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Augustine Vs. Kant Essay

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From Aristotle to Immanuel Kant, philosophy and knowledge has changed throughout history. Philosophy is one of the most controversial subjects and is constantly debated. While there are many people of different philosophical standpoints, certain ideas have dictated the past, dictate the present, and will shape the future. The leading figures in philosophy subtly influence society, and few have done this more profoundly than Rene Descartes. Often considered the father of modern philosophy, Descartes’ ideas are wide ranging and greatly affected the way people thought. His contributions to philosophy have trickled down through the centuries and present themselves in philosophy today. Philosophy is the art of establishing and justifying principles …show more content…

Augustine was a Catholic who supported evangelism, however his ideas pertained to non-Christian groups as well. His conjecture was a driving force in the realm of philosophy because of his support of a higher power or an eternal law. St. Augustine and other medieval writers broke with Aristotle’s philosophy in some instances, but retained many of the foundational ideas. One of the most critical differences was the assertion of a moral code rather than the wisdom of man. St. Augustine promoted the idea that happiness was attained through moral goodness, and that this goodness came through obeying an eternal code that applies to all of mankind. He also believed that the government should base their laws off of the eternal law (Celano, 2014, para. 2-21). The idea of an eternal code was the main focus of the writers in medieval times.
The philosophy of the medieval writers lived through the Renaissance and Age of Absolutism to create the thinking that Rene Descartes would eventually overturn. Called Scholasticism, it focused on senses and evaluating the world based on obvious truths. It closely modeled Aristotelian principles of sensing the external world while following an eternal code; it molded Descartes into the great thinker he was (Skirry, n.d., p. …show more content…

First, the basket is emptied of all the apples. Next, only the choice apples are put back in. The rotten apples are left out of the basket, and there are no spoiled apples in the basket. Descartes thought that it was better to exclude some truths in a foundation for knowledge than to include the slightest error. One of the biggest criticisms of Descartes is that certainty is too high a standard to reach. Many philosophers of the time thought that he used too much doubt in his pursuit of knowledge, but it did not bother Descartes (Newman, 2014, p. 4-9). It is also good to note that despite what he appears to think, Descartes is not a skeptic because he does not believe that all ideas are false, he just temporarily assumes them to be (Skirry, n.d., p. 10). Even though absolute certainty may seem like an impossible concept to a skeptic, Rene Descartes actually proved a foundation of knowledge without using any doubt in his book, Discourse on the

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