Descartes: A Biography

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Metaphysics in a Hornet’s Nest (–) 

or is an illusion and pretence, it is impossible to be mistaken in this judgment and

that they not be,for any person who has the capacity to enter into themselves, as some

people have, and to make the judgmentthat they are.Itisatruth – as perceptible by

reason as the Sun is to healthy eyes – that action presupposes being, that it is necessary

foracause to exist in order to act, and that it is impossible for something that does not

exist to do anything.

Silhon anticipated the Cartesian project at least in this sense. He saw

clearly the impact of sceptical doubts on proofs of the soul’s immortality

or of God’s existence, and he believed that he had to address those doubts

adequately before he could make any progress with those two questions.

It would be merely a change of emphasis if Descartes were to argue that

scepticism about knowledge of nature, whether it is adequately countered

or not, provides a foil against which the relative certainty of self-awareness

is obvious.

The most likely source of these sceptical problems was the publication

in Paris inof a Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus.Theologians

and philosophers exploited its riches to undermine the claims of adver-

saries, irrespective of what was being debated or who the adversaries

happened to be. Catholic theologians, for example, could use such scep-

tical weapons against what they considered undue reliance on reason by

Calvinists, and could then encourage the faithful to put their trust in the

traditional teachings of the church. Calvinists, for their part, could appeal

to sceptical arguments to challenge the alleged credulity of Catholics,

some of whose beliefs seemed to verge on magic. Marie de Gournay could

deploy similar sceptical arguments to challenge received views about the

inferiority of women.

A more immediate source of sceptical arguments, however, were the

very influentialEssaysof Michel de Montaigne, published in various edi-

tions betweenand.Montaigne rehearsed, in hisApology for

Raymond Sebond, all three of the famous sceptical arguments that appear

in the first of Descartes’Meditations.Heargued that our senses often

deceive us, that we cannot be sure if we are awake or asleep, and that we

cannot use our cognitive faculties to establish their own trustworthiness

without arguing in a circle.Thus one factor in Descartes’ decision to

structure theMeditationsas he wrote them, with the First Meditation

rehearsing the strongest possible sceptical arguments available, was the

popularity of Montaigne’sEssaysand the fashionable scepticism that they

endorsed.