Is Descartes's reasoning viciously circular?

Descartes is traditionally accused of reasoning circularly in the Meditations. Yet, recent commentators typically defend him against this accusation, arguing that Descartes would not have made such an obvious mistake. These commentators are right, if the circle in question is taken to be formal or logical. However, there is another kind of circularity that William Alston calls ‘epistemic circularity’, and it seems clear that Descartes’s reasoning is circular in this sense. Thus, the real question is not whether Descartes’s reasoning is circular, but whether it is viciously circular – whether there is anything wrong with it. The answer depends on what Descartes was trying to do. According to a growing number of commentators, one of his central aims was to resolve the ancient Pyrrhonian problematic. I will argue that, if this is his aim, Descartes’s reasoning is, indeed, viciously circular. The problematic cannot be resolved by his project. I will focus on criticizing two recent commentators, James Van Cleve and Ernest Sosa, who both see Descartes as responding to ancient scepticism. They both provide an interpretation of Descartes’s epistemology that saves it from any formal circularity, but concede also that his reasoning is epistemically circular. Yet, neither of them takes this to be a defect. I will argue that they are wrong. Epistemic circularity prevents Descartes from resolving the Pyrrhonian problem.