An Introduction to Rene Descartes By Joel Benedict

Table of contents • • Introduction Background – Where Descartes was from • The history of Descartes family • His immediate family – The instructors of Descartes – The era of Descartes • History • Culture • The end of Descartes’ life • Influences – Major ethical contributions • Cartesian doubt • Cogito ergo sum • The wax argument – Opposition arguments – Contemporary response • Conclusion

Introduction • This presentation documents the background and influences of Rene Descartes. It will show the origins, growth, and impact of Descartes, followed by description of the arguments and contemporary response to his philosophies. We begin with the way things were prior to Descartes, with the history of his family.

Part 1 • Background – Where Descartes was from • The history of Descartes family • His immediate family – The instructors of Descartes – The era of Descartes • History • Culture • The end of Descartes’ life

– Where Descartes was from • The history of Descartes family • His immediate family

The history of the Descartes family, 1/3: distant ancestry • Long before Rene’s birth on March 31, 1596, Rene’s great grand-father on his father’s mother’s side was Jean Ferrand, “an illustrious doctor” to the Queen of Austria (Rodis-Lewis, 1998, p. 2). • Jean’s son-in-law Pierre Descartes died when Jean’s grandson was three, without claim to nobility.

The history of the Descartes family 2/3: the grandfather • Pierre was a war chief that was forced “into business to survive (Rodis-Lewis, 1998, p. 1), ” probably as a doctor, which Rene would later reflect with his interest in medicine and physics. • The death of Pierre left Joachim unable to gain nobility because it could only be gained by acquiring a law practice for three generations, something that came only when his grandson’s, the brothers of Rene, acquired a practice.

The history of the Descartes family 3/3: Rene’s parents • Rene’s father and brother were lawyers, and Rene received his B. A. and law license in “civil and canon law in November, 1616 (Gaukroger, 1995, p. xiv). ” • Rene’s mother died in childbirth to a brother who did not survive (Rodis-Lewis, 1998, p. 4).

Rene’s immediate family 1/2: the environment of his youth • Rene was instead raised in La Hay en Touraine, France by a nurse and by his maternal grandmother Jeanne Sain (Gaukroger, 1995, p. xiv). • The Descartes family acquired nobility and was well-off by the time Rene was born, so he did not need to seek a patron (Gombay, 2007, p. 1).

Rene’s immediate family 2/2: his educational environment • When Rene was about nine, he went to a Jesuit boarding college of a La Fleche at Anjou, “where his older brother was probably already a student (Gaukroger, 1995, p. xiv). ” • Father Charlet looked after Rene “as a second father” until Rene was seventeen (Id).

• The instructors of Descartes

Rene’s instructors 1/2: advanced teaching • Under Charlet and tutor Etienne Noel, Rene learned philosophy throughout his education, along with mathematics, theology, logic, physics, and metaphysics (Rodis-Lewis, 1998, p. 9). • Rene studied law for two years in 1615 -16, and joined the army of Maurice of Nassau (Protestant) in 1618, though he is not an infantryman (Gombay, 2007, p. 2).

Rene’s instructors 2/2: independent studies • Descartes traveled widely from 1618 to 1627, along the way meeting Isaac Beeckman, who livens anew Descartes’ interests in science and music (Gaukroger, 1995, p. xiv), as well as “everyone who is anyone in the world of intellect […] – mathematicians (Hardy, Morin, Debeaune); – writers (Guez de Balzac); – theologians – mostly Oratorian rigorists (Berulle, Gibieuf) (Gombay, 2007, p. 3). ” • Rene was truly the right person in the right place at the right time—it was his era.

– The era of Descartes • History • Culture • The end of Descartes’ life

Descartes’ era 1/3: surrounding history • The era of Rene Descartes is defined by the history and culture that surrounded him and is terminated by his death on February 11, 1650 (Gaukroger, 1995, p. xviii). • Rene was involved in the Thirty Years War as a non-combatant. Descartes was a leading figure of the Scientific Revolution, as shown by his regular communications mainly with Beeckman, Constantijn Huygens, and Marin Mersenne, but also with Galileo, Grotius, Fermat, Toricelli, and Pascal (Gombay, 2007, pp. 3 -4).

Descartes’ era 2/3: surrounding culture • The culture is one of growing agnosticism and dependency from the church, relying increasingly on reason apart from doctrine. • Descartes lived mostly in the Dutch Republic, moving several times within the country throughout his life. Life there is mostly safe from persecution of beliefs that went against the established churches.

Descartes’ era 3/3: the end of his life • Rene kept correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Queen Christina of Sweden until his death (Gaukroger, 1995, p. xviii). • Several of Descartes works came out or were translated posthumously, five unfinished volume-length philosophy books, and fragments on music, mathematics, and anatomy (Gombay, 2007, pp. 9 -10).

Part 2 • Influences – Major ethical contributions • Cartesian doubt • Cogito ergo sum • The wax argument – Opposition arguments – Contemporary response

– Major ethical contributions • The wax argument • Cartesian doubt • Cogito ergo sum

Ethical contributions 1/4: foundationalism • Descartes main contributions to ethics were in the realm of metaphysics and existentialism, that is, the things beyond physics and the proof of existence. • His arguments were methodical, leading from a foundation in the reliability of reason and knowledge to an understanding of existence and thought.

Ethical contributions 2/4: the wax arguement • He started with self-evident truths, ideas discoverable without outside influence: “[W]e come to know them by the power of our own native intelligence, without any sensory experience (Newman, 1997). ” • An example Rene used was the wax argument: the idea behind a sculpture can be understood regardless of the medium that forms it, as a wax carving of a head gives the understanding of the idea of a head regardless if it melts away.

Ethical contributions 3/4: Cartesian doubt • The evil genius and meta-cognitive doubt refer to a divine deceiver creating inherently wrongly wired humans that can never understand the true nature of reality: “I saw nothing to rule out the possibility that my natural constitution made me prone to error even in matters which seemed to me most true. (Med. 6, AT 7: 77 in Newman)”. • Descartes set up the main arguments so that the deeper aspects of existentialism would have a stronger universal foundation.

Ethical contributions 4/4: cogito ergo sum • In the central argument of existentialism, Rene advanced the instantation principle, that the self can prove its own existence, if only to itself, that it absolutely does exist: “I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (Med. 2, AT 7: 25 in Newman). ” • Even that the perceptions of the self were wholly wrong or there was a divine deceiver, the selfawareness proves existence: “if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something (Id, Newman). ”

• Opposition arguments

Opposition arguments 1/2: atheism v God • Rene faced opposition from Voetius, rector of Utrecht, who accused Rene of atheism and trying to achieve redemption apart from God. • Descartes viewed his philosophies as a methodical build-up to the proof of the existence of God and the fallibility of human behavior.

Opposition arguments 2/2: posthumous criticism • Much of the criticism of Descartes came well after his lifetime. • Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard argued that Descartes assumed that the self exists, and can therefore think. However, Descartes already argued that the self was the focus, and not the outside observer, so the self proves its own existence, but only to itself.

Contemporary response • In modern day philosophy circles, the rationalism, existentialism, and the perception of reality and of self argued by Descartes continues to influence philosophy. • The late Ayn Rand, founder of objectivism, opposed Immanuel Kant’s reversal of Descartes’ affirmation of the ability of the self to know reality as it is in itself.

Conclusion • The foundation that Descartes gave to the 17 th century enlightenment was one born of thought and methodical reason, achieved by consulting with the best minds of his generation. • Rene Descartes set an example for ethicist philosophers that we can still emulate today.

References 1/2 • Gaukroger, S. (1995). Descartes an intellectual biography. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. • Gombay, A. (2007). descartes. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

References 2/2 • Newman, L. (1997, December 3). Descartes' epistimology. Retrieved July 21, 2010, from Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy: http: //plato. stanford. edu/entries/descartesepistemology/ • Rodis-Lewis, G. (1998). Descartes: his life and thought. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.