Scepticism and Faith: David Foster Wallace’s Fideism

The term ‘scepticism’ has often referred to ‘doubt or unbelief with regard to the Christian religion’, and Wallace’s interest in scepticism can be seen to be motivated, in no small part, by his interest in theological ideas of belief and faith. This chapter suggests that Wallace can at times be seen to hold a ‘Fideist’ position – an attitude that combines scepticism and faith. Fideists use sceptical arguments to attack our ability to attain knowledge or certainty by means of reason. Given that there are some things we just cannot know, it is argued that we must have faith. Through readings of the drafts of Wallace’s famous ‘Kenyon Commencement Speech’ (2005) and a late story ‘All That’ (2009), I show that Wallace’s work can be seen to espouse Fideist ideas. The chapter also reprises the Pyrrhonist attack on ‘negative dogmatism’ (the radically sceptical position that states that an attachment to scepticism cannot itself be justified) since Wallace is shown to portray a certain type of ‘sceptical empiricism’ as itself a dogmatic attitude.