Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies
Maimonides Centre
for Advanced Studies
for Advanced Studies
Skepticism as Philosophy
8 January 2020
Photo: UHH/SUB HH
We would like to invite you to a Maimonides Lecture on Scepticism on Wednesday, January 8, 2020, at 18:00. Katja Vogt (Columbia University) will talk about "Skepticism as Philosophy."
Skepticism as Philosophy
Abstract
Call this the Philosophy Charge: Pyrrhonian skepticism cannot count as philosophy because skeptics aim at tranquility rather than the truth. Against this, I argue that the Philosophy Charge neglects that the skeptic starts out from a distinctively philosophical experience of the world. The charge misconstrues tranquility as generic rather than truthrelated, and employs a notion of philosophy that is too narrow. My response to the Philosophy Charge sheds light on the starting points of skepticism, socalled anomaly and difference, and the ways they motivate inquiry as well as the pursuit of tranquility. Beyond this, I treat the reconstruction of Sextus Empiricus’ skepticism as an occasion—and perhaps even a challenge—for reflections on the nature of philosophy. The paper focuses on skepticism’s relation to the perennial metaphysical question of what the world must be like for it to strike us in conflicting and divergent ways. Rather than offer a positive metaphysical view, the skeptics engage in a project that, I argue, is of inherent philosophical interest: the devising of mental and linguistic practices that aim to avoid representing the world in misleading ways.
Katja Maria Vogt is professor of philosophy at Columbia University, New York.
Date
January 8, 2020
Venue
Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies
Schlüterstraße 51/5th floor
Seminar Room 5060
20146 Hamburg
Poster
[PDF]
