Comparing Descartes 'Excerpts On Skepticism'

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The Certainty of Reason: An Epistemological comparison between Descartes’ “Meditations 1 & 2” and Pascal’s “Excerpts on Skepticism"
Ziryab Ben Brahem (3521 words)
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Prelimintary
How do we know that all our beliefs are right? How do you know that they are 100% true? How do we know its not just one big dream? One big illusion? What can we doubt and what is certain? These are some of the questions raised by Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, in “Meditation 1 and 2” and “Excerpts on Skepticism”, respectively. Together these philosophers make two of the most influential philosophers of modern thought. However, in their essays, we will examine their opposing epistemological views. We will discuss certainty, first principle, skepticism and doubt

So, we could presume that Pascal viewed the heart and reason as working together.
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However, when evaluating the above quote, we can also infer something else; (i) If reason must trust intuitions of the heart, then it must infer all proposition from first principle. (ii) According to Pascal, first principle is through the heart. (∴) Therefore, according to Pascal, reason must adhere to the heart alone, and not conversely.
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To Pascal, first principle is to understanding truth — knowledge shall come from truth known through the heart and into the mind.
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This idea stands in contrast to Descartes who argues for the human mind as first principle. But even so, it seems that in order for this to be true, a number of other premises must also be true. We can reduce his argument to following premises:
(i) we exist as “a thing that thinks”
(ii) thinking occurs within the human mind
(iii) reason exists
(iv) reason is the primary tool of “a thing that thinks”
(v) first principle to truth comes from reason
(∴) first principle to truth comes from within the human mind

We will consider the differences as well as the similarities.
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Both philosophers seeks to challenge traditional skepticism. Descartes embraces skepticisms, but only as a way of reaching certainty. He distance himself from other skeptic philosophers whose sole purpose is to be skeptics. Descartes differentiates himself from other skeptics since he only doubts to only rebuild all of his beliefs in absolute certainty — thereby removing the skeptic.
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We might call Descartes skepticism a kind of “hyperbolic” kind of skepticism; even though he knows that not all his beliefs are not necessarily false, he assumes that they all are. We might ask, why does Descartes do this? To inaugurate what we discussed earlier, Descartes says:
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“These habitual opinions of mine are indeed highly probable; although they are in a sense doubtful, as I have shown, it is more reasonable to believe than to deny them. But if I go on viewing them in that light I shall never get out of the habit of confidently assenting to them. To conquer that habit, therefore, I had better switch right around and pretend (for a while) that these former opinions of mine are utterly false and imaginary.”