Descartes

Descartes' Discours de la mÐ"©thode was published in 1637 and is still today considered being one of the most influential works in history associated with enlightenment thinking. In this essay I will show, by using examples of the text, that Descartes expresses two very different sides of himself in this work. On one hand one can see his immoderate ambition to finding the truth and one the other hand his extreme caution and permanent justification of his thoughts and theories.

The title and the introduction of Discours de la mÐ"©thode gives the reader a first impression of the tone of voice that Descartes uses throughout the work. The full title: Ð'« Discours de la mÐ"©thode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vÐ"©ritÐ"© dans les sciences Ð'» already shows that Descartes had immense ambitions to find out things that nobody has ever found out before and revolutionise the way of thinking. In the introduction he describes the way he has structured the discourse. One gets the impression that Descartes is fairly confident that he has successfully found the truth, a great method to conduct one's reason and even the proof of the existence of God. In my opinion one comes very quickly to the conclusion that this is the work of an extremely if not even overly ambitious man.

When looking at the six parts one can see a climax in the structure. Descartes starts very careful by describing the way he developed the method, then goes on to describing the method itself and his discourse comes to a climax in part three where Descartes claims to have found proof of the existence of God with the help of his new method. In part five he then goes on to explaining the movement of the human heart and the difference between the human soul and the soul of animals. By explaining exactly why he published this work in part six he shows, like in the beginning, how cautious he actually his. In this short introduction the reader gets a glimpse of what Descartes will explain in detail in the six parts and gets a first impression of how Descartes will go back and forth between being extremely careful about what he writes and being highly ambitious.

One can see an example of how modest Descartes can be in part one when he describes how he thinks that one does not need a superior mind to use his method and discover the truth and how he had often wished his mind was stronger than it is (beginning of paragraph 2). He is being very careful when saying the he "might be wrong" (paragraph 4) and that he only published his work to show what he found out but not to teach and persuade others to use it. He says he hopes he does not hurt anyone and that his openness will be appreciated. We can see here how Descartes tries to cover himself by claiming that this is his own opinion and he does not want to impose it on others. As he describes later in part six he was scared when he heard that Galileo was condemned by Rome in 1633 just when Descartes was thinking about publishing his work. It was a time when thinkers like Descartes had to be very careful not to upset the Church and possibly risk their lives by making their revolutionary views available to the public.

Towards the end of part one Descartes regains his confident and ambitious tone after having explained extensively how he had studied the Sciences but nothing had really satisfied his ambition to finding the truth. At the end of paragraph 14 he clearly states that he has always had a desire to learn the difference between the true and the false to obtain clarity and chose the right path. He abandoned all his study and decided the best way to find the truth was to look for it in himself and study "le grand livre du monde". This idea of self-mastery was very revolutionary during that time. It shows how ahead of his time Descartes was and one can only imagine how impossibly over ambitious and even foolish he will have seemed to other people during that time. In part two, paragraph 11 after Descartes has explained the method itself he describes how he realised that with this method we can discover everything we want to and nothing will be beyond our reach. This again shows his immense ambition. He is not content with small inventions or discoveries; he wants the ultimate truth and one method to solve any problems in the world. The fact that Descartes goes to such extreme measures like abandoning everything that he has learned to be true and rejecting everything as false unless he can prove it to be true and also his conviction to be able to find the truth in merely himself are in my opinion other examples of his over-ambition. He doubts everything and tries to find the ultimate solution to all problems in his own mind.

Part four is the part that struck me the most when looking for signs of Descartes "ambition dÐ"©mesurÐ"©e": he tries to prove the existence of God. Not accepting anything as true unless it was proven to be true also included not accepting that God existed which he therefore had to prove. I think that by trying to prove that God existed, Descartes entered a dangerous zone. It would have certainly been more dangerous to prove that God did not exist but even to prove His existence by reasoning and not merely belief was revolutionary. Already questioning His existence (even though Descartes was agreeing in the end that God did exist) would have made the Church very suspicious. One might argue on the other hand that Descartes might have included this chapter to please the Church, that might welcome the actual proof, but I think that is was very dangerous to even doubt the existence of God and that this chapter shows how far his ambition goes: