List of Specialists

On the right side of this page, you'll find a list with links to the webpages of specialists in the different varieties of skepticism: Pyrrhonian or Academic; ancient, early modern or contemporary. I'm still working on the list so as to make it as complete as possible. But if you want to be added and you've got a webpage, let me know.

Special volume of Philosophiques

I want to let you know that Sébastien Charles (Université de Sherbrooke, Québec) is currently editing Scepticisme et philosophie à l’âge classique, a special volume of the Canadian journal Philosophiques, forthcoming in 2008.

A new book on Montaigne

Luiz Eva (Universidade Federal do Paraná) has recently published a book on Montaigne: A figura do filósofo: ceticismo e subjetividade em Montaigne. São Paulo: Loyola, 2007.

You'll find more information here.

A couple of books

Two collective volumes on skepticism have been published this year, one in Portuguese and the other in Italian:

- W. Silva Filho, P. J. Smith (eds.), Ensaios sobre o ceticismo. São Paulo: Alameda Editorial, 2007.

The description and table of contents are here.

- M. De Caro, E. Spinelli (eds.), Scetticismo. Una vicenda filosofica. Roma: Carocci, 2007.

The description and table of contents are here.

New journal devoted to skepticism

Sképsis is a new Brazilian journal devoted to skepticism. The main editor is Plínio Junqueira Smith and the assistant editors are Luiz Antonio Alves Eva, Roberto Bolzani Filho, and Waldomiro José Silva Filho. Published biannually, its first volume has already appeared. As far as I know, this is the first philosophy journal entirely devoted to skepticism.

Complete information about Sképsis can be found here.

A Companion to Ancient Skepticism

I've heard that Richard Bett (Johns Hopkins University) is editing The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, forthcoming in 2008. So far I only know that he's writing an essay on skepticism and ethics, and that Luciano Floridi (Oxford University) is writing one entitled "The Rediscovery and Posthumous Influence of Scepticism".

I look forward to reading this book, which I'm sure will include papers by several leading specialists in ancient skepticism. In fact, Bett is one of them: he has written a number of papers on ancient (and contemporary) skepticism, published Pyrrho, his Antecedents and his Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and translated Sextus' Against the Ethicists (Oxford University Press, 1997; with an introduction and an extensive commentary) and Against the Logicians (Cambridge University Press, 2005; with an introduction).

Edit: for more information about the contributions, see the comment by Jim Hankinson (University of Texas).

Conference on Pyrrhonism

I'm organizing a conference on ancient Pyrrhonism and its influence on early modern and contemporary philosophy. If everything happens as expected, it will take place in Buenos Aires (Argentina), most probably during the first week of August 2008. Among the participants are specialists from the US, Italy, France, England, Brazil, and Canada.

What will distinguish this event from other conferences on Pyrrhonism is that it will also examine the impact of this philosophy on the development of both early modern and contemporary philosophy.

Though this is an ambitious project, I think there is a good chance that the conference will be a reality.

Michael Frede

On August 11 Michael Frede died in Delphi (Greece), where he was attending the Symposium Hellenisticum. A memorial notice from the Berkeley Classics Department is found here.

Frede was a leading specialist in several fields of ancient philosophy, including skepticism. His two most important contributions in this area are "The Sceptic's Beliefs" and "The Sceptic's Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possibility of Knowledge".

Both papers - which have exerted a major influence on the subsequent research on ancient skepticism - can be found in M. Burnyeat and M. Frede (eds.), The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Hackett: Indianapolis, 1997).

Conference in memory of Richard Popkin

Next October there will be a conference on skepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in Belo Horizonte (Brazil) in memory of Richard Popkin. Popkin is widely known particularly for his ground-breaking book The History of Scepticism. This work was first published in 1960 under the title The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes. Its second edition appeared in 1979 under the title The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, and its last edition - fully revised and considerably expanded - was published in 2003 under the title The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle.

The conference will be organized by José Raimundo Maia Neto. The program can be found here.