Analysis Of Rene Descartes And David Hume

Over the course of the semester, we asked ourselves three question; Who am I? What am I? and Why am I here? Out of these questions, the one that I found the most interesting to learn about was the question, who am I? This question is something I have always thought about, but I never really had a concrete answer. In class we discussed about epistemology, the origin of knowledge, and that just fascinated me. Two of the philosophers that we read about that involved epistemology were Rene Descartes and David Hume. I found their readings to be the most illuminating and helpful in addressing the question of who I am. These two philosophers have contradicting views on knowledge and how it is acquired. Since I agree with many of the points that both philosophers make, I believe that knowledge is acquired from both experiences and reason. Rene Descartes is a rationalist, therefore he believes that knowledge should be based on reason, innate ideas and prior knowledge, before experience. If he has any doubt, he suspends his judgement until he can prove that something is true with certainty. Descartes believes that in order to succeed in the sciences he will have to free himself from previous thoughts and start to question everything. He also states that arithmetic and geometry …show more content…
According to Descartes, the couple should always question each other and and their choices. When a couple does this it makes them lose trust in each other. On the other hand, according to Hume, the couple should have all the faith in the world in each other and to ignore any doubts they may have. Too much trust in each other could lead to one person being naive. In my opinion there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Instead of siding with either Hume or Descartes, I believe there should be an equal balance of questioning everything and trusting in