Both philosophers are abandoning older traditions and offering new ways of looking at knowledge and skepticism. In many ways Locke is drawing on Descartes, rejecting some of his ideas, accepting some, and extending others. Nonetheless, I have tried to illustrate that despite a historical connection and many similarities, their philosophies are fundamentally different. In particular, Descartes and Locke disagree on the origins of knowledge, innate ideas, and the meaning of the self. They offer thoroughly different answers to these and other important philosophical questions.