The “Inner Eyes” of Philosophical Skepticism 168 Volume 78 Issue 3 The “Inner Eyes” of Philosophical Skepticism Nassim Noroozi McGill University In an insightful attempt to specify relations among certain varieties of philosophical skepticism in “Philosophical Skepticism, Racial Justice, and US Education Policy,” Derek Gottlieb observes the legacy of Descartes’ skepticism about the capacity of other minds not just in colonial normative establishments (for example, hierarchies about what constitutes the “ideal human”), but also in attempts to provide correctives to those established norms (namely in educational policies that aim to provide correctives and substantive equality). Gottlieb’s section titled “What I Mean by Skepticism” comprises the theoretical scaffold for the hypothesis of the paper and sculpts the subsequent analytical trajectory for critiquing the harm of Cartesian doubt as well as the correctives to overcome such harm especially as they extend to educational policies. This section is a fundamental part of the paper as it essentially de- termines the type of possibilities and horizons for thinking and theorizing for overcoming racial injustice. Philosophical skepticism (I have to interject: Western Philosophical Skepticism) is seen as having two forms; academic and Pyrrhonian, with the academic one—nourished by Cartesian doubt—having formed the trope for modern science. In Gottlieb’s paper the material grounds for the critique of academic skepticism is comprised of Strauss’ idea of academic skepticism being “industri- ous,” and Wittgenstein’s worry about how efforts to solve it continue its work of denial. 1 Taylor’s diagnostic is also a pillar in Gottlieb’s paper to rely on. Radical doubt originally held emancipatory promises of rigour by allowing us to sift our knowledge to rid it from irrationality and provided grounds for freedom from tyrannical abuses; however, the “ontologization of skepticism” is where the project went wrong. Subsequently, the ensued fundamental estrangement as a result of perceiving the world through the prism of “a subject and an external world” turned the ethos of skepticism to “an enamour with separating subjects and objects,” and consequently to perceiving subjects-as-objects. Gottlieb suggests that the same pattern appears in US policies that aim to overcome racial disparities and discusses how correctives are premised on PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION | susan VerduccI sandford, editor © 2022 Philosophy of Education Society