Cartesian anxiety is a philosophical concept for the conflict that a
subject experiences of failing to have—in
reality
Reality is the sum or aggregate of everything in existence; everything that is not imagination, imaginary. Different Culture, cultures and Academic discipline, academic disciplines conceptualize it in various ways.
Philosophical questions abo ...
—either a fixed and stable foundation for knowledge of what is and is not real, or an inescapable and incomprehensible groundlessness of reality.
coined and used the term in his 1983 book ''Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis'', referring to the feelings expressed by
René Descartes
René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and Modern science, science. Mathematics was paramou ...
, its namesake, in his ''
Meditations on First Philosophy''.
References
Concepts in social philosophy
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