CETICISMO ACADÊMICO NAS "RÈGLES POUR LA DIRECTION DE L'ESPRIT (I, II, III, IV) DE DESCARTES

It seems that some tools from academic scepticism are included on the epistemic precepts in the Règles pour la direction de l’esprit (Amsterdam, 1701). At the second Rule, for example, Carneades’ probabilism can be found as one of the most leading tracks of academic scepticism in the early modern philosophy. There are another topics from this tradition that were used by Descartes on the formulation of his own modern scepticism, such as the definition of science as wisdom (first Rule). In this way, academic scepticism is, paradoxically, one of the allies of the search for Truth (as the fourth Rule shows us). The scope of this paper, hence, is to comprehend how academic scepticism appears on the Règles’ epistemic project, through topics like the search for wisdom, the doubt’s alleviation, the exercice of assentiment by refusing probabilism and the truth of fideism. The academic method’s scope includes these topics, defined by epistemic analysis or recursiviness.