Descartes’ Context: Method, Crisis, and Modern Philosophy
Context of Descartes
Part Two: Discourse on Method
The Discourse on Method is René Descartes’ major work, outlining the rules and features he investigated.
Part Four: Discourse on Method
The Discourse on Method establishes the grounds for the existence of God and the human soul, foundations of his metaphysics.
René Descartes was born in 1596 in La Haye, France, during an absolute monarchy. His mother died shortly after his birth. He studied at the Jesuit college of La Flèche and studied law, but found it disappointing, except for mathematics, which he considered true knowledge and wisdom. This skepticism arose from the crisis of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Descartes developed a method to arrive at truths, filling a deep epistemological and existential void.
The Discourse on Method is an autobiographical work, a first-person account of his discoveries.
The political situation was marked by the Thirty Years’ War, in which he participated. This war involved various German states and the rest of Europe, pitting Catholics against reformers. He served as a Protestant soldier and later as a Catholic. The war brought an economic crisis and the Baroque style, reflecting the illusory nature of life and the threat of death in a pessimistic tone. The conflict also caused a religious crisis, marked by a loss of authority of the Catholic faith initiated by nominalism, humanism, and the scientific revolution.
From a socio-economic standpoint, the seventeenth century saw the strong development of the bourgeoisie linked to mercantile capitalism, aided by the expansion of maritime trade and colonial ventures. The invention and development of printing allowed greater accessibility to works outside the religious sphere, and many books were published in national languages. In fact, the Discourse on Method was one of the first works written in French.
The nominalism of Ockham claimed compensation between reason and faith, backtracking Aquinas’s contribution to Scholasticism, which had developed a geocentric viewpoint. Everything began asserting the existence of God, contributing to an anthropocentric view of man.
Descartes’s life coincided with the end of the Renaissance, where man became the main object of philosophy and knowledge. Descartes is considered the founder and chief representative of rationalism, modeled on the mathematical method. He refers to modern science, including Galileo. After learning of Galileo’s condemnation by the Inquisition in Rome, Descartes decided not to publish some of his works, publishing others anonymously for fear of censorship. In 1643, the council of Utrecht University condemned Descartes for atheism, then accused him of Pelagianism. After his death, some of his major works were condemned by the Church.
The scientific revolution created a new heliocentric model, mathematizing science and nature (Galileo) and carrying out countless discoveries in physics, astronomy, and nautical science, bringing a loss of reference and skepticism. The physical world is also a world Descartes mathematicized. Descartes was not only notable for his philosophical contribution but was also a great mathematician and physicist, making significant contributions to science.
The prevailing opinion among most philosophers and historians of philosophy tends to consider Descartes, with his rationalist philosophy, as the originator of modern philosophy. Although his activity developed in a context of innovation and discovery, and many other philosophers contributed significant inputs, his affirmation of the value of reason, rooted in the discovery of subjectivity, opens the way for modern philosophy.
The possibility of certain knowledge, beyond doubt, is the dominant concern of Descartes’s philosophy. For this reason, he applies himself to the development of a method that can demonstrate the truths in the order imposed by reason.