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Rene descartes philosophy summary reflection
Rene descartes philosophy summary reflection
Life and works of rene descartes
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If we go back to school days and think about the “trouble kid”, the pal who make us get into troubles, the one who complicates everything, we could think about Rene Descartes in that way! Until his works, the world of philosophy was driven for a natural thought: we can think about things that we see and trust in our thoughts. The philosophy went from object that appeared to subject that thought it. After Descartes, there is a big turn, because after him, we cannot trust naturally in our mind, we have to put everything parenthesis, doubt about everything and we are the constructors of the reality, philosophy goes from subject who think to object thought, and this is a big problem! But, that discussing about that trouble goes too far from our porpoise in this brief biography. He is the hinge who closes the door of the medieval world and opens the modern one!
Born in in La Haye in the Touraine (now this little town is named Descartes), Indre-et-Loire, France in March 31st, 1596 from a noble family: Joachim, a lawyer, and Jeanne, who died when he was thirteen months old. He spent his first years with his grandmother and his older brother and sister, Pierre and Jeanne. The little Descartes grew up in a careful environment given his sickly character. At the age of 8 years, he moved to the city La Fléche to attend the prestigious Jesuit school until 1614, where he would studied grammar, latin and greek, classical literature in depth, physics and mathematics, and also would be impregnated by the philosophy of Aristotle, but already filtered by the scholastic view. By that time the city and the intellectual world which surrounds him was moved by the discovery of the moons of Jupiter by Galileo Galilee, in 1610. Like his father and some ot...
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...ce, matemathics, physics, biology, and geometry dismember from the trunk of philosophy and begin their path as separate science. But, more in deep, he is the founder of the Idealism, the system which begins a new era in philosophy, because in the ancient and in the medieval philosophy they believe in the existence of things, res, by them self, independent of me; but with Descartes, we start to believe in the existence of things only if they are related to me, if they exist I my mind, thus giving birth to a new way to see the life, a new way to approach the world, which will be materialized later in the French Revolution, where the personal believes trump over the believes given by god.
In conclusion, Descartes is one of the biggest thinkers of all times, changing the way we see the world, the way we understand religion, funding new ways to understand objects, etc.
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.
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
Before students can judge others ideologies they must understand the philosopher first. Rene Descartes, the father of modern western philosophy, was born in 1596 to French parents. Rene Descartes excelled in mathematics. By 1616 Descartes received his baccalaureate and became a licensed lawyer. In 1618 Descartes joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. During his service Descartes never saw combat, but while in the service he was able to travel and explore the world. During his time in Germany Descartes began to inquire about life’s hardest questions regarding logic, reasoning, arithmetic, God and knowledge. By the early 1830’s Descartes continued his conquest of knowledge; he secluded himself from all temptations and began to write. Descartes
Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 1996.
Rene Descartes was a philosopher credited as the “Father of Modern Philosophy.” He was given this title because of his impeccable ideas he continuously came up with. He is well-known for his many famous pieces such including his very own Descartes Mediations 1 and 2. In these pieces he discusses how he came about his ideas of “I think, therefore I am.” His way of thinking is incredible and far from a normal humans perspective.
4. Descartes, Rene, and Roger Ariew. Meditations, objections, and replies. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2006. Print.
...s" and the "Father of Modern Rationalism." His system of deductive reasoning has been adapted to almost every field of study. His major contributions to the field of math were the Cartesian coordinate system, the exponent, and the development of analytical geometry. His major contributions to the field of philosophy were the "cogito," the system of doubt, and the classical ontological proof of God. Descartes has influenced thought throughout the ages. His works, especially Meditations, Geometry, and his Discourse on Method have become classics. Rene Descartes, although he died at the premature age of 54, was a great mathematician and philosopher well disciplined in all genres. He will always be best remembered for proving his own existence by the statement, "I think, therefore I am."
In conclusion, Descartes efforts in changing the traditional way of learning where not so successful, but because he had such unique ways of thinking he was considered the father of modern philosophy. I think because of his confusing thoughts of doubting everything even thing that may be 100% correct to still doubt it and then saying to forget get all about the doubting to prove that (i.e. God) something is really. I personally do not think this is a logical when of learning.
Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings, tr. John Cottingham and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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
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.
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.
In conclusion, the initiation in philosophy of methodological scepticism will constitute, after Descartes, becoming the obsessive theme of reflection of modern philosophy. Descartes’ mediations are the ones which expose the results of metaphysics based on principles. For the building of this philosophy those principles must be absolute certain. Descartes realises this and doubts all his previous knowledge, not to reach a sceptical conclusion but to find absolute certain elements beyond doubt, allowing him to find the foundation on which he can build the rest of his thinking.
...ll true knowledge is solely knowledge of the self, its existence, and relation to reality. René Descartes' approach to the theory of knowledge plays a prominent role in shaping the agenda of early modern philosophy. It continues to affect (some would say "infect") the way problems in epistemology are conceived today. Students of philosophy (in his own day, and in the history since) have found the distinctive features of his epistemology to be at once attractive and troubling; features such as the emphasis on method, the role of epistemic foundations, the conception of the doubtful as contrasting with the warranted, the skeptical arguments of the First Meditation, and the cogito ergo sum--to mention just a few that we shall consider. Depending on context, Descartes thinks that different standards of warrant are appropriate. The context for which he is most famous, and on which the present treatment will focus, is that of investigating First Philosophy. The first-ness of First Philosophy is (as Descartes conceives it) one of epistemic priority, referring to the matters one must "first" confront if one is to succeed in acquiring systematic and expansive knowledge.
We can apply Rene Descartes philosophy to our everyday lives because we can make a difference. We can analyze what we do in our daily lives and we can make a difference finding the truth about life. I personally like the philosophy of Rene Descartes even though his philosophy is considered to be epistemological and it has zero ground. His philosophy can help our community by making us look at reality in a different way. Even if his philosophy is considered to be irrational, we should take in mind what he mediated in his meditation