The Skeptical Tradition from the Middle Ages to Modernity: The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on Pascalian Anti-Skepticism
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Abstract
Many interpreters have tried to establish the Pyrrhonian or academic character of the skepticism that Pascal shows and criticizes explicitly in reference to the author of the Essays, Michel de Montaigne, and implicitly in relation to the Descartes of the Meditations on First Philosophy by delving into the classical sources of the French author.
But in these readings the origin of the polemical characterization of skepticism in Pascal’s works, which is none other than Augustine of Hippo, in his dialogue Against the Academics and in some other texts, has been left out. Thus, illustrating the main features of the response to Augustine’s academic skepticism will allow us to have a better understanding of the role played by the skeptical attitude in Pascal, the transformations that the classical models undergo in his work as they pass through medieval thinking, and what is innovative in his proposal.
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