THE CORE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT: THE SCEPTICAL MIND AS A CRITERION OF TRUTH
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2023.3.2Keywords:
Antiquity, Enlightenment, Pyrrho, Sextus, Descartes, anthropology, scepticism, PyrrhonismAbstract
The primary motive for carrying out this research was the desire to find out the existence of durability and the degree of ideological affinity between the teaching of ancient sceptics (Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus) and the first enlighteners’ philosophical program (René Descartes). First of all, the article analyzes a set of basic shifts in the field of epistemology and anthropology that took place during the 17th century as a result of fundamental reconfiguration of the established models of human self-understanding and the emergence of a new vision of the cognitive process aimed at understanding the surrounding world. The research demonstrates the historical origins of the Enlightenment concept which, due to the efforts of J. H. Stirling and E. Caird, was finally fixed in the philosophical vocabulary to denote the period in the history of human thought from ~1650 to ~1800. By means of specific historical examples, it is illustrated in the article that it was at this time that the mythological picture of the world was undermined, and the processes of desacralization and secularization of Europe became a marker of the inevitability of those changes that had taken place along with the corrosion of confidence in the steadfastness of centuries-old models of thinking and living. In the 17th century, the Christian faith turned into one of many possible options and worldview concepts that could be chosen freely in a wide market of ideas and conceptual systems. However, the Enlightenment project soon revealed its totalitarian encroachments that were based on the desire to unconditionally universalize human reason. Also, in addition to the established kinship between ancient and Enlightenment scepticism, significant distinctive features of each of the studied thought movements are emphasized in the article. If Pyrrho of Elis’ scepticism consisted in striving for detachment, abstraction, and restraint regarding the possibility of human knowledge of the essence of things, then the 17th-century enlighteners’ scepticism encouraged them to active rational cognition of reality, as well as to systematization and conceptualization of human experience.
References
Ґаєр М. (2007). Світ Канта: Біографія. К.: Юніверс. 336 с.
Європейський словник філософій: Лексикон неперекладностей. Том другий. Вид. 2-е. (2021). К.: Дух і літера. 488 с.
Кебуладзе В. (2017). Чарунки долі: есеї. Львів: Видавництво Старого Лева. 160 с.
Пролеев С. (2022). История античной философии. Изд. 2-е. К.: Дух і літера. 512 с.
Тейлор Ч. (2018). Секулярна доба. Книга перша. К.: Дух і літера. 664 с.
Фрейд З. (2016). Хрестоматия: в 3 т. Том 2: Вопросы общества и происхождение религии. М.: Когито-Центр. 446 с.
Byrne J. (1996). Glory, Jest, and Riddle: Religious Thought in the Enlightenment. London: SCM Press. xiii + 253 p.
Caird E. (1889). The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Volume 1. New York: Macmillan. xxiv + 654 p.
Descartes R. (2006). Meditations, Objections, and Replies. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. xxii + 184 p.
Floridi L. (2010). The rediscovery and posthumous influence of scepticism. In R. Bett (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (pp. 267–287). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521874762.015
Fosl P. S. (2020). Hume’s Scepticism: Pyrrhonian and Academic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. xiii + 378 p. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474451147
Gay P. (1969). The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. Volume 2, The Science of Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. xxii + 705 + xviii p.
Gillespie M. A. (2008). The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. xiii + 386 p.
Israel J. I. (2001). Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xx + 810 p. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206088.001.0001
Kennedy P. (2011). Christianity: An Introduction. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. xlvii + 310 p.
Munck T. (2000). The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721-1794. London: Arnold. xii + 249 p. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474210386
Perin C. (2010). The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 130 p. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557905.001.0001
Stirling J. H. (1865). The Secret of Hegel: Being the Hegelian System in Origin, Principle, Form, and Matter, Volume 1. London: Longmans. lxxiv + 465 p.
Svavarsson S. H. (2010). Pyrrho and early Pyrrhonism. In R. Bett (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (pp. 36-57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521874762.003
Williams M. (2010). Descartes’ transformation of the sceptical tradition. In R. Bett (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (pp. 288–313). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521874762.016
