Was Descartes a Cartesian? Descartes, Quine and “Epistemology Naturalized”

In this paper I intend to argue for an interpretation of Descartes’ theory of knowledge that may be called “Descartes’ naturalized epistemology”. Against Willard Quine, and the tradition of interpretation that followed the publication of Quine’s “Epistemology naturalized” in 1969, I intend to show that Descartes himself thought of his investigation into the nature of human knowledge as an intellectual project coherent with the method of the sciences of his own time. In many respects, as I intend to show, Descartes was neither “Cartesian” nor a strict “rationalist” as Quine’s characterization of Cartesian epistemology suggests. Keywords Descartes; Quine; Cartesianism; epistemology naturalized; empiricism