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Descartes: Discourse On MethodFrom Pearson
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Library of Liberal Arts title.
- Sales Rank: #1193220 in Books
- Published on: 1956-01-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x .30" w x 5.10" l, .25 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 72 pages
Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)
From the Publisher
Library of Liberal Arts title.
About the Author
Lafleur is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Antioch College.
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Precise translation, provocative commentary
By Mark Thomas
This edition contains Richard Kennington's very precise translation of the Discourse along with an interpretive essay. This essay is a close reading of the text in which Kennington attempts to bring out the underlying intention of Descartes' thought, hidden beneath what appear to be nods to traditional ideas of morality and metaphysics. His ideas are provocative, but even if he's wrong, his careful arguments deserve consideration.
The interpretive essay contained in this volume is also included in the collection of Kennington's essays entitled "On Modern Origins" (also highly recommended).
(My initial review incorrectly stated that the editors neglected to include the standard Adam-Tannery pagination in the body of the text. As a comment to my review notes, this pagination is embedded in the text. My mistake!)
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
I think, therefore I read...
By FrKurt Messick
Rene Descartes is often considered the founding father of modern philosophy. A true Renaissance man, he studied Scholastic philosophy and physics as a student, spent time as a volunteer soldier and traveler throughout Europe, studied mathematics, appreciated the arts, and became a noted correspondent with royals and intellectual figures throughout the continent. He died in Sweden while on assignment as tutor to the Queen, Christiana.
Descartes 'Discourse on Method' is a fascinating text, combining the newly-invented form of essay (Descartes was familiar with the Essays of Montaigne) with the same kind of autobiographical impulse that underpins Augustine's Confessions. Descartes writes about his own form of mystical experience, seeing this as almost a kind of revelation that all past knowledge would be superseded, and all problems would eventually be solved by human intellect.
In the Discourse, Descartes formulates logical principles based on reason (which makes it somewhat ironic that this came to him almost as a revelation). Descartes had some appreciation for thinkers such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, but he thought that Bacon depended too much upon empirical data, and with Hobbes he disagreed on what would be the criteria for ascertaining certainty.
Descartes was a mathematician at heart, and perhaps had a carry-over of Pythagorean mystical attachment to mathematics, for his sense of reason led him to impute an absolute quality to mathematics; this has major implications for metaphysics and epistemology. Descartes method was a continuation in many ways of the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and the medieval thinkers, for they all tended toward thinking in absolute, universal terms in some degree.
Descartes in his first section discounts much of Scholasticism, stating that the only real absolutes are theology and mathematics; because theology is based upon revelation, it is therefore beyond reason, and thus, mathematics becomes the only rational truth. Descartes develops this idea further with rules of method, which include ideas of intuition, analysis and deduction. He uses some of his method to come up with his greatest proposition:
Cogito ergo sum - - I think, therefore I am
'The Cogito is a first principle from which Descartes will now deduce all that follows.' This permits Descartes to deal both with rational elements and empirical data.
This is an important text, one that I read the summer before I went to college, and makes a good study for those who wish to see the personal element in the development of philosophy.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Was he for real?
By Michael Sympson
The father of modern philosophy was also an innovative mathematician. But his philosophical enquiry was committed just to one question: ÒIs there anything we can think of, which by the mere fact that we can think of it, is shown to exist outside of our thought? If yes is the right answer, there is a bridge from pure thought to things, if not, notÓ (Bertrand Russell). Descartes, when prodded to it by his critics, was gracious enough to admit his debt to St. AugustineÕs ÔSiloloquia,Õ but pointed out that he had shifted the SaintÕs argument from the mere acquisition of knowledge to an existential statement, perhaps the only in its kind that creates an empirical fact by mere thinking: ÒIn dubito, in cogito, ergo sum.Ó
This first premise led Descartes to a number of valid deductions. Since he now was completely sure about his own existence, the former or eminent cause prior to his present state had to be equally real, and so all the causes prior to that. This of course is a sneaky way of saying that if the first cause argument should hold water, then it leads to something as real as myself. But does it? Why should the chain of prior causes ever come to a halt? After all ÒCausation is not like a hired cab which one dismisses once it has arrived at its desired destination.Ó (Schopenhauer) On the other hand, how can we be sure that there is any cause that would precede the present state of existence? Consciousness might be possible in on of at least 2 forms: either in the shape of an uninterrupted continuum, or as a discontinuous series of separate moments of awareness.
Both possibilities may draw their perceptions from some sort of subliminal referent or memory bank, which would operate as the eminent cause for our existence. However a truly discontinuous sequence of brighter moments could just as well be operated by hypnotic suggestions, such as: Òwhenever you awake, you remain oblivious to the fact that this is all you are aware of and you will append false memories of a past that never was.Ó This is quite possible, as every able hypnotist will tell you. So even the perception of continual awareness might turn out to be illusory. An independent recording device could of course reveal the true nature of our awareness, (provided it isnÕt itself merely a figment, in which case it may repeat infinitely the same mental image, like an object placed between 2 facing mirrors.) Such recordings could testify to dramatic differences between separate moments of lucidity. Life would take us through a multitude of alternative worlds, but unfortunately only of one, the latest, can we ever be aware. (Confused? EverettÕs theorem proposes a similar thing for quantum physics.) Descartes himself hadnÕt seen these possibilities yet, but decided to keep things simple and proposed that thinking would ÒproveÓ the existence of an immortal and immaterial soul.
However this compelled him to devote a lot of attention to animal intelligence. Because if animals can think, they too would have immortal souls. And since such conclusion grossly contravenes Christian theology and could have spelled serious trouble for the philosopher, this opened a whole new can of worms. Descartes had to prove that animals cannot think and therefore advanced the usual arguments, that animals cannot use language, that their behavior is not terribly adaptable, that their seeming exhibition of intelligence is actually guided by instinct, etc. But by addressing animals as ÒsoullessÓ machines he opened himself wide for criticism, and materialists like LaMetrie, employed DescartesÕs own principles and applied them on man as a biological machine. (In a way, this discussion anticipates our present day debates on artificial intelligence. It even has a bearing on future explorations of deep space. If E.T. is out there but doesnÕt look as we expect it to look nor acts as we imagine it to act, then how do we recognize an intelligent life form?)
But for the moment, Descartes felt he had covered all his bases and proposed his famous proof for the existence of God: Ò... recurring to the examination of the idea of a Perfect Being, I found that the existence of such Being was comprised in the idea in the same way that the equality of its three angles to two right angles is comprised in the idea of a triangle, (sic! We shall remember that!) ... consequently it is at least as certain that God, who is this Perfect Being, is, or exists, as any demonstration of geometry can be.Ó Now, this raises a question: Did Descartes really mean what he said? Because just one sentence before this ÒproofÓ we read this: ÒI perceived that there was nothing at all in these demonstrations which could assure me of the existence of their object: ... for example, supposing a triangle to be given, I distinctly perceived that its three angles were necessarily equal to two right angles, but I did not on that account perceive anything which could assure me that any triangle existed ...Ó Strange proof, that begins with its own refutation.
I canÕt imagine that any of DescartesÕs numerous correspondents, failed to spot this slight of hand. But only Hobbes was rude enough to touch the sore. There was a reason for this discretion. Not too long ago, Giordano Bruno had been roasted alive over a slow fire, and Galilei, after a look at the thumbscrews, had retired from science. So you better covered your back with a few symbolic genuflections towards Rome. Descartes did, and thus he became the founder of modern philosophy and of postmodern insincerity as well, leaving it to the reader to figure what he really had meant to say. With this in mind, Descartes is still one of the most inspiring and original thinkers of the modern era.
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