Descartes A Beginner's Guide

Kevin O'Donnell

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781444158120
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This useful guide introduces the reader to the so-called 'father of modern philosophy' - Rene Descartes.

1	The First Modern Philosopher

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

Philosophy is about clear thinking, and means, literally, ‘love of wisdom’. Philosophers are concerned with the whole of knowledge and the whole of life. Traditionally, they have been concerned with the most fundamental truths about reality (the technical term for this is metaphysics). They have also thought about ethics, truth and justice. What surprises some is that they have often concerned themselves in the past with subjects that we would call mathematics or general science. The philosophers were also the early scientists, thinking clearly about life and the world around them. Science had not yet been born as a separate and value-neutral subject.

 

---

KEYWORD

Metaphysics: the examination of general features of reality beyond those described by natural science. The question of Meaning, of Being and of the foundations of truth.

---

THE SCHOOLMEN

The culture of Western Europe was largely held together by the Church in the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages. Learned clerics and monks absorbed Greek philosophy and saw this as a rational foundation upon which to build, only correcting it when it seemed to contradict the teaching of Scripture. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was the Great Doctor, and his views were the foundation of Scholastic thought. The Scholastics, or the Schoolmen, followed Aristotle and others in setting out a compendium of knowledge that saw itself as total and final, or as much as human beings could grasp with their reason. This process was begun by learned pagan converts in late Roman times, such as St Augustine of Hippo (354–430), but the most influential of the Schoolmen was St Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). This Dominican friar and theologian wrote copiously and fixed Aristotelian concepts into Church life like cement. If God had given us the gift of reason, then genuine reason could not go against the tenets of the faith; if it did, then faith came first. Many of Aristotle’s explanations of why things work the way they do are not explanations in the modern sense. Objects fall because they have a built-in propensity to do so, for example, or a magnet has a propensity to attract iron. But why? The Schoolmen would reply, ‘Because that is how God made them’.

All that could be revealed to human reason had been revealed – it was a closed system. New ideas had to be sneaky. They had to claim that they were implied in earlier texts, so that commentaries on old works became a suitable cover for new ideas. The problem was that with a powerful (and often corrupt) Church, freethinkers could find themselves in trouble with groups such as the Inquisition. Some were daring to think more freely, and science was being born as a discipline with a method of observation and experimentation. People were prepared to go out and look at things rather than rely on old texts. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were to be a time of challenge, with the shaking of established thought and authority.

 

---

KEY FACT

Rebirth of Learning and Enlightenment

Trade routes and explorers opened up the Near East to the Western European states at the end of the first millennium. The Muslims had preserved texts from classical Greece which had been lost in the West. Muslim scholars translated these into Arabic and their civilization was ahead of the West in some matters of technology and medicine as a result. These texts were brought back to the monasteries where they were translated. The ancient wisdom led to a rebirth of learning (the ‘Renaissance’) in the early centuries of the second millennium. This was particularly true in the city states of Italy with their wealthy and active merchant class. It was still a pre-scientific age in some ways, though, for alchemy and superstition were mixed in with observation of the natural world. It was in this arena that the Schoolmen flourished and reigned supreme, guarded by the authority of the Church. The seventeenth century saw the rise of new, more scientific and rational philosophy which birthed the scientific method and began a period of new learning and invention known as the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason.

---

DESCARTES – THE FIRST MODERN PHILOSOPHER?

René Descartes (1596–1650) lived during the later period of the Schoolmen and at the start of the Enlightenment. He made a significant and lasting contribution to the history of philosophy and the rise of the scientific method. When he was a young man, new inventions in lens-making and telescopes had started to revolutionize how people viewed the heavens. Galileo (1564–1642) was a contemporary, and his observations confirmed the earlier views of Copernicus, who in 1543, was the first to suggest that the earth orbited around the sun. Kepler confirmed Copernicus’ ideas by mathematics in 1590. Galileo went a step further by testing the calculations by actual observation.

New ideas came from actually looking through a telescope and drawing your own conclusions. Aristotle had argued that the planets were perfect spheres, not marked by any incorruption. He thought the earth was at the centre and not the sun. Telescopes revealed a different story, and the planets, for example, were pot-marked and craggy. Descartes had been working on ideas that placed the sun at the centre since 1629, but upon hearing about Galileo’s difficulties with the Church in Italy, he quietly shut up and stopped the planned publication of his work on the subject. Galileo found some in the Church to be initially supportive, but these ideas were seen ultimately as contradicting the Scriptures, and Galileo was placed under house arrest in 1633 and agreed not to publicize his views any further.

 

---

KEY FACT

Galileo’s Wisdom

Nature is as divine a text as the holy Scriptures. They can’t be in real contradiction with each other …

The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.

 

(from The Two Great Systems of the World )

---

Descartes was to pursue various studies and theories of science, some of which soon dated and have fallen away. At a time of an immense paradigm shift in thought, he set out the rational foundations of the scientific method, applying philosophical principles to the discoveries and observations that he and others were making. He provided a sure conceptual footing for science to develop.

Descartes’ lasting fame lies in forming fundamental philosophical axioms that broke away from the traditions of the past, and looked critically for themselves at life. He pursued a rigorous scepticism, testing and seeking a sure point for knowledge. What our reason, our minds, ourselves, make of things, is important, not just what ancient thinkers had to say. He swept the decks clean, and for this reason he is known as the father of modern philosophy. After him, philosophers could again be more honest and enquiring. Descartes’ lasting contribution, then, was in the field of epistemology. The system or science of knowledge itself concerned him, and his observations confirmed this, conducted according to strict rules of experimentation.

 

---

KEYWORDS

Paradigm shift: a shift in the perception we have of something and the models we use to understand it. Thomas Kuhn (b. 1922) coined the term, arguing that our knowledge did not generally grow like a slow escalator, but it came in flashes of inspiration, in leaps and as a result of new discoveries that render previous paradigms obsolete. Sometimes there is suspicion and conflict as the old order gives way. Descartes and the early Rationalists found exactly this in the reactions of the Church and the Schoolmen.

Epistemology: the nature of knowledge, its sources and methods of learning.

---

SUMMARY

   Philosophy means ‘love of wisdom’ and is about clear thinking. Philosophers are interested in metaphysics, ethics, politics and linguistics. Before science was born as a separate discipline in itself, philosophers were also interested in scientific theories.

   The Schoolmen, or the Scholastics, were Christian theologians who adapted the Greek philosophers, Aristotle especially, to fit in with Scripture and Church teaching. The greatest Schoolman was Thomas Aquinas. It was believed that no new knowledge was possible outside of this system of philosophy.

   Descartes can be called the first modern philosopher because he introduced the fundamental principles of the scientific method, based upon reason and observation. He employed a healthily sceptical method, questioning all earlier foundations and presuppositions.

...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Contents 
• Chapter 1: The First Modern Philosopher
• Chapter 2: Renê Descartes: A Life
• Chapter 3: The Scientist
• Chapter 4: Methods and Principles
• Chapter 5: The Sceptic and the Cogito
• Chapter 6: God
• Chapter 7: The Soul
• Chapter 8: Beast-Machines: Descartes and Animals
• Chapter 9: Descartes and Feminism
• Chapter 10: Goodbye to Descartes?
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• Copyright