Renaissance Pyrrhonism: A Relative Phenomenon

More than any other kind of philosophy, Pyrrhonism exalts relativity, if only, in the first place, by opening up the dogmatist's horizons to new aspects of familiar phenomena. But there is another relativity factor, a more extrinsic one: the very different textual elements of its diffusion in Europe in fragmentary texts of which the reception was unusually erratic. My purpose here is to resume briefly, without giving detailed demonstrations, the results of my work on the revival of scepticism in the sixteenth century, consisting in an exploration of the relations between the different symptoms of the sceptical crisis during this period; this work was the object of a doctoral thesis, and of a number of conferences and articles. I will present here the method of my enquiry as well as the results, insofar as the method may contribute to further research on the rediscovery of ancient philosophies in modern times. My method developed progressively as a means to overcome a seemingly insoluble preliminary problem: can progress be made in the examination of a question which Richard H. Popkin's work seemed to have covered exhaustively? If we concern ourselves exclusively with Pop-kin's chapters on the Renaissance, we can see that he explored this question in the wake of Pierre Villey and Henri Busson, whose starting-point was Pierre Bayle's presentation of modern Pyrrhonism in his Dictionnaire historique. The main and decisive conclusion of Popkin's study of Renaissance scepticism consisted in rejecting traditional prejudice concerning the close link between Pyrrhonism and modern atheism, which prejudice was still the inspiration of Don Cameron Allen's research some years after the publication of Popkin's book. I will not examine in any detail Popkin's enquiry into the Renaissance — the centre of gravity of his work seems rather to be the reappraisal of scepticism in the classical age considered as a development of certain Renaissance trends — and even less all the progress that Popkin's work has allowed us to accomplish in the understanding of modern scepticism. In my eyes, the main interest of Popkin's masterly study is to paint a panoramic view of the reintroduction of ancient pyrrhonism into modern philosophy, and to show decisively that skepsis played a major role in the classical age. Popkin's approach has nevertheless imposed limits on the examination of the scepticism rediscovered and deployed during the Renaissance, as regards the dimensions of that movement, and above all as regards certain options in its interpretation. I would like to point out a few of Popkin's presuppositions or methodological options, which should lead us to undertake a re-examination of Renaissance Pyrrhonism