, and other intelligible objects. Their main concern was not to establish that we can have knowledge but to explain how, that is, by what kind of cognitive mechanism, we are able to acquire it. There is no evidence that they were interested in Pyrrhonism, one of the main forms of ancient skepticism that aimed to show how one can reach “mental tranquility” and a happy life by suspending all beliefs. Although a Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism was available before 1300, this key text had no visible impact on debates in Western Europe. All philosophers in the Latin tradition subscribed to the thesis that we are entitled to have beliefs; they even claimed that we need beliefs to choose specific actions and to pursue a happy life. Thanks to Cicero’s Academica and Augustine’s Contra academicos, Academic skepticism, the second major form of ancient skepticism, was to some extent known during the Middle Ages. But it did not spark an extensive debate or a “skeptical crisis.” Medieval authors in the Latin West occasionally referred to skeptical arguments and examples presented in these texts (such as cases of sensory illusions and dream experiences), but without drawing radical skeptical conclusions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Wittwer, Roland, Sextus Latinus: Die erste lateinische Übersetzung von Sextus Empiricus’ Pyrrhoneioi Hypotyposeis (Leiden: Brill
Schmitt, Charles, Cicero Scepticus. A Study of the Influence of the Academica in the Renaissance (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972)
Marrone, Steven, The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2001)
Pasnau, Robert, “Henry of Ghent and the Twilight of Divine Illumination,” Review of Metaphysics 49 (1995) 49–75Google Scholar
Perler, Dominik, Theorien der Intentionalität im Mittelalter (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2002) pp. 207–30
Courtenay, William, “The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages,” in Rudavsky, T. (ed.) Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy (Boston: Reidel, 1985) 243–69
Maier, Anneliese, “Das Problem der Evidenz in der Philosophie des 14. Jahrhunderts,” in Ausgehendes Mittelalter: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1967) II: 367–418;
Perler, Dominik, “Does God Deceive Us? Skeptical Hypotheses in Late Medieval Epistemology,” in Lagerlund, H. (ed.), Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 171–92
Spruit, Leen, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge (Leiden: Brill, 1994)
Tachau, Katherine, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1340 (Leiden, Brill, 1988)
Pasnau, Robert, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) pp. 236–7
Denery, Dallas, Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology and Religious Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Kaluza, Zénon, Nicolas d’Autrécourt: ami de la vérité (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1995)
Grellard, Christophe, Croire et savoir: les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d’Autrécourt (Paris: Vrin, 2005)
Perler, , Zweifel und Gewissheit: skeptische Debatten im Mittelalter (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2006)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Skepticism
  • Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
  • Online publication: 05 August 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107446953.034
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Skepticism
  • Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
  • Online publication: 05 August 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107446953.034
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Skepticism
  • Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
  • Online publication: 05 August 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107446953.034
Available formats
×