G Anthony Bruno - Skepticism: Historical and Contemporary Inquiries

Skepticism is one of the most enduring and profound of philosophical problems. With roots from Plato and the Skeptics to Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein, skepticism presents a challenge that every philosopher must reckon with. In this outstanding collection, philosophers engage with skepticism in five clear sections: the philosophical history of skepticism in Greek, Humean, and post-Kantian thought; the nature and limits of certainty; the possibility of knowledge and related problems, such as perception and debates about rule-following and objectivity; the transcendental method as a response to skepticism; and overcoming the skeptical challenge.

Skepticism: Historical and Contemporary Inquiries is essential reading for students and scholars in epistemology and the history of philosophy and will also be of interest to those in related disciplines, such as religion and sociology.

G. Anthony Bruno is Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. He has published numerous articles on Kant, German idealism, and phenomenology.

A.C. Rutherford is a doctoral student at the University of Bonn, Germany. Her current research focuses primarily on ancient epistemology and philosophy of mind.

Historical and Contemporary Inquiries

Edited by
G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford

First published 2018

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2018 selection and editorial matter, G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bruno, G. Anthony, editor.

Title: Skepticism: historical and contemporary inquiries / edited by G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford.

Description: 1 [edition]. | New York: Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017027605

Subjects: LCSH: Skepticism.

Classification: LCC B837 .S2744 2017 | DDC 149/.73dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027605

ISBN: 978-1-138-28522-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-26851-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon

by codeMantra

G. ANTHONY BRUNO AND A.C. RUTHERFORD

PART I
Forms of skepticism

MICHAEL N. FORSTER

DONALD C. AINSLIE

BRADY BOWMAN

PART II
Skepticism and certainty

CRISPIN WRIGHT

CRISPIN WRIGHT

CASEY PERIN

PART III
Skepticism and knowledge

MARTIN PICKAV

HANNAH GINSBORG

SEBASTIAN RDL

PART IV
Skepticism and transcendental method

ANDREA KERN

G. ANTHONY BRUNO

PART V
Anti-Skeptical strategies

DUNCAN PRITCHARD

MARKUS GABRIEL

Donald C. Ainslie is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Humes True Scepticism (2015) and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Humes Treatise (with Annemarie Butler, 2014). He has published articles on Hume and biomedical ethics in Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Health Care Analysis, Hume Studies, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Social Philosophy and Policy.

Brady Bowman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of two monographs, Hegels Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity (2013) and Sinnliche Gewiheit: Zur systematischen Vorgeschichte eines Problems des deutschen Idealismus (2003), and has published articles on classical German philosophy in Hegel-Studien, the Journal for the History of Philosophy, the Owl of Minerva, and other journals.

G. Anthony Bruno is Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, prior to which he was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University, a Faculty Lecturer at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bonn. He has published articles on Kant, German idealism, and phenomenology in Analecta Hermeneutica, The Bloomsbury Companion to Fichte, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Continental Realism and its Discontents, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Idealistic Studies, Northern European Journal of Philosophy, PhaenEx: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Rethinking Kant Volume 4, and The Significance of Indeterminacy: Perspectives from Asian and Continental Philosophy.

Michael N. Forster is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Bonn. He is the author of German Philosophy of Language from Schlegel to Hegel and Beyond (2011), After Herder (2010), Kantand Scepticism (2008), Wittgenstein on the Arbitrariness of Grammar (2004), and Hegel and Skepticism (1989). He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of German philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (with Kristin Gjesdal, 2015). He has published articles on ancient philosophy, Kant, German idealism, and German romanticism in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie, The Harvard Review of Philosophy, Inquiry, International Yearbook of German Idealism, Internationale Zeitschrift fr Philosophie, Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays, The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, The Relevance of German Romanticism, Review of Metaphysics, Spinoza and German Idealism, and Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

Markus Gabriel is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bonn. He is the author of Why the World Does Not Exist