Pierre-Daniel Huet a jeho přínos novověkému skepticismu

Abstract

Pierre-Daniel Huet (Huetius, 1630–1721), a scholar of immense erudition, died 300 years ago. Huet wrote many works on philosophy, theology, history and literature. At his time Huet was best known for his fierce criticism of Cartesianism. From an empiricist and sceptical standpoints, he attacked the position of the arrogance of reason in epistemology and the credibility of rational proofs of God in theology. But it was Huet’s scepticism, developing the arguments of the ancient sceptics and insisting on the principal weakness of human mind to achieve true and certain knowledge, that had the biggest impact on the development of early-modern philosophy. I analyze Huet’s scepticism in the context of the revival of the ancient sceptical tradition in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and promote a relatively new interpretation of the formation of early-modern philosophy, in which scepticism is supposed to play a constitutive role.

Keywords

• pierre-daniel huet
• scepticism
• epistemology
• fideism
• science