Analysis Of Rene Descartes: The Father Of Philosophy

Rene Descartes, often dubbed the “Father of Philosophy”, was an inspired 17th century philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who pioneered modern philosophy, and is perhaps most well-known for his “Cartesian Skepticism”, as a result of which he established a “fundamental element of Western philosophy”: “Cogito, ergo, sum. I think, therefore I am.” Descartes doubted the world and reality around him, and so, in a thought experiment, he hypothesized the existence of a malicious demon, or “genius malignus” (evil genius), that was deceiving everyone by keeping them entrapped in an illusionary world. In order to evaluate the veracity of his reality, and being a “fierce rationalist”, he renounced all his beliefs and began to critically examine each and every one of them to arrive at an authentic truth, and use this as a basis to deduce his way back to a verifiable system of beliefs. Descartes’ ideas influenced the
To that extent therefore, he relied primarily on introspecting his own thoughts and ideas, and rejected all sensory information because it is relative, and hence deceptive or erroneous. Descartes explained that complex problems could be solved by breaking them down into smaller fragments, and he applied this “incisive” concept in his method of doubts. This methodology can be described using the analogy of a “barrel of apples”. In order to remove and discard the bad apples in a barrel full of them, all the apples must first be removed, before individually separating the good ones and returning them to the barrel. In a similar way, Descartes renounced all his beliefs and examined them one by one, in order to discard all biases, and find the correct beliefs before accepting