sophistication of the philosophical networks. Skepticism, however, was a long-
standing position in Greek philosophy, going back some 20 generations. So
why should the cogito maneuver appear now for the first time? The defense
that skepticism undermines itself, that the doubter cannot doubt his own
doubt, had been urged by opponents since the early period of this school; and
indeed it had been incorporated into the sophisticated skepticism of Aeneside-
mus (ca. 65 b.c.e.), the position that the skeptic withholds judgment on every-
thing, even on skepticism itself. In this lineup of intellectual factions, the
arguments and counter-arguments leave the field static; the skeptics find a way
to hold to their basic position, and anti-skeptics find reasons to their own
satisfaction for rejecting skepticism and continuing with their systems.
Augustine was motivated to do something else: he adopted skepticism to
clear the ground of rival philosophies, then built upon it a secure system of
his own—in this case to show that Christian doctrine is the superior of
pagan philosophies, by their own best criterion. Doubt extinguishes everything
but one great truth, the existence of the doubter. The self which is thereby
proven—the very awareness which receives this realization—is illuminated by
the clear light of consciousness, and this transcendent standard comes from
God. Augustine became father to the many versions of Christian Neoplatonism
which were to dominate down to the High Middle Ages and even beyond; he
also established a tradition of critical epistemology with which the most intense
standards of argument had henceforth to contend.
In the Islamic networks, skepticism appears relatively late; the political
power of religion allows no true omni-skepticism, and what does appear is the
fideist skepticism put forward by al-Ghazali (ca. 1065 c.e.), rejecting Greek-
oriented falsafa (the Arabic translation of “philosophy”) and the rational
theology of Islamic kalam to bolster the rising third party, Sufism. Here the
Islamic cogito appears several generations before skepticism rather than in
response to it. The matrix is the formation, in the early 900s, of a full-fledged
array of philosophical positions: rationalistic kalam is confronted with Greek
falsafa; Arab-Islamic nationalism is growing, and tolerance of non-Islamic
religions is disappearing in a wave of campaigns for religious conversion. In
the AshÀarite school, which blends kalam with the more conservative theologi-
cal tendencies, the codifier of doctrine al-Baqillani (late 900s) systematizes, in
a scholastic manner, the various sources of knowledge. Among others he lists
knowledge of self, which he notes cannot be doubted. This is not yet a critical
epistemology, and it is not based in confrontation with skepticism; knowledge
from the senses and from reports of other persons is listed on the same level
with al-Baqillani’s cogito.
In the next generation concern for epistemology is invoked in a much more
consequent way by Ibn Sina. He is fully aware of the external pressures build-
814 •^ Meta-reflections