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Jeffrey Laino
Ramapo College

In the Meditations, Descartes embarks upon what Bernard Williams has called "the project of 'Pure Enquiry' to discover certain, indubitable foundations for knowledge." Although Descartes' views relied mainly on skepticism, he did make an attempt to 'remove' himself from this doubt. By subjecting everything to doubt Descartes hoped to discover whatever was immune to it. In order to best understand how and why Descartes builds his epistemological system up from his foundations in the way that he does, it is helpful to gain an understanding of the intellectual background of the 17th century that provided the motivation for his work.
We can discern three distinct influences on Descartes, three conflicting world-views that fought for prominence in his day. The first was what remained of the mediaeval scholastic philosophy, largely based on Aristotelian science and Christian theology. Descartes had been taught according to this outlook during his time......

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