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Rene Descartes Myth Of Sisyphus

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A. Introduction to Descartes’ ‘I’ “If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved” Albert Camus, Myth of Sisyphus Questioning of any sort of an “a priori” and the rise of new existentialist movements clearly have their roots back to Descartes’skepticism as seen in the quote above from Myth of Sisyphus. The restless idea of doubting every concept Descartes builds in his first meditation develops more and more throughout ages to become a new starting point to redescribe certain values such as ethics, God, freedom etc. which were to be accepted by people as basics. Along with these concepts, the skeptic goes even further to question the existence of the self which is the subject of any experience for a ‘thinking …show more content…

(Descartes, 6) Having this particular purpose, Descartes’ approach could be criticized as a deviation from the skeptic view which he had started his examination with. According to Hegel, skepticism would be both the aim and the product of itself at the same time and a skeptic would be satisfied when he achieves to put every notion into doubt.(Hegel) This however, was not Descartes’ intention in his Meditations on First Philosophy. He used skepticism as a tool to arrive at specific unconditioned conclusions rather than making it a destination point. After demanding the refusal of every knowledge and belief in the first meditation, Descartes acknowledges the absolute existence of a being in the second meditation: the ‘I’. The source of this crack in skeptic view is defined as the thinking of the self, in other words, …show more content…

While defining the essence of the self, Descartes leaves out the sensual experiences as well as any material substance. When he points out to a consciousness that has its own unity, he also defines it as an eternal substance independent from the body and bodily received knowledge. In the first meditation, Descartes uses dreams as examples of deceived sensual information and further claims that the world we define as reality could also be a dream or any false imagery. As he states from the very beginning, any knowledge that cannot be absolutely certain has to be thought as falsity for Descartes, so the existence of the outer world becomes an

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