Skeptical Tradition Around 1800

This collection of essays aims to puts an end to the common notion that Kant solved the problem of skepticism. Commemorating C.F. Staudlin, the first historian of skepticism (1794), scholars of various disciplines disclose the continuing importance of the sceptical tradition in Germany, France, and Britain. Their wide-ranging studies cover Hume, Kant, and the philosophical situation in Germany both before and after Kant, particularly the all-but-forgotten Staudlin himself. But they also investigate the role of skepticism in the political thought (Montucla) and in science (Alexander von Humboldt, Laplace, and others), and in the context of such social issues as smallpox inoculation, suicide, and capital punishment.