Metaphysical and Moral Certainty: An Interpretation of Cartesian Methodical Doubts in Light of a Conceptual Distinction

Abstract

In the last decades the specialists in Descartes’ philosophy have focused on the question whether the nature of the methodical doubt raised in the first meditation must be considered as a systematically rigorous worry or, on the contrary, it corresponds to a trick that performs an instrumental value inside of the approach provided by the author. The hope is that the answer to that question may clarify the process that guides the ‘Meditations’. The interpreters who hold that the methodical doubt is feigned as well as those who think that it must be considered rigorously appeal to a conceptual distinction noted by Descartes itself to validate their respective proposals, namely: the distinction between metaphysical and moral certainty. The present paper proposes that the more suitable interpretation is the one maintained by those who consider the methodical doubt, in certain degree, as genuinely rigorous. To justify our adhesion the paper will evaluate the explanatory capacity of both interpretations, as regars to the progressive order contemplated in the first meditation as well as to the approximation to other philosophical problems contemplated in the ‘Meditations’.