empires of belief - why we need more scepticism and doubt in the 21th century

WHY WE NEED MORE SCEPTICISM AND DOUBT TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY IN THE STUART SIM EMPIRES BELIEF OF Edinburgh STUART SIM EMPIRES OF BELIEF EMPIRES OF BELIEF WHY WE NEED MORE SCEPTICISM AND DOUBT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY STUART SIM Stuart Sim is Professor of Critical eory at the University of Sunderland. His books include Lyotard and the Inhuman (2001), Irony and Crisis: A Critical History of Postmodern Culture (2002), and Fundamentalist World: e New Dark Age of Dogma (2004). Also available by Stuart Sim from Edinburgh University Press: Post-Marxism: A Reader ISBN 0 7486 1044 8 (paperback) ‘In this vigorous and challenging book Stuart Sim calls for less belief and more doubt in a world that threatens to tear itself apart over competing certainties. But the book is much more than an analysis of feuding fundamentalisms: it is a call for sceptics everywhere to get organised and do something.’ Richard Holloway, writer and broadcaster, former Bishop of Edinburgh, author of Looking in the Distance ‘A timely book reminding us that without scepticism, the world will be led into chaos by dogmatic and protectionist leaders who increasingly demand immunity from censure from the people they rule over.’ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist on the Independent and Evening Standard and author of Who Do We ink We Are? and Some of My Best Friends Are… Is unquestioning belief making a global comeback? e growth of religious fundamentalism seems to suggest so. For the sceptically- minded this is a deeply worrying trend, not just confined to religion. Political, economic, and scientific theories can demand the same unquestioning obedience from the general public. Stuart Sim outlines the history of scepticism in both the Western and Islamic cultural traditions, and from the Enlightenment to postmodernism. Setting out what a sceptical politics might be like, Empires of Belief argues that we need less belief and more doubt: an engaged scepticism to replace the pervasive dogmatism that threatens our democracies. Cover photograph: Eclipse of the Sun Cathy Sprent Cover design: Cathy Sprent Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk ISBN 0 7486 2326 4 Empires of Belief [...]... imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – being a prime case in point Arguments for scepticism and doubt in public life are beginning to crop up in the daily press and the broadcast media in the West on a regular basis, and a fear is increasingly being voiced there, amongst the more liberal commentators, that the legacy of the Enlightenment is in very real danger of being eroded... unquestioning belief within the heart of the scientific enterprise – which at its best is one of the great monuments to the sceptical temperament 13 Empires of Belief The Empires Strike Back The case for developing scepticism into more of a force in our public life is plain Sceptics are confronted by determined opposition from the many adherents to the empires of belief we shall be examining, however, and. .. theory of scepticism by Aenesidemus (c 100–40 BC) Sextus Empiricus owes his key position in the history of scepticism to 17 Empires of Belief being the author of the only surviving texts from the Pyrrhonian tradition, Outlines of Scepticism and Against the Mathematicians, rather than to any originality of interpretation of his own (one theory is that he owes a considerable debt to an obscure figure from the. .. that we are in need of less belief and more doubt; less fundamentalism and dogmatism, and more scepticism – far more scepticism That case will be made by placing the current clash between belief and scepticism in a wider cultural and historical context Elements of scepticism can be identified in all cultures, and certainly pre-date the Enlightenment, so this need not be seen as a Eurocentric or Westerncentric... literal-minded form of unquestioning belief – the very opposite of the Pyrrhonian spirit we wish to promote 9 Empires of Belief The theory of global warming has its sceptics too, who claim that the data on which global warming proponents rest their case is capable of being interpreted in different ways Rather than humankind being responsible for global warming, as most scientists in the field contend, these... centuries, with philosophy in the West increasingly being drawn into the web of Christian theology and made to serve its more specialised interests (enquiries into the nature of God and his properties, proofs for the existence of God, concerns of that nature) In Richard H Popkin’s summation, the Pyrrhonist sceptic ‘lives undogmatically, following his natural inclinations, the appearances 18 Scepticism: A Brief... philosophical scepticism begins with the Greeks, and as we saw in the introduction soon settles down in the Hellenistic world into two main forms, the Academic and the Pyrrhonian As I noted before, the latter is the one for which I feel the most sympathy, the one most inclined towards undermining the disease called Dogmatism’ – the enemy of true sceptics everywhere Its virtue lies in its very lack of claims; in. .. the eminent historian of religion Ninian Smart has pointed out, ‘has been a laboratory of religious doctrines’ (Hinduism and Buddhism in particular), and is therefore particularly fertile territory for the study of the philosophy of religion.43 In classical Indian philosophy, which has a heritage going back well before the Greeks and the beginnings of Western philosophy, scepticism takes the form of questioning... balancing act that is required of us, but one worth persevering with, as there is no lack of empires to be confronted I will 11 Empires of Belief strive to be the representative sceptic in these pages, drawing attention to where dogmatism is getting the upper hand over openmindedness and suggesting how we can set about redressing the balance; deploying a Pyrrhonist -in uenced soft scepticism, with some other... judge the standard by a standard we throw them into an in nite regress Again, since a proof needs a standard which has been proved and a standard needs a proof which has been judged, they are thrown into the reciprocal mode.7 Philosophical sceptics are fond of trapping their opponents into an in nite regress in this manner, and it can become an irritating game if pushed to extremes – as super-sceptics, . WHY WE NEED MORE SCEPTICISM AND DOUBT TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY IN THE STUART SIM EMPIRES BELIEF OF Edinburgh STUART SIM EMPIRES OF BELIEF EMPIRES OF BELIEF WHY WE NEED MORE SCEPTICISM. ISBN 0 7486 2326 4 Empires of Belief