Ends and the Means to Avoid Them: Skepticism and the fin de siècle

A HEALTHY DOSE OF SKEPTICISM, we are told, is a good thing to carry around. Of this, there can be no doubt. Nonetheless, it’s hard to think of a dose of anything as very pleasant, and the notion of carrying it around, perhaps spreading it, doesn’t help. The advice is also haunted with that other piece of pharmaceutical wisdom that warns about how we start with soft drugs, but soon move up to the hard stuff. In the case of skepticism that would surely mean coming to a bad end.