The Return of Scepticism

1. The English Context: From Hobbes to Locke.- Hobbes among ancient and modern sceptics: phenomena and bodies.- John Locke and the sceptics.- ‘Conjecture’, ‘conceivability’, ‘existence’ between Henry More and Ralph Cudworth.- 2. Descartes and his Context.- Charron’s epoché and Descartes’ cogito: the sceptical base of Descartes’ refutation of scepticism.- Scepticisme, tromperie et mensonge chez La Mothe Le Vayer et Descartes.- 3. Post-Cartesian Ramifications.- Against Descartes: Marten Schoock’s De Scepticismo.- Huet, Malebranche and the birth of skepticism.- Arnauld’s posthumous defense of the “philosophie humaine” against heretics and sceptics.- Foucher and the dilemmas of representation: a ‘modern’ problem?.- Scepticism and analysis: Villemandy as a critic of Descartes.- Sceptical readings. of Cartesian evidence in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy.- 4. Politics and Religion.- Scepticism at Port-Royal: the perversion of Pyrrhonian doubt.- Sorbière’s scepticism: between naturalism and absolutism.- Scepticism and the theory of toleration: human fallibility and ‘adiaphora’.- 5. Scepticism and Sciences.- Medicine and skepticism: Martín Martínez (1684–1734).- From Galileo to Vico. The uncertainty and arrogance of knowledge.- Scepticism and semantic theory: from Locke to Du Marsais.- Le vertige du pyrrhonisme: Hardouin face à l’histoire.- 6. Bayle’s Age.- Théories sceptiques de la politique: Montaigne et Bayle.- Pierre Bayle on scepticism and “common notions”.- Religious truth and freedom of conscience in Noodt and Barbeyrac: the confrontation with Bayle.- 7. After Bayle: Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism.- De la controverse anti-romaine à la théologie naturelle: parcours antisceptiques de Jean-Alphonse Turrettini.-Formey et Crousaz, ou comment fallait-il combattre le scepticisme?.- Jean Meslier, le doute méthodique et le matérialisme.