Individualism in Philosophy

Descartes had a strong feeling for the fact that man, through his thought-development, had brought himself into a warped relationship with the world. Therefore, to begin with, he met everything that had come forth from this thought-development with doubt. Only when one doubts everything that the centuries have developed as truths can one—in his opinion—gain the necessary objectivity for a new point of departure. It lay in the nature of things that this doubt would lead Descartes to the human “I.” For, the more a person regards everything else as something that he still must seek, the more he will have an intense feeling of his own seeking personality. He can say to himself: Perhaps I am erring on the paths of existence; then the erring one is thrown all the more clearly back upon himself. Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) indicates this. Descartes presses even further. He is aware that the way man arrives at knowledge of himself should be a model for any other knowledge he means to acquire. Clarity and definiteness seem to Descartes to be the most prominent characteristics of self-knowledge. Therefore he also demands these two characteristics of all other knowledge. Whatever man can distinguish just as clearly and definitely as his own existence: only that can stand as certain.