Abstract
It is not surprising that attempts to recommend a particular version of Christian faith as the outcome of Skeptical disillusionment with reason and an example of Skeptical calm and detachment, should seem to many to be so obviously implausible that their authors were accused of insincerity or concealed apostasy. Both Montaigne and Bayle are most commonly read, in fact, as anti-religious figures who veiled their agnosticism under thin disguises in order to avoid persecution or inconvenience. I do not think that these judgments are correct, though I do agree that the attempted assimilation of faith to Skeptical detachment and conformity cannot work.
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Notes
The text of the Erasmus-Luther debate that I cite here is that contained in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, ed. by E. G. Rupp and P. S. Watson, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1969.
Its full title was: Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per Bullam Leonis X novissiman damnatorum, 1520.
Erasmus, op. cit., p. 37.
It is entitled The Bondage of the Will.
Luther, op. cit., p. 105.
Op. cit., p. 109.
See Revelation 3:15.
See Chapter III of Popkin’s History of Scepticism.
From The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, trans. Jacob Zeitlin, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1935, Vol. II, p. 233.
Montaigne, op. cit., p. 269.
See Popkin, op. cit., Chapter III.
For the more standard view of Bayle see Howard Robinson, Bayle the Sceptic. Columbia University Press, New York, 1931
the positive interpretation, which I follow here, is argued in Karl C. Sandberg, At the Crossroads of Faith and Reason: An Essay on Pierre Bayle, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1966
For a comparison of Bayle with Montaigne, see Craig B. Brush, Montaigne and Bayle: Variations on the Theme of Skepticism, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1966. The more positive reading of Bayle is defended by Popkin in the introduction of his Selections from the Historical and Critical Dictionary (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1965) and in his article, ‘Bayle’ in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Paul Edwards, Macmillan, New York, 1967. Quotations from Bayle are from the translations in Popkin’s selections; with author’s permission.
At least he quotes from La Mothe le Vayer to this effect in Remark C to the article ‘Pyrrho’ (Popkin, p. 208).
Third Clarification II; Popkin, p. 423.
Third Clarification VIII; Popkin, p. 435.
Second Clarification; Popkin, p. 414.
‘Spinoza’, Remark M; Popkin, pp. 298–299.
See Popkin, op. cit., footnote pp. 199–200.
The equivalence is not, of course, an exact one. See Sextus, PH III, 64–81, and M X, 168.
See Popkin, History of Scepticism, Chapter III.
See Popkin’s article ‘Huet, Pierre-Daniel’ in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the references in The High Road to Pyrrhonism.
See Note 5 to Chapter I.
See below, Chapter 6.
For a general discussion of the significance of this device, see my essay ‘Human Nature and External Desires’, The Monist, Vol. 62, 1979.
See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, Book IX. This aspect of Pyrrhonism is emphasized in Burnyeat, ‘Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?’, and is discussed further below.
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© 1983 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Penelhum, T. (1983). Conformist Fideism — I. In: God and Skepticism. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7083-0_2
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