Rene Descartes
René Descartes (1596-1650) is known as the father of modern philosophy and algebraic geometry. He is most famous for his statement, "I think therefore I am" (in Latin, "Cogito, ergo sum"). A brilliant mathematician as well as a philosopher, Descartes viewed the mind as being in an unchallengeable state very different from the body. Descartes founded a school of rationalist philosophy called Cartesianism. After being educated in France and spending time in the military service from 1618 to 1619, he spent most of his creative life in Holland (1625 - 1649) before entering the service of Queen Christiana of Sweden shortly before his death.[1] Descarte was a Catholic.[2]
An improvement on his insight could be, "I pray therefore I am."
To write his famous Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes locked himself in a room and thought about existence, arriving at the conclusion that he, as a thinking person, must exist, because even if existence is a delusion, there must be someone to be deluded. However, he was still not sure that the things he perceived exist as well. He used a variant of Anselm's proof of the existence of God to decide that perhaps he wasn't deluded, and perhaps things did exist after all. He thought the soul lived in the pineal gland, and when someone does something, it's just an accident because the brain doesn't control the body, God does. He also used God and a demon in attempts to justify his sense-perceptions and why they were perceived to be as they seemed rather than as something different, which is related to Berkeley's idealism in the sense that it is the mind which has the ideas of objects, but conforms to the 'two-world' theory of John Locke.
Descartes' most widely read work is his Discourse on Method (in French, Discours de la methode), published in 1637. There Descartes sets forth four rules for discovering knowledge:
- (1) accept as true only what can be proven. In addition, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "These passages (and others) suggest an account wherein doubt is the contrast of certainty. As my certainty increases, my doubt decreases; conversely, as my doubt increases, my certainty decreases. The requirement that knowledge is to be based in complete, or perfect certainty, thus amounts to requiring a complete inability to doubt one’s convictions – an utter indubitability. This conception of the relationship between certainty and doubt helps underwrite Descartes’ methodical emphasis on doubt, the so-called ‘method of doubt’."[3]
- (2) solve problems in a systematic manner, part-by-part
- (3) proceed from simple to more complex issues
- (4) finally, review everything completely to ensure that nothing was left out
Descartes established a metaphysical basis for his philosophy, that all philosophical propositions derive from a self-evident certainty of the mind, as in "I think therefore I am."
Christianity commentary on Rene Descartes
- What impact did René Descartes have on the Christian faith?, Got Questions Ministries
- René Descartes on Science, Philosophy, and God, Answers in Genesis
- Richard Proctor, René Descartes, and NOMA, Answers in Genesis
See also
External links
- Descartes’ Epistemology, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Descartes’ Method, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
References
- ↑ The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Penguin Group, 1989
- ↑ René Descartes, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ↑ Descartes’ Epistemology, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
