Descartes probably wrote like that because his life wasn't the best-
While not necessarily the stereotype of a 'creative', Rene Descartes did introduce what many honors students have learned is a system of methodological doubt (otherwise known as your first academically fueled existential crisis. Not an academic crisis, or a self-worth related crisis-- those were likely born during a time of reading Homer's Odyssey during our first weeks in Honors. Nevertheless, I digress;) Descartes's Meditations are important to the western philosophical movement as a whole-- outside of Honors, I've had the fortune of covering the man and his works no less than thrice, analyzing him within a historical context, others through his role in epistemological development, and others by proxy of Descartes' work. Establishing a system of doubt, as I have been taught, was relatively novel for the discipline as a whole, but within the context in which Descartes lived, such doubt was expected. A major war was occurring in Europe at the time of Descartes...