Descartes walks into a bar.
The bartender walks up to him and says, “Would you care for a drink?”
Descartes replies, “I think not.” and promptly disappears.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician and is still, to this very day, is widely regarded as, and according to Russell quite rightly so, the "father of modern philosophy." His work conveys an easy, unpedantic nature, coupled with a discoverer’s curiosity, a healthy and vital set of qualities for a philosopher. Although attacked with allegations of atheism by the protestants, once in Holland( where the freedom of speculation right was in order), Descartes was able to fully concentrate on his philosophy, mathematics and science, the first two of which are hugely in debt to his incredibly important findings. In mathematics, Descartes developed the notion of co-ordinates. In philosophy, he was one of the most influential substance dualist. He discarded Aristotelian ideas which were dominant for 2000 years, and stated that the body was governed by physical law and the mind was separated from matter. He did this through what is now known as Cartesian doubt in which he doubted everything, including his own existence, which he said could be the result of an evil demon’s sneaky trickery. He then went on to state that a demon could not trick him if he did not exist. Although our external world and everything in it can be put in doubt, the existence of our mind cannot. He developed this from “corgeto ergo sum” (I think therefore I am), which basically stated that one cannot doubt that one thinks because to doubt is to think. Hobbes objected to this by stating, and I quote, “It may be that the thing that thinks is subject to which mind, reason or intellect belong, and this subject may be something corperal”.
The bartender walks up to him and says, “Would you care for a drink?”
Descartes replies, “I think not.” and promptly disappears.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician and is still, to this very day, is widely regarded as, and according to Russell quite rightly so, the "father of modern philosophy." His work conveys an easy, unpedantic nature, coupled with a discoverer’s curiosity, a healthy and vital set of qualities for a philosopher. Although attacked with allegations of atheism by the protestants, once in Holland( where the freedom of speculation right was in order), Descartes was able to fully concentrate on his philosophy, mathematics and science, the first two of which are hugely in debt to his incredibly important findings. In mathematics, Descartes developed the notion of co-ordinates. In philosophy, he was one of the most influential substance dualist. He discarded Aristotelian ideas which were dominant for 2000 years, and stated that the body was governed by physical law and the mind was separated from matter. He did this through what is now known as Cartesian doubt in which he doubted everything, including his own existence, which he said could be the result of an evil demon’s sneaky trickery. He then went on to state that a demon could not trick him if he did not exist. Although our external world and everything in it can be put in doubt, the existence of our mind cannot. He developed this from “corgeto ergo sum” (I think therefore I am), which basically stated that one cannot doubt that one thinks because to doubt is to think. Hobbes objected to this by stating, and I quote, “It may be that the thing that thinks is subject to which mind, reason or intellect belong, and this subject may be something corperal”.
His ontological argument uses the reductio ad absurdam approach (reduction to absurdity), he argues that God’s existence can be proved through his nature. As God is supremely perfect, and existence itself is perfection, God must exist, as if he did not, he would not be perfect. Descartes remained scholastic in his philosophy, and Russell argues that this approach left his work somewhat inconsistent, but nevertheless, of huge importance.
Although Russell often doubts Spinoza’s philosophy, his fondness for him is evident as he claims that he was in fact “ethically supreme”, and was one of the very few who practiced his own doctrines, and was not swayed by the promise of money (he actually rejected 1000 florents a year, which he was offered to take back his philosophical claims) In The Ethics, he deals with metaphysics (the main premises of which are based on Descarte’s work), psychology (mirroring that of Hobbes) and finally, ethics, on which his work was wholly original. He believed essentially in Pantheism, in that everything is a manifestation of God’s ideas, that all is good because God is good and he would not create evil. Once addressed with the question of the existence of sin, Spinoza simply stated that all that is considered a sin is in fact a part of a whole, which can only be seen by God himself who is not limited by time and space as he exists outside of it. We are unable to see this “whole” as we are distracted by our passions; abstract and obscure in their nature. He stated that the concept of time was in fact unreal, and dates are irrelevant. A natural disaster in current day is no more or no less relevant than one say, a thousand years ago. This is because once again, he placed emphasis on the “whole picture”, which only God can view. He preached (and practiced, as he was jovial and calm on the day of his own death), that since a man’s obsession with death cannot make him immortal, his obsession leaves him bounded. In order to be free, one must accept one’s mortality. Rather hippy in his mentality, he also believed (rather naively some would argue-especially Russell), that hatred is increased by being reciprocated and can only be destroyed by love. Unlike Russell’s account of Spinoza, his ideas on Leibniz are swayed towards the negative and could be in danger of ad hominem. However, he goes on to express Leibniz’s ideas with little prejudice.
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