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This book offers a detailed and scholarly historical and philosophical examination of French scepticism from Descartes to the beginning of the Enlightenment by examining the views of Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721). It shows the crucial role played by Huet in the modification of the early modern sceptical tradition: from a practical perspective closer to ancient scepticism, mostly presented by Montaigne and Charron, to an epistemological and metaphysical perspective strongly influenced by Descartes's doubt. The book examines and gives original interpretations of the various sceptical (and semi-sceptical) views held in the period and their connections to Huet's own scepticism. Besides known philosophers such as Descartes, Gassendi, Pascal and Bayle, the book also accesses sceptical views held by secondary figures such as La Mothe Le Vayer and Simon Foucher and others who have not thus far been connected to the sceptical tradition such as Jean-Baptiste du Hamel and Madeleine de Scudéry. The book is useful for scholars in the field of early modern ideas: philosophical, religious and scientific.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Erudite Libertines.- Chapter 3. Traité Philosophique de la Faiblesse de l'Esprit Humain: First Book of Huet's Planned Alnetanae Quaestiones in Five Books.- Chapter 4. From Cartesian Physics to Cartesian Skepticism against Cartesian Metaphysics.- Chapter 5. French Skeptics in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century.- Chapter 6. Conclusion.
About the author
José R. Maia Neto is an expert on the history of modern scepticism who teaches at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. His areas of interest also include early modern history of ideas (philosophical, scientific and religious), Socrates and ancient scepticism, philosophy and literature, and the Brazilian Nineteenth century writer Machado de Assis. He is the author of
Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian (Purdue U. P, 1994),
The Christianization of Pyrrhonism (Kluwer, 1995) and Academic Skepticism in Seventeenth-Century French Philosophy (Springer, 2014). With Richard Popkin, he co-edited
Skepticism in Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Thought (Humanity Books, 2004) and
Skepticism, an Anthology (Prometheus Books, 2007); with Gianni Paganini he co-edited
Renaissance Scepticisms (Springer, 2009), and with G. Paganini and John Laursen,
Skepticism in the Modern Age (Brill, 2009).
