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René Descartes (1596–1650) is widely regarded as the father of modern philosophy. A French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, Descartes broke decisively with the medieval Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition and sought to rebuild human knowledge from the ground up on a foundation of absolute certainty. His philosophical method of radical doubt, his discovery of the cogito, his substance dualism, and his arguments for God’s existence are all central to AQA A-Level Religious Studies. His principal philosophical works are the Meditations on First Philosophy (Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, 1641), the Discourse on Method (1637), and the Principles of Philosophy (1644).
In the Meditations, Descartes set out to find a proposition that is absolutely certain — immune to any possible doubt. To do this, he employed a method of systematic, hyperbolic doubt: he resolved to reject as false anything that could conceivably be doubted, no matter how unlikely the grounds for doubt. His aim was not to become a sceptic but to find an indubitable foundation on which to build the edifice of knowledge.
Descartes identified three progressively more radical grounds for doubt:
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