Essay On Rene Descartes First Meditation

Perhaps one of the most prominent figures in seventeenth century philosophy, Rene Descartes is still known for his great contributions to the philosophical branch of epistemology. His renowned book, Meditations on First Philosophy was first published in 1641. Divided into six different meditations, each meditation in the book addresses a specific epistemological issue. In the First Meditation, Descartes calls into doubt all of his previous beliefs and all he considered to be legitimate knowledge. He does so, however, with the intent of learning what is true, so he can separate real knowledge from falsehoods. Descartes writes that his first objective is to find one certain, indubitable belief, that he could further use to build all his prospective knowledge. The First Meditation alone already distinguished Descartes as an important advocate for the theory of knowledge of foundationalism, and as a remarkable adherent of scepticism as a method. Descartes, in the First Meditation, outlined various arguments through which he tries to call all his previous beliefs into doubt. In the first paragraphs of this meditation, he writes how he was suddenly

When it comes to rational knowledge, however, the matter is much different. At first, Descartes claims that unlike physics or astronomy, - which are disciplines that depend on the study of composite things, and are therefore, doubtful - there are other subjects, such as arithmetics and geometry, that appear to be certain and indubitable. That is because, such subjects deal with necessary truths. Following the example given by Descartes, regardless if we are awake or not, its inconceivable to imagine a square that has more than four sides - since a square, by definition, is four sided. So Descartes claims that although he can conceive why empirical knowledge can be false, such rational, “transparent truths”, are harder to