Comment traiter de ce qui n’est pas « entièrement certain et indubitable ». Descartes héritier des Académiques de Cicéron

Abstract

Descartes is generally not very inclined to admit what he owes to his predecessors. His relationship to the greek Skeptics is all the more difficult to identify, that it has been paradoxically hidden by the skeptical reception of his work : in spite of the indisputable contribution of the Academics to the writing of the argument of the Meditations, the cartesian venture has been interpreted as inaugurating a new and radical Skepticism doomed to mark a break with the tradition. However, Descartes uses Academics’ Skepticism, and particularly the sorit argument, in order to criticize the whole philosophical tradition, and to grant his mind such a licence, that neither knowledge, nor even one belief could be a priori preserved. Nevertheless, uncertainty is not entirely dismissed from his philosophy which inherits, in science as in morals, the skeptical insight of probability, as this latter notion has been passed down from Cicero’s Academica.

Keywords

• Descartes
• The Academics
• skepticism
• Cicero
• probabilité
• likelihood