THE SKEPTICAL TRADITION AROUND 1800 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 155 THE SKEPTICAL TRADITION AROUND 1800 Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society edited by JOHAN VAN DER ZANDE AND RICHARD H. POPKIN Founding Directors: P.Dibont (Paris) and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis & UCLA) Director: Sarah Hutton (The University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom) Co-Editors: J.E. Force (Lexington); C. Laursen (Riverside) Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (Paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A, Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory (Rome); J.D. North (Groningen); M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington); Th. Verbeek (Utrecht) Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); B. Copenhaver (Los Angeles); A. Crombie (Oxford); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop (Melbourne); P.O. Kristeller (Columbia University); E. Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Malarczyk (Lublin); J. Orcibal (Paris); W. ROd (Miinchen); G. Rousseau (Los Angeles); H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P. Schobinger (Ziirich); J. Tans (Groningen) THE SKEPTICAL TRADITION AROUND 1800 Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society edited by JOHAN VAN DER ZANDE University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. and RICHARD H. POPKIN Washington University, St. Louis and University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A. SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-4946-9 ISBN 978-94-017-3465-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-3465-3 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ..................................... ix Preface ........................................... xi Richard H. Popkin Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv lohan van der Zande I. FRENCH AND SCOTTISH SKEPTICISM The Existence of External Objects in Hume's Treatise: Realism, Skepticism, and the Task of Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Marina Frasca-Spada Hume and Skepticism in Late Eighteenth-Century France ............. 15 Laurence L. Bongie Brissot and Condorcet: Skeptical Philosophers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Richard H. Popkin Mathematical Skepticism: A Sketch with Historian in Foreground ........ 41 Luciano Floridi Commentary: Pascal, Skepticism, and the French Enlightenment ........ 61 lose R. Maia Neto II. GERMAN SKEPTICISM UP TO KANT The Moderate Skepticism of German Popular Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 lohan van der Zande Skepticism: Philosophical Disease or Cure? ..................... 81 Manfred Kuehn Kant's Responses to Skepticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 101 Rudolf A. Makkreel Commentary: Skepticism in Eighteenth-Century German Philosophy 111 John Christian Laursen v vi III. GERMAN SKEPTICISM AFTER KANT Putting Doubt in Its Place: Karl Leonhard Reinhold on the Relationship between Philosophical Skepticism and Transcendental Idealism ........ 119 Daniel Breazeale Polemic and Dogmatism: The Two Faces of Skepticism in Aenesidemus-Schulze ................................ 133 Thomas Grundmann Skepticism and Methodological Monism: Aenesidemus-Schulze versus Arcesilaus-Erhard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 143 Marcelo Stamm Commentary: Reading Schulze's Aenesidemus ................... 159 Achim Engstler IV. SCIENCE AND SKEPTICISM "Baconianism" in Revolutionary Germany: Humboldt's "Great Instauration" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 175 Michael Dettelbach A Scientist Responds to his Skeptical Crisis: Laplace's Philosophy of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 187 Roger Hahn Analogy, Comparison, and Active Living Forces: Late Enlightenment Responses to the Skeptical Critique of Causal Analysis ............. 203 Peter H. Reill Commentary ....................................... 213 William Clark V. SKEPTICISM AND POLITICAL THEORIES The Practical Value of Hume's Mitigated Skepticism ................. 221 Dario Castiglione Burke and the Religious Sources of Skeptical Conservatism .......... 235 lain Hampsher-Monk Tocqueville's Flight from Doubt and His Search for Certainty: Skepticism in a Democratic Age ........................... 261 Harvey Mitchell vii VI. SKEPTICISM AND SOCIAL ISSUES What Do You Think of Smallpox Inoculation? A Crucial Question in the Eighteenth Century, Not Only for Physicians ............... 283 Peter Albrecht Skepticism and the Discourse about Suicide in the Eighteenth Century: Traces of a Philosophical Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Vera Lind The Debate about Capital Punishment and Skepticism in Late Enlightenment Germany ................................ 315 Otto Ulbricht Commentary: Skepticism and Social Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Joachim Whaley VII. CARL FRIEDRICH STAUDLIN IN CONTEXT Some Thoughts about Staudlin's History and Spirit of Skepticism . . . . . .. 339 Richard Popkin Skepticism as a Sect, Skepticism as a Philosophical Stance: Johann Jakob Brucker versus Carl Friedrich Staudlin .............. 343 Constance W. T. Blackwell Skepticism and the History of Moral Philosophy: The Case of Carl Friedrich Staudlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 John Christian Laursen Commentary: Staudlin and the Historiography of Philosophy. . . . . . . . .. 379 Ulrich Johannes Schneider VIII. SKEPTICISM BmLIOGRAPHY, 1989-1991: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 Jose R. Maia Neto Bibliography, 1989-91 .................................. 393 Bibliography Index ................................... 455 Index of Names ..................................... 457 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume contains the Proceedings of the Conference on Skepticism in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century, held in Leipzig and Gattingen in July 1995. The conference was sponsored by The Foundation for Intellectual History (London), the UCLA Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the Zentrum fUr Hahere Studien der Universitiit Leipzig. The editors thank the University of Leipzig, in particular Matthias Middell of the Zentrum, and the Max-Planck-Institut fUr Geschichte in Gattingen for their hospitality. We would like to express our gratitude to the organizers of the conference, Hartmut Lehmann, Director, Max-Planck-Institut fUr Geschichte, Richard H. Popkin, Peter Reill, Director, UCLA Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Studies, but especially to Hans BOdeker, Senior Research Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut. We also thank the staff of the UCLA Center, in partic ular its Managing Editor, Marina Romani, for her very efficient and courteous help. ix PREFACE In the early 1980s the late Charles B. Schmitt and I discussed the fact that so much new research and new interpretations were taking place concerning various areas of modem skepticism that we, as pioneers, ought to organize a conference where these new findings and outlooks could be presented and discussed. Charles and I had both visited the great library at Wolfenbiittel, and were most happy when the Herzog August Bibliothek agreed to host the first conference on the history of skepticism, in 1984 (published as Skepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R.H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt [Wiesbaden, 1987, Wolfenbiitteler For schungen, vol. 35]) Charles and I projected a series of later conferences, the first of which would deal with skepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately, however, Charles died suddenly in 1986, while lecturing in Padua. Subsequent to his death Constance Blackwell, his companion of many years, established the Foundation for Intellectual History to support research and publica tion on topics in the history of ideas that continued Schmitt's interests. One of the first ventures was to arrange and fund the already planned conference on skepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After many difficulties and problems, the conference was sponsored and funded by the Foundation for Intel lectual History, one of its first public activities. It was held at the lovely facilities of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar in 1990. Scholars were brought together from North and South America as well as many European countries. They were able to discuss and debate various topics formally and inform ally over four days. The results were published as Skepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. R.H. Popkin and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden, 1993). The success of these first two conferences about themes in the history of modem skepticism led Constance Blackwell and I to consider a subsequent conference dealing with skepticism at the end of the eighteenth century. This seemed to us to be an area where, traditionally, philosophers had seen skepticism only in terms of Hume's views and Kant's reaction to them. Few were concerned with the kinds of skepticism that emerged from the French Enlightenment. And few knew or cared about skepticism in Germany before, during, and after Kant's efforts. (In fact, at the Wolfenbiittel conference, Myles Burnyeat had expressed the opinion that after Kant's achievement, skepticism ceased to be a philosophic problem. I replied that Kaht~s solution only lasted a few weeks until it was attacked and skeptically challenged by Maimon, Hamann, Schulze and others. Burnyeat was surprised and asked if anyone but Popkin knew about these figures.) Realizing that skepticism in Germany would be a central part of the next conference, we started looking for a host institution there. I discussed possibilities with Peter Reill of the UCLA Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Studies, who was involved with the leaders of the Max-Planck-Institute for Historical Studies in Gottingen and with members of the German Historical Institutes in xi xii Preface Washington and London. With Hartmut Lehmann's appointment as the Director of the Max-Planck-Institute we found a fine location for our conference. Years earlier on a visit to Gottingen I was impressed by how much the University had kept its late eighteenth-century persona. The plaques on the buildings telling of the many distinguished figures who had been there indicated that this was one of the most important centers of skeptical discussion at the time. Among the attractions of Gottingen was the fact that the first history of skepti cism, by Carl Friedrich Staudlin, was written and published there in 1794. Constance Blackwell and I tried to aim at holding the conference in 1994, the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Stliudlin's work. But due to financial and logistical problems we had to wait another year. In the meantime one of our friends, Dr. Ulrich Schneider of Leipzig University, who had written on Staudlin, brought up the possibility of holding the conference partially in Leipzig and then at Gottingen, where we would do homage to Stliudlin and launch him into the modem intellectual world. We had hoped to have an English translation of his two volumes ready for publication by the time of the conference but though well on its way that has not yet come to pass. With the help and resources of the Foundation for Intellectual History, the UCLA Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Max-Planck Institute at GOttingen, and Leipzig University, we were ready to proceed. In late June of 1995 I met with Hans BOdeker of the Max-Planck-Institute and Ulrich Schneider in a park in London across the street from the Italian Cultural Institute where we had all been at a meeting organized by Constance Blackwell. There on a park bench we drew up an outline of the program, a list of people to be invited, topics to be discussed at the conference, and some of the logistics of a conference to be held at two distant locales. We planned to cover both theoretical and practical subjects insofar as they indicated the role of skepticism in the period. When we had fmished our meeting, believing we had the whole conference successfully planned, we discovered to our astonishment that we were in a private park, and that while we had been deep in discussion the park had been locked up and only people with a key could enter or exit the park. While we debated whether to send our youngest and fittest confrere, Ulrich Schneider, to scale the wall (and risk the wrath of the local constabulary), a woman came by apparently from a tennis court. When she heard our plight, rather than calling the police, she took out her key and released us. We returned to our respective homes, and the Max-Planck-Institute began the task of assembling the participants and setting up the actual program. Faxes went back and forth across the Atlantic during the fall and winter of 1994-95. In early 1995 my health got worse, and my doctor unfortunately told me that I could not do any flying at the time. (The situation has gotten worse, and it seems that I will not be able to fly anywhere in the future.) I, therefore, had to drop out of the conference, and leave my colleagues with all of the problems. And I had to miss the intellectual joy of participating in the actual conference, both with the feast of ideas and the give and take of the many discussions that took place. In fact I had to drop out of a conference on skepticism in Paris prior to our meeting, and another