Fellows and Research Projects: 2019–20

Senior Fellow: October 2019–February 2020

Research Project: The Debate on Scepticism in Germany between Enquiry and Doubt (1650–1720)

In 1702, the Lutheran theologian Johan Eberhard Udam discussed a thesis entitled Dissertatio de ortu et progressu Scepticismi (Dissertation on the Origin and Development of Scepticism). This work dealt with the long history of scepticism, but also testified to the interest that this philosophy had aroused in the Lutheran circles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is true that the interest in scepticism that had become part of the debate in the Lutheran universities had arrived from overseas. However, the debate, which took place between 1699 and 1725, took on a completely autonomous character. During this period, several scholars (such as Johann Franz Budde, Jacob Reimmann, and Johan Christoph Wolf) published treatises on scepticism, and a new edition of the works of Sextus Empiricus was published in Leipzig in 1718. All these works testify to the interest that the Lutheran world had developed in this particular Greek philosophy. The project aims to investigate the role that scepticism, both as a philosophy (i.e., in its historical dimension) and as a method, played within the history of German culture in this period. The analysis will particularly focus on the use of scepticism within the debate between Lutheran Aristotelian orthodoxy and its opponents, which seems to take the shape of a clash between dogmatists and sceptics. This part should help us to understand the role played by the use of scepticism in the process of enquiring into a dogmatic philosophy (as Aristotelian Lutheranism was at that time) and the role of doubt within this process.

Guido Bartolucci is assistant professor of early modern history at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Università della Calabria.

Junior Fellow: October 2019–July 2020

Research Project: Scepticism, Certainty, and Belief in Medieval Jewish and Christian Philosophy

When should we not be sceptical? And when should we be sceptical? This research project will investigate how medieval Jewish and Christian philosophers answer these questions. In particular, it will aim to provide careful analyses of two notions that play important roles in their answers to these questions: the notion of certainty (yaqīn/certitudo) and the notion of belief (‘emunah/fides).

(1) Is certainty absolute or gradable?
Regarding the concept of certainty, the project will investigate two different conceptions held by medieval Jewish and Christian philosophers: first, the absolute conception of certainty, according to which certainty allows no degrees; second, the gradable conception of certainty, according to which certainty allows degrees. After examining the arguments for these two conceptions of certainty, it will show how they can address the sceptical challenge.

(2) Is belief voluntary or involuntary?
Regarding the concept of belief, this project will particularly focus on Hasdai Crescas’s defence of involuntarism about ‘emunah in the Jewish tradition. After analysing his arguments for involuntarism, it will compare Crescas’s view with a similar view held by the fourteenth-century Dominican philosopher Robert Holcot, according to which fides cannot be achieved by our will alone.    

 Philip Choi is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder (USA).

Junior Fellow: October 2019–March 2020

Research Project: Is the Prisca Theologia a Doubting Device? Greco-Latin Astrological and Medical Lore in Hebrew Garb from the Perspective of a Renovatio Antiquorum

Humanists used sceptical arguments in different ways, firstly as instruments for rejecting Aristotelianism or other dogmatic authorities or in religious controversies, secondly in the new theory of knowledge, and, more generally, in the epistemological crisis, anticipating the post-Renaissance questions of whether we know something and if we know, how we know. In this context, the Neoplatonic cosmologies, theologies, and philosophies of love developed between the second half of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth century may not be sceptical theories, but they can be considered to have been influenced and marked by sceptical arguments, doubting and rethinking both the privileges of religious authorities and the claims to knowledge. Aiming to contribute to the understanding of the prisca theologia as a sceptical device and the sceptical issue of the human system of knowledge being rejected in favour of the divine nature of God, the main focus of this research is an analysis of the astromythology and astrological medicine found in the second dialogue of the Dialoghi d’amore written by the Sephardic Jewish Neoplatonic philosopher and physician Yehudah Abarbanel (1465/70–1525/34), best known as Leone Ebreo, around the first decade of the sixteenth century between Naples and Venice.

Maria Vittoria Comacchi defended her European PhD (2019) in philosophy at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia (Italy), supervised by Emanuela Scribano, on the renovatio antiquorum in Yehudah Abarbanel’s Dialoghi d’amore.

Senior Fellow: June–July 2020 –– DEFERRED/2023

Research Project: Spinoza and the Parmenidean Ascent: Themes from Wittgenstein and Sextus Empiricus

During my time at the Maimonides Centre, I will build on the rationalist, Parmenidean, and sceptical research programme launched by my book The Parmenidean Ascent, which will be published in summer 2020. The monism in that book—in the form of a rejection of all distinctions—has sceptical implications, not just in the sense that it leads to a doubt or denial of distinctions to which we are ordinarily committed, but also in the sense that it challenges whether we even have—as we uncritically presuppose that we do—a coherent understanding of such notions as being, action, knowledge, and meaning.  During my time at the centre, I would like to deepen this sceptical strand in my project by examining the rationalist underpinnings of the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus and the extent to which this kind of scepticism, infused by the Principle of Sufficient Reason, can be found in Spinoza. This distinctionless, sceptical monism that I will explore in Spinoza reflects a major change from the interpretation of Spinoza that I offered in my 2008 book in the Routledge series in the history of philosophy, and indeed a related project on which I will be working at the Centre is the completion of the substantially different second edition of my book, Spinoza.

Michael Della Rocca is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.

Senior Fellow: July–August 2022 and April–June 2023 (DEFFERED/2019–20)

Research Project: Scepticism between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries

During the seventeenth century, thanks to the influence of René Descartes on the one hand and Robert Boyle and Joseph Glanvill on the other, the interest in the epistemological side of scepticism prevailed. Therefore, scepticism seemed to avoid the critique of religion and moral relativism and appeared to be compatible with an apologetic design. Despite these precautions, sceptics were often accused of irreligion or atheism. The refutation of modern scepticism requires the construction of a complex speech, building an intricate network of sceptical affinities which often includes authors from ancient times and authors of the modern age, and not only philosophers, but also theologians. Condemnations of scepticism actually elaborate some doxographic treatises which would evolve into histories of philosophy during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Anontella Del Prete aims to examine this evolution through some cases studies, especially referring to Dutch and German cultures, and  intend to establish a possible link between the refutations of scepticism found in Martin Schoock and Gijsbert Voetius’s works and the presentations of this philosophy present in Georg Morhof and Jakob Brucker, finding and analysing intermediate texts and paying particular attention to the disputes produced by Dutch and German universities.

Antonella Del Prete is an associate professor at Università degli Studi della Tuscia in Viterbo.

Senior Fellow: April–August 2020

Research Project: Truth and Scepticism. Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique in the Tension between Confessional Commitment and Early Enlightenment Scepticism

The French philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) is considered one of the great pioneers of the Enlightenment in Europe. His main work, the four-volume Dictionnaire historique et critique (1696/97), experienced an unexpectedly wide distribution. It laid the basis for Bayle’s reputation as a great sceptic and atheist, whose positions revealed an ambivalent attitude towards Christianity. He himself seemed – in view of the Huguenot persecution in France under Louis XIV – to oscillate between a faith rooted in the Calvinist tradition and doubting rationalism. This ambiguity is reflected in Bayle’s Dictionnaire, whose articles covertly suggest that readers should open up those areas that were previously comprehended only by faith and confession to the “light of reason.” The aim of this research project is to shed light on this paradigm shift that Bayle initiated, which appears in the abandonment of an understanding of reality that rests on religiously founded truth and leads to the development of a rationally grounded doubt. Bayle’s integration into the confessionality of his time will play a role in the project, as will the reception of his Dictionnaire in the German-speaking world, where the thought of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz mitigated Bayle’s critique.

Irene Dingel is the director of the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz (Department of European Religious History).

Senior Fellow: April–August 2020

Research Project: Staging Doubt, Transforming Identities: Buddhism and Performing Arts in Early Modern Japan (in cooperation with Eike Grossmann)

In late medieval and early modern Japan, it is first and foremost Nō theatre—including its performance, scripts, and theoretical treatises—that radically questions commonplace naturalist worldviews from a sceptic perspective. Nō theatre stages moments of crisis during which reality is questioned, and it does so by relying heavily on aspects of illusion, disguise, transformation, and revelation. The ambiguity of words, appearances, and emotions creates a transcendental space where collective and individual identities are negotiated and an awareness emerges which corresponds to ideas about karma and memory. The audience is suspended in a state of uncertainty in which doubt is the only certainty left. Thus, Nō is the performance of scepticism; it is, in fact, the staging of the Buddhist sceptic project itself.

This project proposes to investigate the interrelation of Buddhist scepticism and Nō theatre by focusing on:

(1) modes of specifically sceptic enquiry and multiform expressions of systematic doubt;

(2)  their role in the intellectual currents of their time; and

(3) the interwoven relationship between critical religio-philosophical speculation and its Sitz im Leben as expressed in the performing arts.

Steffen Döll is Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhism and co-director of the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the Asia-Africa-Institute at the Universität Hamburg

Junior Fellow: April–September 2020

Research Project: Scepticism and Infinitism in Sextus and Maimon

This project aims to explore the relationship between scepticism and a commitment to ongoing or even infinite inquiry in the work of a number of significant thinkers in the history of epistemology, although without the expectation that this will lead to the discovery of one significant, shared position or common thread. The focus of this fellowship will be the work of Sextus Empiricus and Solomon Maimon.

In the case of Sextus, the project will contribute to the ongoing debate concerning the nature of the Sceptic’s investigation as it is presented in Sextus’s works and its relationship to the claim that a state of tranquillity follows from the Sceptic’s suspension of judgement. The primary goal is to offer a new account of why the Sceptic should be committed to a project of ongoing inquiry. In the case of Maimon, rather than focusing (as is often the case) on the validity or invalidity of his criticisms of Kant, the aim is to examine whether or not Maimon’s rehabilitation of Humean scepticism is compatible with his positive picture of the development towards the goal of a systematically organised body of knowledge. The likely conclusion will be that it is not.

 Robert Dunphy studied at the University of Warwick (BA and MA) and the University of Sussex (PhD).

Junior Fellow: April–September 2020

Research Project: Social Ataraxia: Mendelssohn’s Scepticism, Pluralism, and Moderation

On the one hand, Mendelssohn famously thought of scepticism as a “disease of the soul,” one which he himself experienced as a form of “torture.” On the other, his philosophy reflects a sceptical attitude towards metaphysics and the ability of our language to convey complex abstract ideas. How can this tension be resolved? In other words, if scepticism is such a “torture,” why does Mendelssohn still advocate a sceptical attitude? This research will explore the notion that while acute doubts about central aspects of religion are indeed nefarious on the personal level, Mendelssohn construes a sceptical attitude to be socially productive insofar as it enables and promotes pluralism and moderation. The aim of the project is therefore to explore the ways in which Mendelssohn’s scepticism enables such “social ataraxia”; how his sceptical thought enables pluralism and promotes moderation, thereby leading to social well-being. As such, it explores the dynamics between scepticism as a precursor to tranquillity and scepticism as a “disease of the soul” in an effort to delineate a characteristically nuanced Mendelssohnian position between these poles.

Jeremy Fogel teaches at Tel Aviv University and at Alma, lectures publicly on philosophy in various forums, and is also involved with various independent artistic and literary ventures.

Senior Fellow: April–August 2020

Research Project: Staging Doubt, Transforming Identities: Buddhism and Performing Arts in Early Modern Japan (in cooperation with Steffen Döll)

In late medieval and early modern Japan, it is first and foremost Nō theatre—including its performance, scripts, and theoretical treatises—that radically questions commonplace naturalist worldviews from a sceptic perspective. Nō theatre stages moments of crisis during which reality is questioned, and it does so by relying heavily on aspects of illusion, disguise, transformation, and revelation. The ambiguity of words, appearances, and emotions creates a transcendental space where collective and individual identities are negotiated and an awareness emerges which corresponds to ideas about karma and memory. The audience is suspended in a state of uncertainty in which doubt is the only certainty left. Thus, Nō is the performance of scepticism; it is, in fact, the staging of the Buddhist sceptic project itself.

This project proposes to investigate the interrelation of Buddhist scepticism and Nō theatre by focusing on:

(1) modes of specifically sceptic enquiry and multiform expressions of systematic doubt;

(2)  their role in the intellectual currents of their time; and

(3) the interwoven relationship between critical religio-philosophical speculation and its Sitz im Leben as expressed in the performing arts.

Eike Grossmann has been an associate professor in the Department of Japanese Language and Culture at Universität Hamburg since 2012

Senior Fellow: February–March 2020

Research Project: The Pedagogical Value of Scepticism according to Maimonides, Hasdai Crescas, and Other Medieval Jewish Philosophers

Maimonides (1138–1204) and Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340–1410/11) were both philosophers with sceptical inclinations. They both had grave doubts about Aristotelian physics and both considered all proofs of the One God to be invalid. However, they differed in their attitude towards scepticism as a pedagogical tool.
Maimonides considered scepticism to be pedagogically subversive: doubts could lead students to despair of religion, science, or both. Hasdai Crescas held the contrary view. He considered scepticism to be pedagogically useful, believing that knowledge advances by criticism and that the open expression of doubt is good for both science and religion. He thought that the danger to knowledge is not scepticism, but dogmatism.
One may speak of “two kinds of scepticism,” or more precisely, “two pedagogical approaches to scepticism.” According to the first approach, scepticism is subversive and must be taught as an esoteric doctrine. According to the second approach, scepticism is educationally useful and must be taught openly.
This research project proposes to examine the different attitudes of medieval Jewish philosophers with regard to the pedagogical value of scepticism. How many agree with Maimonides and how many agree with Crescas? How does this influence their theories of education?

Zev Warren Harvey is professor emeritus in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has taught since 1977.

Senior Fellow: May–July 2020 –– DEFERRED/2023

Research Project: The Rabbis as Jesters and the Truth Wars of Antiquity  

This research employs Leszek Kolakowski’s figure of the jester to argue that the dominant voice in classical talmudic literature (from the second to the seventh centuries CE) expresses an aversion to dogmatic truth claims of various kinds. It documents rabbinic opposition to a range of dogmatic epistemological positions: the positive absolutism of truth-centred rationalist philosophy, ontological realism, and empiricism, as well as the negative absolutism of relativism and nihilism. Christine Hayes argues that against these absolutisms and their associated claims to epistemological certainty, the rabbis deploy the destabilising strategies of play, including not only humour, but also, and specifically, excess. She further argues that the jester’s voice is not confined to non-legal texts; every developed legal argument of the Talmud is an exercise in (serious) play designed precisely to prevent dogmatic certainty in the realm of halakhah, for the rabbinic “jester” stood vigilant against the absolutist within as much as the absolutist without. Against the philosophers’ static “one” and the sophists’ equally static but nihilistic “none,” rabbinic scepticism imagined a dynamic world of manifold particulars that allows neither moral and epistemological certainty nor nihilism. Methodologically, my work is deeply informed by recent scholarship on play theory, humour theory, and the epistemological function of detail in both ancient and contemporary theories of knowledge.

Christine Hayes is the Weis Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University.

Senior Fellow: October 2019–February 2020

Research Project: Traces of Dogmatism and Scepticism in the Philosophies of Education, ca. 1780–1920

This research project aims to analyse the emerging modes of rearranging the relationship between knowledge and religion which were invented in the “long nineteenth century” in order to overcome the secularisation crisis in the field of education. This includes propositions by Mendelssohn and Wessely and their opponents, as well as Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and addition: Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Nechama Leibowitz. The focus is on identifying elements of sceptical philosophy in the diverse conceptions of educational philosophy which arose between 1780 and the 1920s. It is also targeted on the question of the direction and extent to which Jewish education had to be reconditioned in order to preserve Judaism and to simultaneously allow for a peaceful coexistence with Christians.

Monika Kaminska is a researcher in Jewish philosophy of education and an assistant lecturer at the Universität Hamburg.

Junior Fellow: October 2020–March 2021 (DEFERRED/2019–20)

Research Project: Scepticism and Kantianism: Salomon Maimon’s Reading of Kant

This project will analyse and critically assess Salomon Maimon’s engagement with Immanuel Kant: Maimon endorses scepticism and argues that Kantianism cannot escape scepticism either. Building on existing research on Maimon’s philosophy that mostly takes a Maimon-immanent perspective, it adopts a distinctive approach by placing special emphasis on the context in which Maimon articulates his scepticism: reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In its approach to Maimon, it takes seriously both the relationship that his work has to that of other early readers of Kant (most notably the sceptic Gottlob Ernst Schulze) and his work’s connection to questions figuring prominently in contemporary Kant scholarship. It will consist of two subprojects focusing on (i) Maimon’s treatment of the Kantian thing in itself and (ii) Maimon’s criticism of Kant’s refutation of Hume. This distinctive Kant-oriented approach seeks to argue against some influential accounts of both (i) and (ii) and to develop a more realist interpretation of Maimon’s views, adding to our understanding of his thinking, its place in the history of philosophy, and its importance for contemporary Kantianism.

Marialena Karampatsou will be a postdoctoral fellow in 2020. She is currently completing her PhD at the Department of Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Senior Fellow: October 2019–February 2020

Research Project: Scepticism in the Educational Philosophy of the Berlin Haskalah. The Example of Joel Bril Löwe

One of the most important Berlin maskilim was Joel Bril, also known as Joel Löwe (1760–1802). He had connections to some intellectual protagonists of the Haskalah, such as Moses Mendelssohn, Aaron Wolfssohn, and David Friedländer, in whose home he was employed as a teacher. Löwe edited Mendelssohn’s translation of the book of Psalms and the Song of Songs, and he himself translated the book of Jonah (all with commentaries) and wrote an introduction to the sceptical book of Kohelet. He also published numerous works on German linguistics. Moreover, he was a member of several of the Berlin Haskalah’s social associations, a contributor and at times the co-editor of the journal Ha-Meassef, and among the founders of the Königliche Wilhelmsschule in Breslau. This research project intends to put this largely forgotten representative of the Berlin Haskalah centre stage. The aim is to relate Löwe’s sceptical attitude to the Haskalah’s central thoughts on human’s purpose of perfection (Bestimmung des Menschen zur Vervollkommnung), and to search for modes of sceptical strategies in his pedagogical concepts, linguistic approaches, translation method and throughout his educational philosophy (Bildungsphilosophie).

Uta Lohmann wrote her PhD on the biography of the Jewish enlightener David Friedländer. Since 2012, she has headed her own DFG project at the Universität Hamburg, which aims at the study of the Haskalah’s programme of education (Bildungskonzept) and the interaction between the Berlin Jewish enlightenment and the neo-humanistic theory of education (Bildungstheorie).

Senior Fellow: April–August 2020 –– DEFERRED

Research Project: History of Clandestine Thought, from Jean Bodin to Jean Meslier

Clandestine manuscripts represent a very peculiar kind of philosophical communication in the modern age. One can consider Jean Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomeres, written at the end of the sixteenth century, as the prototype, but most of the ca. 200 indexed texts, of which about 2,000 copies are spread among public and private libraries, date back to the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century.
From the libertine period to the full development of the Enlightenment, clandestine manuscripts went through an age of important cultural changes, and they mirror various trends. One can only speak about clandestine philosophy in the plural (“clandestine philosophies”), taking into account that these texts borrow from Montaigne’s and Bayle’s scepticism, from Descartes’s and Malebranche’s rationalism, from Spinoza’s metaphysics and Hobbes’s mechanism, and from Locke’s empiricist methodology.
An interesting and peculiar feature of this clandestine philosophical literature is its interest in comparisons between the great Mediterranean religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The final goal of this research project will be a book entitled The History of Clandestine Thought from Bodin to Meslier, which is currently in preparation.

Gianni Paganini is professor of the history of philosophy at Università del Piemonte Orientale and a member of the research centre at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.

Senior Fellow: September–October 2019 and July–September 2021

Research Project: A Jew in the Fringe: Richard H. Popkin’s Views on Judaism and Scepticism in His Correspondence with Judah Goldin

Popkin’s scholarly interest in Judaism appeared late in his academic career, only from the sixties onwards, after what Popkin described as an “overpowering religious experience.” Recent scholarship on Jewish scepticism has rightly stressed that Popkin’s multifarious ouvre lacks of an articulated reflection concerning a specifically Jewish current within the sceptical tradition, independent from the Converso encounter with classical philosophy and Christian theology.
However, Popkin’s personal papers and archives shed light on research fields that he cultivated which did not find adequate representation in his published oeuvre, i.e., the origins of European racism, Jewish–Christian relations, Jewish emancipation, Zionism and religious fundamentalism. Among Popkin’s correspondents, his life-long friend Judah Goldin (1914–98), an internationally renowned scholar of rabbinic literature, stands out as his main mentor and confidant for everything concerning Judaism, Israel, and his spiritual struggles. The Popkin–Goldin correspondence extends over almost forty years, from 1953 to 1997, and provides a new understanding of how Popkin’s self-perception as a Jew affected his scholarly interest in scepticism in the frame of Jewish intellectual history.

Asher Salah is an associate professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Junior Fellow: December 2019–November 2020

Research Project: Destruction, Knowledge, and Colonial Ethnography: Encounters with Colonial Scepticism

This research project is part of an ongoing broader project on pre-modern anthropological thinking and the emergence of ethnography in the Spanish, French, and English colonial realms between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Beyond its implications for the history of ethnographical practices, it will argue that this source base offers a distinct colonial perspective to our understanding of the genealogy of scientific doubt in modern thought. It aims to analyse how cultural encounters in America and Asia informed sceptical approaches by attempting to define a typology of scepticism found within ethnographical literature. Significantly, the increasing attention paid to anthropological evidence in Europe raised awareness of cultural diversity and bred scepticism regarding the existence of supposedly innate principles underlying human activities and beliefs. The growing recognition of diversity led to an epistemological change that expressed itself in dissatisfaction with existing analytical concepts for describing humankind. The objective is thus to connect the sceptical tradition to the transformation in the ways in which Europeans studied peoples and cultures (including Jews) during a period that coincided with both scientific advancement and the global discovery of humanity.

Ran Segev is a historian who specialises in knowledge culture and European colonial expansion in the early modern era. He completed his PhD at the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin (December 2015), specialising in colonial Latin America and the Atlantic world.

Senior Fellow: January–May 2020

Research Project: Anti-Scepticism and Ordo Geometricus in Spinoza

This research project builds upon a previous one and continues to explore the relationship between Spinoza’s anti-scepticism and his methodology. Whereas the previous project investigated how knowledge of first principles is actually attained in Spinoza’s metaphysics, the present one focuses on the degree of evidence that Spinoza accords to the geometrical style of reasoning used in his Ethics. The adoption of the mos geometricus could be construed as Spinoza’s best strategy against the sceptical threat, due to the rigour of its proofs and the evidence of its principles. Yet this conclusion presupposes that the geometrical method is a rigid system. Scholars have shown that the use of the geometrical method in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was fairly flexible and dependent on context. When considered against this background, the reading of Spinoza’s Ethics as a closed system impervious to sceptical worries becomes questionable. Instead of being absolutely certain, a significant part of the principles and axioms in the Ethics seem to have merely conventional validity. In like manner, many of the demonstrations based upon them appear to be plausible rather than indisputable. Moreover, a close look at the deductive character of geometrical reasoning shows that it is not purely a priori, but that induction and generalizations from experience play a crucial role in it.  

José María Sánchez de León Serrano earned his PhD in philosophy at the Universität Heidelberg. Before coming to Hamburg, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.