Descartes: Father of Modern Philosophy and Rationalism
Life of René Descartes
Life: Father of modern philosophy, initiator of rationalism. Born in 1596 into a family of minor nobility, the son of Joachim Descartes, counselor of the parliament of Rennes. Descartes was educated by his grandmother until 1606, when he entered the Jesuit school, despite a weak state of health. He studied grammar, Latin, Greek, logic, physics, metaphysics, and mathematics, but criticized scholastic matters and methods. He moved to Paris and began case studies for his bachelor’s degree.
He participated in the Thirty Years’ War, where he met Isaac Beeckman, a Dutch researcher, joining him in mathematics and physics. From this point, Descartes began scientific investigation. Interested in friendship with Beeckman, he joined Maximilian’s Catholic army of Bavaria. He died of pneumonia on February 11th at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, where he was giving lessons at age 53.
Epistemology and Knowledge
Epistemology or Knowledge: The theme of knowledge is fundamental, a question prior to the analysis and solution of other problems. The importance of this problem is due to several factors. Philosophers of this era rejected the argument of authority as a real guarantee, emphasizing the importance of the individual subject. The subject is now active, not passive. God ceased to be the center of philosophical concern, as man became the subject of knowledge, the focus of philosophy, enhancing ethical and political problems.
Both rationalism and empiricism would use modern science as a model of knowledge, characterized by the use of mathematical methods and a critical stance against the prevailing scholasticism. Descartes is the most important author in this age. The concern is not so much what can be known, but how we can establish and determine the limits of our knowledge, to know where we can get and how we can know, with what means, modes, or methods we have to acquire stable, self-evident knowledge.
Descartes’ Method
Descartes considered that if astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and physics have achieved high development, it is due to having and using an efficient and effective method in their investigations, while philosophy is faltering. To solve this, he decided to provide philosophy with a method. In this way, the knower obtains independent experience. The guarantee of knowledge depends on the correct application of the rules of deduction. Descartes decided to construct his own method with 3 goals:
- Formulate rules.
- Establish an absolute, fundamental, metaphysical, and universal method.
- Demonstrate its fecundity in distinct branches of knowledge.
His method consists of 4 principles. Descartes states that there are 2 forms or modes of rational knowledge:
- Intuition: A kind of natural light that allows reason to immediately grasp simple ideas without any possibility of doubt or error.
- Deduction: A mode of knowledge through which reason discovers the connections between simple ideas.
Descartes’ method is defined as follows: a set of certain and easy rules, which anyone who observes exactly will never take anything false for true, and without wasting effort, but gradually increasing their knowledge, will come to the knowledge of all things they are capable of knowing.
Four Rules for Reasoning
He outlines 4 rules for reasoning in order to seek the truth. The first refers to intuition, admitting only those ideas that are presented clearly and distinctly to our spirit. The 3 remaining rules concern inference.
- The second rule speaks of division or analysis, breaking down each problem into its simplest aspects.
- The third rule is to proceed from the simple to the complex.
- The fourth rule requires making counts and revisions of the steps, to be sure of nothing.
All of these omit the constructive, positive parts of the Cartesian method. It gathers logic, geometrical analysis, and algebra. The starting point of the method is certainly not skeptical, but methodical, a dialectical process aimed at discovering one truth.