Paper Summary:

This paper examines Renee Descartes' "Meditations", and explains that within this writing, he justifies his faith in reason by a circuitous route. The paper explains that Descartes accomplishes this by first raising all of the epistemological doubts of skeptics - and then vindicating his faith in reason by advancing an argument for trusting certain aspects of our rationality. In the process, as far as he is concerned, he manages to: ... "tear down everything and begin anew from the foundations [in order to] ... establish ... firm and lasting knowledge". The paper then goes on to argue that contrary to establishing his faith in reason, to a very large extent, the new foundation that Descartes erects, and pins his firm knowledge on, is his certainty of the existence of God.

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