It is time for the unexamined tacit assumptions behind skepticism to be examined and challenged. Early in his career C. S. Peirce showed the way.

Skepticism assumes a sort of tabula rasa of belief, a default blank canvas upon which we can freely posit beliefs. But this blankness is sheer philosophical fiction. Truth is, we all have many beliefs that we are unable to disbelieve, even as we disingenuously formulate theoretical doubts:

We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. …

A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

To put it bluntly, a great many skeptics refuse to take their own real practical beliefs seriously. They argue frivolously, paying no attention at all to what they take to be real in their own practical lives.

For this kind of skeptic, philosophy is a delightful recreation — a diversion — that does not touch on real life in any significant way — conceptual concoction play, unencumbered by any obligation or consequence. And this would be fine if they would confine themselves to their conceptual playrooms.

But this is where fun-time skepticism shows its dark underside. The replacement notions constructed to replace skeptically refuted actual beliefs are seductive, and inevitably become fanatical fantastical politics — ideologies — which leak out from the private study, into the classroom, and, from there, into the offices and cubicles of the practical world.

These conceptual concoctions and theories and formulas are highly brittle, and vulnerable to reality. (Nietzsche says “When a poet is not in love with reality his muse will consequently not be reality, and she will then bear him hollow-eyed and fragile-limbed children.“). Ideologues must defend themselves, most of all, from genuine belief of those who are stubbornly loyal to the givens of reality.

Dishonesty becomes the cost of membership in this kind of movement — dishonesty or total self-alienation, where the partisan sincerely no longer knows what they believe or disbelieve, due to habitual self-doubt and terror at being exposed as biased or prejudiced, and is ready to conform to those who seem credible. But whose judgment seems credible to such self-alienated judgment? They say, “so it seems to me, but how can I know given the unreliability of my own perceptions and understandings? Things are never as they seem. So I should trust the best and brightest around me…” But these best and brightest are also self-alienated. The blind lead the blind into ideological ruts, where war is peace, freedom is slavery, power is weakness, truth is false, up is down, left is right, conventionality is revolution, superficiality is radical, openly sociopathic totalitarians are freedom fighters and those who defend themselves from Nazi are the new Nazis.

The famous universal acid of skepticism does not only dissolve beliefs. It also dissolves persons. And before we get all armchair Buddhist, and pat ourselves on the head for thinking non-self, anatta, this acid dissolves our relationship with reality beyond form and beyond being. Nothing could be less Buddhist than addiction to recreational deconstruction.

This kind of habitual skepticism in fact enlists us in Heidegger’s famous anonymous public, the They. It makes us an intuitionless, de-centered, unselfed political unit. It makes us, in Nietzsche’s words, a zero: “What? You search? You would multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? — Seek zeros! –”

The spell of skepticism, however, is broken if we become honest with ourselves, and recognize that we do have an implicit faith behind our professed beliefs.

This faith is as given as any other reality. We cannot freely invent it any more than we can freely invent the physical world around us. This faith is actual — we reveal it through our actions, which are based on what we assume is real and true.

To articulate this actual faith is to be philosophically honest. To hold a faith that wishes to express its actual beliefs — a faith that wishes to be honest about itself — is a good faith.

To invent beliefs that are not actual — that we would not bet our lives in, if it came down to it, is to be philosophically dishonest. A faith that needs this kind of dishonesty is a bad faith.

All we can really do with our faiths and the beliefs our faith articulates is question them and test them. Through this process, I have changed my own faith. And when my faith changed, the beliefs I articulate change. — But not before!

Consequential philosophy is not always, or even often, delightful. It is not something we do only for fun, and prance away from when it gets unpleasant or tragic. It is as different from recreational philosophistry as scientific investigation is from fiction writing. And if we abandon our hard questions as soon as the going gets unpleasant, it doesn’t even gain the depth of literary fiction — it is just easy conceptual entertainment that is easy precisely because it reinforces the habits of the status quo, however “daring” it pretends to be. And the status quo today is frivolous skepticism, and of course, frivolous cynicism toward anyone who believes anything substantial.

What are some things I know are true?

I’ve been listing them a lot lately, but I’ll list them again:

• Morality is real and it matters. We know there is better and worse, and we are both guilty and ashamed when we do or are what is worse.

• There is an absolute. Certainty about the absolute seems impossible, but we know that this absolute determines the truth and falsehood of our “constructions”.

• The absolute transcends our understanding. When we equate reality with our beliefs about it, we know that this is an immoral and false denial of the absolute. (Metaphysics is something that must be overcome? Says who? Show me a skeptic who is skeptical about automatic anti-metaphysics!)
• The Golden Rule is universally binding. At its most radical, the Golden Rule means that we must treat our fellow I’s as equal, and approach them with the dignity every I deserves.

• How we treat others and how we approach the Absolute are inextricably bound. Exercise of the Golden Rule is our most reliable method for approaching the Absolute. If we take the faiths of others around us seriously, and exchange teaching and learning with our fellows, we increase our actual certainty through improvement of our own faith and the faith we share with those around us.

These are things I cannot currently doubt. And, more, I believe in my heart that we must not pretend to doubt them, or even make an effort to overcome belief in them. I will not trample on them with boots of any kind, whether muddy boots of cynicism, shiny jackboots of ideology, or antigravity boots of alienated skepticism.