Descartes is seen as a reaction against scholastic philosophy in seventeenth century. The reason for this thought is that Descartes strongly criticized the methods of scholatic philosophy in his some writings. Scholastic philosphy was based on constant dogmas that could not be changed or criticized while Descartes claims that everything, even God, should be criticized to achieve the truth. If you look at Descartes' philosophy in your own perspective you can easily say that he is inconsistent with himself; however, if you can catch his idea or view in which he see the world, God, and everything you will see that he built his philosophy on unshakable bases. Actually, the given two proposition are seen inconsistent without Descartes' glasses. As Mustafa Armagan states, Descartes follows four basic ways when he philosophisizes. First of all is that you should accept nothing unless its truth is obvous. The second is that subjects that will be examined should be brought into pieces as much as possible. The third is that you should follow an order way while you are thinking. And the fourth is that you should control everything not to skip any detail . By using these ways, Descartes formed his philosophy. Descartes, as other philosophers, tries to reach absolute truth. To do this he doubts everything that contains any small piece of friction or that he sees a sign of friction. He says that because our senses do not provide us the reality and can deceive us we have to doubt everything. He uses his first basic way of his method that accept nothing unless its truth is obvious. He tells us that because of our senses' imperfection we percieve one thing differently and adds that we cannot be sure that something exists as we perceive . He starts to doubt everything. In Reader, he says " in rejecting … everything which we can in any way doubt, it is easy for us to suppose that there is no God and no heaven, and that there are no bodies, and even that we ourselves have no hands or feet, or indeed any body at all…" . At the end, he concludes that he could doubt everything except the fact that he is doubting. In Reader, he says that it is not logical to say that one who is thinking and has some thoughts does not exist . By this way, he reaches his first principle, ego cogito, I am thinking therefore I exist. As we saw, he proves his own existence by doubting everything in external world which we percieve through our senses. After this point he seems to think above the existence of God while he is doubting everything because he does not accept something unless he sees or understands it is obviously true. He threw away his every thought that percieved by his senses. He realizes that at the end there are two things in his mind. One of them is ego cogito and the other is something else: Perfection. He asks himself that where does this perfection comes from? He tries to answer to this question. He thinks that because it could not be produced by Descartes himself in his mind. He knows that because he can even doubt himself he is imperfect so does not have ability to produce such a nation. After that he says yhat this imperfection in my mind shoul come from something which is perfect, infinite and cause of everything: God. By this way he proves the existence of God. Because at the beginning he starts to search for the truth by doubting everything and after that he proves the existence of God which he ignored by doubting while reaching his first principle one can easily say that given two statements that was mentioned in Reader in the 8th and 24th propositions are incompatible with each other. However, if he catches the view of Descartes' philosophy he will say that they are compatible. As I said before, he proves his own existence by doubting everything. However I want you to closely look at the statement which I mentioned before. I his statement, he says "… it is easy to us to suppose that there is no God…". In this statement, I think he does not doubt the God he tries to deceive the readers that everything can be doubted. İn addition, if he has doubted the God at the end of his doubting he realizes that there is something different from ego cogito in his mind. He says that this thing should be infinite perfect and the cause of everything which is God. After that he says that because the God is perfect and the cause of the everything he should be existing as the creature of the God. As conclusion, we can say that first he proves his existence through doubting everything with his first principle, I am thinking, therefore I exist, and secondly he accepted the existence of the God and proves again his own existence as the creature of the God. So these two statements are not compatible but overlapped each other.
