RENÉ DESCARTES               1596-1650

A portrait by Daniel Paquet

 

“Descartes is quite generally considered the greatest French philosopher.  (…)  Those who wish to classify Descartes call him the first of the ‘Continental Rationalists,’ and say that he was followed by Spinoza and Leibniz, neither of whom was French.  Such fascinating writers as Montaigne, Pascal, Voltaire, and Rousseau- Frenchmen of unquestioned genius – are major literary figures and not very close to Descartes.  On the whole, French philosophy has tended to be more literary and less technical than British or German philosophy.  His first major philosophic work, the celebrated Discours de la méthode, appeared in 1637.  It is the first philosophic classic in French, and is almost as remarkable for its literary excellence as for its solid contents.  Next, Descartes wrote his great Meditationes de prima philosophia, reverting, as Bacon had done, to Latin. Unlike Bacon, Descartes was keenly aware of the importance of mathematics. Indeed, he was a first-rate mathematician, and it was he that first devised analytic geometry.”[1]

Descartes wrote:  “Good sense is the most evenly shared thing in the world, for each of us thinks he is so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in all other respects are not in the habit of wanting more than they have.  It is unlikely that everyone is mistaken in this.  It indicates rather that the capacity to judge correctly and to distinguish the true from the false, which is properly what one calls common sense or reason, is naturally equal in all men, and consequently that the diversity of our opinions does not spring from some of us being more able to reason than others, but only from our conducting our thoughts along different lines and not examining the same things.  For it is not enough to have a good mind, rather the main thing is to apply it well.  The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues, and those who go forward only very slowly can progress much further if they always keep to the right path, than those who run and wander off it.”[2]

“Yet there are philosophers who seek to prove that the world has two primary bases -material and ideal. (…) The 17^th-century French philosopher Descartes, a dualist, held that reality was based on two substances –material, with extension as its attribute, and ideal, with thought as its attribute.  Independent of each other, these two substances merged in man and assumed the form of body and soul.  Though they existed side by side in man, Descartes maintained, they will remained quite independent and equal.”[3]

Reflections and thoughts of Descartes are the fruit of an intense intellectual work.  “I did not, however, fail to value the work we did in school.  I knew that the languages one learns there are necessary for an understanding of the classics; that the grace of fables awakens the mind; that the  memorable actions of history elevate it and that, if read  with moderation and discernment, they help to form one’s judgement; that to read good books is like holding a conversation with the most eminent  minds of past centuries and, moreover, a studied conversation in which the authors reveal to us only the best of their thoughts; that oratory has incomparable  power and beauty; that poetry as ravishing subtlety and sweetness; that mathematics contains some very ingenious inventions which can serve just as well to satisfy the curious as to make all arts and crafts easier and to lessen man’s work; that writings  which treat of ethics philosophy gives  the means by which the admiration of the less learned; that law, medicine and the other sciences bring honours and wealth to those who practice them; and finally that it is good to have examined them all, even those most full of superstition and falsehood, in order to know their true worth and to avoid being misled by them.”[4]

We are getting to our topic:  philosophy.  “Philosophy is a world outlook and a method of cognition developed on the basis of a specific solution to the problem of the relationship between matter and consciousness. (…)  The Marxist-Leninist philosophy is a science studying regularities in the relationship between matter and consciousness, the universal laws of nature, society, and thought, and developing a world outlook, and a method of cognizing and transforming reality.”[5]

“Just like Bacon and Hobbes, representatives of the 17^thcentury bourgeoisie in England, so René Descartes in France came out with a substantiation of new methods of cognizing reality.  He drew a materialist picture of the world.  Nature, he said, consisted of small material particles of different sizes, forms and directions of motion. (…) In developing his view of the world, Descartes in contrast to medieval scholasticism, attempted to rely on science.  But at that time mechanics and mathematics had been developed appreciably.  This inevitably left an imprint on Descartes’ teaching making it rather mechanistic.  (…)  Descartes was not a consistent materialist.  He only held materialist views on matters relating to certain natural phenomena.  But as soon as he passed on to the basic principles of being and knowledge, he turned away from materialism and approached philosophical problems from the premise that God was the only basis of being.  He said, for instance, that  ‘God… has in principle created matter together with motion and rest’ and that there were two independent substances in the world-spiritual and material. (…) Descartes always proceeded from pure reason.  He did not believe that experience had an important part to play in the process of cognition, and thought that, in cognizing the world, one should rely exclusively on one’s mind and   be guided by its principles and ideas, which were innate.”[6]

It seems that even in this period of time, there was a language problem.  “And if I write in French, which is the language of my country, rather than in Latin, which is that of my teachers, it is because I hope that those who use only their pure natural reason  will be better judges of my opinions than those who believe only in the  books of the ancients; and, as for those who unite good sense with study, whom alone I wish to have for my judges, they will not, I feel sure, be so partial to Latin that they will refuse to hear my reasons because I express them in the vulgar tongue.”[7]

Obviously, even nowadays, especially in regard with Québec high-school students, there are some people in our society who strongly believe and affirm that philosophy is by no means useful for those young heads. 

“I should then have proposed for consideration the usefulness of philosophy, and have shown that, since it extends to all that the human mind can know, we must believe that it alone distinguishes us from savages and barbarians and that each nation is the more civilized and polished the better its members are versed in philosophy and, accordingly, that the greatest good which exist in a State is to have true philosophers.”[8]

 

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[1] Kaufmann, Walter, Philosophic Classics, Bacon to Kant, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,MCMLXI, pages 26-27

[2] Descartes, René, Discourse on Method and Other Writings, Penguin Classics, Markham, Ontario, 1968, page27

[3] Sheptulin, A. P., Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, page18

[4] Ibidem, Discourse on Method, page 30

[5] Ibidem, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, page 27

[6] Ibidem, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, page 48-50

[7] Ibidem, Discourse on Method, page 91

[8] Ibidem, Discourse on Method, page 174