Essay Database

Descartes How does Descartes try to extricate himself from the sceptical doubts that he has raised? Does he succeed? by Tom Nuttall [All page references and quotations from the Meditations are taken from the 1995 Everyman edition] In the Meditations, Descartes embarks upon what Bernard Williams has called the project of 'Pure Enquiry' to discover certain, indubitable foundations for knowledge. By subjecting everything to doubt Descartes hoped to discover whatever was immune to it. In order …

…it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect; for whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its cause? And how could the cause communicate to it this reality unless it possessed it in itself?" Whence do these principles draw their indubitability? Even if we grant that it is contrary to natural rea