Richard H. Popkin (1923-2005) transformed the study of the history of philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. His History of Scepticism and his many other publications demonstrated the centrality of the problem of skepticism in the development of modern thought, the intimate connections between philosophy and religion, and the importance of contacts between Jewish and Christian thinkers. In this volume, scholars from around the world assess Popkin’s contributions to the many fields in which he was interested. The Legacies of Richard Popkin provides a broad overview of Popkin’s work and demonstrates the connections between the many topics he wrote about. A concluding article, by Popkin’s son Jeremy Popkin, draws on private letters to provide a picture of Popkin’s life and career in his own words, revealing the richness of the documents now accessible to scholars in the Richard Popkin papers at the William Andrews Clark Library in Los Angeles.

In this sequel to his classic study The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, Popkin examines the important role played by the revival and reformulation of classical scepticism in eighteenth-century philosophy.

Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, numerous apocalyptical and messianic movements came to the fore across Eurasia and North Africa, raising questions about possible interconnections. Why were eschatological movements so pervasive in early modern times? This volume provides some answers to this question by exploring the interconnected histories of confessions and religions from Moscow to Cusco. It offers a broad picture of Christian and, to a lesser extent, Jewish and Islamic eschatological movements from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, thereby bridging important and long-standing gaps in the historiography. Apocalypse Now will appeal to both researchers and students of the history of early modern religion and politics in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic worlds. By exploring connections between numerous eschatological movements, it gives a fresh insight into one of the most promising fields of European and global history.

Since the publication of the first edition of Richard Popkin s classic The History of Scepticism in 1960, skepticism has been increasingly recognized as a major force in the development of early modern philosophy. This book provides a review of current scholarship and significant updated research on some of the main thinkers and issues related to the reappraisal of ancient skepticism in the modern age. Special attention is given to the nature, importance, and relation to religion of Montaigne s and Hume s skepticisms; to the various skeptical and non-skeptical sources of Cartesian doubt; to the skeptical and anti-skeptical impact of Cartesianism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and to philosophers who dealt with skeptical issues in the development of their own various intellectual interests.

The Reasoning Voter is an insider's look at campaigns, candidates, media, and voters that convincingly argues that voters make informed logical choices. Samuel L. Popkin analyzes three primary campaigns—Carter in 1976; Bush and Reagan in 1980; and Hart, Mondale, and Jackson in 1984—to arrive at a new model of the way voters sort through commercials and sound bites to choose a candidate. Drawing on insights from economics and cognitive psychology, he convincingly demonstrates that, as trivial as campaigns often appear, they provide voters with a surprising amount of information on a candidate's views and skills. For all their shortcomings, campaigns do matter. "Professor Popkin has brought V.O. Key's contention that voters are rational into the media age. This book is a useful rebuttal to the cynical view that politics is a wholly contrived business, in which unscrupulous operatives manipulate the emotions of distrustful but gullible citizens. The reality, he shows, is both more complex and more hopeful than that."—David S. Broder, The Washington Post

Philosophy: Made Simple, Second Edition provides information pertinent to the fundamental philosophical problems. This book discusses the developments in philosophy. Organized into seven chapters, this edition begins with an overview of the usage of philosophy in the interpretation or evaluation of what is important or meaningful in life. This text then examines the intimate connections of political philosophy with ethics and with the social sciences. Other chapters consider some of the fundamental metaphysical problems that have persisted throughout the ages and examine the most popular metaphysical systems in the history of philosophy. This book discusses as well the aspect of philosophy that examines the intellectual questions that arise in considering religious views. The final chapter examines some of the main movements in modern philosophy. This book is a valuable resource for teachers as well as undergraduate and graduate students. Readers who are seeking the simplest introductions to philosophy will also find this book useful.