From Universal Pyrrhonism to Revolutionary Scepticism: Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville

Abstract

Jean-Pierre Brissot de Warville’s relationship to early modern scepticism is interesting for two main reasons. Firstly, he does not share the common preference of the Enlightenment philosophers for what they called a “mitigated scepticism,” which they thought was an important methodological warrant against systematic thought. On the contrary, Brissot de Warville insists on the necessity to revisit scepticism and to come back to a “general system of Pyrrhonism” which, like that of the Ancients, would undermine any kind of knowledge. Secondly, this sceptical stand of Brissot’s evolves during his lifetime. In youth texts that are still very little known of, particularly in an unpublished manuscript, he establishes the foundations of what is meant to be an absolute scepticism. However, the French Revolution forced him to change his views and to favour a form of dogmatism – his dogmatic defence of the Girondists, indeed, causing his death. This evolution interestingly revives Myles Burnyeat’s discussion of whether the sceptic can really live his scepticism. This example would prompt me to answer that there are historical periods in which scepticism is not only a fruitless, but actually an impossible view to hold.