Nos in Diem Vivimus: Gassendi’s Probabilism and Academic Philosophy from Day to Day

Abstract

In “Nos in Diem Vivimus: Gassendi’s Probabilism and Academic Philosophy from Day to Day,” Delphine Bellis challenges Popkin’s twofold reading of Gassendi. On Popkin’s account, Gassendi was first a Pyrrhonian, and later in his career became a mitigated “sceptic” who tried to elaborate a specific epistemology in order to overcome the sceptical crisis of his time. Bellis shows that, beyond the role played by Pyrrhonian arguments in rebuking Aristotelian theses, Academic philosophy (in particular as conveyed by Cicero) played a much more constructive role in building Gassendi’s own philosophy right from its beginning. Academic philosophy offered to Gassendi a probabilist model of knowledge which, contrary to Pyrrhonism, opened the possibility of a natural philosophy conceived as a science of appearances, i.e. as based on experimentation on appearances, in the line of the Academic notion of “inspected” or “scrutinized” appearances. By showing the long-lasting permanence of Academic philosophy as a source of inspiration for Gassendi’s own philosophy, Bellis demonstrates how probabilism became central to his epistemology and natural philosophy. In addition to Gassendi’s erudite interest for Cicero and Charron, Academic probabilism suited Gassendi’s own practice as a natural philosopher in the realms of meteorology and astronomy. But first and foremost, Gassendi’s preference for Academic philosophy rather than for Pyrrhonism was motivated, early in his philosophical career, by ethical concerns: the importance of preserving his libertas philosophandi, combined with his personal incapacity not to incline toward one opinion or another, led him to formulate his epistemological probabilism and to claim the freedom to revise his opinions from day to day.