Reflections on Facing Skepticism, and Facing Death

Abstract This chapter explores the parallel between confronting skepticism and confronting death, arguing that both provoke a distinctive form of anxiety rooted in epistemic bewilderment. It examines Hume’s and Nagel’s responses to skepticism, and it critiques Broughton’s account of belief and doubt, questioning whether it is plausible to identify with doubt rather than belief. The chapter develops the idea that skeptical anxiety emerges from a level outside the confines of sanity, producing a pervasive sense of bewilderment akin to Pascal’s terror, Beckett’s existential fog, and Heidegger’s uncanniness. Extending this analysis to mortality, it shows how facing death generates the same confrontation with solipsism and Nothingness, as described by Sartre, Heidegger, Nagel, and Valberg, leaving the individual with an incomprehensible sense of solitude and impossibility. Finally, the chapter concludes that since skepticism and death both propel consciousness beyond the limits of sanity, the only honest response within ordinary life is Hume’s counsel of carelessness and inattention, sustained by irony and the acceptance of life’s eventual end.