Descartes and Modern Philosophy

Descartes is often described as the 'father of Modern Philosophy', and the most frequently cited reason for that characterization is his principle 'I think, therefore I am'. But that proposition is hardly universally ascribed to by subsequent Philosophers, and, within his own project, is only one result of a more fundamental ambition. Indeed, what most of the main modern schools--Rationalism, Empiricism, Transcendentalism, Intuitionism, Phenomenalism, Phenomenology, Epiphenomenalism, Dialecticism, Structuralism, Deconstructionism, Analytic Logicism--share with Cartesianism is that they are methods in the quest for Certainty. Even one prominent seeming exception, Pragmaticism, is explicitly a method in pursuit of modified Certainty, i. e. highest Probability. So, Heidegger is mistaken to classify Descartes as a modern Protagoras, the father of modern Subjectivism. For Descartes does not assert that he is the measure of all things--his presumption is that his logically sound method of doubt is the measure of all things, including of 'I am'. Instead, Heidegger's own ontologization of Phenomenology only underscores that Descartes' primary influence on Modern Philosophy is as the progenitor of the ascendancy of Epistemology, a not necessarily intentional paternity.