RENÉ DESCARTES

French philosopher and mathematician.

After the splendor of the
ancient Greek philosophy and of
apogee and crisis of scholasticism
in medieval Europe, the
new airs of the Renaissance and
the scientific revolution that it
they would result in the
17th century, to the birth of the
modern philosophy.

The first of
the philosophical isms of the
modernity was rationalism; Descartes, its initiator, set out to make a table
the essence of tradition and build a new edifice on the foundation of reason and with the
effective methodology of mathematics. His 'methodical doubt' did not question God,
but quite the opposite; however, like Galileo, he had to suffer
persecution due to their beliefs.

Biography

He was born in La Haye (Touraine; France) on March 31, 1596, and died in
Stockholm (Sweden) on February 11, 1650, due to a lung condition.
His family belonged to the wealthy bourgeoisie and his mother died when he was one year old.
of age. He was educated at the school of La Flèche, run by the Jesuits and
considered one of the most famous in Europe; there he remained between 1604 and
1615, studying the classics. Due to his fragile health, in school he had
permission to stay in bed until 11 o'clock in the morning and kept
this habit for the rest of his life. The studies at this center had a
decisive importance in their intellectual formation; the turbulent youth is well known
of Descartes, undoubtedly in La Flèche he must have laid the foundation of his culture. The
traces of such education manifest objectively and sharply throughout the
philosophical ideology of the wise.

The school's curriculum was very varied: it revolved around

essentially around the traditional teaching of the liberal arts, to which
theological concepts and practical exercises useful for life were added
future gentlemen. Even though the program was supposed to be rather light and
oriented in an essentially practical sense, the most active or curious students
they could complete them on their own through personal reading.

Years later, Descartes criticized the education he received. After his time in La
Flèche, Descartes obtained the title of bachelor and licentiate in Law from the
Faculty of Poitiers (1616), and at the age of twenty-two he set out for the Netherlands,
where he served as a soldier in the army of Maurice of Nassau. In 1619 he
he enrolled in the ranks of the Duke of Bavaria.

As Descartes recounted in the Discourse on the Method, during the harsh winter of
that year he was found blocked in a locality of the Upper Danube, and there he remained
shut away next to a stove and far from any social interaction, with nothing more
company than that of their thoughts. In such a place, and after a strong crisis of
skepticism, the foundations on which he would build his system were revealed to him
philosophical: the mathematical method and the principle of cogito, ergo sum. Victim of a
feverish excitement, during the night of November 10, 1619, he had three dreams,
in which he intuited his method and recognized his deep vocation to consecrate
his life to science.

After resigning from military life,

Descartes traveled through Germany and the
Netherlands and returned to France in
1622, to sell their possessions and
to ensure like this a life
independent; spent a season
in Italy (1623 - 1625) and settled
later in Paris, where he associated
with most scientists of the
era.

In 1628 he decided to settle in

Holland, a country where the
scientific investigations enjoyed
of great consideration and, in addition, they were favored by a relative freedom of
thought. Descartes considered it the most favorable place to fulfill the
philosophical and scientific objectives he had set, and resided there until 1649.

He dedicated the first five years mainly to developing his own system.
of the world and its conception of man and the human body. By 1633 it already had
an advanced investigation on the writing of a comprehensive text on metaphysics and
Physics titled Treatise on Light; however, the news of the condemnation
ofGalileoit frightened him, since Descartes also maintained in that work the
movement of the Earth, an opinion that I did not consider censurable from the point of view
theological. As I feared that such a text might contain condemnable theories,
resignation from its publication, which would take place posthumously.

In 1637, his famous [Link] on the Method, presented as a prologue to three

scientific essays. For the audacity and novelty of the concepts, the genius of
the discoveries and the momentum of ideas, the book was enough to give its author a
immediate and well-deserved fame, but for that very reason it also provoked a flood of
controversies that would henceforth make his life exhausting and even dangerous.

Descartes proposed in the Discourse a methodical doubt, which subjected to judgment.

all the knowledge of the time, although, unlike the skeptics, the
it was a question aimed at the search for ultimate principles on which
to solidly cement knowledge. This principle was found in the existence of the self
consciousness remained, in its famous formulation "I think, therefore I am." About the
Based on this first evidence, it was possible to partially retrace the path of its
skepticism, finding in God the ultimate guarantor of the truth of the evidence of
the reason, which manifests itself as "clear and distinct" ideas.

The Cartesian method, which Descartes proposed for all sciences and disciplines,
it consists of breaking down complex problems into progressively smaller parts
simpler until finding their basic elements, the simple ideas, that are
they present reason in an evident way, and proceed from them, by
synthesis, to rebuild the entire complex, demanding from each new relationship
established between simple ideas the same evidence of these. The essays
scientists who followed the speech offered a summary of their physical theories,
among which stands out her formulation of the law of inertia and a specification of
his method for mathematics.

The foundations of his mechanistic physics, which made extension the main one.
properties of material bodies were exposed by Descartes in
theMetaphysical Meditations (1641), where he developed his demonstration of the
existence and perfection of God and the immortality of the soul, already pointed out in the
Fourth part of the Discourse on Method. The radical mechanism of physical theories.
of Descartes, however, determined that they should be overcome later.

As his fame grew and the dissemination of his philosophy increased, the criticisms intensified.
the threats of religious persecution by some authorities
academic and ecclesiastical, both in the Netherlands and in France. Born
in the midst of discussions, the metaphysical Meditations were to be worth various for him
accusations promoted by theologians; something like this happened during the
writing and publishing other works of his, such as The Principles of the
Philosophy (1644) and The Passions of the Soul (1649).

Tired of these struggles, in

In 1649, Descartes accepted the
invitation from Queen Christina of
Sweden, which urged him to
relocating to Stockholm as
your philosophy preceptor.
They had previously maintained
an intense correspondence, and,
despite the satisfactions
intellectuals what the
provided Cristina,
Descartes was not happy in 'the country
of the bears, where the
thoughts of men
they seem, like water, to metamorphose into ice." He was used to the
comforts and it was not easy for him to get up every day at four in the morning,
full darkness and with the winter cold gnawing at his bones, to indoctrinate a
queen who had no more free time due to her obligations. The
Spartans' early risings and the cold were stronger than the philosopher, who died from a
pneumonia in early 1650, five months after his arrival.

The philosophy of Descartes

Descartes is considered the initiator of modern rationalist philosophy by

his approach and resolution of the problem of finding a foundation of
knowledge that guarantees its certainty, and like the philosopher who assumes the point of
definitive break with scholasticism. In the Discourse on the Method (1637), Descartes
he stated that his project to develop a doctrine based on principles
totally new came from the disenchantment with philosophical teachings that
had received.

Convinced that the whole reality responded to a rational order, his purpose
It was to create a method that would make it possible to achieve in all areas of
knowledge the same certainty provided in its field by arithmetic and
geometry. Its method, outlined in the Discourse, consists of four
precepts or procedures: do not accept as true anything that is not
be absolutely sure that it is; break down each problem into its parts
minimum; going from the most understandable to the most complex; and finally, reviewing for
I complete the process to ensure that there are no omissions.

The system used by

Descartes to fulfill the first
to precept and reach certainty is
the methodological doubt. Following
this system, Descartes places in
trial cloth all its
knowledge acquired o
inherited, the testimony of the
senses and even their own
existence and that of the world. Now
well, in any doubt there is something of it
that we cannot doubt: of the
same doubt. Said in another way
however, we cannot doubt that
we are doubting. We arrive at a first absolute and evident certainty that
we can accept as true: we doubt.

I think, therefore I am

Doubt, then reasons Descartes, is a thought: to doubt is to think. Now

Well, it is not possible to think without existing. The suspension of any concrete truth,
the same doubt, it is an act of thought that immediately involves the
existence of the thinking "I". Hence its famous formulation: I think, therefore I exist.
(I think, therefore I am). Therefore, we can be firmly assured of our
thought and our existence. We exist and are a thinking substance,
spiritual.

From this, Descartes develops his entire philosophy. Since he cannot trust in
the things, whose existence he has not yet been able to prove, Descartes tries to start
of thought, whose existence has already been demonstrated. Although it may refer to
Abroad, thought is not made up of things, but of ideas about the
things. The question that arises is whether there is in our thinking any
idea or representation that we can perceive with the same 'clarity' and 'distinction'
(the two Cartesian criteria of certainty) with which we perceive ourselves as subjects
thinkers.
Classes of ideas

Descartes then proceeds to review all the knowledge that he had previously acquired.
he had dismissed at the beginning of his search. And upon reconsidering them, he observes that
the representations of our thought are of three kinds: 'innate' ideas,
like those of beauty or justice; "adventitious" ideas that come from things
outdoor, such as those of star or horse; and 'fictitious' ideas, which are mere
creations of our fantasy, such as the monsters of mythology.

The "fictitious" ideas, mere sum

or combination of other ideas, no
they can obviously serve as
railing. And regarding the ideas
"adventitious", originated by
our experience of things
outdoors, it is necessary to act with
caution, as we are not
sure that things
exteriors exist. It could happen,
dice Descartes, what the
"adventitious" knowledge, that
we consider them corresponding
impressions of things that
they really exist outside of us, they would have been provoked by a 'genius
"evil" that would like to deceive us. Or that what seems to us reality is not.
more than an illusion, a dream from which we have not awakened.

From Me to God

But when examining the "innate" ideas, without a sensible outer correlate, we find
in us a very singular idea, because it is completely detached from what
we are: the idea of God, of a supreme being who is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, perfect. The
human beings, finite and imperfect, can form ideas like that of "triangle"
or 'justice'. But the idea of an infinite and perfect God cannot arise from a
finite and imperfect individual: has necessarily been placed in the mind of the
men by the same Providence. Therefore, God exists; and being as
he is a perfect being, he cannot deceive himself or deceive us, nor allow the
existence of a 'malicious genius' that deceives us, making us believe that it is real
a world that does not exist. The world, therefore, also exists. The existence of
God thus guarantees the possibility of true knowledge.
This demonstration of the existence of God constitutes a variant of the argument
ontological used as early as the 12th century by Saint Anselm of Canterbury, and was
harshly attacked by Descartes' opponents, who accused him of falling into
a vicious circle: to prove the existence of God and thus guarantee the
knowledge of the outside world is based on the criteria of clarity and distinction,
but the reliability of such criteria is justified by the existence of God.
Such criticism points not only to the validity or invalidity of the argument, but also to the
the fact that Descartes does not seem to apply his own methodology at this point.

thinking thing and extended thing

Admitting the existence of the external world, Descartes proceeds to examine what is the
essence of beings. Here introduces its concept of substance, which it defines as
that which "exists in such a way that it only needs itself to exist."
Substances manifest themselves through their modes and attributes. The attributes are
essential properties or qualities that reveal the determination of the substance,
That is to say, they are those properties without which a substance would cease to be such.
substance. The modes, on the other hand, are not essential properties or qualities,
but merely accidental.

The attribute of bodies is the

extension (a body cannot
lack of extension; if it lacks
she is not a body), and all the
other determinations (color,
shape, position, movement) are
only modes. And the attribute
of the spirit is thought,
Well, the spirit 'always thinks'.
There is, therefore, a substance
thinking (res cogitans), lacking
of extension and whose attribute is the
thought, and a substance that
composes the physical bodies (res
extensive), whose attribute is the
extension, or, if preferred, three-dimensionality, quantitatively measurable in
a three-dimensional space. Both are irreducible to each other and totally
separated. It is what is referred to as Cartesian "dualism."

As far as the substance of matter and bodies is extension, and

in which this is observable and measurable, it must be possible to explain its
movements and changes through mathematical laws. This leads to the vision
mechanistic view of nature: the universe is like a huge machine whose
we will be able to understand through study and discovery
of the mathematical laws that govern it.

The communication of substances

The radical separation between matter and spirit is rigorously applied, in

principle, to all beings. Thus, animals are nothing more than very
complex. However, Descartes makes an exception when it comes to the
man. Since he is made of body and soul, and the body is material
and extended (res extensa), and the spiritual and thinking soul (res cogitans), should
there is an absolute lack of communication between them.

However, in the Cartesian system this does not happen, but rather the soul and the body
they communicate with each other, not in the classical way, but in a singular manner. The soul
it is located in the pineal gland, situated in the brain, and from there it governs the
body like "the sailor governs the ship," through the animal spirits,
intermediate substances between spirit and body in the form of very fine particles of
blood, which transmits the orders of the soul to the body. Descartes' solution
was not satisfactory, and the so-called problem of communication of the
substance has been widely discussed by later philosophers.

Its influence

Both for not having satisfactorily defined the notion of substance and for the
Franco dualism established between the two substances, Descartes raised the
fundamental problems of European speculative philosophy of the 17th century.
Understood as a strict and closed system, Cartesianism did not have excessive
followers and lost its relevance in a few decades. However, philosophy
Cartesianism became a reference point for a large number of thinkers,
sometimes to try to resolve the contradictions it contained, such as
the rationalist thinkers did, and others to directly counter it, such as the
empiricists.

Thus, the German philosopherGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and the DutchBaruch Spinoza
They established forms of psychophysical parallelism to explain communication.
between body and soul. Spinoza, in fact, went even further, and stated that there existed
a single substance, which encompassed within it the order of things and that of ideas, and
of which the res cogitans and the lares extensa were nothing but attributes, with which it
I was arriving at pantheism.
From a completely opposite point of view, empiricists
BritishThomas Hobbes yJohn Locke they denied that the idea of a substance
spiritual outside demonstrable; they claimed that there were no innate ideas and that the
philosophy should be reduced to the realm of what is known through experience. The
Cartesian conception of a mechanistic universe, in short, had a decisive influence
in the genesis of classical physics, founded by Newton.

It is not an exaggeration to assert, in summary, that although Descartes did not manage to resolve
many of the problems he raised, such problems became
central issues of Western philosophy. In this sense, modern philosophy
(rationalism, empiricism, idealism, materialism, phenomenology) can
to be considered as a development or a reaction to Cartesianism.
 Bibliography
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