174 BOOK REVIEWS

For all these features to exist in re is to exist in individual substances (67). It

is by abstracting these features from their individual subjects that we obtain
abstract items that are predicated of many. ‘Abstraction’ should thus be
understood as a relation between the item from which one abstracts some
features and the abstract item that is constituted by these features (29–39).
For that reason, Bäck describes Aristotle’s metaphysics as ‘relational’ meta-
physics. Hence Bäck’s book includes more ambitious ideas than may be
expected from the title – it proposes a new interpretation of Aristotle’s
general metaphysical system. Aristotle becomes in many respects a ‘nomin-
alist’ metaphysician maintaining that essences are singularities explaining
why an individual substance is such-and-such (274–5).

Aristotle has said that except for substances everything else does not exist in
its own right but only as in or of substances. We do not have to suppose that
there exists the sitting of Socrates in addition to Socrates [ … ] So we can say
that, like relata in general, abstracta (‘abstractions’) signify mental states or
things existent in re. But understand the ‘or’ inclusively (281).

It is controversial to conceive of essences as singularities, but Bäck always

supports his views with refreshing references to Aristotle’s texts. The pres-
ence of common features in singularities allows us to group individuals into
kinds and to have scientific statements about the world.
The book contains several typographical errors, especially in the Greek quo-
tations. Another infelicity is even more perplexing. At page 34, n. 21 it is stated
that the attribution of pseudo-Simplicius In De Anima to Priscian of Lydia has
been proposed by R. R. Sorabji, whereas Sorabji is simply following a sugges-
tion earlier made by F. Bossier and C. Steel (see ‘Priscianus Lydus en de “In de
anima” van Pseudo(?)-Simplicius’, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 34 (1972), 761–
822). Despite the complexity of the topic and the subtlety of the analysis,
Bäck presents his case in a clear way and his book is a highly stimulating
read for all the students of Aristotle’s philosophy.

Luca Gili
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Fordham University
© 2015, Luca Gili
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2015.1082970

José R. Maia Neto: Academic Skepticism in Seventeenth-Century French

Philosophy: The Charronian Legacy 1601–1662. Dordrecht: Springer,
2014, pp. xii + 165. £72 (hb). ISBN 9783319073590.

Academic Skepticism collects, updates, and expands upon a number of Maia

Neto’s previously published articles. Technically, four of its seven chapters
 BOOK REVIEWS 175

are composed of new material; but of these, two are the slim ‘Introduction’
(Chapter 1) and the even slimmer ‘Conclusion’ (Chapter 7). Of the five chap-
ters that comprise the bulk of the book, only two are entirely new: ‘Gassen-
di’s Attack on Dogmatic Science’ (Chapter 3) and ‘La Mothe Le Vayer’s
Attack on Opinion and Superstition’ (Chapter 4). The second chapter (‘Char-
ron’s Academic Skeptical Wisdom’) expands upon an earlier article of the
same title, published in 2009, and incorporates elements of Maia Neto’s
‘Epoche as Perfection: Montaigne’s View of Ancient Skepticism’, published
in 2004. The fifth chapter (‘Descartes’s Rehabilitation of Science’) is an
updated version of Maia Neto’s ‘Charron’s epoché and Descartes’s cogito:
The Sceptical Base of Descartes’ Refutation of Scepticism’, published in
2003. Finally, the sixth chapter (‘Pascal’s Rehabilitation of Christian
Faith’) is an updated version of Maia Neto’s ‘Pascal’s Christian versus Char-
ron’s Skeptical Wisdom’, published in 2011.
Aside from their predictable repetition of claims and quotations, the chap-
ters fit well together and make a compelling, well-documented case for Char-
ron’s importance in early modern philosophy, both historically and
philosophically. Charron’s historical importance turns on the fact that he
was widely read in the early seventeenth century: ‘We can hardly imagine
today how much read, respected and admired he was during the first half
of the seventeenth century’ (1). This historical importance has generally
failed to translate into an appreciation of his philosophical importance
‘mainly because he has been mostly seen since the late seventeenth
century as a mere and uninteresting disciple of Montaigne’ (1). Indeed,
until recently he was widely considered a plagiarist (1 fn. 1). The idea,
then, was that Charron’s philosophical importance was exhausted by his
transmission of ideas already found in Montaigne’s Essays, in which case
we could excise Charron from the history of philosophy without introducing
philosophically significant holes in the intellectual history of the period.
Maia Neto explodes this misapprehension. He focuses almost exclusively
on the historical and philosophical importance of Charron’s De la Sagesse
(1601, rev. 1604), which ‘had such a huge impact in seventeenth century
ideas that it can hardly be fully measured’ (1). The frontispiece that
Charron designed for the cover of Sagesse provides the focal point both of
Maia Neto’s interpretation of Charron and of his tracing of Charron’s sub-
sequent influence on Gassendi, La Mothe Le Vayer, Descartes, and Pascal.
The frontispiece shows Wisdom, a woman, standing atop a pedestal to
which four other women are chained. These women, the enemies of
Wisdom, are Passion, Opinion, Superstition, and Science. In keeping with
the ancient sceptical tradition, Academic as well as Pyrrhonian, which
emphasizes the ‘equanimity’ and ‘moderation’ of mature sceptics, the over-
coming of Passion is supposed to follow more or less directly from the over-
coming of dogmatism (cf. 49, 56). The three faces of dogmatism are: opinion
(‘vulgar’ or pre-philosophical dogmatism), superstition (religious
176 BOOK REVIEWS

dogmatism), and science (philosophical dogmatism, which in Charron’s case

means primarily scholastic Aristotelianism) (cf. 28 fn. 55).
The ‘central characteristic’ (13; cf. 11, 18) of sceptical wisdom is epochē
(suspension of judgement) with respect to opinion, superstition, and science.
Epochē underlies ‘intellectual integrity’ (12 fn. 2), which represents ‘[t]he
perfection of the human cognitive faculties’, that is, the ‘perfection de
l’homme comme homme’, as Charron puts it (16). Charron’s Sagesse pro-
vides a systematic account of such ‘perfect’ human wisdom and how one
might go about attaining it (2, 15), that is, how one might overcome dogma-
tism and thereby moderate one’s ‘passions’. Interestingly, although no such
systematic account is on offer in Montaigne’s Essays, this disparity between
Master and Disciple has typically been taken as a sign not of Charron’s orig-
inality, but of his corruption of the source he was supposedly copying:
‘Charron, so the charge goes, besides deprived of originality, put the
content of Montaigne’s Essays in a systematic form, thus … adopting a
form perhaps incompatible with genuine skepticism’ (2). Yet, as Maia
Neto argues, it is precisely Charron’s systematic presentation of scepticism
that is the primary touchstone for discussions of scepticism in the early
seventeenth century. It is also worth noting Maia Neto’s arguments for the
coherence of a systematic presentation of scepticism: as an Academic
sceptic, Charron allows himself assent to non-epistemic probabilities (i.e.
‘impressions which have the appearance of truth and therefore induce
assent’ (32)); in presenting the ‘positive’ claims made in Sagesse as ‘prob-
abilities’ of this sort, Charron in no way compromises his scepticism (33;
cf. 63–4 on Gassendi).
Charron’s systematic project is taken up by Gassendi in his first work,
Exercitationes, which focuses on overcoming science (51), and by La
Mothe Le Vayer, who targets mainly opinion and superstition (67, 69). Fur-
thermore, Charron’s project serves, according to Maia Neto, as the basis of
Descartes’s attempt to overcome scepticism, that is, to replace Sceptical
Wisdom with Reformed (Cartesian) Science on the pedestal. ‘By reforming
Science to meet Charron’s skeptical challenge, Descartes would propose, as
he summarizes his mission in his dream [of 1619], “la Philosophie & la
Sagesse jointes ensemble”’ (102). Perhaps the most interesting feature of
Maia Neto’s linking of Charron and Descartes is his argument to the effect
that the cogito is simply a metaphysical version of the Charronian sage’s
epochē. Whereas Charronian epochē leads one from the turbulent sea of
opinions into the safe harbour of one’s own autonomous rational agency,
on the basis of which one can stand back from the world and say ‘I know
nothing’, Cartesian epochē leads one back to the metaphysical certainty of
one’s own rational nature. Why the difference? Because Descartes,
through his ‘extrauagantes suppositions’ (his hyperbolic doubt), replaces
‘the actual practical doubt of the skeptics of his time by [sic] metaphysical
doubt’, thereby transforming ‘the firmness and assurance of èpoché’ with
‘metaphysical (dogmatic) assurance’ (122).
 BOOK REVIEWS 177

Finally, Maia Neto argues that Charron’s systematic project serves as the
basis of Pascal’s self-overcoming scepticism, which seeks to replace Scepti-
cal Wisdom with Christian Wisdom on the pedestal. Christian wisdom, on
Maia Neto’s account, is arrived at through

the denial of the denial of skeptical wisdom. Pascal locates Christian wisdom
on the same side (although on a higher level) as skeptical wisdom, and both
are opposite to the position of the ‘demi-habile’ (the dogmatic philosophers)
and the ‘dévot’ (the dogmatic religious), which corresponds to Charron’s
‘superstitious’. (136)

In my estimation, the book’s greatest substantive weakness lies in its loose

treatment of the relation between Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism. We
are told that ‘Charron’s wisdom … is basically Academic skeptic’ (4); yet for
the most part, it seems that Charron’s self-identification with Academic scep-
ticism results more from the interpretive vicissitudes of his time than from a
clear understanding of the ancient sceptical tradition. Maia Neto writes that
‘[t]he main problem of the latter [i.e., Pyrrhonism] from the viewpoint of
Charron’s wisdom was its association with disquieting doubt’ (36) as well
as with ‘irreligion’ (36 fn. 88). Yet these associations have little grounding
in Sextus Empiricus’s texts, which tend rather to speak against them. Maia
Neto shows us how Charron would appropriate Montaigne’s descriptions
of Pyrrhonians, excise all references to Pyrrhonism, and then apply the
descriptions to Academics (36–8).
Now, it is of course significant that Charron replaces Montaigne’s ‘Que
sais-je?’ with his own ‘Je ne sais’, and Maia Neto is no doubt right that
this tells us something important about Charron’s understanding of the
differences between Pyrrhonism and Academic scepticism (38). But it
remains unclear if we ought to agree, or whether Maia Neto agrees, that
the differences between Pyrrhonism and Academic scepticism that
Charron identifies are genuine differences. In particular, is it in fact the
case, as many have claimed (going back at least to Sextus himself), that
assent to pythanos – i.e., to that which is ‘probable’ or (better) ‘persuasive’
– necessarily sets Academic sceptics apart from Pyrrhonians? Sextus
suggests that Pyrrhonism differs from the Academic scepticism of Arcesilaus
only in that, when Pyrrhonians assent to the persuasive, they do so ‘in
accordance with what is apparent to [them]’, whereas Academics do so
‘with reference to the nature of things’ (Outlines of Pyrrhonism I 233,
trans. Annas & Barnes) – yet this is precisely not the way Charron (following
Cicero) understood Academic assent (cf. 33).
In the middle of the book, Maia Neto writes, ‘I propose to place La Mothe
Le Vayer in the Academic skeptical tradition, without prejudice to the Pyr-
rhonian one, itself an heir to this tradition’ (80). He adds: ‘Assuming that the
view of Pyrrho as the founder of Pyrrhonism was a creation of Aenesidemus’
(80 fn. 58). This suggests that the two traditions properly belong together,
178 BOOK REVIEWS

that the differences between (e.g.) Arcesilaus and Sextus might be no greater
than those between (e.g.) Carneades and Arcesilaus. I strongly suspect that
Pyrrhonism and Academic scepticism are best understood not as antagonisti-
c, or even as fundamentally distinct, philosophical schools, especially not as
those schools were taken up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (con-
trary to the interpretations of many early-moderns themselves, of course).
Even if this is right, however, Maia Neto’s goal of highlighting the impor-
tance of Academic sources (Cicero, mainly) in early modern philosophy,
in order to balance the overriding focus on the impact of Sextus’s texts
(such as one finds in Popkin), is most welcome, for even (or especially!) if
Pyrrhonism and Academic scepticism ultimately belong together, we limit
our view of that tradition’s impact on early modern philosophy if we
focus on one set of texts at the expense of others.
Finally, potential readers should be made aware of the following. First, Aca-
demic Skepticism contains extensive quotations in French and Latin. For those
without French, especially, the book is unreadable. (Let me take this opportunity
to suggest that it is high time for a new English translation of De la Sagesse,
which was last rendered into English by George Stanhope in 1697.) Second,
the book is riddled with grammatical and typographical errors. Many of the mis-
takes do not interfere with comprehension, but many others do, sometimes ren-
dering whole passages mysterious, if not indecipherable. A recurring error
pertains to Maia Neto’s use of the word ‘harshness’ when, I think, he clearly
means ‘rashness’, as in ‘rashness of judgment’ (a term often used in English
translations of Sextus). For example: ‘This does not mean that he takes the prob-
able as true for this would be harshness’ (33). Later, Maia Neto translates the
Latin ‘levitatis’ as ‘harshness’ (56). ‘Levitatis’ literally means ‘lightness’; in
context, it seems to mean something like ‘to take the demands of intellectual
integrity too lightly’, that is, to be rash in judgement. It is a pity that such excel-
lent scholarship is released to the public without, I can only assume, any attempt
made to secure proper copyediting of the text by a fluent speaker of the language
in which it is presented.

Roger E. Eichorn
University of Chicago
© 2015, Roger E. Eichorn
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2015.1082968

Roger Ariew: Descartes and the First Cartesians. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2014, pp. 256. £45.00 (hb). ISBN 9780199563517.

Roger Ariew’s monograph further undermines the traditional narrative

according to which Descartes was a visionary figure who wholly transcended
the influence of his scholastic predecessors. Situating Descartes and later