We now jump to the 17th century - we'll have to go back to the 16th c. on Saturday the 27th for Bartolome de las Casas and Michel de Montaigne. Rene Descartes was born near Tours on 31 March 1596. He took a Licentiate in Law and lived in Paris, Holland and Stockhold, Sweden where he died on 11 February 1650. He studied physics but abandoned this work when he learned of the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633. This led him to publish a description of his new philosophy in the Discourse in 1637. As a side note, the introduction mentions that Descartes was often reluctant to publish because he was very protective of his privacy. He adopted Ovid's adage bene qui latuit, bene vixit (he who remains well hidden, lives well) though this may have been a necessary stategem to continue his philosophical explorations without publicly flouting the Church.
During Descartes' time, science meant the pursuit of knowledge based on nature. It was also termed natural philosophy and explored an understanding of the world based on observations, cause and effect. Much of the thinking at the time was based on Aristotelian philosophy. Though in this course we have read Plato - and from Phaedrus and the Symposium we got a glimpse into Socrates' method and philosophy, we did not read any of Aristotle's texts. Many of the writers we have read since then based their method of thinking and reasoning on Aristotle and I'm finding a gap in my understanding by not having read anything yet about Aristotle (other than Annabel Lyon's novel, The Golden Mean, last year). I won't be able to remedy this during the next couple of weeks but I will try to read something about or by Aristotle later on.
University studies at the time followed the tradition of the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). Descartes started his schooling in the Jesuit system which was rigorously structured ('give me the child, and I will give you the man'). Students learned classical literature, history, drama as well as theology and philosophy, including natural philosophy, metaphysics and ethics. This time period is described in the intro as Counter-Reformation Europe (the Reformation being led by Luther and Calvin and the Counter-Reformation being the Catholic Churches efforts at reform especially in Spain and Italy). Early on, Descartes became interested in deriving a method for scientific enquiry. Descartes felt that the Aristotelian view of the world was unsatisfactory and he had planned to write a book setting out his world system, ambitiously entitled "The Universe". He did not complete this work. He does write that he is speaking without the benefit of divine inspiration. His philosophic principles have been termed 'cartesianism'. The adjective 'cartesian' is used in relation to his mechanistic philosophy. His methods relied on "good sense' rather than a rigorous education and therefore was accessible to more people, including women (who usually did not receive equal formal education).
Descartes was a soldier for many years. He had an annual income after his mother's death and was later able to travel and devote time to his intellectual and scientific work. He spent several years in Paris during a fairly lax time, a period of "free philosophizing" though he remained steadfast in his personal religious beliefs (to the point of being willing to suppress 4 years of his own work when he thought the Roman Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo made the sun's movement an article of faith). He did not seem narrow-minded and, though Catholic, he had many Protestant friends and lived much of his adult life in Protestant countries. He was aware of the work of Bacon, the other writer we are considering this week, and of Montaigne whom we are discussing on Saturday 27th.
There are some medical aspects to Descartes work which, while interesting from an historical perspective, leave me cringing from a humane (in the 20th century meaning of the word) point of view. He refers to reading William Harvey's (the father of circulation) book De motu cordis about the movements of the heart and I hate to think how Harvey did his research.
As background for some of the issues and conflicts during the 16th and 17th centuries (which, since the 13th century considered problems reconciling the Catholic church's teachings with philosophic thinking (the nature of the soul, intellect and the individual, the origin and functioning of the universe). These conflicts came to a head for Descartes in the trial and treatment of Galileo Galilei who espoused the truth of the new cosmology of the Copernican system (putting the sun as a still body at the centre of the galaxy with the earth as one of several planets revolving around the sun). Though whole episode of Galileo and his work and the uproar it caused is intriguing - again, something to read more on when I have time.
The Discourse is divided into 6 parts, written at different times and places.
In part 1 .........
Good sense or reason = the power of judging correctly & of distinguishing the true from the false
(pg 5, 1.2)
Descartes also said that good sense or reason is the only thing that makes us human and distinguishes us from brute beasts. While I agree with his definition of reason, I don't agree that this is what makes us human. Imagination and an awareness of the universe and of mortality are also part of what makes us human (but maybe that's part of the definition of Reason - I'm still sorting that one out). Altruism may also be a human characteristic but there are cases of animals acting in unexplained ways that resemble altruism so I don't know about the exclusivity of that quality yet.
Diversity of opinion arises because we have different ways of directing our thoughts
For it is not enough to possess a good mind; the most important thing is to apply it correctly
(pg 6. 13) His method involves 4 characteristics:
- certainty in the distinction between truth and error
- ease of application
- fruitfulness
- wisdom, or the production of true knowledge
Descartes uses a building metaphor to argue for a solid foundation to build upon, whether for a house or a body of knowledge and philosophy. He says it would not be reasonable to tear cities down which grew up haphazardly and therefore are not ideal and he says he is not advocating to tear down states (overthrow them) nor the established order of teaching in schools but his argument seems contradicted by the example he quotes (of people having to demolish their houses to rebuild them due to insecure foundations) which he says convinced him not to advocate for tearing established institutions (like nations or states) down to their foundations.
He does go on to say that he feels the body politic is too large and established to make it advisable to tear it down, and that over time, any imperfections are corrected.
In Part 2, Descartes says that he feels a state is much better governed by a few laws that are strictly observed, and this is his basis for reducing his logical precepts to 4:
- never to accept anything as true that I did not incontrovertibly know to be so;
- divide all the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as many as were required to solve them in the best way;
- conduct my thoughts in a given order beginning with the simplest and most easily understood [...] and gradually ascending , as it were step by step, to the knowledge of the most complex;
- undertake such complete enumerations and general surveys that I would be sure to have left nothing out.
In Part 3, Descartes describes the provisional moral code he uses to guide himself while he is "tearing down to the foundations" his knowledge of the world and building or re-building his judgements.
- Obey the laws and customs of my country and to adhere to the religion in which [I was instructed]
- be as firm and resolute in my actions as I could
- endeavour always to master myself rather than fortune, to try to change my desire rather than to change the order of the world, and in general to settle for the belief that there is nothing entirely in our power except our thoughts
- to devote my life to the cultivation of my reason and make such progress as I could in the knowledge of the truth following the method I had prescribed for myself
These moral precepts seemed very Aurelian, reminding me strongly of the Stoics and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Descartes makes a good point that to know what someone's opinions really were he had to "take note of what they did rather than what they said," saying that "some do not even know what they believe."
I have a bit of a problem , from a rational point of view, with his comment that "God has given each of us an inner light to distinguish true and false." I'm not convinced this is true of everyone. I don't know if it comes down to nurture rather than nature but it seems some people have more of an innate faculty or need for truth while some others seem to see truth as a device to fool others and thereby fulfill their desires.
He speaks about travelling for nine years, "trying to be a spectator rather than an actor in all the dramas that are played out on that [the world's] stage."
Descartes discourse is targeted to metaphysics, mathematics, mechanics, physics and he wishes to allow for progress in medicine. His method involves positing, the formulation of a hypothesis, consistent with general principles, which then needs to be tested against empirical observations.
Descartes says there is no material aspect or locality to thinking. He lists the mental faculties of reason, imagination, memory and speaks about a thinking substance.
I'm sure that throughout my master's I will find myself, as Descartes felt, "progressively revealing to myself how ignorant I was" (pg. 7.4)
Just as a note of personal interest, Ian Maclean, the translator of the text we read, used the expression pis-aller in his intro. I'd never heard this before but it means a fall-back position or option, 2nd choice, for lack of a better option etc.
pis-aller Wiktionnaire: pis-aller
- Pire qu’il puisse arriver, moindre avantage qu’on puisse avoir.
- S’il ne réussit pas dans sa nouvelle carrière, son pis-aller sera de rentrer dans celle qu’il a quittée.
- Quelque chose ou quelqu’un choisi faute de mieux, expédient, compromis bancal.
- Les reboisements ne sont que des pis-allers qui ne remplaceront jamais la richesse naturelle de la forêt originelle.
- Je ne veux pas être son pis aller, la personne à qui il s’adresse par défaut, faute d’avoir trouvé mieux.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Also solely of interest to me, the introduction refers to a letter where Descartes mentions he doesn't wish to have his Discourse printed by the prominent Dutch publishing house Elzeviers - interestingly one of the main medical publishers today is Elsevier. Founded in 1880 and based in Amsterdam, it is not related to Elzeviers but did take its name from them.
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