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Must Skepticism Remain Refuted? Inheriting Skepticism with Cavell and Levinas

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This article defends Cavell and Levinas’ view that anti-skeptical arguments cannot attain universal assent. In the first half of the article, I argue that Conant’s reading of Cavell is mistaken in two respects: he ignores Cavell’s inheritance of Kant as well as the differences Cavell emphasizes between external world and other minds skepticism. In the second half of the paper, I examine affinities between Cavell and Levinas’ thought, viz., acknowledging the facticity of the other and their remarks on skepticism. I close the paper by noting three metaphysical and ethical truths that arise from Cavell’s way with skepticism.

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Notes

  1. For discussions of, particularly, though not exclusively, modern skepticism see Descartes (1984), Hume (1960), Kant (1929), Peirce (1934), Moore (1993a, 1993b), Heidegger (1962), Austin (1962b), Clarke (1972), Rorty (1979), Burnyeat (1983), Stroud (1984), McGinn (1989), and Williams (1999).

  2. For discussions of skepticism in Levinas and Cavell see Critchley (1992, 2002), Putnam (2002), Hammer (2002), de Vries (2006), Morgan (2007), Overgaard (2007), and Stricker (2012). For discussions of Cavell and skepticism see Stone (2000, 2003), Witherspoon (2002), Minar (2004), Shieh (2006), Franks (2006), Moran (2011/2), Conant (2012), Macarthur (2014), and Bax (2013, 2015). For discussions of Levinas and skepticism see Bernasconi (1991), de Boer (1997), and Davies (2005).

  3. The cardinal difference between Cavell and Kripke’s respective skeptical readings of Wittgenstein is that whereas the latter’s view concerns conforming to rules, the former is worried with making one’s self intelligible to others and working to make sense of others see Kripke (1982) and Cavell (1990, 2005).

  4. For other passages where Cavell discusses Kant see Cavell (1969a, 1969b, 1969c, 1979). For discussions of Kant and Cavell see Franks (2006), Friedlander (2011), and Baz (2015).

  5. For Conant’s remarks on the difference between “varieties” and “variants” of skepticism see Conant (2012), pp. 6–7 footnote 9 and p. 18 footnote 14. One might point out that if one restricts, the variety of skepticism (e.g., Descartes, Kant, etc.) to a certain variant (e.g., perception, language, etc.), then there is nothing paradoxical about the skeptical thesis “it is true that we cannot know”. The problem with this is that restricting claims to know from a question about whether we can know in general to “can we know in this domain” is still a general claim about knowing in that domain. What is paradoxical about the skeptic’s claim that “we cannot know” is that they are making the epistemic claim (“it is true …”) of denying knowledge in general or some domain (“we cannot know …”). This is paradoxical because they are both claiming to know and not know. See Cavell’s remarks on the drive to speak outside of language games (Cavell 1979, pp. 189, 207, 224, 226, 471, 477). I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this question and stimulating my subsequent response.

  6. Cavell makes similar remarks in relation to moral disagreement (Cavell 1979, Part III) and aesthetic judgments (Cavell 1969c).

  7. See Levinas (1990), Putnam (2002), Charlier (2002), and Morgan (2007), pp. 336–414.

  8. For discussions of the differences between Levinas and Cavell’s interpretations of Descartes see Cavell (2005), de Vries (2006), and Stricker (2012).

  9. Cavell is quoting Levinas (1996b), pp. 136–8.

  10. See Derrida (1991), Irigaray (1986, 1991), and Guenther (2006).

  11. One might object that if a particular form of skepticism is refuted then what sense does it make to say it reappears? One might think that it is better to say the form of skepticism has never been refuted. Or perhaps that it has been refuted and the person expressing the skeptical thesis is confused or wrong. If one takes the first path––arguing that it is better to say no one has refuted the skeptical thesis––then there are one of two problems. First, if it was never been refuted, then skepticism is a genuine intellectual possibility such that it is a live option that we do not know the world. However, this would concede that there is an insight or truth in skepticism and motivate Cavell and Levinas respective projects to articulate that truth. Another problem with taking the first path is that it occludes the possibility that someone is simply wrong or confused (i.e., skepticism has been refuted and someone just does not get it or is stubborn, etc.) Maybe someone is wrong or confused, but maybe not. It is this last possibility, viz., the possibility that the person expressing the skeptical thesis is genuinely experiencing the skeptical as a live problem that motivates Cavell and Levinas’ distinctive concern with the “truth” of (other mind) skepticism, viz., to attend and respond to a unique, separate perspective (i.e., the person experiencing the world as meaningless). I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this question and stimulating my subsequent response.

  12. I would like to thank an anonymous reader for encouraging me in this direction.

  13. One could tell a more complicated story about Derrida and experience through his critical inheritance of phenomenology, but that would be a different essay. Here I have simply followed Cavell’s presentation of Derrida.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Zed Adams, Anita Avramides, Simon Critchley, Juan Carlos González, John Greco, and Joe Milburn for discussing aspects of this paper. Further, I would like to thank the Graduate Faculty Student Senate of the New School for Social Research as well as the Richard J. Bernstein Endowed Prize Fellowship in Philosophy for providing funding that made this research possible.

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    Alexander Altonji

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Altonji, A. Must Skepticism Remain Refuted? Inheriting Skepticism with Cavell and Levinas. Topoi 42, 61–72 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09849-3

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