Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Descartes' Cogito
- 1 The Prolegomena to Any Future Epistemology
- 2 The Problem of Epistemology
- 3 The Solution: Cogito
- 4 A Skeptic against Reason
- 5 The Five Ways
- 6 Cogito: Not an Argument
- 7 The Content of the Cogito
- 8 Memory, Explanation, and Will
- Appendix A Comments on Jeffrey Tlumak's “Certainty and Cartesian Method”
- Appendix B Comments on Robert Nozick's “Fiction”
- Appendix C Cogito and the Port-Royal Logic
- Appendix D Bacon and Descartes
- Appendix E Comments on Anthony Kenny's “Descartes on the Will”
- Bibliography
- Name Index
- Subject Index
3 - The Solution: Cogito
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Descartes' Cogito
- 1 The Prolegomena to Any Future Epistemology
- 2 The Problem of Epistemology
- 3 The Solution: Cogito
- 4 A Skeptic against Reason
- 5 The Five Ways
- 6 Cogito: Not an Argument
- 7 The Content of the Cogito
- 8 Memory, Explanation, and Will
- Appendix A Comments on Jeffrey Tlumak's “Certainty and Cartesian Method”
- Appendix B Comments on Robert Nozick's “Fiction”
- Appendix C Cogito and the Port-Royal Logic
- Appendix D Bacon and Descartes
- Appendix E Comments on Anthony Kenny's “Descartes on the Will”
- Bibliography
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
No one has portrayed better the deep and powerful skepticism that prevailed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in France, in the fields of science, mathematics, and religion than Richard Popkin. Religious persecution was rampant, and epistemology was “a new machine of war.” Given the extreme doubt regarding so many matters, confidence in the possibility of knowledge was low, at best. This was the skepticism that Descartes tried desperately to combat. He wanted to combat it by showing that there was, at least, one certainty on which an entire edifice of knowledge could be constructed. That certainty was such that it could not be doubted, no matter how deep and sweeping the doubt that the human mind could invent. On that certainty, the confidence in human reason could be regenerated. So Descartes thought.
In this matter, Descartes nicely contrasts with Saint Augustine. Here is Saint Augustine in De Utilitate Credendi: “I could produce many arguments to show that absolutely nothing in human society will be safe if we decide to believe only what we can regard as having been clearly perceived” (CSM II, 152; AT VII, 217). By contrast, Descartes' revolution of reason was designed to show that nothing would be safe if we decided otherwise – neither society, nor knowledge, nor for that matter faith. “I am vain enough to think,” he said, “that the faith has never been so strongly supported by human arguments as it may be if my principles are adopted” (CSMK, 88; AT I, 564).
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- Descartes' CogitoSaved from the Great Shipwreck, pp. 58 - 100Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003