The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy - Ethics Book Series | Philosophy & Theology Studies for Academic Research & Personal Enlightenment

Stout's account here is legendary in academic studies -- frequently discussed and cited when people are trying to make sense of thinkers like Rorty. Based on a series of lectures, Stout does for "knowledge" what Foucault did for "asylum." He performs a "conceptual archaeology" or historical-linguistic analysis of the development of Enlightenment epistemology. Stout concentrates on the distinction between "opinio" (justified belief) and "scientia" (demonstrable knowledge). He shows how the ways in which these are defined and understood lead directly to accounts of what can be known and what is "mere" belief. Stout shows how in the pre Modern period, the scope of "scientia" was fairly restricted -- e.g. to Euclidean style arguments-- and therefore a more robust role in life was given over to "opinio" which could include very important beliefs, which are intertwined with human experience and the "authority" of institutions, investigation, and conversation. Stout traces how the Modern period, starting with Spinoza and Descartes, finds any belief which cannot be "certain" and demonstrable as outright folly. Similarly, the philosophical "Given" goes from some version of "in media res" to "Nature" -- and in the process all mediation by language, human experience, and culture is eliminated. These developments parallel the rise of liberal political philosophy which seeks to end the Religious Wars, and also the rise in the notion of probability. (Here Stout relies a great deal on Ian Hacking's work, which goes largely undefended.)Stout's purpose is largely to help us make sense of the scientism and logical positivism of the 20th century. Unlike many books on the subject which take pot shots at Descartes in place of argument, Stout elicidates how "scientia" ended up shouldering the entire burden of human knowledge in a way it could not sustain. The return to a role for "belief" and "authority" and human beings in the process of "inquiry" helps the neopragmatic Stout make sense of his own "nonfoundationalism." Stout defies Rorty's claim that the only way to do philosophy nowadays is through satire. No, Stout takes seriously his predecessors at the same time he tells the story of how we have come to understand the very concept of knowledge.