How
Descartes tried to remove himself from his skeptical point
In the Meditations, Descartes embarks upon what Bernard Williams has called
\"the project of \'Pure Enquiry\' to discover certain, indubitable
foundations for knowledge.\" Although Descartes\' views relied mainly on skepticism, he did make an attempt to \'remove\' himself
from this doubt. By subjecting everything to doubt Descartes hoped to discover
whatever was immune to it. In order to best understand how and why Descartes
builds his epistemological system up from his foundations in the way that he
does, it is helpful to gain an understanding of the intellectual background of
the 17th century that provided the motivation for his work.
We can discern three distinct influences on Descartes, three conflicting
world-views that fought for prominence in his day. The first was what remained
of the mediaeval scholastic philosophy, largely based on Aristotelian science
and Christian theology. Descartes had been taught according to this outlook
during his time at Jesuit college, and this had an
important influence on his work, as we shall see later. The second was the
skepticism that had made a sudden impact on the intellectual world, mainly as a
reaction to the scholastic outlook. This skepticism was strongly influenced by
the work of the Pyrrhonians as handed down from
antiquity by Sextus
