Senior Honors Theses
History Department Honors Program
Document Type
Thesis or dissertation
Date of this Version
March 2007
Abstract
Despite the seeming oppositions between skepticism and religious belief, Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) was both a devout Catholic and a philosophical skeptic. While this opposition may seem paradoxical to both modern readers and Huet’s contemporaries, this thesis explains how Huet’s scandalous posthumous Treatise Concerning the Weakness of Human Understanding (1723) fits into the intellectual curriculum of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. By situating Huet in the intellectual context of Early-Modern France, this thesis demonstrates how philosophical skepticism became appealing to Catholic thinkers both as a polemic and as an epistemological stance in opposition to the rationalist transformation of pre-Enlightenment thought.
Keywords
pierre-daniel huet, early-modern france, skepticism, fideism
Date Posted: 19 April 2007
Comments
A Senior Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors in History.
Faculty Advisor: Alan Charles Kors