Descartes' Philosophy

The Renaissance was not a revolution of new thoughts, but rather a discovery of old ones. So it is Descartes' complete thrusting aside of old thought, both of medieval and antiquated times that mark the beginning of the modern era. His quote, cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am," helped give birth to individualistic philosophy as, at its heart, it seperates the individual from all other things - society, class and religion in particular - and places this individual at the centre of things.

I think it was confusion that led Descartes to his revelation: neither education nor experience gave him clarity on anything, as philosophies and cultures conflicted so radically from one place to another. "I think, therefore I am," is a universal truth, and the one thing we can be sure about. Descartes doubted everything, discarding everything that could be doubted, until he came to doubt his own existence. Descartes proves his existence with the phrase "I think, therefore I am," which states that if he did not exist, he would not be able to question his own existence, and so therefore, as he thinks to question his existence, he must exist.

Descartes was quite a revolutionary thinker. He broke free from the fixation philosophy up until then had had with the antiquated ideas of Aristotle and Plato and pushed forward this new philosophy which I think is still, to some extent, relevant in today's very individualistic society. That's not to say his philosophy was perfect, because there were certainly some very large holes in them. His proof of God's existence does not really fit in with the individualistic ideology and seems to me more like he was trying to reconcile his newfound ideas with his own beliefs and avoid the Church's wrath, and his ideas on the seperation of mind & body and humans & animals can be easily proved wrong with modern science.

His idea, that our God-given mind will never betray us whilst our body and senses may does not really stand when we cannot even prove that the 'mind' exists - to the best of our knowledge, thoughts are the result of reactions going on in the brain between two or more neurons. Where does body end and mind begin? Not to mention that our perceptions of such things vary between individuals. If I saw a cat from the corner of my eye, then turned to face it and discovered it was a bag instead, I would think that, as what I see is my brain's interpretation of visual data it receives from my eyes, my mind has deceived me, but Descartes would surely say that his eyes deceived him. He claims also that we are seperate from animals due to our minds, whilst they are 'automata' - biological machines and nothing more. But it's been proven that cats dream in their sleep, and observed that orangutans use primitive tools to hunt. Human consciousness and ingenuity isn't unique - just a step ahead of the rest of the animal kingdom.

Descartes had one brilliant idea, which is that "I think, therefore I am," and we can look to him as the very beginning of modern philosophy and outlooks on life, but I don't think he quites fits in modernity - though he doesn't fit in with the Renaissance (antiquated) philosophy either. I think he's somewhere in between the two ways of thought, and it's not until Locke and Newton introduce us into the philosophy of empiricism and the age of science that a relateably modern outlook can be found.