Rene Descartes: Philosophy, Knowledge, and God
Rene Descartes
1. Historical and Socio-Cultural Context
The 17th century witnessed the rise of political absolutism alongside emerging opposing concepts. A continuous crisis, expressed through endless wars, faced the nobility. Impoverishment of the people, resulting from military expenses and court luxuries, would soon generate critical issues. Democracy emerged as a relevant new political system during the Enlightenment.
Culturally, the 17th century was the era of the Baroque, a reaction against a collapsing world. This shift impacted philosophy, which abandoned the study of a hostile reality and focused on the human being. The key question became how humans interact with reality. Descartes’ thinking reflects Baroque elements, such as his concept of doubt and the blurred line between waking and sleep.
The scientific revolution of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, culminating in Isaac Newton’s mathematization, took place. In a crumbling world, humans sought refuge in subjectivity, giving rise to modernity, characterized by the radical importance of the subject.
Knowledge is always of ideas, not things. Since ideas and things are distinct, the existence of things can be doubted.
2. Philosophical Framework
During the 17th century in Europe, ancient and medieval scholasticism, along with Renaissance attitudes, gave way to rationalism. Five key characteristics can be identified:
- Rationalism recognizes the universal value and necessity of scientific laws. Nature falls under the domain of reason, enabling humans not only to understand and explain but also to transform and dominate. Human reason can access and explore the fundamentally sound laws of nature and control their operation.
- Rationalism posits the existence of innate ideas.
- Rationalism emphasizes the importance of method. Reason requires a method to guide it towards knowledge without error, informed by the mathematical model, considered the model of true science.
- Rationalism values intuitive knowledge as the basis of deductions that constitute the entire edifice of knowledge about reality.
- Rationalism exhibits absolute trust in reason as self-sufficient for all knowledge, needing no other source.
4. Knowledge
Human reason can achieve comprehensive knowledge, but requires guidance. Methods of reason will be central to rationalism, with the mathematical method as a reference point.
The certainty of mathematics is ensured by reason itself, which can grasp it directly because its truths are self-evident, clear, and distinct.
Descartes and Leibniz were eminent mathematicians. The Cartesian method is based on two natural operations of the human mind: intuition and deduction. Its four rules can be reduced to these two.
Evidence Rule: Only accept ideas that are clear and distinct to the natural light of reason.
Analysis Rule: Based on intuition, break down complex problems into simple, self-evident elements.
Synthesis Rule: Build upon these clear and distinct intuitions by inference to address the original problem, recomposing new knowledge through deduction.
Enumeration Rule: Review the previous steps to ensure no false assumptions or unclear ideas.
6. God
Descartes affirms the possibility of knowing God, the world, and the self, based on the clear and distinct idea of “sum ergo cogito” (I think, therefore I am). However, God sustains the existence of thought. Descartes proposed a single infinite substance, leading some to argue that his thinking is circular: thinking substance ensures the existence of infinite substance, which in turn would not exist without the former.
7. Humans
Humans consist of two separate substances: soul and body. Descartes’ ideal of clarity and distinction leads him to differentiate them clearly. He rejects the idea of the soul simply inhabiting the body. Furthermore, Descartes asserts that humans are essentially free, a freedom prior to the discovery of the thinking self. Without this freedom, doubt would be impossible, and the discovery of consciousness unattainable.