Contents

Introduction

1 The Intellectual Crisis of the Reformation

2 The Revival of Greek Scepticism in the Sixteenth Century

3 Michel de Montaigne and the Nouveaux Pyrrhoniens

4 The Influence of the New Pyrrhonism

5 The Libertins Érudits

6 The Counterattack Begins

7 Constructive or Mitigated Scepticism

8 Herbert of Cherbury and Jean de Silhon

9 Descartes: Conqueror of Scepticism

10 Descartes: Sceptique Malgré Lui

11 Some Spiritual and Religious Answers to Scepticism and Descartes: Henry More, Blaise Pascal, and Quietists

12 Political and Practical Answers to Scepticism: Thomas Hobbes

13 Philosophers of the Royal Society: Wilkins, Boyle, and Glanvill

14 Biblical Criticism and the Beginning of Religious Scepticism

15 Spinoza’s Scepticism and Antiscepticism

16 Scepticism and Late Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics

17 The New Sceptics: Simon Foucher and Pierre-Daniel Huet

18 Pierre Bayle: Superscepticism and the Beginnings of Enlightenment Dogmatism

Notes

Bibliography

Index