O ceticismo cartesiano

aspectos epistemológicos nas Meditações Metafísicas

Abstract

The nature of Cartesian scepticism is one of the most controversial and challenging points in the interpretation of the Metaphysical Meditations. The aim of this paper is to show that the doubts presented and developed by the seventeenth-century philosopher have an epistemological nature, through the following investigative guiding question: what is the role and function of exposing the possibility that all knowledge can be definitely doubtful, through the hypothesis of the doubt of dreams or the existence of the evil genius? For this, the critical-analytical method of investigation will be followed, via a bibliographical review of some of the main commentators who deal with the present question, and the skeptical hypotheses presented by Descartes in his main work will be scrutinized, as in significant excerpts of his theoretical life, in which he addressed and confronted this theme. Our conclusive theoretical findings show that scepticism plays a central role in the foundation of the concept of science in the Cartesian system with impacts on the ancient-medieval causal theory of perception, given that certainty as the ultimate criterion of truth, as advocated by Descartes, originates from an attitude of doubt about the truth of beliefs about the existence of external bodies and even of their essences; it now resides in the certainty of the truth of ideas such as God, and the "I am, I exist". (AT, VII, 27; IX-1, 21).