Descartes’ Philosophy: Method, Metaphysics, and Context

Posted on Feb 19, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Descartes’ Philosophical Thought

Thinking of Discards. Descartes, formed in scholastic philosophy, warns that this philosophy does not respond to the issues and concerns of his time. On the other hand, he thinks that mathematics, besides being a safe and rigorous science, serves to organize experience and to develop science. Therefore, he relies on the conduct of the mathematical structure and elements of his method. In experiment, the subject is passive, and the knowledge that experience provides is questionable. In mathematics, the opposite is true. The subject is active and, by apparent reason, produces, designs, and knows for sure. Reason is, therefore, knowledge alone, without recourse to experience.

So, Descartes departs from experience and looks for the foundation of the method and justification of all knowledge in reason. Inspired by the process of reason in mathematics, he made the four rules of his method:

  1. Rule of evidence
  2. Rule of analysis
  3. Rule of synthesis
  4. Rule of enumeration

They deployed the two fundamental operations of the human mind: first, intuition, the operation by which reason creates the simple elements of knowledge; second, deduction, which adds to the concept of intuition, being a step in the mind from one statement to another. Based on metaphysics, then, on the subject, this procedure of reason is the method. The subject is thought existing, and as such, is perceived based on intuition expressed in the cogito ergo sum. In this insight, the subject is clearly and distinctly perceived as a thoughtful existence. This provides the first certainty, the model of all other certainties, as Descartes raises in terms of certainty: it is true all that is perceived clearly and distinctly.

But the subject is alone, only certain of its existence as thinking. He is alone with his ideas. Descartes breaks this cycle of loneliness using these ideas found in the cogito: the idea of infinity, the idea of God, which will serve as a springboard to get out of the circle. The idea of God is, for Descartes, moreover, the guarantee of its existence as a superior and distinct reality of being human. And since the Infinite God is perfect and true, and cannot allow that human beings err when they think there is a material world outside himself, the world exists; God becomes the guarantee that there is a world outside of the human mind.

There are, therefore, for Descartes, three realms of reality: the thinking substance (the self), the infinite substance (God), and the extended substance (bodies). The bodies are mere machines. They are all explained by extension and motion—mechanistic. Descartes establishes the important laws of inertia, straight-line motion, and motion preservation. In humans coexist body and soul, extension and thought. To explain this coexistence, he works also, in unison, as if a single reality. Descartes turns to God, a God geometer, ultimately responsible for the order of the universe, who has decided that it works that way.

Historical Context

In Europe, boom in England, France, and the Netherlands:

  • Decline of Italy and Spain, dominant throughout the Renaissance.
  • Political and religious wars.
  • Confrontation between Catholics and Protestants as two ways of understanding. The emerging capitalist bourgeoisie of the Protestants. The feudal nobility of the most dominant Catholic traditionalists.
  • Thirty Years War (1618-1648):
    • The Bohemian Revolt of the Calvinists (1618-1625).
    • Statement of Denmark (1625-1629).
    • Statement of Sweden (1630-1635).
    • Intervention by France (1638-1648).

Sociocultural Context

Spanish Baroque:

  • Painting: Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera, Murillo, etc.
  • Literature: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Calderón, etc.

Modernity:

  • Confidence in the capabilities of human beings.
  • Autonomy of reason.
  • Sound research methods: mathematics as a model.

Philosophical Context

Modernity: The mechanistic paradigm:

  • The bodies are machines.
  • There are hidden forces that direct the motion of bodies.
  • All changes are caused by priority.
  • Efficient causes of cuantitativo.

Rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, etc.):

  • Innate for some ideas.
  • Using the mathematical method.
  • Criticizes the scholastic method.