Skepticism as a Sect, Skepticism as a Philosophical Stance: Johann Jakob Brucker Versus Carl Friedrich Stäudlin

Abstract

At the first conference of this series on the history of skepticism organized by Richard Popkin¹ and Charles Schmitt at Wolfenbüttel, Schmitt² set out how skepticism was described in histories of philosophy, taking his essay up to Johann Jakob Brucker.³ Schmitt says of Brucker: “he clearly sees the general picture and notes astutely the similarity and differences between ancient and modem skepticism, as well as comprehending the vast diversity in viewpoint among the modem skeptics.”⁴ When Brucker’s writing on skepticism, both ancient and modern, are compared with those by the late eighteenth-century German theologian, Carl Friedrich Stäudlin, one is immediately struck by the wealth of sources on skepticism available to them both, an availability which increased during the century.⁵ They had three traditions of ancient skepticism to draw on, one which came from a reading of the “Life of Pyrrho” in Diogenes Laertius, one from an interpretation of Cicero’s Academica, and one from Sextus Empiricus. At this time the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French skeptical works were first published in Germany and then the translation of David Hume’s life and writings.