An Introduction to Rene
Descartes
• By Joel Benedict
• University of Advancing Technology
• Background image “treeee” ©2010
Maritonestyle
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
17th 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/descart
es-epistemology/
• Rodis-Lewis, G. (1998). Descartes: his life
and thought. Ithica, NY: Cornell University
Press.