On the 21st of April, Professor Li Meng from Peking University presented a lecture on “The Founding and Fading Away of Descartes’ First Philosophy”. Professor Li reviewed from Descartes’ effort of trying to complete a work “once in a lifetime”, which started from a radical skepticism and proceeded from “a new beginning on the original foundation”. However, such destruction and reconstruction were not epistemology or methodology proper, but the “metaphysical foundation” of epistemology and methodology, a foundation which cannot be the object of intuition or knowledge. Professor Li argued that philosophy cannot be a lifestyle, and our reason can only grasp a tiny part of the whole world clearly. Our daily life depends on something which cannot be articulated clearly by philosophy, and we can only have a moral certainty on the daily life. Therefore, we should keep a distance from the life od meditation. After the lecture, Professor Li communicated with the participant on relevant issues.
