In his preface to The High Road to Pyrrhonism, Popkin tells us his book is a "partial fulfillment" of the promise he made in his earlier History of Scepticism to extend into the eighteenth century his investigation of his intent "to show how historical research can illuminate certain major issues in philosophy and the ideas of certain major thinkers." Anyone familiar with The History of Scepticism must surely have been impressed with the scholarly care that went into its writing. We (...) are indebted to Popkin for what his study shows, that the philosophers who have become history’s legacy to introductory philosophy courses did not philosophize in vacuums. Their thoughts emerged as the products of philosophical debates with contemporaries such as Montaigne, Gassendi, Mersenne, etc., who were the philosophical equals of their more famous brethren, even though not favored by history with comparable recognition. Were The High Road to Pyrrhonism an expansion of that excellent study, it would be welcome indeed. (shrink)

Popkin's History of Scepticism, first published in 1960 and now appearing in a third, revised and expanded, edition, has long since won the status of a "standard work," at once the starting-point for further historical research and an instigation to philosophical reflection on the sceptical tendencies apparently inseparable from the advent of modern thought. The two earlier editions have already been amply celebrated and criticized. The new edition includes a revised treatment of "The Revival of Greek Scepticism in the Sixteenth (...) Century", based in part on C. B. Schmitt's research in his book Cicero Academicus and in later studies. Two new chapters have been added: "Isaac La Peyrère and the Beginnings of Religious Scepticism". embodying Popkin's many recent and continuing studies of La Peyrère and other figures in the seventeenth century pre-Adamite and Marrano movements and "Spinoza's Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism". These new chapters continue to be written in a clear and vivid style, combining narrative with analysis so as to engage both the specialist and the neophyte. (shrink)