Rene Descartes
Essay by 24 • November 13, 2010 • 672 Words (3 Pages) • 1,270 Views
Since everything he had previously accepted as being absolutely true and
assured had been learned from or through his senses, which had sometimes
played him false, Rene Descartes believes to be certain only that which can be
indubitably proved to be so. Only then can something be established as firm and
constant in the sciences. Even arithmetic and geometry are open to doubt since
it is possible that God or an evil demon could be deceiving him into perceiving
them incorrectly. Descartes comes to the conclusion that he thinks and therefore he exists. This belief is proved to be a fact by his ability to express it or conceive of it in his mind.
Although we do make certain assumptions about the nature of the real world, such as its being continuous, bound by physics and linear, there is no way to prove these things as completely indubitable in the way Descartes intends. We cannot be certain that the real world actually exists the way that we perceive it to. But while it is possible to contemplate the nature of our existence the fact of it is inescapable.
Descartes believes himself to essentially be a mind, a thing that thinks and seeks to know itself. He maintains that while he is the being who apprehends and knows things by the sense organs, such as seeing light, hearing noise, and feeling heat, these things may indeed still be false. His body exists only in his
perceptions of it through the mind. But while the mind can exist without the body, the body cannot exist without the mind.
I believe myself to be a product of life’s longing to know itself. The word life as used here is interchangeable with what some refer to as God, or perfect love. In order for life to know itself as perfect, it had to become and experience itself as something other than perfect. Just as we could have no conception of cold unless we had experienced heat, the concept of perfection can only be experienced in relation to imperfection. And so love’s knowledge of itself gave birth to it’s experience, validating it’s existence. We are essentially
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