{"product_id":"9780199253180","title":"Scepticism and Literature","description":"'The more we enquire, the less we can resolve,' wrote Johnson. Scepticism-a reasoned emphasis on the severe limitations of rationality-would seem to undermine the grounds of belief and action. But in some of the best eighteenth-century literature, a theoretically paralysing critique of the pretensions of reason, precept, and language went hand in hand with a vigorous intellectual, moral, and linguistic confidence. To realise philosophical scepticism asliterature was effectively to transform it. Dr Parker traces the presence of this life-giving irony in works by Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson, relates it more broadly to the social self-consciousness of eighteenth-century culture, and discusses its source in Locke and its inspiration in Montaigne. The argumentserves as a reminder that radical scepticism is not the invention of the late twentieth century, and that its strategies and implications have never been more interestingly explored than in the eighteenth.","brand":"Fred Parker","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45744239247678,"sku":"9780199253180","price":9087.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9780199253180_10406f76-7e21-474b-b7ee-04360a193a3a.jpg?v=1707223685","url":"https:\/\/exclusivebooks.co.za\/products\/9780199253180","provider":"Exclusive Books Online","version":"1.0","type":"link"}