Doubt Is The Origin Of Wisdom

This exact formulation is not found in René Descartes's published writings, but the idea is central to the Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), whose method proceeds by systematically doubting everything that can be doubted in order to discover what cannot. For Descartes, methodological doubt (dubium methodicum) is not scepticism but its antidote: by doubting rigorously, one arrives at certainties that no sceptic can challenge. Søren Kierkegaard later inverted this: he argued that Descartes's doubt was not radical enough, since it left the thinking self unquestioned.