Descartes's Method of Doubt and the Evil Demon Hypothesis

René Descartes (1596–1650) gave ancient skeptical arguments their most influential early modern reformulation in his Meditations on First Philosophy (Meditationes de Prima Philosophia), published in Latin in 1641 with a French translation following in 1647, after having first sketched the same method more briefly in Part IV of the Discourse on the Method (1637). Where the ancient Skeptics had generally treated the suspension of judgment as itself the goal of philosophy, Descartes repurposed the technique of doubt as a deliberate method, a demolition tool meant to clear away all merely probable or habitual beliefs so that he could rebuild knowledge afterward on a foundation immune to any possible doubt.