[All page references and quotations from the Meditations are taken from the 1995 Everyman edition] In the Meditations, Descartes embarks upon what Bernard Williams has called the project of "Pure Enquiry" to discover certain, indubitable foundations for knowledge. 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...
mind, he cannot but give his assent to this idea, and furthermore, that while this assent is being granted, the clear and distinct idea can be justly used as a foundation for knowledge. The most this gets us - and this is not a little - is the knowledge of our own existence each time we assert it. But Descartes" project should not be judged by us as a failure - the fact that he addressed topics of great and lasting interest, and provided us with a method we can both understand and utilise fruitfully, speaks for itself.