Skepsis. Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme.

Montaigne,
Le Vayer, Campanella, Hobbes, Descartes, Bayle (review)
Jean-Robert Armogathe

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 48, Number 2, April 2010,

pp. 241-243 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/hph.0.0196

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v048/48.2.armogathe.html

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 book reviews 241
exegetically refigures them into a vision of Jewish sociality organized entirely around the
cardinal value of metaphysical wisdom. This book will be of lasting value for those interested
in the concrete means by which text-centered religions, in this case Judaism, incorporate
philosophical claims and thereby transform themselves.
A particularly interesting chapter is devoted to the striking idea of “imperial humility”
as it emerges in Maimonides’ account of kingship. This is a notable insight that deserves
widespread attention, but it needs to be reconciled with the fact that Maimonides also invests
this humble king with the power to execute felons at a whim, according to his unregulated
conception of the public good. Diamond’s portrait of Maimonides’ king looks a bit too
much like Gandhi, whereas he probably resembles Ahmadinejad: humble, but ruthless.
But Diamond’s overarching thesis is compelling. Maimonides’ revisionary hermeneutic
“deontologizes” the social and theological hierarchies of Judaism according to which people,
like God, have given positions in the order of things. Maimonides, for whom the intellect
was the highest accolade, displaces these givens by means of philosophical exegesis; kings
are majestically humble, converts are revered like patriarchs, and the indwelling of God is
outcast to a placelessness that only the mind can reach. This insight even draws the medieval
Jewish metaphysician into relation with “post-metaphysical” theologians who likewise seek
access to “God without being.”
The final chapter examines Maimonides’ interpretation of the meaning of the Sabbath,
the temporal “outsider” within the order of creation. This impressive chapter meticulously
reconstructs Maimonides’ reversal of the dominant view that sees the Sabbath as marking
the seal of God’s supernatural powers over the laws of nature. For Maimonides, the Sab-
bath signifies the cessation of the anomalous state of the world prior to the establishment
of the laws of nature and thus repeatedly confirms the passage from our dependence on
an inscrutable divine will to our rational capacity to understand the cosmos and govern
ourselves.
A valuable index to all cited primary sources will assist the numerous readers who will
want to revisit particular cases in which Diamond reveals Maimonides concealing his radical
transformation of Judaism amid his philosophical exegesis.
Michael Fagenblat
Monash University

Gianni Paganini. Skepsis. Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme. Montaigne, Le Vayer, Campanella,
Hobbes, Descartes, Bayle. Paris: Vrin, 2008. Pp. 448. Paper, e36.00.

The countryside around what Bayle called “the high road of pyrrhonism” has been often
explored in the last fifty years. Richard Popkin (1923–2005) was the first cartographer to
draw a map when he published the History of Scepticism in 1960. Against Busson’s view of
scepticism as a variant of irreligion (see his 1933 book, La pensée religieuse française de Char-
ron à Pascal), Popkin provided a more subtle interpretation, where scepticism is a via media
between atheism and religion—a third way, akin to fideism. Later, Popkin came to distinguish
between pyrrhonian scepticism (often of a scientific sort) and a scepticism “coming from
heaven” based on divine omnipotence and situated in a theological perspective. Discussions
of scepticism during the past decade have often been limited to historiographical debates
that quickly produced controversial interpretations. Well aware of this recent trend, Gianni
Paganini proposes a new reading of modern scepticism, which he uses to explore modern
philosophy and define its major issues.
Paganini himself contributed to the historiographical debate in his valuable edition
(with G. Canziani) of the Theophrastus redivivus (1981), as well as in numerous edited col-
lections. The present volume contains nine papers originally given as lectures and now
carefully rewritten and enlarged for publication. Each of the six chapters revolves around
a precise argument, often original and always stimulating.
242 j o u r n a l o f t h e h i s t o r y o f p h i l o s o p h y 4 8 : 2 a p r i l 2 0 1 0
Everything begins with Montaigne, who in fantasie reassesses the sceptical doctrine
of the phenomenon: la fantasie et apparence n’est pas du sujet, ains seulement de la passion et
souffrance du sens (Essais II, XII, ed. Villey, 601). Through a detailed examination of Henri
Estienne’s Latin translation of the Hypotyposes, Paganini shows how ‘apparentia’ serves to
translate the Greek ‘phainomena’. Montaigne avoids the technical term, but borrows his
translation from the lexicon of appearance, giving to posterity the Sextian phenomenon
and not the Pyrrhonian “appearance.”
La Mothe Le Vayer remains enigmatic. Although he certainly “added a libertine de-
velopment to Montaigne’s scepticism” (S. Giocanti), this cannot be separated from the
status of religious orthodoxy in the mid-seventeenth century, especially in the Gallican
areas. To mention Foscarini (who had been condemned by the Roman Inquisition) was
not very risky in France, where non viget Index Romanus (the Roman Index does not ap-
ply). The pious Seguier, Chancellor of the Kingdom of France, did not hesitate to publish
in 1636 a manuscript written in 1580 by his grandfather, Pierre Seguier, defending the
salvation of heathens. Antoine Arnauld wrote a refutation (published posthumously in
1701) simultaneously aimed at Seguier, La Mothe Le Vayer, and Father Sirmond. For the
young theologian of Port-Royal, they were all guilty of claiming that one does not have to
believe in Jesus Christ to be saved; thus, a pious statesman, the preceptor of the King, and
a learned Jesuit all shared the concept of a Universalist Christianity! Paganini is cautious
about the concept of sceptique chrétienne, insisting that it must be linked to what orthodoxy
meant then. It was a concept in progress, built up by successive condemnations of errors
by the Roman magisterium. Practical theology developed very slowly and did not entail a
rigid orthodoxy until the end of the century.
The second important claim in the present volume is that scepticism has been fruitful
even for “dogmatic” philosophers such as Campanella, Mersenne, and Descartes. In the
last few years, Italian historians of philosophy have worked to rehabilitate Campanella. In
his (too) many books, Campanella absorbed the culture of his time: the first book of his
Universalis philosophia (which includes his Metaphysica) deals with sceptical arguments, but
it was published only in 1638, and seen as outdated by readers of the more recent Discours
de la méthode. Paganini convincingly shows that Mersenne ruthlessly (and literally) bor-
rowed the sceptical arguments he refutes in La vérité des sciences (1625) from Campanella.
But his refutation is weaker than that of the Calabrese monk because it only demonstrates
the reliability of sensorial evidence, whereas Campanella claims that all we know (through
acquired knowledge) is “perception and judgment about passion, and consequently about
its object.” According to Campanella, scepticism is more excess than error, so he proposes
an original theory of knowledge where knowing always involves knowing oneself.
The chapters on Descartes have plenty of new insights. Paganini carefully tracks Des-
cartes’s Campanellian readings. Having read the De sensu rerum in 1623, Descartes declined
to read the Metaphysica in 1638 and caught just a glimpse of the Compendium sent by Huy-
gens. Against Blanchet’s view that Descartes borrows the cogito from Campanella, Paganini
reaches the conclusion—which he sees as elusive but nevertheless important—that Descartes
remained untouched by Campanella’s influence. But these events played an important role
in Descartes’s own use of the primary quality of feeling, and of feeling one’s own self, as
essential to ground certitude against sceptical arguments.
Similar insights are made with regard to Hobbes. The principle of material causality
is the bulwark of his theory of knowledge, but Paganini shows very aptly that the Sextian
critique of causality in the tropes attributed to Aenesidemus was not widely accepted by
modern sceptics before Hume. Sanches, for example, still refers to Aristotelian knowledge
per causas, while recognizing the numerous difficulties preventing rei perfecta cognitio. Hobbes
uses this causality to affirm the knowledge of substance, but he makes a further distinction
between two kinds of accidents: those without which substance is unthinkable, and those
that are ephemeral and decayed. In Hume, the sceptical dichotomy between appearances
and objects is transferred to the world of accidents; the world of bodies withdraws into a
rational and hypothetical background, leaving fantasmata or accidents on center stage.
 book reviews 243
Descartes (and Cartesianism) reappears in the last two chapters (though in the Hobbes
chapter, Paganini underlines the importance of the Third Objections and their coherence
with Hobbes’ general system). Descartes’s dialogue with contemporary sceptics such as
Sanches, Montaigne, and Charron, but also La Mothe Le Vayer (a relationship that has
seldom been studied and that Paganini explores exhaustively) sheds light on his own use
of sceptical arguments, showing that he was not solely concerned with ancient scepticism.
It is worth noting that the Cartesian use of doubt, which made scepticism fashionable, put
Descartes under suspicion of Nicodemism and hypocrisy, especially among German (and
Lutheran) commentators who frequently denounced Cartesian philosophers as undercover
sceptics. Paganini scrutinizes more neglected Cartesian sources, such as the Seventh Replies
and the Recherche de la vérité (very aptly compared to La Mothe Le Vayer’s Dialogues), giving
special attention to Sanches, whose dogmatic 1576 treatise on doubt, Quod nihil scitur, may
have provided Descartes with a literary model for the Discourse.
The last chapter is devoted to Pierre Bayle. Paganini is very cautious when it comes to
Bayle’s religious views. The positions adopted by Elisabeth Labrousse, Gianluca Mori, Hu-
bert Bost, Thomas Lennon, and others demonstrate the range of possible interpretations.
We may say simply that the debate stems from two currents in Bayle’s thought: materialist
Stratonism and Christian scepticism. Paganini provides historical background for discussions
between Pascal and the Chevalier de Méré about mathematics in the Second Objections to
Descartes’s Meditations, in the correspondence between Leibniz and Foucher, and in the
debate between Arnauld and Malebranche about the existence of bodies. He concludes
that Baylian thought puts an end to the great conflict between the notions of divine om-
nipotence and divine veracity by making such appeals illegitimate.
This book is not merely a piece of historical research. Besides showing that scepticism
is central to modern thought, it promises new insights for a variety of approaches to phi-
losophy. In short, Paganini makes a very clear and very convincing case for re-drawing the
map of the origins of modern thought.
Jean-Robert Armogathe
Ecole pratique des Hautes études, Paris

Kevin J. Harrelson. The Ontological Argument from Descartes to Hegel. JHP Books Series. Am-
herst, NY : Humanity Books, 2009. Pp. 253. Cloth, $39.98.

Kevin Harrelson’s book commences with the following words:

This book provides a philosophical analysis of the several debates concerning the
“ontological argument” from the middle of the seventeenth to the beginning of the
nineteenth century. My aim in writing it was twofold. First, I wished to provide a detailed
and comprehensive account of the history of these debates, which I perceived to be lack-
ing in the scholarly literature. Second, I wanted also to pursue a more philosophically
interesting question concerning the apparent unassailability of ontological arguments.
In pursuit of this latter problem, the driving question that my account addresses is “why
has this argument, or kind of argument, been such a constant in otherwise diverse
philosophical contexts and periods?” (9)
I think that there is no doubt that Harrelson succeeds in the first of these aims. He has,
indeed, produced a detailed scholarly account of the history of debates about ontological
arguments from the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.
His history is engaging and interesting, covering a wide range of authors with diverse
philosophical orientations: Descartes, Arnauld, Caterus, Gassendi, Hobbes, Mersenne,
More, Geulincx, Cudworth, Locke, Clarke, Malebranche, Huet, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff,
Baumgarten, Eberhard, Crusius, Kant, Mendelssohn, and Hegel, among others. It seems
to me that anyone who works on the treatment of ontological arguments in this period is
bound to profit from Harrelson’s study.