Descartes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Descartes - Essay Example His method throughout the project is to establish a radical skepticism in which he doubts everything, even his own ability to conceive of himself and the existence of the world (Newman). As he comes in Meditation III to a proof for God, he finds it necessary to argue God into existence in order to move beyond the certainty of knowledge he has established in some very simple facts, including the cogito and simple mathematics. In this brief essay, it will be shown that Descartes proves God’s existence as a means of defeating radical skepticism, and his argument for that proof will be considered for its validity and relevance to his overall project.  In order to achieve his objective of proving the knowledge is possible, Descartes dives into an ever-increasing skepticism in which he doubts even the existence of himself and his own ability to imagine the word and his place in it. As part of his method, he imagines a demonic deceiver who works to mislead him at every turn. The deceiver presents him with a challenge that almost cripples his project since the deceiver, when taken to the logical extreme, makes all but his own private thought possible to doubt. He has ideas about the world that seem certain, including his own existence and simple mathematics, but he must prove that such ideas have corresponding material realities in the world in order to prove knowledge possible. The use of demon deceiver suggests that the link between ideas and material reality may be dubious. At the end of the Second Meditation, Descartes establishes the cogito as a form of certainty that he begins to believe will suffice as the first thing that he can actually argue with certainty. He thinks, and in that ability to think, he believes he expresses something too important to be overlooked. By being able to conceive of the notion of thought, he must exist, since to think something (even if it is the act of thinking) is by definition to bring the