ABSTRACT
Having completed the systematic undermining of his earlier beliefs, Descartes begins to rebuild his epistemic world. In his reconstruction he follows the method we outlined in the first three chapters. Under that method the Second and Third Meditations are fundamentally a search for principles. To follow Descartes’s house metaphor, in these meditations he pours the foundation and constructs most of the framing; in the final three meditations, he adds the siding and lays out the interior. The completion of the interior decor and external trim is work left for his physics and ethics.
