Descartes’ Provisional Morality and Methodic Doubt

Posted on Mar 16, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

PART 3: A MORAL NEED NOT REMAIN PROVISIONAL

Irresolute in Action

2. Maximum of Moral Provisional

First Maxim

  • Obey the laws and customs of the country you live in.
  • Follow the more moderate opinions of others.
  • Be modeled after sensible men.
  • Pay more attention to what they do than what they say because not everyone says what they think.
  • Consider extreme opinions that dispose of the highest freedom.

Constancy in Action

Second Maxim

  • Be firm and resolute in action.
  • Analogy: a man lost in the forest is still strong.
  • To get anywhere in life, it is usually not prudent to delay the release of remorseful actions.

Third Maxim

  • Winning over oneself rather than fortune.
  • Only our own thoughts are in our power.
  • Limit our desires to what is possible according to our nature.
  • Make a virtue of necessity.

Employ Fourth Maxim in the Cultivation of Reason

  • The acquisition of truths is a source of satisfaction.
  • Reason is the foundation of the three previous points.
  • The will is determined by sufficient understanding to act correctly and judge well.

After discarding these reflections, apply them to remove your old opinions.

  • Comments on nine years of travel experience, etc.
  • Your question is not of skeptics.
  • Nine years elapse without taking sides on philosophical questions.
  • Decision to retire to a quiet place to develop his philosophy (Holland).

PART 4: Methodic Doubt

Reject Everything You Doubt to See if Anything Remains Certain

  • Doubt the information from the senses.
  • The senses sometimes deceive us.
  • Argument: How do we know we are not dreaming when we sleep?
  • Geometric doubt shows men are wrong to argue.

First Truth

  • “If I doubt, I think; therefore, I am.” This is the beginning of philosophy.
  • What am I?
  • I am a soul, a thinking substance, distinct from the body and easier to know.

The Criterion of Truth

Everything conceived clearly and distinctly is true.

Nature of God and Proofs

  • First Proof: The idea of perfection that is in me can only have been produced by a perfect being.
  • Second Proof: If I had produced the perfections I possess, I would also have given myself those I do not possess, and whose ideas are in me.
  • Third Proof: Existence is a perfection.
  • Many find it hard to know God because they do not rise above the senses, and the ideas of God and the soul are not given by the senses.
  • But we must distinguish the sensible and the intelligible. God is imaginable.

God as the Guarantee of Truth

  • Corporeal things are less certain than God and the soul.
  • To give moral certainty (less reality to the waking dream), one must assume the existence of God.
  • God’s own criterion of certainty is guaranteed because God is perfect.
  • All our true ideas come from God; false ideas are due to our imperfection.
  • God is the warranty of mathematical truths, which are true even if we are dreaming.
  • There is no doubt about the evidence of reason, even if the imagination and the senses contradict it.

Methodical Doubt (Part 4 Repeated and Shortened)

Offer to reject all doubt with the aim is to see if something is certain

  1. Doubt of information from senses
  2. Senses deceive us sometimes
  3. Argument: How do we know if we are sleeping or not dreaming?
  4. Geometric doubt shows men are wrong to argue.

First Truth

  1. If I doubt, I think, therefore I am. This is the beginning of philosophy.
  2. What I am?
  3. I am a soul, a thinking substance, distinct from the body and easier to know.

The Criteria of Truth

Everything conceived clearly and distinctly is true.

Test and Nature of God

  1. First Test: The idea of perfection that is in me can only have been produced by a perfect being.
  2. Second Test: If I had produced the perfections I possess, I would also have given myself those I do not possess, and whose ideas are in me.
  3. Third Proof: Existence is a perfection.
  4. Many find it hard to know God because they do not rise above the senses, and the ideas of God and the soul are not given by the senses.
  5. But we must distinguish the sensible and the intelligible. God is imaginable.

God as the Guarantee of Truth

  1. Corporeal things are less certain than God and the soul.
  2. To give moral certainty (less reality to the waking dream), one must assume the existence of God.
  3. God’s own criterion of certainty is guaranteed because God is perfect.
  4. All our true ideas come from God; false ideas are due to our imperfection.
  5. God is the warranty of mathematical truths, which are true even if we are dreaming.
  6. There is no doubt about the evidence of reason, even if the imagination and the senses contradict it.