This lecture begins the account of the sceptics who appealed to the common working man, with the main focus of this first lecture on Thomas Paine, wit...
Lecture 04: Urbane Skepticism: Mill and Arnold
This second and final lecture on urbane scepticism deals with the work of the Utilitarian John Stuart Mill and the English poet Matthew Arnold.
Lecture 03: Urbane Skepticism: Gibbon vs. Watson
Urbane scepticism, an extension of English Deism, is presented in this lecture mostly through the lens of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roma...
Lecture 02: Continental Skepticism
The focus of this lecture is continental scepticism, primarily a French movement influenced by Deism, and its main proponents: Voltaire and Rousseau.
Lecture 01: Introduction and Course Overview
This lecture introduces the course and the seven sceptical challenges of the period: continental, urbane, populist, scholarly, transcendental, establi...