Abstract
This chapter considers the encounter of skepticism with the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophical enterprise and focuses on the intriguing feature whereby it is assimilated into this enterprise. In this period, skepticism becomes interchangeable with its other, which helps understand the proliferation of many kinds of views under its name and which forms the background for transforming skepticism into an anonymous, routine practice of raising objections and counter-objections to one’s own view. German philosophers of this era counterpose skepticism to dogmatism and criticism, ancient to modern skepticism, and, importantly, conceptualize the transitions from one form to another, which forms the conceptual matrix in which new disciplinary forms, such as psychology, anthropology, and historicism contend for cultural-intellectual standing beside philosophy. I present this assimilationist trajectory by reviewing three well-known moments of this encounter of skepticism and idealism: (1) Kant’s idealization of skepticism as a floating position amidst various philosophical positions through the dialectic, polemics, systematics, and history of pure reason; (2) Fichte’s schematic conception of skepticism as a dispute of systems in the early Wissenschaftslehre following his review of the skeptic G. E. Schulze’s attacks on Critical philosophy; (3) Hegel’s historicizing conception of skepticism in the context of differences between subjective idealism and speculative thought and his early Jena review of another work by the same skeptic Schulze.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Brady Bowman (2013, 126) uses the term to describe Hegel’s rejection of all finite forms of knowing, while Michael Forster (2005) sees Hegel’s skepticism as radical in rejecting all beliefs (not only metaphysical ones as Kant does), although this radicality is undermined by the retention of skepticism’s reactionary features.
- 2.
Paul Franks (2014, 23) considers “the logical possibility of post-Kantian skepticism,” given that Kantian critique was supposed to put an end to skepticism once and for all, and Plínio Smith (2013a, 262) talks about post-Kantian skepticisms as certain forms that predate, pass through, and survive Kant’s critique.
- 3.
As Michael Baur (1999, 63–64 f.n.2) puts it: “[T]he strategy of the German Idealists was not merely to offer an externally related alternative to skepticism; instead, their strategy was to show that the dangers of skepticism would be avoided only if self-conscious skepticism and systematic philosophy were shown to be in some sense identical.”
- 4.
Charles does not mean that the selection should necessarily privilege lesser known figures and works, and, in fact, his particular example at this point concerns the need to look at the skepticism that was “at the heart of the debates about Kantian criticism” (Charles and Smith 2013, 13) rather than only attending to relatively secondary figures like Maupertuis or Merian. Charles’s call for restraint interestingly comes as an Introduction to the same volume that also calls for expansion (esp. ibid., x–xi), which is a sign that the said suggestion is meant as conciliatory rather than hostile. Other thoughtful calls for expansion include the editor’s Introduction followed by Popkin’s remarks in Paganini (2003, ix–xix, xxi–xxviii). The development of Popkins’s views is documented in Popkin et al. 1997.
- 5.
It also left out the complication that Berkeley’s Three Dialogues inverts skeptical values to hold the external-world realist as a skeptic and the external-world skeptic as a common-sense realist. Hylas the realist recounts: “You set out upon the same principles that the Academics, Cartesians, and like sects, usually do; and for a long time it looked as if you were advancing their philosophical skepticism; but in the end your conclusions are directly opposite to theirs” and Philonous the idealist adds: “[T]he same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.” (Berkeley 1979, 94)
- 6.
Paganini 2011 diagnoses a turning point with Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, etc., after which “doubt and skepticism are a matter of fluctuation, not equilibrium” (44). I will consider Kant’s denial and Fichte’s pronouncements in the next two sections respectively, but I wish to note that the characterization of Hegel’s view above as historically indifferent does not apply to all of Hegel’s views on skepticism, yet it does apply to the famous characterization of skepticism in the Phenomenology of Spirit , from which the above quoted passage is taken.
- 7.
This issue belongs to a revealing turning point in Kant’s historiography of philosophy. Giuseppe Micheli (2015, 706–713) thinks that Kant begins to look for Greek rather than Eastern “founders” and a more narrowly conceived speculative history of metaphysics around the mid-1760s under the pressure of current beliefs about ancient Greek republicanism and German nationalism. This historiographic interest coincides with the interest in the history of skepticism, which both have an impact on the subsequent conception of metaphysics. In this context it is also worth noting that both ‘skepticism’ and ‘history’ exceed purely rationalist paradigms of thought and ‘dogma’ contrasts with both ‘skepticism’ and with acquired information or mathema. On Kant’s novel handling of these contrasts, see Tonelli 1997, 70–71 and 89–91n.10. For Tonelli, Kant’s main source for ancient thought is Jakob Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae (which would also explain the preference for founders and the lament on degradation through subsequent institutionalization and sectarianism), and, in some cases, Ralph Cudworth, but not Sextus Empiricus directly. Popkin and Laursen (1998) point out the slim but concrete chances for Kant’s access to some texts of Sextus. Given Kant’s fondness for Lucian, I would also add dialogues like Hermotimus as an indirect source. Tonelli holds that Kant’s knowledge of modern skeptics like Huet and La Mothe le Vayer came from Brucker, but he did have direct access to Bayle, which is especially responsible for his high praise of Zeno of Elea to be seen below (on the debt to Bayle, see Smith 2013a).
- 8.
“Such a dialectical doctrine will relate not to the unity of understanding in concepts of experience , but to the unity of reason in mere ideas, whose conditions, since, as a synthesis according to rules, must first be congruent with the understanding, and yet at the same time, as the absolute unity of this synthesis, must be congruent with reason, will be too large for the understanding if this unity is to be adequate to the unity of reason, and yet too small for reason if they are suited to the understanding…” (A422/B450)
- 9.
While Sextus (PH 1.10, 1.202–203) sees equipollence more loosely as a countering of claims and justifications by other equivalent claims and justifications, Kant’s antinomies relate opposed claims and justifications more strictly through mutually referring apagogic proofs. Smith (2013b, esp. 26–27) finds a precedent for this construal of equipollence in Bayle and Testa (2003, 172) also finds this likely. I thank Plínio Smith for helping see the significance of this and related issues about Kantian antinomies and pressing for clarifications.
- 10.
These points will form the context for Hegel’s objections to be considered below. About the last point, it should be additionally noted that the principle of contradiction had become a veritable battlefield by 1800 (see Gottlob Jäsche’s prefatory comments in his edition of Kant’s logic textbook, Kant 1992, 523–6; Ak.9: 6–9). For Kant, the principle of contradiction is the highest principle of analytic judgments, the possibility of experience is the highest principle of synthetic judgments, and the transcendental unity of apperception the highest principle of the understanding as such. The early Hegel has not entirely renounced Fichtean talk of intellectual intuition and its formulations through Kantian apperception but wants to link the unity of apperception to the unity of reason, rather than to the lower faculty of understanding. Kant’s conception of reason in the antinomies is subordinated to the principle of contradiction at both the levels that generate conflict as well as the level that resolves it, and, since reason is driven by the task of totalizing experience in this sphere, the subordination of reason to the understanding is complete just where it should have been the reverse. Rejecting this result, but preserving the Kantian framework, Hegel declares that the principle of contradiction is valid only for the understanding, while reason essentially opposes it: “every genuine philosophy…always sublates the principle of contradiction” (2000, 325; TWA 2:230).
- 11.
Apprehending this skeptical problematic determines large interpretive strategies. For example, a famous invocation of Hume’s skepticism occurs in the preliminaries (B127–128) to the Transcendental Deduction. The story told here of an empiricism becoming dogmatic on the one side (Lockean “enthusiasm”) and dogmatically skeptical on the other side (an incurably forlorn Hume taking reason itself as illusory) reflects the antinomic-dialectical structure of reason above. Speculative idealists thus approached the deduction’s claim of objective validity as a limited case of reason’s systematic unity, while twentieth century Anglo-American approaches, erasing confusing invocations of Locke and Hume as immoderate empiricists, took it as defeating external world skepticism.
- 12.
Another is the juxtaposition of “the cool-headed David Hume, especially constituted for equilibrium of judgment” with “Priestley, who is devoted only to the principles of the empirical use of reason ” (A745/B773) as polemicists defending reason despite their denials of a highest being and of the immortality of the soul. The systematic context of this juxtaposition is the impossibility of a genuine antithetic of reason around the ideas of soul and God, thus, a negative defense of reason, and here the skeptic helps the empiricist from becoming dogmatic. For the historical context of this juxtaposition, see Popkin (1997, 24–25).
- 13.
This aspect of the Kant-Hume relation needs further research. How did Kant’s thought develop in regard to the generalizations between causality and mathematics (in light of overarching developments in a theory of judgment and categories) in the period, and how does it relate to the development of the skeptical problematic in Kant’s thought and its sources in Hume, Bayle, and others in the same period? A similar pressure of the Kategorien-problematic informs the move to an elevation of skeptical methodology in Hegel’s case, as we shall see below.
- 14.
See the remarks above in Sect. 14.1 about the Blomberg Logic.
- 15.
As a counterpoint to the historical collection of methods lumping Hume together with various “popular philosophers” and Wolff himself, it is important to note that for all of Wolff’s systematizing dogmatisms, there was always in it a catholic embrace of empiricism that bothered Kant’s search for systematic purity (see A843/B871). On the German hybridizations of moderate skepticisms and common sense theories, see van der Zande (1998), Kuehn (1987, ch. 9 and 251–74; and 1998), and, in light of the point made about the transformations between skepticism and its others, see the telling account of the alternating self-stylings of Platner as an anthropologist, empirical psychologist, and skeptic in conjunction with his alternating critiques of Kantian criticism as dogmatic skepticism and skeptical dogmatism in Wunderlich (2018). For the state of empirical psychology at the time, see various texts by Udo Thiel and Corey Dyck, but in particular, see Thiel (2001) for a brief summary of relevant positions and Dyck (2014, esp. chs. 1,2 & 7) for the Wolffian background.
- 16.
Reinhold was quite happy to discuss the elements of the disarray as consisting inter alia dogmatic skeptics, critical skeptics, forms and stages of dogmatic, unphilosophical, and critical doubt – constructing through all this a tower of babble reaching to the highest principles, and all through leaning on Kantian principle in interesting but capricious ways without a deep grasp of Kant’s concepts and arguments. See generally Reinhold (2011), esp. the so-called “Destinies” essay for a survey of the disarray, and Books I and II for his planned exit route.
- 17.
Reinhold (2011, 86): “Representation is the only thing about whose actuality all philosophers are in agreement.” The historical-analytic method used to get to this point was, in fact, derided by a critic “as a ridiculous attempt to substantiate philosophical assertions by majority vote,” which criticism Reinhold narrates to us without any sense of irony (ibid., 34n). Earlier, in his Eighth Merkur letter, he had similarly broached the concept of the soul as an immaterial thing through a long analysis of statements by various ancient philosophers, proceeding throughout on the assumption that this thing is given in introspection and so must lie beneath the variety of those statements.
- 18.
See Daniel Breazeale’s several helpful articles on this topic, including introductory notes to his translation of the text, his (1998) to clarify the role of Reinhold’s own work on skepticism, and especially his (2011), which contains a very useful summary of the contents of Fichte’s review and of recent discussions of it, which have revised initial estimates and energetically delved into some neglected details. Also see Dieter Henrich’s (2003, chs. 10, 11) analysis of the encounter, which goes so far as to say that “[w]e could delineate Fichte’s entire philosophical program by analyzing his two basic thoughts in the Aenesidemus Review and their relationship” (ibid., 177).
- 19.
The abovementioned “Destinies” essay claims that the waning of the dogmatic Leibinizian-Wolffian system has perforce meant that one populates its rationalistic formalisms with content drawn from the most varied sources. This process, for example, has “brought the light of philosophy to regions where it had never shone in Germany – from the mysteries of the most holy to the cabinets of ministers and princes, and to the toilet tables of ladies.” (2011, 4).
- 20.
Sextus (PH 1.1) describes the dogmatist as declaring that truth has been found, and the academic and the skeptic denying this either through positive decision or through a combination of denial of decision and affirmation of zetetic search.
- 21.
See Franks (2014) for Fichte’s debts to Maimon.
- 22.
This is how the Foundations (1982, 118n.5; SW I:120n) represents him in the locus classicus for Fichte’s definition of skepticism as the consummation of dogmatism, and, since it cannot form a system, genuinely existing only as a critical skepticism.
- 23.
Forster’s (1996) fine analysis shows how Hegel’s critique of modern skepticism works by rejecting the necessity of this minimal endorsement. If that is right, Hegel would undermine easy transformations from skepticism to dogmatism or the inherent transformability of (modern) skepticism. If I follow the argument correctly, however, we still need a justification for Hegel’s understanding of ancient equipollence and its operationality. Early Hegel does not have a science of logic providing that, and needs to assume the Platonic idea (ibid., 79) or Kantian reason as a self-subsistent work, or both together (see Baum 1990) to get his view off the ground, which too seems right.
- 24.
The form of science, for Fichte, is the communication of a primordial certainty to all its parts, and, although this feature by itself is Cartesian, the skeptical scenario is construed in Reinholdian terms. The freedom to abstract and reflect is another expression of the fact that there just is a presupposition. In the “First Introduction” (1994, 17–20; SW I:431–5), Fichte avoids universal skepticism issuing from the interminable dispute between the dogmatist and the idealist by appeal to moral character and practical interests (following Kant’s talk of the conditions bearing on the antinomies as described at the end of Sect. 14.2 above). This section of Fichte’s text is related to the famous master-slave dialectic in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and thus contextualizes its subsequent discourse on skepticism. The “Second Introduction” (89–90; I:504–5) tries to explain the practical interest through the theoretical confusion of pure with empirical apperception.
- 25.
See Breazeale (1991, 451–2) and Hegel (1977c, 49): “By the former assurance [of being wholly different from ordinary cognition], Science would be declaring its power to lie simply in its being; but the untrue knowledge likewise appeals to the fact that it is, and assures us that for it Science is of no account. One bare assurance is worth just as much as another.”
- 26.
Since Hegel’s interest in skepticism emerges from his battles with the culture of the Enlightenment, Italo Testa (2013, f.n.54) connects Hegel’s epistemological skepticism to the longer arc of religious skepticism painted vividly by Popkin.
- 27.
Not these facts and sciences, then, but, rather, the proper target of skepticism, for Schulze, is theorizing about the absolute. Hegel (2000, 220–6) takes care to show that these attributions are not imposed upon but fairly drawn from Schulze, but see Engstler (1996) for comments cautioning against Hegel’s reading. Schulze responded with two articles (1803 and 1805), including a parody of Absolute idealism to show that skepticism is its ultimate result. These articles and their authorship were known to Hegel. For suggestions about their impact on him and other references, see di Giovanni and Harris (2005, 310–11n.55).
- 28.
Hegel outlines a threefold division of skepticism (2000, 330; TWA 2:237): (1) a skepticism immanent to philosophy is exemplified by Plato’s Parmenides: “skepticism itself is in its inmost heart at one with every true philosophy [such that] there is a philosophy that is neither skepticism nor dogmatism, and is thus both at once” (322–3; 227); (2) a skepticism turned against philosophy, which he identifies with later forms of ancient skepticism captured in the well-known dilemma of the criterion or the Agrippan five tropes; (3) a skepticism not turned against philosophy identified with older forms attacking commonsensical dogmatisms and collected in the ten tropes. As self-differentiations within the structure of reason, the tripartition is primarily schematic, although Hegel also presses its historical viability.
- 29.
The Phenomenology of Spirit distinguishes between a “thoroughgoing scepticism” (1977c, 49–50) and the method of doubt or antecedent skepticism generally, and further distinguishes between this methodological conception and the historical formation of skepticism as a stage in the development of self-consciousness (123–6). The Encyclopaedia Logic (§§79–82) talks formally about skepticism as the dialectical side of logic wedged between understanding’s abstractive and reason’ speculative activity, and, interestingly, refers to the 1802 Skepticism essay separately (in a remark upon Humean skepticism) as clarifying historical differences. The Lectures on the History of Philosophy narrates the historical sequence of skeptical personages, schools, and arguments.
- 30.
In Faith and Knowledge , skepticism counts as the flip-side of idealism, while both are jointly opposed to a one-sided empiricism (1977b, 62; TWA 2:295). Extracting skepticism from this system of positions falsifies skepticism itself (ibid., 64; 297) and thus skepticism exists only within it.
- 31.
For example, the two 1797/8 “Introductions” to the Wissenschaftslehre appealed to essential differences in character (First) and to the philosopher’s self-consciousness (Second), and the 1800 Vocation of Man expressly addressed the lay reader’s non-philosophical self. Also, see f.n.24 above.
- 32.
Kant strictly excluded intellectual intuition as an intuition exceeding sensible forms, but it was revived by Fichte as the consciousness of the activity of the self and held compatible with Kantian premises (Fichte 1994, 55–6; I:471–2). Expressed in the form of propositions about the subject’s fundamental activity, it stands for that which corrects Reinhold’s assumptions about the structure of consciousness and representation, which Schulze had attacked. Hegel recognizes it as a principle expressing the self-sufficient and self-differentiating structure of reason , and he also sees the inevitable inadequacy of its articulation and elaboration in propositional form. Hegel rejects its inherent subjectivism and its presuppositional character, and he rejects its subordination to the laws of logic on account of the propositional form. In the worst instance, the former devolves into personal idiosyncrasy and the latter into a merely formal logic (both belonging to Reinhold’s methodologies) ; in better circumstances, they amount to provisional dogmas, such as Schulze’s adherence to facts of consciousness and to the principle of non-contradiction.
- 33.
A proper resolution would combine the partial truths of the Wissenschaftslehre and of the philosophy of nature, and Hegel hints at a system to come, which would formulate the self-intuition of reason in the triad of art-religion-philosophy (1977a, 160–72; TWA 2:100–113). At the same time, Hegel indicates that the true principle of rational unity was already encountered in Plato’s Timaeus (ibid., 157–8; 97).
- 34.
“Locke and the eudaemonists transformed philosophy into empirical psychology… The philosophies of Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte are the completion and idealization of this empirical psychology.” (Hegel 1977b, 63; TWA 2:297).
- 35.
This historical problem contains the issue of seeing how dogmatism (Plato) is also a skepticism and how skepticism (Academic) is also a dogmatism, and the yet deeper issue of a third position (philosophy itself) consisting in their intrinsic and exhaustive transformations. It belongs substantively to the Schulze-critique, because to miss the problem is to also misunderstand one’s own skepticism. Also note that his early work already begins the critical historiography that later develops into a full-fledged philosophy of history. Hegel’s reading of the historical details of the said problem (323–7; 2:227–234), for example, defends Ficino against Tiedemann to get at Plato’s position and questions Schulze’s reliance on Stäudlin, who downplays the role of the Middle and New Academies valued highly by Hegel both here and more fully in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. The numerous layers of history writing – general notes on contemporary culture, history of skepticism as given in Sextus, grand narratives of philosophy as a fall into history, fine-grained historiographical debates between historians –are all present together in the present works and form an essential context for the philosophical inquiries. Disentangling the various threads and studying Hegel’s own progress towards his philosophy of history and the relation of all this to his conception of skepticism –remains a matter of further research.
- 36.
Sextus himself offers this list but goes on to think about the progression within this list in different ways (PH 1.164–177), and Hegel is following his lead in this, although with a different intent and with different ordering. I am only considering Hegel’s presentation of these lists and progressions above, although a fuller analysis will reveal much about Hegel’s reception of Sextus.
- 37.
Since this whole taxonomy is mangled, and altogether missing crucial components like the trope of relationship, in the 1825–1826 version of his Lectures (Hegel 2006, 312–14), Hegel’s working out of the order of the tropes may be dated somewhere between 1805–1817. A more precise dating, a task I must set aside for another occasion, would help understand the development of Hegel’s views on skepticism from the 1807 Phenomenology to the 1817 Encyclopaedia Logic.
- 38.
I have tried to indicate this by calling the second act of skepticism a self-cancelation rather than a negation of negation. I concur with Manfred Baum (1986, 187–92) on this. Baum also sees the above ‘result’ of skeptical self-annihilation, which yields purely subjective attitudes without epistemic content, as either amounting to a claim to know nothing or as having retracted all critical power against another and thus passing over to positivist objectivity.
- 39.
See f.n.29 above, Hegel 1977c, 50, 56–7, and on the significance of the designation of skepticism as one of the “sides” of logic, see Michael Wolff’s careful analysis (1996). Wolff’s article also helps us see the particular significance of this designation in light of Hegel’s reformulation and advance upon the Kantian science of logic, which includes a transcendental logic, where the skeptical method plays a key part.
Bibliographical References
Ameriks, Karl. 2000. Kant’s Theory of Mind. An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Baum, Manfred. 1986. Die Entstehung der Hegelschen Dialektik. Bonn: Bouvier.
———. 1990. Kosmologie und Dialektik bei Platon und Hegel. In Hegel und die antike Dialektik, ed. Manfred Riedel, 192–207. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Baur, Michael. 1999. The Role of Skepticism in the Emergence of German Idealism. In The Emergence of German Idealism, ed. Michael Baur and Dahlstrom Daniel, 63–92. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
Berkeley, George. 1979. In Three Dialogues Between Hylaes and Philonous, ed. R.M. Adams. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Bowman, Brady. 2013. Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Breazeale, Daniel. 1991. Fichte on Skepticism. Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (3): 427–453.
———. 1998. Putting Doubt in its Place: Karl Leonard Reinhold on the Relationship between Philosophical Skepticism and Transcendental Idealism. In Popkin and van der Zande, eds., 119–132.
———. 2016. Reinhold/Fichte/Schulze: A Re-examination. In Krankheit des Zeitalters oder heilsame Provokation? ed. Bondeli, Chotaš, and Vieweg, 151–179. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Charles, Sébastien, and Plínio Smith, eds. 2013. Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung. Dordrecht: Springer.
di Giovanni, George, and Henry Harris, eds. 2000. Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism. Indianapolis: Hackett.
———, eds. 2005. Freedom and Religion in Kant and his Immediate Successors. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dyck, Corey. 2014. Kant and Rational Pyschology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Engstler, Achim. 1996. Hegels Kritik am Skeptizismus Gottfried Ernst Schulzes. In , ed. Fulda and Horstmann, 98–114.
Fichte, Johann. 1982. The Science of Knowledge, ed. and trans. P. Heath and J. Lachs. New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1988. Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. D. Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
———. 1994. Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings (1797–1800), ed. and trans. D. Breazeale. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Forster, Michael. 1996. Hegel on the Superiority of Ancient over Modern Skepticism. In , ed. Fulda and Horstmann, 64–82.
———. 2005. Hegelian vs. Kantian Interpretations of Pyrrhonism: Revolution or Reaction? Kritisches Jahrbuch der Philosophie 10: 53–70.
———. 2008. Kant and Skepticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Franks, Paul. 2014. Skepticism after Kant. In Varieties of Skepticism: Essays after Kant, Wittgenstein, and Cavell, ed. James Conant and Andrea Kern, 17–58. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Fulda, Hans Friedrich, and Rolf-Peter Horstmann, eds. 1996. Skeptizismus und Spekulatives Denken in der Philosophie Hegels. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1896/1974 (repr.). Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. Haldane and Simon, 3 vols. New York: Humanities Press.
———. 1970. Werke in zwanzig Bände, eds. E. Moldenhauer and K.M.Michel. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. [ TWA, volume: page].
———. 1977a. Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. W. Cerf and H. S. Harris. Albany: State University of New York Press.
———. 1977b. Faith and Knowledge, trans. W. Cerf and H.S. Harris. Albany: State University of New York Press.
———. 1977c. Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1991. The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. Geraets, W. Suchting, and H. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett).
———. 2000. On the Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy. In di Giovanni and Harris, ed., 313–362.
———. 2006. In Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 2: Greek Philosophy, ed. Robert Brown. New York: Oxford University Press.
Henrich, Dieter. 2003. In Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, ed. D. Pacini. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1992. Lectures on Logic, trans. and ed. J. Michael Young. New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1996. Critique of Practical Reason. In Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor, 133–271. New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press [Cited per standard A/B pagination].
———. 2002. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. G. Hatfield. In Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, ed. H. Allison and P. Heath, 49–169. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kuehn, Manfred. 1983. Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem’. Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1): 175–193.
———. 1987. Scottish Common-Sense in Germany, 1768–1800. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
———. 1998. Skepticism: Philosophical Disease or Cure? In Popkin and van der Zande, ed., 81–100.
Makkreel, Rudolf. 1998. Kant’s Responses to Skepticism. In Popkin and van der Zande, ed., 101–109.
Micheli, Giuseppe. 2015. Philosophy and Historiography: The Kantian Turning Point, trans. Hilary Siddons. In Models of the History of Philosophy, ed. G. Piaia and G. Santinello, 697–768. Dordrecht: Springer.
Paganini, Gianni, ed. 2003. The Return of Scepticism: From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle. Dordrecht: Springer.
———. 2011. The Quarrel between Ancient and Modern scepticism: Some Reflections on Descartes and his Context. Revista Estudos Hume(a)nos 2 (1): 32–50.
Popkin, Richard. 1997. Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism in the Latter Part of the Eighteenth Century. In Popkin, de Olaso, and Tonelli, ed., 17–34.
Popkin, Richard, and John Laursen. 1998. Sources of knowledge of Sextus Empiricus in Kant’s time: A French translation of Sextus Empiricus from the Prussian academy, 1779. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 6: 261–267.
Popkin, Richard, and Johan van der Zande, eds. 1998. The Skeptical Tradition around 1800. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Popkin, Richard, Ezequiel de Olaso, and Giorgio Tonelli, eds. 1997. Scepticism in the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Springer.
Reinhold, Karl Leonard. 2011. Essay on a New Theory on the Human Capacity of Representation, trans. T. Mehigan and B. Empson. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Sassen, Brigitte, ed. and trans. 2000. Kant’s Early Critics. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Contains the Feder/Garve review on pp. 50–58].
Schulze, Gottlob. 1803. Aphorismen über das Absolute. In Neues Museum der Philosophie und Litteratur, ed. F. Bouterwerk, Bd. I, Hf. 2, 107—148.
———. 1805. Die Hauptmomente der skeptische Denkart über das menschliche Erkenntnis. In Neues Museum der Philosophie und Litteratur, ed. F. Bouterwerk, Bd. 3, Hf. 2, 3—35. Leipzig.
———. 2000. Aenesidemus, or Concerning the Foundations of the Philosophy of the Elements Issued by Prof. Reinhold in Jena Together With A Defense of Skepticism Against the Pretensions of the Critique of Reason (Excerpt), trans. G. di Giovanni, eds di Giovanni and Harris, 105–135.
Sextus Empiricus. 1994. Outlines of Scepticism, trans. J. Annas and J. Barnes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Cited per Fabricius “book, section” reference.]
Smith, Plínio. 2013a. Kant’s Criticism and the Legacy of Modern Scepticism. In Charles and Smith, ed., 247–263.
———. 2013b. Bayle and Pyrrhonism: Antinomy, Method, and History. In Charles and Smith, ed., 19–30.
Testa, Italo. 2003. Skeptische Antinomie und Anerkennung beim jungen Hegel. In Wissen und Begründung (Kritische Jahrbuch der Philosophie, vol.8), ed. Klaus Vieweg and Brady Bowman, 171–178. Würzburg: Königshausen & Hausen Verlag.
———. 2013. Scepticisme et dialectique des Lumières chez le jeune Hegel. In Charles and Smith, ed., 281–97.
Thiel, Udo. 2001. Kant’s Notion of Self-Consciousness in Context. In Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung, ed. Gerhardt, Horstmann, and Schumacher, vol. 2, 468–476. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Tonelli, Giorgio. 1997. Kant and Ancient Skepticism. In Popkin, de Olaso, and Tonelli, ed., trans. J. C. Laursen, 69–98.
van der Zande, Johan. 1998. The Moderate Skepticism of German Popular Philosophy. In Popkin and van der Zande, ed., 69–80.
Wolff, Michael. 1996. Die ‘Momente’ des Logischen und der ‘Anfang’ der Logik in Hegels philosophischer Wissenschaft. In, ed Fulda and Horstmann, 226–43.
Wunderlich, Falk. 2018. Platner on Kant: From Skepticism to Dogmatic Critique. In Kant and his German Contemporaries, ed. Dyck and Wunderlich, vol. 1, 155–171. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sudan, M. (2021). Disciplining Skepticism through Kant’s Critique, Fichte’s Idealism, and Hegel’s Negations. In: Rosaleny, V.R., Smith, P.J. (eds) Sceptical Doubt and Disbelief in Modern European Thought. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 233. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55362-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55362-3_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-55361-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-55362-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)