Understanding Cartesian Metaphysics ( A very Short Overview)
Descartes, R., Miller, V. R., & Miller, R. P. (1983). Principles of philosophy. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel.
Understanding Cartesianism
It refers to the philosophy of Rene Descartes, who attempted to fill the deficiencies of philosophy through the inclusion of concept ‘Substance’ as God. The Cartesian metaphysics have the following explanations:
1. How we could understand the union of ‘Mind and body’ in human beings given that mind and body are two distinct substances?
2. Of what term ‘Substance’ means as applied to God on one hand and to mind and body on the other?
3. How bodies can be impenetrable, and so move one another by impulse, given that the essence of body is extension?
4. The nature of ideas given that, they are particular things that occur in us on the occasion of our sense organs being stimulated on one hand and we have ideas of what general words signify on the other.
5. Of our being justified in believing in the existence of the external material things given that, we are no immediately aware about them.
Basically, it was these explanations that brought subject-object dualism and thus, gave birth to Cartesian dualism. Cartesian dualism is a theory of Rene Descartes that stresses on two created substances: mind, the essence of which is thinking and matter, the essence of which is extension.[1] Moreover, it was Rene Descartes and the writings of Immanuel Kant that laid down the foundations of Modern philosophy. In his famous book ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ Kant famously remarked ‘truth is formally an agreement of knowledge with its object, but that since the object of knowledge varies, the content of knowledge also varies. So, it is quite impossible and is absurd to ask for the general test of truth.’ [2]
Basically, Descartes founded the principles of knowledge from the spirit of reason — two reasons will be sufficient for that purpose. Firstly, these principles are vivid and clear. Secondly, all the other things can be deduced from them. In this regard, human mind must doubt in everything, if it wished to draw some conclusions from these principles. Doubting everything could only generate reason from the unknown. Moreover, it is a fact that mind is the first principle that explores everything and for this purpose, Descartes explored the fundamental principles of nature; the way in which heavens, the fixed stars, the planet, and the comets and generally the universe is composed. Likewise, the whole principle of Rene Descartes aims at ascending to the highest stage of wisdom and these principles initiate the new trends in human reasoning from all aspects. The principles are as follow:
1. That whoever is inquiring after the truth, must once in life, must doubt all things, insofar as this is possible.
2. Those doubtful things must furthermore be held to be false — it is all about being certain and must easy to know.
3. This doubt meanwhile not to be adopted for the conduct of life — doesn’t chose alternatives for the conduct of life.
4. Why we can doubt perceptible things? Here we are only with seeking the truth and it is not clear that the perceptible and imaginable things do exists.
5. Why we can even doubt mathematical demonstrations because it is Substance, nature or God, whose demonstrations are perfect.
6. We must not doubt our existence, perhaps, this is the first thing, we know by philosophizing in the correct order.[3]
Based on the following principles of knowledge, the philosophy of Rene Descartes can be sketched in the following way:
1. According to Descartes first principle of knowledge, we have to hang the whole universe as well as the God.
2. In this way, the universe must become the plurality of thoughts.
3. Matter owes its existence to perception.
4. Matter is dependent on knowledge for their existence.
5. Our own bodies are elements in the external world.
6. Idealism itself stands revealed as the self-devouring cormorant of philosophy.
7. Every person must enjoy the ‘ecstasy of intellectualism — the intoxicated speculation.[4]
On the contrary, Descartes principles of philosophy gave birth to the question of existence and being — though Descartes speculated the aspects of self and being in the context of substance and abstract objects but his writings paved the way for the emergence of Kantian metaphysics. According to Spinoza, substance means which is in itself and is conceived through itself — here itself means substance is self-sufficient and is able to exist independently of anything else. Likewise, through [For]-itself means we can think of substance without thinking of anything else. Moreover, for satisfaction there is only one substance that exists, Descartes called it God or nature, which is absolutely infinite and having infinite attributes.[5] The question of ‘being’ was raised by Aristotle 2500 years ago in his untitled manuscript, which was latter called ‘metaphysics’ because for Aristotle, Science investigates ‘Being as such’, without regard to any specific realm of being. Basically, he mingled both the living and non-living part along with the natural world. Likewise, if we move to expanded version on the discourse of ‘being’, then for philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard, St Augustine and Luther, then ‘ it is relation to God that self finds itself’. But for philosophers like Heidegger and Nietzsche, we must confront with our own death by making meaning out of the ‘finitude’. As Nietzsche asserts, in the process of grasping finitude ‘one knows what one is’ — the eclipse of the final destination, which is the shadow of death upon life.
[1] Cogito ergo sum [Latin]: I think, therefore I am.
[2] Kritik der reinen Vernunft — Critique of pure Reason published in 1781, in which Kant deconstructed the metaphysics of Rene Descartes and his discourse of method. Through this work Kant raised a question ‘How do I know? The objects of metaphysics (God, I and the world) –to trace the answer of this question Kant makes two crucial distinctions between a ‘Priori and Posteriori’ and between analytic and synthetic judgment. Here according to Kant, the Posteriori knowledge refers to the knowledge, which is gained through experience while a priori knowledge refers to the knowledge, which is gained independent of experience that is universal such as our knowledge of mathematics. For Kant, science and mathematical principles are synthetic, priori knowledge — for example, the rule ‘9+2=10’ is a priori because it is universal and it is synthetic because the concept ‘10’ is not contained in the concept of ‘ 9+2’.
[3] Though, we can imagine that there is no God, no heaven, no material bodies but imagination does not mean that whatever, we perceive is true — maybe, this thinking does not exist. According to this knowledge, Descartes reiterates; ‘I think therefore I am’ is the first and most certain principle in philosophizing the correct order.
There is also a philosophical description that; ‘The world was made for the successful solution of God’s own tensions and confusions’. For philosophers like Frederich Nietzsche, who proclaimed ‘God is dead’, morality in this view became a mere fabrication for the purpose of things; at best as an artistic fiction and at worst as an outrageous imposture. In this regard, according to Nietzsche the Christian assertion ‘nothing counts except moral values’ –is the supreme danger to humanity.
[4] It was Saint Augustine theory of ‘Divine illumination’ which popularly asserted that ‘he who is not certainly is not deceived; therefore, if I am deceived, I am. Basically, Saint Augustine divine illumination is counter-thesis of Descartes famous cogito.
[5] For David Hume, ‘our perceptions are our only objects; he claimed this in his famous work ‘treatise on human nature’. On the contrary, the concept of critical realism also emerged with the emergence of positivists, which assert that the idealists and naïve realists’ claim about human consciousness are wrong. Moreover, the critical realists oppose the former for its view that ‘what we perceive is our own mental furniture (sense data/datum) and the latter for supposing that we grasp the physical world directly’. Therefore, the Critical Realists assert that ‘our perceiving and cognizing as conveying the external world to us’.
On the contrary, whenever we talk about the Logic whether propositional or formal then we are required to grasp the relationship between universality, necessity and apodicity — this refers to the eidetic spheres, the foundation of pure science such as pure logic, pure physics, pure mathematics and pure reason. [The Eidetic-affair complex emerges whenever there is a relationship gap between universality, necessity and apodicity].
