The specific focus of my philosophical undertakings shifted during the period in which the essays collected here were written. For a number of years, my work was guided by an intense concern with certain metaphysical and epistemological issues in the philosophy of Descartes. This was followed by a similarly concentrated preoccupation with various interrelated topics in moral philosophy and with what I suppose may plausibly be construed as philosophical anthropology. Descartes has something to say about these topics, but that was not what led me to them; indeed, I never took much interest in those aspects of his thought. My attention was shifted adventitiously, by factors unrelated to the trajectory of my Cartesian studies.

I was first led to study Descartes's thought mainly (if I remember correctly) by a hopeful curiosity about what his professedly uncompromising dedication to methodological skepticism might actually be worth. Early in the Discourse on Method, he says that the impetus of his thinking “was always my most earnest desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false in order to see clearly into my own actions and proceed with confidence in this life.” That was my most earnest desire too. Moreover, I was inclined by nature to the very sorts of doubt and self-doubt that Descartes proposed to employ constructively against themselves. His reputation as a “rationalist,” his lucid style, and the fact that his books are short made him even more appealing.