Descartes and Spinoza: Cartesian Method, Metaphysics, and Ethics
Descartes: The Cartesian Method
The Cartesian method is a procedure followed to obtain the truth. This procedure should adhere to clearly defined rules. The system is a set of truths obtained through the application of the method and intended as a description and explanation of reality. Descartes believed in the unity of method, convinced of the need to unify knowledge and thinking through a unified research method.
Assumptions of the Method
- Reason is qualified by nature to reach the truth.
- Education and cultural tradition generate prejudice which hamper the work of reason.
- It is necessary to conduct a review of all knowledge to separate genuine knowledge from accumulated errors and prejudices.
- The critical review is necessary, but also dangerous because it carries the risk of disorientation. Not everyone should undertake this task.
Key Concepts
- Intuition: Knowledge that captures immediate intellectual simple natures.
- Deduction: Operation of the mind which derives some truths from others.
Rules of the Method
- Rule of evidence: Only those claims accepted as truths that are obvious, i.e., clear and distinct.
- Rule of analysis: Decompose the complex into its simplest elements, so they can be grasped by intuition.
- Rule of synthesis: Rebuild the complex from its simple parts following the proper order.
- Rule of enumeration and revision: Review the above, so that the listing looks at the analysis and review surveys the synthesis.
Cartesian Fundamentals
The system includes the Cartesian division of reality into three types of substances: the thinking substance (the ego), the extended substance (the world), and the infinite substance (God). This strategy is required by the first rule of method to achieve the undoubted truth, that is obvious.
Features of Methodical Doubt
- It is voluntary and demonstrates the subject’s freedom to decide to doubt.
- The question is theoretical because of the knowledge and sincere because, in practice, it is not a universal doubt.
- It doubts all knowledge and is problematic because it says all things can be doubted.
Methodical doubt spreads on layers that affect the sense data, the reliability of the reasoning, and the existence of a world outside the subject. The hypothesis that there is an evil demon that deceives us even about what we consider obvious (a feature of immediate truth) seems to spread doubt over the whole reality.
The First Truths
- First truth: I think, therefore I am. This truth is reached by intuition, not by deduction.
- Second truth: I am a thinking thing. This truth informs our essence, just as the first truth affirms our existence.
Fundamental Concepts of Cartesian Metaphysics
- Substance: That which exists so you do not need another thing to exist.
- Attribute: Essential property of a substance.
- Mode: What else needs to exist.
Cartesian Dualism
By distinguishing between thinking and extended substance, Descartes separated the soul from the body and restores the Platonic dualism. The first rule of method provides a formal criterion of certainty.
The cogito provides content to that standard. Is it true that it is as obvious as I think, therefore I am? This approach guarantees subjective certainty, but the evil genius hypothesis prevented moving to a criterion of objective truth.
The existence of God, infinitely good, neutralizes the evil genius hypothesis and converts the standard of certainty into a criterion of truth.
Descartes’ Ideas
Descartes classified ideas according to three different criteria:
- In their adaptation to reality: real or false.
- According to the criterion of truth: clear or confused.
- With their origin: adventitious (seem to come from abroad), factitious (produced by the imagination), or innate (they’ve been in the subject always).
Requirements for the Existence of God
They come from the cogito, which is the only certainty that has been established. It cannot be a deduction, questioning the methodical doubt.
Testing the Existence of God
- Only the Infinite can be the cause (proportional) of my infinite idea.
- The innate idea of God alone can be the cause of the thinking subject which, being limited, cannot be its own cause.
- Because we think of the perfect, this must necessarily exist.
The existence of God cancels the evil genius hypothesis and identifies subjective certainty with objective truth. The world is conceived as a machine (mechanistic model) subject to deterministic laws that predict any future state from the current state of knowledge.
Spinoza: Motivation and Results
Descartes seeks the truth by a theoretical interest, while Spinoza seeks the truth to make sense of human life and provide bliss. Descartes presents a mechanism to explain the communication problems between body and soul, while Spinoza poses a pantheism that solves the Cartesian problem.
Notion of Substance
Definition: What is in itself and is conceived through itself.
Implications: The only substance is God, whose infinite attributes are thought and extension. Every thought or extended thing is a way of God. All is needed and is derived from God.
Pantheism
God and nature are one and the same thing.
The Ethical Ideal
Emotions: Active (clear ideas: pleasure) or passive (passions or confused ideas: pain).
Moral progress: Is equal to the intellectual progress, and turning passive emotions into active emotions, or turning confused ideas into clear ideas.
Moral relativism: If all things are necessary, they are neither good nor bad, they just are. Good is what holds our being, and bad is the opposite.
Ethics and freedom: There is no freedom as free will, but as liberation from the bondage imposed by the passions. With reason, we understand the need and clear ideas, and active emotions replace passions.
Moral intellectualism: Identifies virtue with knowledge, recovering the Socratic ideal.
Political Theory
The ultimate goal is the preservation of the individual self, which is endangered in the state of nature. Society was created to avoid this danger and needs a sovereign to maintain the bond created with its foundation. Individuals give to society their rights, but not their freedom. Of the three forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy), Spinoza prefers democracy as the best guarantee of freedom.