René Descartes

I start off by providing a biography of René Descartes, who is formally accorded the title of “Father of Modern Philosophy”. This is followed by a definition of epistemology. Descartes embarks on a quest for the foundation of all scholarly disciplines, a foundation that  is immune to doubt. I shall examine his Meditations I and II and especially his exercise of hyperbolic doubt. As a result of seeking that which is absolutely indubitable, it is possible that we arrive at a notion that there is no physical world out there and that I may not have a body and sense faculties. After unravelling Descartes’s “Cogito ergo sum”, objections to the Cartesian substantive “I” will be assessed.