Includes bibliographical references (pages 294-298) and indexes

1. The prolegomena to any future epistemology -- The making of an ideal seeker -- The method: the rationalist thread -- The tree of philosophy -- Method, morals, and bootstraps -- 2. The problem of epistemology -- Types of problems -- Directive to dismantle -- Two models of doubt -- Doubt and principles -- 3. The solution: cogito -- The nature of the first principle -- The thought experiment -- The experiment evaluated -- The Eucharist objection -- Doubt and the cogito -- The general rule and truth -- 4. A skeptic against reason -- Why natural reason? -- "Buy all or nothing" -- Attempting to step out of the circle -- No escaping from the circle -- Another failed attempt -- How not to read the meditations: a skeptic's reply -- 5. The five ways -- The five ways ... -- ... Plus one -- 6. Cogito: not an argument -- The preliminaries -- The core of the claim -- The proof -- Skepticism and the theory of deduction -- 7. The content of the cogito -- A source of the mistake -- The content of the cogito -- Ryle and the elusive 'I' -- 8. Memory, explanation, and will -- The role of memory -- Discovery, explanation, and the new logic -- Will, cogito, and the purposes of God

"Perhaps the most famous proposition in the history of philosophy in Descartes' cogito, "I think, therefore I am." Husain Sarkar claims in this provocative new interpretation of Descartes that the ancient tradition of reading the cogito as an argument is mistaken. It should, he says, be read as an intuition. Through this new interpretative lens, the author reconsiders key Cartesian topics: the ideal inquirer; the role of clear and distinct ideas; the relation of these to the will; memory; the nature of intuition and deduction; the nature, content, and elusiveness of 'I'; and the tenability of the doctrine of the creation of eternal truths. Finally, the book demonstrates how Descartes' attempt to prove the existence of God is foiled by a new Cartesian Circle."--Jacket