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Thinker profile

Rene Descartes

Begins from methodic doubt and treats mind and body through a sharply dualist framework.

Dates

1596-1650

Tradition

Early Modern

Core profile

Begins from methodic doubt and treats mind and body through a sharply dualist framework.

Concepts to watch

Methodic doubtmind-body dualismcertainty

How to study this thinker

  1. 1Start with the basic problem this thinker is trying to solve.
  2. 2Name the concepts Aquinas receives, corrects, or resists.
  3. 3Return to Aquinas and ask how the borrowed insight is reordered.

Aquinas connection

Later challenge

Cartesian method asks whether knowledge should begin with interior certainty rather than with being and sensible experience.

Possible Thomistic defense

Aquinas can answer that intellect begins from the senses without being reduced to sensation, and that the person is one substance, not two joined things.

Adjacent profiles

Previous thinkerWilliam of OckhamQuestions real universals and limits metaphysical necessity through a sharper appeal to divine freedom.Next thinkerDavid HumeCritiques causality, substance, miracles, and natural theology by limiting knowledge to impressions and habits of expectation.