Renée Descartes’
was a seventeenth century rationalist philosopher who, if alive today, would
still have the bragging rights to being the father of modern philosophy.
Descartes’ made major contributions in many disciplines. More
importantly however, Descartes’ spent his days attempting to set
up a framework to establish the most fundamental truths about the universe. He
worked to ascertain how we could separate what is absolute truth from
everything else. To achieve this Descartes’ came up with a method of
philosophical inquiry called methodological skepticism. It was a system of
doubt set up as an experiment and not for the purposes of everyday life. All of
the so-called knowledge that Descartes’ had acquired in his life up until that
point was subject to doubt. He metaphorically cleared his table of knowledge
and vowed to only place back on that which he could replace with absolute
certainty. After examining what Descartes’ thought he knew he came to one
troubling conclusion; there was nothing that he could prove with complete
surety. Like fellow rationalist Plato, Renée Descartes’ believed that the
senses were fallible and could not be relied upon for true knowledge and
because we experience the world in which we live through the senses nothing can
be truly known. Descartes’ purposed that everything we think we know is
actually varying levels of belief. Nevertheless, Descartes’ kept at it and
after a while he finally came up with a single solitary fact that he could
unapologetically announce without any room for the slightest bit of doubt and
that was that he existed. He defended this conclusion with the argument that
for him to be questioning the nature of his existence there must exist
something to ask of in the first place. This theory highlights his famous
saying “I think, therefore I am”.
Descartes’ did manage to add
several more things to his table of knowledge. He believed in the existence
of various axioms of geometry for example; a square always has four sides;
a triangle always has three sides, and so on. Also, it was through this
theory that Descartes’ believed that he could prove the existence of god and
put yet another truth on his table. The French philosopher believed that just
as the definition of a square necessitates the existence of a square, the
definition of God necessitates the existence of God. This was Renée Descartes
ontological argument. This argument also lined up his belief with Plato’s in
terms of innate ideas. Descartes’ also put forth that the universe is primarily
made up of two categories: the matter that you see every day and the non
material substance of the mind and spirit. Much of this is similar to Plato’s
approach to dualism. Plato taught that reality is comprised of two realms. The
first of the two is the natural world, the world that we can observe with our
senses and second, there is a world made of eternal ideal “Forms” or flawless
templates that are present somewhere in another dimension. These forms are the
definitive position points for all objects we observe in the natural world. The
term “Forms” is the key difference. The two philosophers seem to agree in
regards to the first domain, but Plato’s “Forms” are unchanging and seem to
have no location. On the other hand, Descartes’ believed that metaphysical
concepts such as souls were subject to science and even believed that he had
located the soul within the pineal gland. Though biology and medicine have
advanced quite a bit since the seventeenth century, much of what we are taught
in school can be traced back to Descartes’ which is ironic considering that his
central philosophy is that everything you’ve been taught could be wrong.
Do you believe that God gave us his definition
or is it more of a man made idea? It seems to me that many philosophers would
have been much more liberal with their arguments on God had it not been for
fear of punishment by the church. What do you think? Weigh in…. what would your
ontological argument be?
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