Sextus and Aristotle

On Saturday 2, the Université Paris-Sorbonne (1 rue Victor Cousin, Salle D. 690) will hold the conference "Permanence et mutations de l'aristotélisme dans les philosophies hellénistiques". At 14h30-15h30, Emidio Spinelli (Roma) will give the talk "Sextus Empiricus et l'ombre longue d'Aristote".

New Paper on Ancient Pyrrhonism

Angela Longo and Davide Del Forno recently edited Argument from Hypothesis in Ancient Philosophy, Elenchos 59 (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2011). The volume contains Lorenzo Corti's "Scepticism and Hypothetical Method."

Norris on Skepticism

The latest issue of The Philosophical Forum features Christopher Norris' "How Not to Defeat Skepticism: Why Antirealism Won't Do the Trick". The paper can be found here.

New Issue of IJSS

A new issue of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now available online. You can check it out here.

Beginning next year, the number of issues per volume will increase from two to four.

Skepticism and Politics

A couple of days ago, I received information about the upcoming conference "Skepticism and Politics in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," which will take place at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in LA, on May 11-12. The conference is organized by Gianni Paganini (University of Piedmont) and John Christian Laursen, (University of California, Riverside).

This conference starts from the point that much of our thinking in both philosophy and politics today is an inheritance from the encounters by major philosophers such as Hobbes, Descartes, Hume, Smith, and Kant with the skeptical traditions. Their work, in turn, influenced a host of minor figures such as the libertines of the seventeenth century and the political activists of the time of the French Revolution. The skeptical foundations of Hobbesian political philosophy, Cartesianism, and the clandestine writers of the seventeenth century fed into the Humean empiricism, Smithian cosmopolitanism, and Kantian political idealism of the Enlightenment. Along the way, literature and historical writing tried to make sense of the implications of skepticism for political life. All put together, we will try to bring out the political implications of philosophical skepticism in the early modern period as the foundation for understanding its continuing political implications today. 

Registration Deadline: May 8, 2012. Registration Fees: $20 per person; UC faculty & staff, students with ID: no charge.

All students, UC faculty and staff may register via e-mail by sending their name, affiliation and phone number to c1718cs@humnet.ucla.

The registration form as well as the program can be found here.