Descartes: a dúvida e suas dívidas

Abstract

This article discusses important passages in the work of St. Augustine and argues that many are the anticipations of theses commonly attributed to Descartes.  Among them is a clear anticipation of the famous formula "I think, therefore I am" in the work of the Bishop of Hippo, as well as other important theses distributed throughout his work.  In the second part, the text ends with another practically unknown fact: the meditative style employed by Descartes had also been anticipated by an author whose work was widely known in mid-16th and 17th century Europe. We are referring to the nun Teresa of Avila, who was canonized when the young Descartes was studying with the Jesuits at La Flèche. This raises the need to rethink the academic historiography that most of us were subjected to when we started our philosophical studies without having been exposed to the real sources of the central theses that we find in many classic works of philosophical thought.