Descartes Contextualization

Posted on Mar 13, 2016 in Philosophy and ethics

Life. Descartes was born in 1596 in the Hague and in 1600 entered the College of La Fleche. In 1917 she decided to study the great book of the world and is installed as a volunteer in the Protestant army. Two years later has 3 dreams that lead him to understand the basis for the invention admirable analytic geometry and method. He traveled extensively until back to Holland in 1629 seeking the quiet to do his work. Work. In 1637 he published his first work “Discourse on Method to drive good reason and seeking truth in science.” Also the “Dioptric” and “Meteors” and “analytic geometry” that are testing this method. In 1641 he published the “meditations of raw philosophy,” In 1644 he published “Principles of Philosophy” and is published five years after the book “Passions of the Soul”. Finally we must say that were written in 1628 and “Rules for the Direction of the Mind and the search for truth by the natural light,Current philosophy. The philosophical current that belongs to Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and Malebranche is the seventeenth-century rationalism. Rationalism is an ideal of modern science: our knowledge can be built deductively from certain ideas and principles evident, from first principles innate. Influences. Roots of his thinking. Descartes had a negative motivation, on this point: their educational environment, based on repetition and tradition. However, it also had a positive motivation for at the time of Descartes developed the experimental method of physical science and astronomy, mathematics-based (innovation). It’s just finding a new method that characterizes the modern age. A new method to replace the above syllogism by Aristotle. Descartes and F. Bacon agree in their criticism of the syllogism, although one is another precursor of empiricism and rationalism. The syllogism of general truths but F. Bacon completely reverses the order. The deductionsBacon opposed ion induction, Descartes also receives influence of mathematical-analytical method: the method is modeled mathematics because the mathematical method, based on two concepts: the order and measure. It is also because Descartes gives analytical primacy to how complex simple. Has only simple clarity and distinction.


-Clarity: It appears as dark anything not shown identical with itself. A good logical deduction is that which leads to establish an identity, a tautology between two things. -Distinction: a thing is identical with itself when it can be separated from the others. The distinction eliminates the confusion of some things with others. Only clear and distinct it can give us certainty. In short, the variety of philosophical opinions was a depressing spectacle. Hence it was necessary to find a universal knowledge. According to Descartes had not come to that knowledge by the absence of a valid and proper, which he said should be the mathematical method, using intuition and deduction.Impact. The Cartesian belief that autonomous reason is the only guide for man may be determined primarily rationalist character of all modern philosophy. But the concrete way in which Descartes conceives of reason will lead the call modern rationalism (Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz and Descartes), will be criticized by Kant and Hume. The Cartesian approach to knowledge and the solution gives, in which the only strong point of all knowledge is the self and its ideas of reason, give rise to the ideal. But the idealism (rationalism) differs from subsequent idealism “epistemological: because the cogito does not create the world, but only knows it,” subjective, because even if the cogito is the basis of all knowledge belongs and is internal to a subject, is not itself independently. Descartes gives rise to process formalizaciion of science and tries a new method, a new science that will institute a modern method of thinking, as opposed to scholastic-Aristotelian. Descartes’s work was so important in mathematics and philosophy. With the creation of the coordinate system laid the basis of analytic geometry. The fundamental methodological concern of Descartes, as embodied in the criteria of clarity and distinction, are the factors that influence the development of rationalist philosophers thought later: Pascal’s Cartesian orientation behind the new research ideal proclaimed by Descartes. -Spinoza part of the Cartesian definition of substance and takes it to the end. -Malabranche occasionalism defended the theory whereby the relationship of body and soul takes place only through divine intervention. Finally, note that British empiricism is a historical constant rationalism. Empiricism denies the existence of innate knowledge, and therefore claims that all our knowledge comes from experience.