DESCARTES’ RATIONALISM AND THE CRITERION OF CERTAINTY IN KNOWLEDGE
This work examines Rene Descartes’ rationalist epistemology as a criterion for certainty of knowledge. This work is geared to address the problem of doubt or uncertainty in human knowledge. Hence, his search for epistemological certainty made him to establish the foundation of true knowledge on the rational powers of human thinking or reason alone. This work makes use the method of analysis to analyse Rene Descartes’ rationalist epistemology as criterion of human knowledge based on self-evidence and a priori principles. Thus, this work establishes methodic doubt as a philosophical principle to reconstruct philosophy on a very solid foundation without error by discovering ‘his thinking self’ as the unquestionable truth that other truths can be known. Again, it conceives intuition and deduction as the only two reliable methods of attaining authentic knowledge of things. In addition, this work sees innate ideas as a way of driving something that is clear and distinct like existence of God. But, human reason alone as Rene Descartes postulates cannot serve as the only reliable source of true knowledge. Thus, this work postulated that reason is complemented with experience in the attainment of authentic knowledge of things in the world and beyond.
Keywords: rational, certainty, knowledge, methodic, doubt, intuition and deduction