Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'fragments/reports' and 'A Discourse on Method'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty
In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes]
     Full Idea: Descartes' procedure for treating values (accepting normal conventions when faced with uncertainty) is the exact antithesis of that used to attain knowledge.
     From: comment on René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.73
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 4. The Cogito
In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes]
     Full Idea: While I decided to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought thus must be something; the truth 'I think therefore I am' was so certain that the most extravagant scepticism could never shake it.
     From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32)