Introduction

pp. 1-13

in: Suzanne Cunningham, Language and the phenomenological reductions of Edmund Husserl, Berlin, Springer, 1976

Abstract

René Descartes started modern Western philosophy on its search for an absolutely certain foundation for knowledge. A product of a faith-oriented culture, Descartes gradually realized the paucity of guarantees he had for the many things he had accepted as true, so he set himself the task of sorting out the unquestionable from the uncertain and of finding a criterion by which to judge the validity of those beliefs that were open to doubt. Thus, his Meditations are a systematic attempt to put aside every belief that had been accepted on some merely external authority and which in itself was not beyond doubt, and to work his way to what he considered to be the one absolutely indubitable fact: cogito, "I think." On the foundation of this cogito, using as criterion of validity the clearness and distinctness of ideas, he meant to rebuild a realm of certain knowledge.