Descartes doubts everything
Meditations on First Philosophy razed every belief that could be doubted, rebuilding from a single certainty: a thinking self — cogito, ergo sum.
Why it matters
Descartes made the individual mind the foundation of knowledge and split reality into mind and matter — the move modern philosophy has spent four centuries arguing with, from Spinoza to cognitive science.
People
René Descartes
Related events
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Descartes