René Descartes was a skeptic, and he therefore believed that for something to be considered true knowledge, that "knowledge must have a certain stability”. ”, (Cottingham 21). In his work Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes concludes that to achieve this stability, he must start from the foundations of all his opinions and find the basis of doubt in each of them. David Hume, however, takes a different position on skepticism in his work An Inquiry into Human Understanding, as he criticizes Descartes' assertion because "'it is impossible'" (qtd. in Cottingham 35). The two philosophers present distinct reasoning about what skepticism is and whether it is useful for finding stability. Descartes begins the excerpt by stating that because many things he learned in his childhood turned out to be false, he felt it was necessary to "completely demolish everything and start again from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything it is in the sciences that is stable and likely to last” (22). Such a tedious task would require an enormous amount of time; although by comparing his beliefs to a building, Descartes intends to start at the beginning or "foundations" of his beliefs, so that when he finds doubt about the support, any beliefs based on the foundation will be ignored. He begins this doubt with the senses, because he believes that every opinion he has derives from the senses, and that because the senses “deceive us,” they are not reliable sources of information (22). Like a “madman”, Descartes must therefore doubt the existence of everything he sees, and he then wonders about the difference between real life and dreams. According to Descartes, the images placed before us in the middle of the paper correspond to the level of skepticism that every philosopher follows. Descartes, excessively skeptical, attempts to doubt his beliefs, reality versus dreams, God, and ultimately his own existence. Hume, a moderate skeptic, believes on the contrary that Descartes' skepticism is illogical because by doubting the senses and everything else in the world, we will never find satisfactory truths. In conclusion, the distinction between these two philosophers is evident in the assertions they made. Works cited Descartes, René. Meditations on the First Philosophy. 1996. Western Philosophy: AnAnthology. Ed. John Cottingham. 2nd ed. Np: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008. 21-25. Print. Hume, David. An investigation into human understanding. 1996. Western Philosophy: AnAnthology. Ed. John Cottingham. 2nd ed. Np: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008. 35-39. Print.