Philosophical Skepticism

Catalog description

This course will provide a careful study the ideas and arguments of some of the most influential philosophers in the history of philosophical skepticism about knowledge in the Western tradition and some of the most influential responses to them. The major forms of skepticism in this tradition and the responses to them?including ancient Academic and Pyrrhonian skepticism as well as modern Cartesian and Kantian conceptions of skeptical challenges?will be carefully studied both in their respective historical contexts and in their reception in contemporary philosophical literature. The course will cover classical texts by Plato, Sextus Empiricus, Cicero, Montaigne, Descartes, Hume, Berkeley and Kant, as well as a variety of recent texts by contemporary figures in epistemology.