The Great Rationalist’s Questions

1. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is an important Rationalist (Rationalists were philosophers who used reason as the basis for their philosophical theories) philosopher from the fifteenth century. He is credited with the famous quote, “I think, therefore I am.” The philosophical journey that he took to get to this conclusion is what makes him so important. Descartes was an educated man from France who had been in the army and eventually settled in Holland and died in Sweden while tutoring Queen Christina in 1650. His education was heavy in mathematics which resulted in him being prone to looking at philosophy in a mathematical way. He used the practice of mathematics to approach what he felt was the most important question: Is there anything that we can be certain is true? He liked that mathematic equations were predictably consistent and true and wanted to find a way to apply that principle to life. This is what constitutes the Cartesian Principle of Doubt. Cartesian Doubt is simply having skepticism about what you think is true based on what you see or feel. Descartes dismissed the senses as a way to determine this because he found them to be unreliable. He said that he could sense that he was doing something, but in reality, he was merely dreaming. He felt that seeing something was not evidence that it was true because of the presence of things like optical illusions, dreams, and hallucinations. He calls the source of these dreams and hallucinations the “Malicious Demon”. The only way to overcome this demon and find truth is to keep in mind the truths that his theory of rationality proposes. These truths are that a. I know myself to be some sort of existing being, b. that I exist and possess conscious thought is indubitable and c. I think, therefore I am. Descartes also had a theory called Dualism. This theory suggests that the mind (or soul) and body are separate, but have varying degrees of influence over one another. This is partly influenced by Descartes’ catholic beliefs and their embrace of the idea of a soul being the true self (De Rosa, 2013).

2. Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Jewish philosopher and admirer of Rene Descartes. His philosophies were similar in that he believed theories should come from a mathematical basis. He dealt with both moral and ethical issues in his search for truth. All of his philosophical works held the assumption that God exists. Spinoza felt that many of Descartes’ ideas, but he disputed the idea of Duality. He felt that if reality really only consisted of the physical and the mental, it did not make sense that the mind could move matter around in space. They had to be one and the same rather than functioning as separate entities. He also wondered about the place of free will in a system where things are scientifically ordered with no variable outcome. This troubled him because of his belief in God. He agreed with the Newtonian belief that God created the universe then left it alone to operate according to the scientific laws that we discover. He felt that our sense of being free is an illusion and that it is only when we accept this that we can gain some measure of freedom. He also felt that we are both our bodies and souls which is like the Jewish teaching that our body is the soul in its outward form.

3. Spinoza has a particular philosophy that influenced many of his predecessors. This is that an individual should look at his problems in proportion to the influence they have on the big picture. This is particularly appealing because it helps put personal issues in perspective and make them seem smaller and more manageable. Another hugely influential philosophy of Spinoza’s was that of free speech. He felt that the foundation of a rational society should be free speech. These two attractive ideas influenced later philosophers such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. This is because his ethical ideas were easy to understand and hit a cord of truth that has stood up to the test of time. I personally agree with Spinoza’s claim that we are both mind and body. I think that without the body, the mind would be nothing. The body is simply an extension of the mind rather than being separate from it. I believe this because of bodily instincts that happen independently of conscious thought. I like the idea that we must recognize that we are not free before we gain a measure of mental freedom.

4. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a philosopher who shared Descartes’ and Spinoza’s propensity to look at the world through a mathematical lens. He was an accomplished mathematician who invented calculus and the concept of kinetic energy. He was incredibly forward-thinking and introduced many philosophical concepts that have continued to influence the world today. One of the most important of these was the explanation of the difference between analytic and synthetic statements. Analytic statements are statements which we can tell are true (or false) without having to look outside of them. For instance, if someone said that their mother is not a woman, we would know this to be false immediately, without having to check if their mother was female. This is because we know only women can bear children. On the other hand, if the statement was that their mother has long hair, it would be synthetic because we would have to check and see whether this is true. This is because synthetic statements are not inherently true or false, but could be either. This concept is important to philosophy because it determines which statements need to be examined as to whether or not they can be possible in this reality.

5. Leibniz believes that there are many possible realities that could have been created by God. However, he believes that because God is perfect, he picked the most perfect reality possible. This world may look imperfect because of the presence of evil, but in reality, it is perfect because of the presence of free will. Leibniz felt that even with the consequence of evil, a world with free will is better than a world in which free will does not exist (Magee, 1998).

References

De Rosa, R. (2013). Descartes' causal principle and the case of body-to-mind causation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 43(4), 438-459. doi:10.1080/00455091.2013.847347

Magee, B. (1998). The story of philosophy (pp. 84-99). New York, NY: DK Publishing.