"All-Crushing" Critic of Metaphysics 263refuted skepticism in general and Hume in particular is a central concern
in most discussions of Kant's critical philosophy. There is a consensus,
that is, at least in large parts of the English-speaking world, that Kant was
essentially an antiskeptical philosopher, even if there is less agreement
about the success or failure of Kant's arguments against skepticism. As
Ralph C. S. Walker puts it:Any list of the great philosophers has to include Kant. His influence on philosophical
thinking... has been immense, and his work remains of the most immediate contem¬
porary relevance. For he faces up to the most fundamental problem that confronts
philosophers, and tackles it in a more illuminating way than anyone has done before
or after. This is the problem which scepticism raises.According to this view, Kant is the great philosopher he is because of his
thoroughgoing antiskepticism, and those who are seriously trying to answer
the skeptic today "have nearly always done so by developing, or amending
Kant."^52
Many others would agree. Barry Stroud, for example, argues that al¬
though Kant's "comfortable anti-skepticism" ultimately fails, it does
contribute "to our understanding of the complex relation between the
philosophical theory of knowledge, on the one hand, and the inquiries and
claims to knowledge that we make in everyday and scientific life that are
presumably its subject matter, on the other."^53 For Stroud, these positive
contributions are a function of Kant's thorough antiskepticism. Yet they
may be the result of Kant's genuine appreciation of the skeptical position.
Though Stroud admits that "Kant's rejection of all forms of skepticism
nevertheless comes out of a full acknowledgment of its powerful appeal,"
he never asks why skepticism has such a powerful appeal for Kant.^54 While
still others find Kant's antiskepticism less "comfortable" than does Stroud,
they do agree that Kant was an anriskeptic. Thus Richard Rorty contends
that we should set Kant aside as part of the larger task of moving beyond
"the notions of'foundations of knowledge' and of philosophy as revolving
around the Cartesian attempt to answer the epistemological skeptic."^55
Since, for him, Kant is also the very ideal of an antiskeptical philosopher,
Rorty takes his own view to be necessarily "anti-Kantian." Rorty is trying
to persuade us that a "post-Kantian" culture is possible and desirable, and
he would like us to "see philosophy neither as achieving success by 'an¬
swering the skeptic,' nor as rendered nugatory by realizing that there is no
skeptical case to be answered."^56 For Rorty the story is more complicated.
We do not have to go down the road of either Hume or Kant.^57