“A welcome contribution to the history of ideas, Skepticism and the New World traces how European philosophical and intellectual traditions influenced encounters with and understandings of the peoples, languages, and cultures of the Americas; and—crucially—how these encounters and understandings would come to influence the development of key ideas in Western philosophy and science. Marcondes’ careful analysis of texts from diverse linguistic, philosophical, and theological traditions highlights the complexities of these interactions and provides the reader with a wide-ranging overview, underscoring the importance of dialogues between Europe and the ‘New World’ to our current understanding of humanity and human nature.”

Catherine Fountain, Appalachian State University

Skepticism and the New World represents a major and innovative contribution to understanding the paradigm opened by Popkin, regarding the crucial role of scepticism in shaping modern philosophy. The innovation primarily consists of introducing a previously disregarded element: the ‘constitutive force’ of the New World and its imposition on the European imagination. While it revived ancient sceptical arguments—as in Montaigne— such imposition induced a deep mutation within the sceptical tradition itself. Danilo Marcondes’ shows us how scepticism provided a distinct understanding of ‘universality of human nature’: the universality of the human being as a ‘symbolic animal,’ capable of producing numerous forms of life and countless cultural variations. This outstanding book points to the importance of scepticism in forging a new scientific attitude, based on empirical observation.

Renato Lessa