Descartes’ Provisional Morality and Methodic Doubt
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
- Doubt of information from senses
- Senses deceive us sometimes
- Argument: How do we know if we are sleeping or not dreaming?
- 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 I am?
- 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
- First Test: The idea of perfection that is in me can only have been produced by a perfect being.
- 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.
- 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.