ABSTRACT
Misleadingly styled an Age of Reason, the seventeenth century was torn between dogmatism and doubt. The problem of authority was its torment and its joy: authority in knowledge, as Galileian dynamics and Copernican astronomy destroyed the traditional picture of nature; authority in religion, as the wars between the sects brought discredit on them all; authority in law and politics, as the absolutist state took form, releasing men from outworn allegiances; authority in morals, as the virtues of medieval Christendom proved unsuited to the needs of the competitive market economy. The demise of the old order left a vacuum, which many new philosophies offered to fill. Some, like Montaigne, cultivated a modest scepticism and a taste for the quiet life: the rediscovery of Sextus Empiricus suited the temper of those grown weary of contending religious fanaticisms. Others, like Pascal, turned the weapons of reason against itself, in defence of the waning orthodoxy: the tragic art of Port-Royal glimpsed a design in the universe, but not one men can fathom. A complex and enigmatical figure like Descartes combined in himself the sceptical impulse and the dogmatic dream, mastery of the new knowledge and deference to the old pieties.
