Philosophy
1596 to 1650, La Haye en Touraine, France
Doubt, certainty, the thinking self, and the foundations of modern philosophy.
Start learning Rene →Descartes resolves to doubt everything that can possibly be doubted - the senses, the external world, even mathematics - in search of one belief so certain that no doubt can touch it, on which all knowledge can be rebui…
In the depths of total doubt, Descartes finds the one truth no deceiver can take from him: that while he is thinking, he exists. The cogito becomes the first certainty and the foundation of his philosophy.
To trust his own reason and reach the world beyond his mind, Descartes argues he must first prove that a perfect, non-deceiving God exists - guaranteeing that whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly is true.
Descartes argues that mind and body are two utterly different substances - thinking and unextended versus extended and unthinking - distinct enough to exist apart. This dualism shapes the modern mind-body problem.
Descartes sought a single method, modelled on mathematics, to make all knowledge certain - and applied it to build a mechanical physics of a world of matter in motion, helping launch the Scientific Revolution.
More in Philosophy
AristotlePlatoImmanuel KantFriedrich NietzscheConfuciusSenecaEpictetusMarcus Aureliusepoché — a humanities education that remembers you.