Thinker · Rationalists
Descartes
1596 – 1650 · Rationalists · The rationalists & empiricists · 3 works
One man decided that almost everything he believed had come to him secondhand (from teachers, from books, from his own unreliable eyes), and that none of it had ever been checked. So he resolved to tear the whole structure down to the ground, doubt everything it was possible to doubt, and see whether a single certainty was left standing in the rubble that he could build on. He found one. The rest of his life, and most of modern philosophy after him, is the attempt to rebuild a world on that one stone, and the discovery that the stone may not be big enough to hold the house.
What changed
Before
Knowledge starts from what the authorities and the senses hand over, and the work is to understand it
After
Knowledge starts from nothing (from the one thing that cannot be doubted) and is rebuilt outward, every step certified by the thinker
Inside the walk-through
The man who doubted everything
The demolition
The one thing left
Mind and body
God, the circle, and the princess
The afterlife of a wound
The works
