Descartes, Hobbes, and Pascal During the 17th and 18th century, religion, religious beliefs and most of all the religious leaders played a very influential role in the direction of politics. This was also a time when religion and politics played a large role in the direction of what was accepted as a result of the new discoveries in the natural sciences and in a time when there were some very influential writers, philosophers, scientists and mathematicians. At the time, these people were considered to be very radical and revolutionary because of some of their beliefs and this often times led them to be highly scrutinized, criticized and sometimes even punished by the legal system. Now in the 21st century, these views that were considered to be radical and even ridiculous at that time are now considered to be brilliant revelations written by ingenious individuals. It would be very interesting to see how some of these individuals would feel about the progress of the planet in which they helped to inspire and how they might feel about some more recent issues concerning the direction of humanity in the late 20th century, as I shall further discuss in this paper. In this class we have discussed about many philosophical writers of the 17th and 18th century and in this paper I shall discuss some of the opinions written about the following document; Renee Descartes’ Discourse on Method (1637), Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts (1670) and Jacques Bossuet’s Politics + Scriptures (1679). First I am going to talk about Renee Descartes and the subjects that he would discuss at a dinner party hosted by me. Renee Descartes was the father of modern philosophy, a great scientist and also ... ... middle of paper ... ...otect their boundaries or beliefs. He was also very disappointed to see that people don’t believe in God as much as people used to in the past. He knew that this was the worst thing about the 20th century because there is no way for people to enjoy peace without God’s protection. As you have read, all of these thinkers were great philosophers who still believe what they were taught in their early years. All of them defended their point of view and agreed that science was definitely changing the way people thought. This is a fact because as the church and science have separated, everything changed dramatically. The church lost a lot of power and science was the big gainer. It was really a pleasure to have such great philosophers to see their views about the 20th century and hopefully we can use their comments for us to live in a better future.
Religion is the substance that produced social morality which bound all elements of society in the Jacksonian Era. Religion produced the moral code all men adhered to. Church leaders were so vocal in pastoring patriotism and loyalty to one's God and country. Church members received the message of liberation and promoted the common man to seek social and political equality. The concept of divine morality in the early-19th century held accountable the behavior of all who were at least partially active in their social environment.
To read Damasio's critique alongside Stephen Gaukroger's remarkably rich intellectual biography of Descartes, however, is to realize that Damasio could just as aptly have titled his book "Descartes' Vision." As Gaukroger points out, Descartes was reviled during his lifetime and for a century after his death not for his dualism but for his materialism. Only when the history of philosophy was rewritten in the nineteenth century as the story of epistemology did Descartes come to bear the double designation of being both the "father" of modern philosophy and the ranking nativist who visited upon us the catastrophic separation of mind from body and of reason from emotion. These labels are essentially caricatures that distort the actual complexity of what Descartes struggled to work out in his cognitive theory. Gaukroger reconstructs this struggle for us, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, showing how Descartes shuttled back and forth between an account of the body and the pursuit of the mind.
In his book Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes tries to accomplish several subject concerns. Firstly, Descartes attempts to accomplish the use of methodological doubt to rid himself of all beliefs that could be false. Then, he arrives at particular beliefs that could not possibly be false. Next, he discovers a criterion of knowledge. Also, he proves that the mind is distinct from the body and also the existence of God.
René Descartes signifies a unique change compared to ancient and medieval traditions in many ways. The ancient and medieval traditions consist of ideals of which people impose meaning on things. These classical traditions also consist of how a person identity starts from outside of the body and the works its way inwards towards a complete person. Those traditions had a perception that humans began to analyzes themselves outside of themselves first before they analyze themselves internally. Descartes challenged the ancient and medieval traditions by having a different perception of how he came to know things. Descartes, instead of imposing meaning on things, he would derive meaning from things. He also challenged the classical traditions because
The 20th century brought about many changes, with several events molding society in the way we know of it today. With the Great Depression, World War 2 , and the Cold War, America faced many internal and external threats, that endangered the American way of life and forced the country to reshape it’s views to move past events that seemed, at the time, to be the lowest points.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been a number of great revolutionary movements going on in the United States, contributing to a huge spectrum of changes, ranged from American people’s everyday lives, to a more comprehensive view about the world and themselves, even to the national economic system. Those movements had reached a climax in the 1920’s, known as the “The Roaring Twenties”. Accompanied with the changes were conflicts and tensions rising rapidly between the adaptation to new attitudes and the preservation of traditional values. The emergence of the “New Morality”, the development of Science and Technology, and the changes in economy were the three most significant winds of changes leading to the enormous tension in the 1920’s, manifesting in their own distinct ways.
4. Descartes, Rene, and Roger Ariew. Meditations, objections, and replies. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2006. Print.
Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six different steps that he named "Meditations" because of the state of mind he was in while he was contemplating all these different ideas. His six meditations are "One:Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", "Two:Concerning the Nature of the Human mind: that it is better known than the Body", "Three: Concerning God, that he exists", "Four: Concerning the True and the False", "Five: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and again concerning God, that he exists" and finally "Six: Concerning the Existence of Material things, and the real distinction between Mind and Body". Although all of these meditations are relevant and necessary to understand the complete work as a whole, the focus of this paper will be the first meditation.
Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings, tr. John Cottingham and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Descartes: Philosophical Letters, translated and edited by Anthony Kenny, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1970 pp. 11f, 14f, 236f, 150f.
The teaching of Descartes has influenced many minds since his writings. Descartes' belief that clear and distinct perceptions come from the intellect and not the senses was critical to his ultimate goal in Meditations on First Philosophy, for now he has successfully created a foundation of true and certain facts on which to base a sold, scientific belief structure. He has proven himself to exist in some form, to think and therefore feel, and explains how he knows objects or concepts to be real.
Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 1996.
René Descartes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
During the sixteen hundreds, the French philosopher René Descartes laid the foundations for the beginnings of Cartesian Dualism. In contrast, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued against dualism in favor of materialism. Recently, Cartesian Dualism, and dualism in general has fallen out of favor as materialism arose as a more plausible and explanatory theory regarding the interrelationships between body and mind. The translation Descartes’ writing in the Meditations is far more cryptic than Hobbes’ writing in the Leviathan. Making it far easier to see Hobbes’ claims. Hobbes provides a reasonable explanation against dualism in his objections to Descartes, and in his Leviathan, provides background upon his reasoning in those objections. Dualism may be less popular than materialism in current philosophy, but it may simply be because dualism has more or less reached some sort of block in regards to its further development, and not anything to do with the writings of Descartes or Hobbes. Descartes and Hobbes may have influenced many of the earlier bickering between philosophers of mind upon the subject of mind-body interaction, as Hobbes was likely the first objector to Descartes’ dualism.
Rene Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher believed that the origin of knowledge comes from within the mind, a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. His Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations (1641) contain his important philosophical theories. Intending to extend mathematical method to all areas of human knowledge, Descartes discarded the authoritarian systems of the scholastic philosophers and began with universal doubt. Only one thing cannot be doubted: doubt itself. Therefore, the doubter must exist. This is the kernel of his famous assertion Cogito, ergo sum (I am thinking, therefore I am existing). From this certainty Descartes expanded knowledge, step by step, to admit the existence of God (as the first cause) and the reality of the physical world, which he held to be mechanistic and entirely divorced from the mind; the only connection between the two is the intervention of God.