AQUINO Journal of Philosophy

The attempt to deconstruct all knowledge claims and re-erect new ones on unshakable foundation immune to skepticism is, unarguably, linked to the philosophy of Rene Descartes. For him, this firm foundation is the famous 'cogito ergo sum' (I think, therefore, I am) discovered in the process of universal methodic doubt. But the question is can Descartes epistemological foundationalism justifiably answer the skeptics' arguments? This paper argues that the cogito is not logically coherent with Descartes' grounds for his systematic skepticism and that so long as knowledge follows the metaphysics of man and subject to environmental and social determinants, any effort to erect superstructures that will withstand skepticism is not only unnecessary; it is also undesirable for, the growth of philosophic knowledge-which is tentative, dynamic and contextual- is not linear and enjoys no finality.

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