Rene' Descartes biography

The French philosopher Rene Descartes lived from 1596-1650. He was the son of an aristocrat and traveled throughout Europe studying a wide-variety of subjects including math, science, law, medicine, religion, and philosophy. Descartes was greatly influenced by other thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment.

Descartes was a rationalist. Like many philosophers, novelists, and poets of his time, he questioned his own existence, and his reason for being, man's purpose in the scheme of the universe. Descartes set forth a number of philosophical trends. The questions he asks is where do I fit? Decartes was concerned with how we come to ourselves, our identity. He wished to discover truths where there could be no doubt. He believed in a dualism of mind and body, that they were two separate parts. This allowed him to uncover the only truth he could not deny "I think, therefore I am." In Philosophy Now, Paula Rothenberg Struhl and Karsten J. Struhl claim: However, Descartes argues that there is one thing that is absolutely certain. I cannot doubt the existence of the self that has these doubts. Thus, for Descartes, "I think, therefore I am" is the fundamental axiom from which all philosophy must begin. The "I" that thinks is defined simply as a thinking thing, and from this, it follows that the essential nature of the self is the mind, as distinct from the body. (Struhl, Paula Rothenberg, and Struhl Karsten J., editors, Philosophy Now. Random House: 1980, P. 87)

Our eyes and other senses distort the truth and can deceive us. We must use both the mind and the senses, we must observe nature and analyze what we see. This is the law of nature Descartes discovers, and his idea, "I think, therefore I am," corresponds to it, therefore it is true. However, in order to discover truth we must be totally neutral. We cannot allow our senses to deceive us in the pursuit of truth.

Descartes has a clear distinct picture of God, which he cannot, and will not doubt. He believes all other truths can be doubted, but not God.

For whether I am awake or dreaming, 2 and 3 are 5, a square has no more than four sides, and it does not seem possible that truths so evident can ever be suspected of falsity. Yet even these truths can be questioned. That god exists that he is all-powerful and created me such as I am, has long been my settled opinion. (Descartes, Rene, "Meditations," Struhl, Paula Rothenberg, and Struhl Karsten J., editors, Philosophy Now. Random House: 1980, P 89)

Descartes believes a lack of a belief in God will hinder the process of discovering truths that cannot be doubted. He says, Even so we shall not have met and answered the doubts suggested above regarding the reliability of our mental faculties; instead we shall have given mental force to them. For whatever way it be supposed that I have come to be what I am, whether by fate or by chance, or by a continual succession and connection of things, or by some other means, since to be deceived and to err is an imperfection, the likelihood of me being so imperfect as to be the constant victim of deception will be increased in proportion as the power to which they assign my origin is lessened. (Descartes, P. 90).

Therefore, it could be argued that for Descartes there are two things which cannot be argued. They are "I think, therefore, I am," and "I think, therefore there is a God!" Descartes knows he is a thinking thing. He believes in God because he as a clear and distinct picture and idea of God in his mind, and the one thing he cannot deny is he exists because he thinks. Ockman says this was Descartes whole purpose in writing "Meditations." According to Ockman:

Descartes goes on to say that he will try to prove not only that God exists, but that his existence is clearer and more certain than the existence of anything other than ourselves--that we can be more sure that God exists than we can be that tables and chairs exist. (Ockman, William, "Medieval Elements in Descartes." http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/z3611.html accessedApril 8, 1999)

In Descartes' process of verification, he verifies things by himself, but what he finds is the subjective truth. In trying to find a way to verify truth, Descartes eliminates everything but what can not be doubted: Can I affirm that I possess any one of those things which I have been speaking of as pertaining to the nature of body? On stopping to consider them with closer attention, and on reviewing all of them, I find none of which I can say that it belongs to me; to enumerate them again would be idle and tedious. (Descartes, Rene, "Meditations," Struhl, Paula Rothenberg, and Struhl Karsten J., editors, Philosophy Now. Random House: 1980, P. 93)

He then proceeds to eliminate the body and the senses from being without doubt, until he comes up with the one verifiable truth: Sensing? There can be no sensing in the absence of body; and besides I have seemed during sleep to apprehend things which does belong to me: it alone cannot be separated from me. I am, I exist. This is certain. How often? As often as I think. For it might indeed be that if I entirely ceased to think, I should thereupon altogether cease to exist. I am not at present admitting anything, that is to say, a mind an understanding or reason--terms the significance of which has hitherto been unknown to me. I am, then, a real thing, and really existent. What thing? I have said it a thinking thing. (Descartes, Rene, "Meditations," Struhl, Paula Rothenberg, and Struhl Karsten J., editors, Philosophy Now. Random House: 1980)

Descartes later claims this allows him to verify other things. He says he may be dreaming and his senses may be deceiving him, but: the imaging, qua active power, is none the less really in me, as forming part of my thinking. Again I am the being who senses, that is to say, who apprehends corporeal things as if by the organs of sense, since I do in truth see light, hear noise, feel heat. . . .this is what in me is called sensing, and as used in this precise manner is nowise other than thinking (Descartes, P. 94).

According to Descartes himself, his purpose for writing "Meditation" was to prove that there was nothing more un-doubtable in the universe than the existence of God.

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than theological argument, that is, the questions of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. (Qtd in Ockman, William)

In so doing, he develops a new philosophical way of looking at the world. Instead of viewing things only objectively, Descartes throws in the subjective. This type of philosophy became the basis for all future philosophic discussion up until present day. The American pragmatists, who were scientists first, like Descartes, used Descartes to develop a philosophy of science. A philosophy where no truths are fully accepted but those that can be proven by future results. Descartes would most likely agree with this philosophical science.