Cartesian anxiety

Cartesian anxiety is a philosophical concept for the conflict that a subject experiences of failing to have—in reality—either a fixed and stable foundation for knowledge of what is and is not real, or an inescapable and incomprehensible groundlessness of reality.^[1] Richard J. Bernstein coined and used the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, referring to the feelings expressed by René Descartes, its namesake, in his Meditations on First Philosophy.