There is a principal weakness in Descartes philosophy. Let's stay within the context of his program of "radical doubt." He began his
Mediations by questioning everything, by asking how he could sure about what he supposedly knew.
This has been distilled to the practice of closely questioning and examining the premises or axioms of the system of thought you are using.
Descartes came to the point that he couldn't doubt tha "fact" that he was the one that was doubting and therefore, "I think, therefore I am." True enough. The problem came later as he tried to build back the world using the "cogito" as his foundation. I honestly don't remember the exact place where this occurred, but at one point, Descartes had to posit the existence of God to complete his project. And that doesn't necessarily follow from "I think, therefore I am." Of course, that seemed quite self-evidence to a man living in the culture and times in which he did.
The entire history of Western thought is troubled with premises that only seem self-evident. It was this error which Nietzsche and all the "post-modern" thinkers/artists that followed him are ultimately attacking.
There is a mathematical version of this insight: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem which shows that in any formal system as complicated as simple arithmetic, there are truths that the system cannot even formulate as well as questions which are undecidable. In short, there are limits to reason and logic alone.
Everyone knows this instinctively. And after all, linear reason and logic is an activity involving only the left side of the brain. The "non-verbal" or "emotional" correlates to the right side of the brain. And let's not forget that that there a pervasive network connecting the two brain hemispheres: the corpus callosum.
Beginning at least as early as Socratic philosophy, emotions and all things "feminine" were distrusted and only "masculine" linear (reason / logic) are trusted. All of this is implicit in Descartes' program.
I suggest we've had enough of (thinking / believing) we are half-people. What happens when intellect and emotion are integrated together instead of being at war with one another? This is what Friedrich Needs-She never got.
It's not a simple matter after centuries of indoctrination and conditioning. But for myself, I'm quite tired of carrying all that cultural baggage around. And as I look at the condition of the world around me, it certainly suggests that modern culture leaves something to be desired.
--Jimi Le