Philosophy

Yes, Descartes, in his Meditations 1 to 4 succeeded in finding something certain, summed up by his  I think therefore I am,  despite the fact that age of Descartes is echoed by skepticism, (Bracken, 2002, p.10). There was a prevalent confusion, for instance, between dream and reality. Although Descartes himself doubted, there is something that makes his doubting different from that of his age his does not end up in pure skepticism, because methodical doubting is a method devised by the French philosopher in search of truth.  In his Meditations, the man doubts everything first by the complete rejection of the senses, second by doubting the external reality, third by the dream-reality confusion, fourth by the deceiving God argument, and finally, by the deceiving Demon argument.

By the cancellation of  everything,  Descartes is left solely by one thing that he cannot doubt, and that is the fact that he doubts. Hence, he is exclusively left by self-knowledge.  Subsequently, his rational doubting, the search for an indubitable truth and a definite principle made him recognize that he is a res cogitans. This means that he is a thinking thing, a thing which doubts, affirms, denies, wills, shuns, approves.

This acknowledgment now gives the delusion of the possibility that these things proceed from him, akin to Berkeley s esse est percipi or to be is to be perceived. Although there are criticisms about the Cartesian philosophy, such as that it was merely a revision of Anselm s arguments in the middle ages, and that Descartes was a victim of solipsism or the belief that he alone existed, the point is in his search for an indubitable truth, he found one. This one solid certainty of which he cannot doubt becomes the foundation for all the other truths and for the re-affirmation of the things whose reality he questioned.