How Did Rene Descartes Defeat Skepticism

Descartes was a French philosopher who is considered today as the “Father of Modern Philosophy”. Descartes often fought with the idea of this thing called Skepticism, which is the philosophical position that knowledge is impossible. This did not sit well with Descartes so he decided to write a book called “The Meditations on First Philosophy” as a guide book to the truth. Descartes’ two main aims with this book were first, to address and defeat skepticism, and second, to attain perfect knowledge, which is knowledge that is absolutely certain and indubitable; he aimed to used this idea of perfect knowledge to defeat skepticism. One of the first things Descartes had to do in order to defeat skepticism was look at his own beliefs and doubt all …show more content…
This certainty is undoubtable because of a few things. If one was to doubt that they existed, that would be self defeating. In order for one to doubt, one must exist. One popular counter argument to this certainty is what if some omnipotent being, such as God, is deceiving one about one’s existence? Well the answer to that is fairly simple, if God is deceiving him, then he must exist in order to be deceived. God can deceive one about anything else, but he will never be able to deceive one about their existence. Another popular argument is since one can say “I think therefore I am”, can one then say “I walk therefore I am” as a way to prove their existence? The answer to that is no. This is because people can have different interpretations of what walking is. If one defines walking as walking with our body to someplace, or aimlessly, then it is doubtable. But if one defines walking as how one walks in a dream, or the thought of walking, then it is a thought, and therefore since it is a thought, they exist. Since Descartes found this certainty that one exists because they have the ability to think, he has just defeated skepticism and attained a piece of perfect