Suspending Judgment

In this last post of the year, I would like to let you know about this early-view paper by Jane Friedman forthcoming in Noûs: “Why Suspending Judgment.” Interestingly, she defends a view remarkably similar to Sextus's. It can be found here.

Moore's Proof

The latest issue of the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy features Kevin Morris and Consuelo Preti's paper “How to Read Moore’s ‘Proof of an External World’.” It can be accessed for free here.

Skepticism about Skepticism

The latest issue of Philosophy contains Nick Zangwill's "Scepticism about Scepticism," which you can find here. I haven't read it yet, but needless to say I regard any attack on skepticism as sacrilegious.

Pyrrhonian Relativism

In case you’re interested, my paper “Pyrrhonian Relativism” has just been published in Elenchos 36 (2015): 89-114. It can be found here -- if you don't have access and would like to have a copy, contact me. And here’s the abstract:

This paper argues that Sextus Empiricus’s Pyrrhonism is a form of relativism markedly different from the positions typically referred to by this term. The scholars who have explored the relativistic elements found in Sextus’s texts have claimed that his outlook is not actually a form of relativism, or that those elements are inconsistent with his account of Pyrrhonism, or that he is confusing skepticism with relativism. The reason for these views is twofold: first, when employing the term “relativism” one hardly has in mind the sort of relativistic stance adopted by the Pyrrhonist; and second, those scholars have misinterpreted Sextus’s relativistic remarks. The purpose of this paper is to show that he adopts a phenomenological kind of relativism that is compatible with his account of Pyrrhonism.

Issue 5.4 of IJSS

Issue 5.4 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now out. You can find it here.

Dossier on Pyrrhonism

The latest volume of the French journal Philosophie Antique (15, 2015) includes a dossier devoted to Pyrrhonian skepticism (in addition to several papers on other topics).

Carlos Lévy

"Philon d’Alexandrie est-il inutilisable pour connaître Énésidème ? Étude méthodologique."

Richard Bett

"Why Care Whether Scepticism is Different from Other Philosophies?"

Baptiste Bondu

"Le problème du critère sceptique."

Stéphane Marchand

"Sextus Empiricus, scepticisme et philosophie de la vie quotidienne."

Lorenzo Corti

"Scepticism, Number and Appearances : The ἀριθμητικὴ τέχνη and Sextus Empiricus’ targets in M I-VI."

Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies

In previous posts, I referred to the recently founded Maimonides Centre for Advances Studies at the University of Hamburg, whose central aim is the study of Jewish skepticism. The center has now a website.

French Translation of Against the Ethicists

I've just found out about what I think is the first French translation of Sextus Empiricus's Against the Ethicists:

Sextus Empiricus, Contre les moralistes (Adv. Math. XI). Traduit, présenté et annoté par Olivier D'Jeranian. Manucius: 2015.

I cannot recommend this translation because I haven't seen it yet and I don't know the translator, but you can find more information here.

For and Against Skepticism

A couple of months ago, the French publishing house Honoré Champion published Pour et contre le scepticisme: Théories et Pratiques de l’Antiquité aux Lumières, edited by Élodie Argaud, Nawalle El Yadari, Sébastien Charles, and Gianni Paganini. For more information, click here.

Defending Skepticism

My paper "Conciliationism and the Menace of Scepticism" has just been published in Dialogue 54 (2015): 469-488. It can be found here.

Two New Papers on Sextus

Two new papers on Sextus by Emidio Spinelli has just been published:

- "Sesto Empirico: iceberg scettico della nozione di epoché", Archivio di Filosofia 83 (2015): 193-207. (It can be found here.)

- "Sesto Empirico: contro il corpo, contro l’anima. L’uomo non può essere criterio," Syzetesis - Rivista online 2 NS (2015): 7-14. (It can be accessed for free here.)

Conference on Modern Philosophy in Rome

On October 7 & 8, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei will host the conference "La curiosità e le passioni della conoscenza: filosofia e scienze da Montaigne a Hobbes". The program can be found here.

New Volume of Sképsis

Volume 12 of the Brazilian journal Sképsis is now out. You can access the papers for free here.

CFP Special Issue on Vuillemin on Ancient Skepticism

Following a one-day workshop devoted to the approach of the French philosopher Jules Vuillemin to ancient scepticism, which took place at the Archives Henri Poincaré at Nancy (France) on December the 6th 2014, the journal Philosophia Scientiae organises a special issue devoted to this theme, edited by Lorenzo Corti and Joseph Vidal-Rosset. On this occasion, we encourage submissions on Jules Vuillemin’s discussion of ancient scepticism.

Vuillemin deals with ancient scepticism in several loci of his work. In his Nécessité ou contingence?, having reconstructed the Dominator argument and three ancient reactions to it attested by Epictetus, he analyzes some ancient positions that defended contingency by dropping one of the implicit premises of the argument. One of these positions is that of Carneades, as attested in Cicero’s De Fato (Nécessité et Contingence?, 231-51). At the end of the same book, Vuillemin characterizes a few philosophical systems by the way in which they react to the Dominator argument. These include scepticism – i.e. the scepticism of Carneades, somehow understood as an ʻancient Humeʼ (Nécessité et Contingence?, 400-6). In his article ʻUne morale est-elle compatible avec le scepticisme ?ʼ (Philosophie 7 (1985), 21-51), Vuillemin asks the question mentioned in the title as far as four varieties of scepticism are concerned. In his « La justice par convention; signification philosophique de la doctrine de Rawls » (Dialectica 41, n°1-2 (1987), pp. 155-166), Vuillemin assimilates Rawls’ approach to justice to that of an Academic sceptic. This thematic issue of Philosophia Scientiae aims at inquiring into the multiple facets of the attitude of an atypical contemporary philosopher to ancient scepticism.

The submitted manuscripts will be published subject to peer-review. All papers have to be prepared for peer-review blind refereeing. Manuscripts should be submitted in French, English, or German, and prepared for anonymous peer review. Abstracts in French and English of 200-300 words in length should be included. Articles should not exceed 50,000 characters (spaces and footnotes included).

Please send submissions to:

Lorenzo Corti <lorenzo.corti@univ-lorraine.fr>

Joseph Vidal-Rosset <joseph.vidal-rosset@univ-lorraine.fr>