Why does the air-target and its associated practices matter? This special section is about the politics, practices and ethics surrounding the target and efforts to subvert or circumvent them. Since Eyal Weizman’s groundbreaking essay on the ‘politics of verticality’ in 2002, there have been numerous attempts to critically open up the aerial gaze, but rarely have they come together for sustained analysis and critique, to explore the implications of the air-target’s techniques, processes, visual cultures and aesthetics for politics and life (...) itself. This special section brings together leading international experts in order to open out a fuller and more complete analysis of the kinds of tensions of verticality that lie at the heart of today’s warfare, security and politics. This introduction outlines three dominant problematics of the air-target, which the articles in the section will go on to explore in more detail. (shrink)

Here the concern is with the logic underlying Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica and with the relation of that logic to Russell's underlying metaphysics. The author emphasizes the fact that work is, strictly speaking, a theory of propositional functions, not of classes; sentences containing symbols for classes are defined by means of propositional functions. It is terms of the latter sort of entity that Russell's Paradox must be solved; the theory of types is, strictly speaking, a theory of the (...) stratification of propositional functions. (shrink)

This dissertation is meant to interpret Whitehead's basic unit of ontology in energetic terms. The actual entity is to be understood as an oscillating unit of existence that is nothing other than its oscillatory activity. There is nothing substantial underlying it: it is essentially a vibrating entity that has nothing more primary appended to it. Through such vibratory activity, it realizes itself out of its own conative drive and its deeply interrelated adventures with other entities and objects. Energizing actuality (...) makes such entities objectively stubborn, subjectively agentive, massively interrelated to others, and entirely aesthetic in constitution. There are two main ways to analyze this metaphysical energy. This is mirrored by Whitehead's twofold analysis of actuality from the genetic and coordinate perspectives, which itself is an adaptation of James's Pragmatic analysis of experience. The quantum oscillation model of atomicity perfectly matches Whitehead's genetic analysis, and thus the phases of actuality, the poles of existence, and the formation of an atomic unit, are all developed in oscillatory terms. Conversely there is the coordinate analysis, where issues of ontological rhythmicity, identity via agentive repetition, unification via cyclical patternings, and coeval concrescence among entities will be dealt with according to the principles of wave transmission. Each analysis develops important characteristics of actuality, but neither analysis on its own can capture the totality of what actuality is. For such a generic interpretation to occur, unification between the genetic and the coordinate analyses must take place. The energy thesis accomplishes this by adopting the language of energy fields. The actual entity is a field of energy that is both the center of agentive activity that defines the field, and the center of attention of other entities. Whitehead calls this ontologically agentive attention 'concern,' a term that allows Whitehead to be closely compared to Heidegger, whose existential analysis of Dasein will be used to further develop the character of actuality. The aesthetic core of Whiteheadian ontology will be developed by comparing it to Dewey's aesthetic theory of consummatory experience. Together, a fully concerned and consummatory actual entity will stand as the most generic rendering of actuality. (shrink)

Church’s type theory, aka simple type theory, is a formal logical language which includes classical first-order and propositional logic, but is more expressive in a practical sense. It is used, with some modifications and enhancements, in most modern applications of type theory. It is particularly well suited to the formalization of mathematics and other disciplines and to specifying and verifying hardware and software. It also plays an important role in the study of the formal semantics of natural language. When utilizing (...) it as a meta-logic to semantically embed expressive non-classical logics further topical applications are enabled in artificial intelligence and philosophy. A great wealth of technical knowledge can be expressed very naturally in it. With possible enhancements, Church’s type theory constitutes an excellent formal language for representing the knowledge in automated information systems, sophisticated automated reasoning systems, systems for verifying the correctness of mathematical proofs, and a range of projects involving logic and artificial intelligence. Some examples and further references are given in Sections 1.2.2 and 5 below. Type theories are also called higher-order logics, since they allow quantification not only over individual variables, but also over function, predicate, and even higher order variables. Type theories characteristically assign types to entities, distinguishing, for example, between numbers, sets of numbers, functions from numbers to sets of numbers, and sets of such functions. As illustrated in Section 1.2.2 below, these distinctions allow one to discuss the conceptually rich world of sets and functions without encountering the paradoxes of naive set theory. Church’s type theory is a formulation of type theory that was introduced by Alonzo Church in Church 1940. In certain respects, it is simpler and more general than the type theory introduced by Bertrand Russell in Russell 1908 and Whitehead & Russell 1927a. Since properties and relations can be regarded as functions from entities to truth values, the concept of a function is taken as primitive in Church’s type theory, and the λ-notation which Church introduced in Church 1932 and Church 1941 is incorporated into the formal language. Moreover, quantifiers and description operators are introduced in a way so that additional binding mechanisms can be avoided, λ-notation is reused instead. λ-notation is thus the only binding mechanism employed in Church’s type theory. (shrink)

The last twenty-five years or so have seen the emergence of exciting comparative work on Nietzsche and various philosophical traditions beyond the bounds of Europe. So far, however, the emphasis has been primarily on the cultures of India, China and Japan, with an almost exclusive focus on Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Confucian traditions. Surprisingly, little work has been done on Nietzsche and the Islamic tradition. In this paper, I sketch out Nietzsche’s understanding of Islam, the ways in which he uses (...) it as a resource for his critique of Christianity and European modernity and the criticisms he has to make of it as one of the great monotheistic world religions. I then argue for the need to engage Nietzsche with specific Islamic falāsifa of the classical period (9-12th c.) rather than Islam itself, as some recent scholars have attempted to do. Although Nietzsche himself seems to have had no direct familiarity with any of the falāsifa, there are, I argue, many entry points for productive comparison and dialogue. This is at least in part because they share a significant common heritage: both were careful students of classical Greek and Hellenistic thought, and both put the insights they encountered there to work in bold new ways. Indeed, they appropriated, transformed and reanimated Greek ideas in new contexts and towards new ends that their progenitors would scarcely have recognized, and that were often radically challenging to their contemporaries. I focus here on a few select themes—the idea of philosophy as a “way of life,” the ideal of “becoming like God so far as it is possible” and the Platonic figure of the philosopher-ruler, all of which get taken up and re-imagined in radically novel and sometimes antipodal ways. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to outline Dorothy Emmet’s (1904-2000) account of perception in The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (published in 1945). Emmet’s account of perception is part of a wider attempt to rehabilitate metaphysics in the face of logical positivism and verificationism (of the kind espoused most famously by A. J. Ayer). It is thus part of an attempt to stem the tide of anti-metaphysical thought that had become widespread in British philosophy by the middle of the twentieth (...) century. In pursuit of that aim, Emmet draws on the work of figures like A. N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson, rather than more mainstream analytic thinkers like Bertrand Russell or G. E. Moore, for inspiration. Indeed, Emmet’s ideas stand in contrast to the prevailing tides of British philosophy during her lifetime. This makes Emmet a figure of considerable historical interest; she does not fit neatly into the traditional narrative of the continental-analytic divide, proposed a way forward for metaphysics in one of its greatest times of crisis, and pre-empted certain movements in more contemporary philosophy of perception. By espousing her unique account of perception and drawing out its connections to her wider philosophy, I hope to put Emmet ‘on the map’, so to speak, of twentieth century British thought. (shrink)

Peter S. Fosl offers a radical interpretation of Hume as a thoroughgoing sceptic on epistemological, metaphysical and doxastic grounds. He first contextualises Hume's thought in the sceptical tradition and goes on to interpret the conceptual apparatus of his work - including the Treatise, Enquiries, Essays, History, Dialogues and letters.

William James’s interest in psychical research is often treated as something of an anomaly. The fact that James took "that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as ’mesmeric,’ ’psychical,’ and ’spiritualistic,’" seriously as a legitimate area of scientific inquiry seems slightly bemusing to our contemporary jaded ears. As a result, his writings collected in Essays in Psychical Research tend to be marginalized, even ignored by most serious James scholars. But American pragmatist communication theorist John Durham Peters, in (...) his innovative philosophical and cultural history of communication, Speaking into the Air, provides the key to a new appreciation of this oft-neglected work by asserting that, for James, "the question of communication was one of our time’s questions of faith." By this Peters means that James’s investigations were not simply about whether communication with the dead via mediums was scientifically possible but also and more fundamentally about the desire for authentic person-to-person or soul-to-soul connection across distances. As Peters reads James, the question of communication is fundamentally a religious one, involving issues of hope, trust, faith, and interpretation; James’s "concern was never to rule out the possibility of contact with the inhuman– beast or God." Why? Because of the difference that it made, the effects that it had. (shrink)

This paper starts with the observation that at least for the last century there has been an orthodoxy in the social sciences characterized by sui generis structures of various kinds but also (paradoxically) by the unique role of individuals in their ability to intervene in the flow of events. This paper argues that there is a commonality to a number of challenges to orthodoxy that dates back to the beginnings of the social sciences themselves with Vico. Although many connections have (...) been made between elements of these critiques (Latour’s connection to Whitehead, Deleuze’s connection to Tarde), this paper proposes to make such connections more explicit by focusing on a central commitment to or tendency towards a monism characterized by a univocal ontology. The implication is that these various alternatives perhaps have more in common than normally thought and can continue to learn from each other. Most importantly, they present a coherent and viable alternative to social science orthodoxy. (shrink)

Despite its lack of influence in analytical philosophy, and independently of its content as a process philosophy, Whitehead's system in Process and Reality affords a valuable lesson on how to pursue revisionary systematic metaphysics. This paper argues the case generally for metaphysical revision and system, describes the structure of Whitehead's categorial scheme, endorses his idea of an ultimate which is not an entity, and outlines an alternative, “digital” ultimate or basis composed of several analytical factors. [I]n the absence (...) of a well-defined categoreal scheme of entities, issuing in a satisfactory metaphysical system, every premise in a philosophical argument is under suspicion. (shrink)

A Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead's Metaphysics .

Through Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics, the Philosophy of Organism, it will be argued that psychedelic experience is a vertical, lateral and temporal integration of sentience.

There are a number of possible strategies open to one in meeting this problem. He can try to show that God's unlimited power and goodness are, in fact, compatible; or show, through linguistic analysis, that the problem is meaningless; or show, through the use of the notions of commitment and mysticism, that the problem can be safely ignored. There are, however, grave difficulties with all these moves. So the most reasonable alternative move for one who wishes to remain more or (...) less within the theistic tradition is to try to modify the notion of unlimited power in a way that neither does violence to this tradition nor founders on the problem of evil. Whitehead and Hartshorne are the best examples of this interesting and complicated strategy. This strategy requires careful analysis before effective criticism can be advanced. After careful analysis, however, the criticisms of this strategy can be seen to be as effective as the criticisms of all the other strategies. The ultimate result is driving another nail into the coffin of religious cosmology. (shrink)

This chapter argues that in addition to being a hilarious stoner comedy, one of the most beloved cult films of all time, and a trenchant genre critique of film noir detective cinema, as well as American Westerns, Ethan and Joel Coen’s film, The Big Lebowski (1998, TBL), also presents reflections on several important philosophical themes. First, as a matter of feminist and gender philosophy, TBL examines and criticizes prominent ideals of masculinity, especially as they appear in US cinema, exploring the (...) question of what a better kind of man might be. Second, that project is woven together with an investigation of virtue as exemplified by the film’s protagonist, Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. TBL portrays in The Dude a man whose virtues include Epicurean-like excellences related to contented poverty, equality, community, and friendship. Friendship is also a virtue among Aristotelians, and The Dude’s culture of friendship, from an Aristotelian perspective, bears significant political import. By positioning The Dude at a mean between the extremes of his friend Walter Sobchak’s excess and the nihilists’ deficiencies, TBL explores the way rules and rule-following properly fit into virtuous moral life. In The Dude, the film shows how moral virtue not only requires intellectual excellences but also the right kind of character. And third, perhaps most centrally, TBL engages the problem of modern European nihilism and the effect it has had upon US culture. By means of the “abiding” virtues it valorizes, existential repetition, comedy itself, and the way its characters inhabit time, TBL confronts the death, despair, and disillusionment nihilism yields. (shrink)

Philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-H’s Noumenautics traverses the mindscape of metaphysics, nihilism and psychedelic phenomenology. It navigates through subjects such as the sentience of cells, the constrictions of consciousness, the metaphysics of might, the magic of mushrooms, the narcotics of Nietzsche, and the neologism of neo-nihilism – the last of which may itself cause flashbacks. -/- Tracing the fall of western morality through Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the book descends deeper still into a metaphysics further upheld by Henri Bergson and Alfred (...) North Whitehead. This collection of essays and notes provides a most idea-provoking, educational, and original piece of literature for the thoughtful lay-reader and specialist alike. -/- Contents: I. Philosophy and Psychedelic Phenomenology II. Myco-Metaphysics: a Philosopher on Magic Mushrooms III. Psychedelics and Empiricism IV. Bergson and Psychedelic Consciousness V. Vertexes of Sentience: Whitehead and Psychedelic Phenomenology VI. Antichrist Psychonaut: Nietzsche and Psychedelics VII. Neo-Nihilism: the Philosophy of Power VIII. The Teutonic Shift from Christian Morality: Kant – Schopenhauer – Nietzsche IX. Schopenhauer and the Mind X. The Will to Power. (shrink)

The Critical Thinking Toolkit is a comprehensive compendium that equips readers with the essential knowledge and methods for clear, analytical, logical thinking and critique in a range of scholarly contexts and everyday situations. Takes an expansive approach to critical thinking by exploring concepts from other disciplines, including evidence and justification from philosophy, cognitive biases and errors from psychology, race and gender from sociology and political science, and tropes and symbols from rhetoric Follows the proven format of The Philosopher’s Toolkit and (...) The Ethics Toolkit with concise, easily digestible entries, “see also” recommendations that connect topics, and recommended reading lists Allows readers to apply new critical thinking and reasoning skills with exercises and real life examples at the end of each chapter Written in an accessible way, it leads readers through terrain too often cluttered with jargon Ideal for beginning to advanced students, as well as general readers, looking for a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to critical thinking. (shrink)

Resistance movements have traditionally posited a logocentric reality to counter the prevailing structure of dominance. This element of opposition--in the humanities it has been a transhistorical nature and self--is characterized as a preideological essence. Whether this identity is a worker, a woman, the coherent individual, or nature, the tendency has been to use it as a cultural critique as well as an ontologically superior source for representation in literature and for recasting the shape of society. In the process, however, resistance (...) movements tend to replicate--by their participation in logocentricity--the problems of exclusion, hierarchy, mystification, and authority that they initially oppose. ;Examining the use that Emerson, Melville, Jeffers and Snyder make of the term "nature" provides a structure for discussing the problem of attempting to establish a point outside of the text. In addition, the use of nature has a specific role in relation to particular historical moments--nineteenth-century expansion; World War II; and Vietnam--in the works of these writers. ;Emerson is an often referenced source as an example of the oppositional spirit. One finds, however, that his attempt to depoliticize nature results in a centering of anthropocentric concerns. His treatment of the term exposes the criss-crossing of cultural currents and the attempt to locate power. As a result, Emerson inadvertently serves the interests of empire within a rhetoric of freedom. ;Melville probes the possibilities of nature as a ground and finds that the aesthetics of doubleness suggests political contradiction, epistemological relativity, and the will to power. Melville also explores the political and particularly male usages of metaphor. ;Jeffers and Snyder continue to work against a human centered form of resistance and representation. Jeffers posits women and nature against a patriarchal world of violence and narcissism. While tending to posit an essentialist concept of nature, Jeffers nevertheless sets the stage for a nonfoundationalist ecofeminism. Snyder appropriates this framework and, with the help of Hopi myth and Buddhist teachings, moves closer to a resistance that challenges without reference to authority. (shrink)

This article considers the significance of the Blessed Isles in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. They are the isolated locale to which Zarathustra and his fellow creators retreat in the Second Part of the book. I trace Zarathustra’s Blessed Isles back to the ancient Greek paradisiacal afterlife of the makarōn nēsoi and frame them against Nietzsche’s Platonic conception of philosophers as “commanders and legislators,” but I argue that they represent something more like a modern Epicurean Garden. Ultimately, I suggest that Zarathustra’s (...) Epicurean impulse toward withdrawal (whether into a sequestered friendship community or mountain solitude) undermines his Platonic attempts at great politics. (shrink)

In 1937 Joseph Grinnell founded the University of California’s first biological field station, the Hastings Natural History Reservation. Hastings became a center for field biology on the West Coast, and by 1960 it was serving as a model for the creation of additional U.C. reserves. Today, the U.C. Natural Reserve System is the largest and most diverse network of university-based biological field stations in the world, with 36 sites covering more than 135,000 acres. This essay examines the founding of the (...) Hastings Reservation, and asks how it managed to grow and develop, in the 1940s and 1950s, during a time of declining support for natural history research. It shows how faculty and staff courted the support of key institutional allies, presented themselves as the guardians of a venerable tradition in nature study, and emphasized the station’s capacity to document ecological change and inform environmental policy and management. In the years since, Hastings and other U.C. reserves have played crucial roles in California environmental politics. Biological field stations in the post-war era deserve more attention not only from historians of biology, but also from environmental historians and other scholars interested in the role of science in society. (shrink)

Conservation and restoration programs usually involve nostalgic claims about the past, along with calls to return to that past or recapture some aspect of it. Knowledge of history is essential for such programs, but the use of history is fraught with challenges. This essay examines the emergence, development, and use of the “ecological baseline” concept for three levels of biological organization. We argue that the baseline concept is problematic for establishing restoration targets. Yet historical knowledge—more broadly conceived to include both (...) social and ecological processes—will remain essential for conservation and restoration. (shrink)

A unique introductory guide to the rich, complex and diverse tradition of Islamic philosophy, this book comprises over a hundred concise entries, alphabetically ordered and cross-referenced for easy access. All the essential aspects of the Islamic philosophical tradition are covered here: key figures, schools, concepts, topics and issues. Articles on the Peripatetics, Isma'ilis, Illuminationists, Sufis, kalam theologians and later modern thinkers are supplemented by entries on classical Greek influences as well as Jewish philosophers who lived and worked in the Islamic (...) world. Topical entries cover various issues and key positions in all the major areas of philosophy, making clear why the central problems of Islamic philosophy have been, and remain, matters of rational disputation. (shrink)

Conservation and restoration programs usually involve nostalgic claims about the past, along with calls to return to that past or recapture some aspect of it. Knowledge of history is essential for such programs, but the use of history is fraught with challenges. This essay examines the emergence, development, and use of the “ecological baseline” concept for three levels of biological organization. We argue that the baseline concept is problematic for establishing restoration targets. Yet historical knowledge—more broadly conceived to include both (...) social and ecological processes—will remain essential for conservation and restoration. (shrink)

This comparative examination of Nietzsche and the Islamic philosopher al-Kindi emphasizes their mutual commitment to the recovery of classical Greek and Hellenistic thought and the idea of philosophy as a way of life. Affiliating both thinkers with the Stoic lineage in particular, I examine the ways in which they appropriate common themes such as fatalism, self-cultivation via spiritual exercises, and the banishing of sorrow. Focusing primarily on their respective conceptions of self and nature, I argue that the antipodal worldviews of (...) al-Kindi and Nietzsche can be understood as a bifurcation of Stoic philosophy. (shrink)

This essay argues that Hume's political and historical thought is well read as skeptical and skeptical in a way that roots it deeply in the Hellenistic traditions of both Pyrrhonian and Academical thought. It deploys skeptical instruments to undermine political rationalism as well as theologically and metaphysically political ideologies. Hume's is politics of opinion and appearance. It labors to oppose faction and enthusiasm and generate suspension, balance, tranquility, and moderation. Because Hume advocate the use of reflectively generated but epistemically and (...) metaphysically suspensive general rules, his political thought is not intrinsically conservative. While it valorizes stability and peace, Humean politics accepts a contested and open-ended political order, one that requires continuous maintenance and revision but does not pretend to any ultimate or final progress or end. (shrink)

In this book, Peter Wenz addresses the major issues and thinkers in environmental ethics. His style is accessible, even journalistic at times, featuring current facts, real controversies, and a vivid narrative, while preserving rigorous philosophical content.theories and methods are introduced, not for their own sake, but to help the reader understand and solve environmental problems.

Concentrating on the views of Christopher Stone, who advocates moral pluralism, and J. Baird Callicott, who criticizes Stone’s views, I argue that the debate has been confused by a conflation of three different positions, here called minimal, moderate, and extreme moral pluralism. Minimal pluralism is uncontroversial because all known moral theories are minimally pluralistic. Extreme pluralism is defective in the ways that Callicott alleges and, moreover, is inconsistent with integrity in the moral life. However, moderate pluralism of the sort that (...) I advance in Environmental Justice is distinct from extreme pluralism and free of its defects. It is also consistent with Callicott’s version of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which is itself moderately pluralistic. (shrink)

This paper initiates a dialogue between classical Islamic philosophy and late modern European thought, by focusing on two peripheral, ‘heretical’ figures within these traditions: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyāʾ al-Rāzī and Friedrich Nietzsche. What affiliates these thinkers across the cultural and historical chasm that separates them is their mutual fascination with, and profound indebtedness to, ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy. Given the specific themes, concerns and doctrines that they appropriate from this common source, I argue that al-Rāzī and Nietzsche should (...) be read as Epicureans and seen in relation to their predecessor as part of the subterranean tradition of philosophical naturalism. However, while each figure appropriates the philosophy of Epicurus, they ultimately transform it in important ways: al-Rāzī offers us a qualified “Platonic” Epicureanism, while Nietzsche forges a radicalized “Dionysian” Epicureanism. The point of such a comparative examination is twofold. First, analyzing the divergent paths of these “wayward” Epicureans sheds new light on the historical trajectory of naturalism as a philosophical stance (as well as its current prospects and limitations). Second, by initiating a dialogue between the classical Islamic and modern European philosophical traditions, we can better understand the antagonisms and shared concerns between these two horizons, as well as the ambiguities and self-questioning that occur within them. (shrink)

Deflationism about truth is the claim that the concept of truth is completely explicated by the disquotational view of truth, where the latter is the specification of a device of semantic ascent that avoids the semantical paradoxes. Over the last twenty years, the plausibility of deflationism has been intensely debated by philosophers of language. A number of writers have argued that even though deflationism is a coherent view, it is false. Some maintain that this is because a complete account of (...) truth must reduce truth to purely physical concepts but that the disquotational view of truth provides no such reduction. Others hold that there are important uses of the truth predicate that cannot be assimilated to its use as a device of semantic ascent. (shrink)

This essay argues that the exploration of scepticism and its implications in the work of Stanley Cavell and David Hume bears more similarities than is commonly acknowledged, especially along the lines of what I wish to call “sceptical naturalism.” These lines of similarity are described through the way each philosopher relates the “natural” and “nature” to the universal, the necessary, and the conventional.

The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor encourages the study of many disciplines in order for the soul to acquire knowledge that aids in the restoration of human nature. However, according to Hugh's epistemology much of the acquired knowledge depends upon sensory qualities internalized as images which distract the soul and cause it to degenerate from its original unity. This essay explores the tension between Hugh's educational optimism and Hugh's epistemological pessimism. After considering and rejecting two unsuccessful strategies the soul (...) might pursue for avoiding degeneration and distraction, we shall utilize Hugh's non-representational conception of cognition to develop a plausible intellectual strategy. We shall also build upon some of Hugh's remarks about music to sketch a model of self-knowledge as a kind of proportionality in the soul. (shrink)

This rich and detailed volume reads David Hume as a skeptic, but Susato is less interested in dissecting Hume’s particular skeptical arguments and more concerned with what he regards as Hume’s larger skeptical vision as it relates to his social and political thought. Susato argues against the idea that Hume’s historical work is independent of his philosophical skepticism; and he opposes the idea that Hume ought best to be read as a conservative thinker. Broadly speaking, the question Susato addresses is (...) how the “Humean defense of such positive values as ‘industry, knowledge and humanity’ is supported by seemingly conservative, though actually sceptical aspects of Hume’s thought, such as his criticism of... (shrink)

The Bibliographic Bases of Hume's Understanding of Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonism PETER S. FOSL N~q~e ~vaoo 6t~ttoxe~v' Epicharmus OVER THE PAST FORTY YEARS, the work of many scholars has served to advance and secure a hermeneutical approach to the development of modern philoso- phy first articulated by Richard H. Popkin3 The central proposition upon which this approach turns is that the discovery and application of ancient I am grateful to Richard Popkin, Julia Annas , Jonathan Barnes , Craig Walton (...) , Tom L. Beauchamp , and a number of anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. LOn the back of one of the sheets of his memoranda Hume wrote this remark. It may be translated as: "Keep sober and remember to be skeptical"; Ernest Campbell Mossner, "Hume's Early Memoranda, 1729-4o: The Complete Text," Journal of the Histo U of Ideas 9.4 : 5o3n.17 9 Richard H. Popkin, "David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and His Critique of Pyrrhonism," The Philosophical Quarterly 1. 5 : 385-4o7; "The Sceptical Crisis and the Rise of Modern Philosophy," Parts I, II, and III, Review of Metaphysics 8 : 131-51, 3o7-33, 499-51o; The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza ; "Scepticism and the Counter-Reformation in France," Archiv ffir.. (shrink)