Demystifying the Demystifiers: Metaphysical Snares of Ideological Criticism

reasoning itself, by the time we get to Burke, would come to be associated with private individuals bent on overthrowing traditional authority. And Burke's heirs, down to the present day, will invoke the Baconian norms of experience and observation to defend the status quo and condemn subversive social visions. This being the case, no epistemological position can be intrinsically reactionary or intrinsically progressive. Nor is philosophical skepticism or relativism an exception to this rule. For while many contemporary theorists seem to assume that skepticism is intrinsically subversive of established authority, a glance at Sextus Empiricus, or at the long history of skepticism, will reveal a tradition of skeptical arguments to justify obedience to religious and civil authority: since our own investigations cannot yield certainty, the argument goes, we have no basis for questioning established authority.15