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Silencing the Demon's AdvocateThe Strategy of Descartes' Meditations$
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Silencing the Demon's Advocate: The Strategy of Descartes' Meditations

Ronald Rubin

Print publication date: 2008

Print ISBN-13: 9780804758161

Published to Stanford Scholarship Online: June 2013

DOI: 10.11126/stanford/9780804758161.001.0001

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Certainty and Stability

Certainty and Stability

Chapter:
(p.24) Chapter 2 Certainty and Stability
Source:
Silencing the Demon's Advocate
Publisher:
Stanford University Press
DOI:10.11126/stanford/9780804758161.003.0002

This chapter examines Rene Descartes' views on certainty and stability based on his Meditations. It analyzes the connection between perfect certainty and perfect stability, and argues that Descartes strove for certainty, not as an end in itself, but as a means to stability of belief. The chapter also contends that Descartes searched for certainty in order to avoid the intellectual turmoil of the sort which plagued Europe during his lifetime.

Keywords:   certainty, stability, Rene Descartes, belief, intellectual turmoil, Europe

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