AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

This enquiry is motivated by two interrelated aims, at the core of which are two fundamental questions that troubled Descartes: ‘is a new metaphysics possible?’ and ‘is a free, autonomous enquirer possible?’. The search for a new metaphysics is not independent of but requires the attainability of freedom, transforming the self as locus of authority and autonomy. The attainability of both is predicated on Descartes’ constructive conception of scepticism, which is completely different from what is considered as ‘Cartesian scepticism’.

My first aim is to shed light on the ways in which Descartes’ response to scepticism has metaphysical and moral implications, and on his order of reasoning, which is indispensable to his metaphysical turn and ontological shift away from Scholasticism.

The second is to explore the connection between scepticism, habits, and freedom, as against misattributions to Descartes’ undertaking. Doubt requires reason and freedom. Without freedom from prejudicial intellectual habits and prevailing Principles, Descartes’ enquiry would not get off the ground. This triad of notions has far-reaching consequences for our philosophical concerns, yet it has gone unnoticed in the vast literature on scepticism.
A sceptical enquirer is a searcher after truth. Descartes’ concern is not primarily the external world, but truth.