Therefore, anything that can be doubted in even the slightest way must be abandoned in favor of the truth.Īpproaching life with a healthy dose of skeptical doubt means first not believing everything your senses tell you. The first thing Descartes argues is that you can’t build your understanding and view of the world on lies. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: Don’t trust your senses without questioning them. There are three levels of truth in the world.įeeling smart? Our philosophical plane ‘descartes’ now! (pun intended).The fact that you think proves that you exist.Your senses don’t always tell the truth.It’s one of the prime works of Western philosophy, written in 1641 and therefore part of any well-educated man’s (or woman’s) reference book. Meditations On First Philosophy shows how he reasoned his way to these conclusions and more. It explained how Descartes kept questioning himself for days: “Is this really true? Is there a 0.000000000000001% chance it isn’t?” And every time he found doubts, he removed a particular belief from his mind, until he eventually saw he was left with only one thing: math. One of the steps in Tai Lopez’s 67 Steps program was labeled “Descartes & Solving Problems With A Calculator.” The first time I ever learned something more from René Descartes than “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) was in 2014. Listen to the audio of this summary with a free reading.fm account*:
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