The Questionable Quest for Certainty
Philosophy: was the Cartesian effort either possible or desirable?
Introduction: The Problem of Where You Start Doing Philosophy.
Where do you start “doing philosophy”? Where you are, or after seeking — and finding — some ideal standpoint?
The first seems reasonable. Where you are — wherever you might be, whatever situation you find yourself in — might be the source of whatever problems or issues perplexed you.
But most major philosophers haven’t started that way. The pivotal figure behind modern philosophy claimed he’d reasoned his way to an ideal standpoint, or foundation. Rene Descartes (1596–1650) changed the direction of Western thought.
Descartes believed that any sound inquiry began with philosophy, and that sound philosophy could only begin from an apodictically certain starting point: sought through a very specific method, the result logically necessary, proven with mathematical precision. Having been a physicist and mathematician, this was his gold standard.
Subsequent history has thrown us many suggestions that this quest for certainty was misguided. Science went on its merry way, for example. It was not, and never could be, a quest for absolute certainties…
