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Rene Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

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“Je pense, donc je suis.” This French philosophical statement means, I think, therefore I am which was written in Rene Descartes’ text, Discourse on Method. In this quote, Descartes has is denying everything he believes in. Meaning, “Regardless of whether or not he is being deceived, or his beliefs are wrong, he is able to see that if he has the ability to doubt something, he must be existing to even doubt it in the first place ((Un) Enlightened English par 3).” Because Descartes can think, it guarantees his own existence. Descartes continues his examination of reality without doubting that he is by all means existing. On the 31st of March, 1596, Rene Descartes, known as “The Father of Modern Philosophy”, was born in La Haye, France to …show more content…

He produced works such as, Treatise on the World, but withheld its publication along with the censorship of Galileo’s work by the Catholic Church in 1633. However, Rene succeeded in producing part of the writings in his essays namely La Géométrie, La Dioptrique and Les Météores. After living a generous amount of time in the Dutch Republic, Rene returned to France in 1622. There, he continued to write, and later presented his work, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), which is taught as a standard text in universities today, and Principles of Philosophy (1644) on metaphysics. In the text, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes analyzes a process called methodological doubt. He realizes that at any moment he could be dreaming and his concept of existing is not real and can no longer trust his senses. Descartes concludes that a God does exist because someone had to create his mind. He resolves that his mind is too perfect and too complex which means it had to have been created by something greater than him, or man in this case. In his novel, Passions of the Soul (1649), Rene writes about psychology and morality topics thanks to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. He argued that moral philosophy must include the study …show more content…

Therefore, our structure is a machine and we do crave and desire material virtues. Although Descartes was unique in his philosophic ideas and discoveries, he also played a profound role in the world of mathematics. Known as "the father of analytical geometry", Rene invented the Cartesian coordinate system where he connected the bridge between algebra and geometry. After all of Rene Descartes’ legendary works were created and made known, he became very sick of pneumonia. He was traveling to Sweden in September 1649 to meet Queen Christina. He was asked to rise at 5:00am to greet her. Unlike his usual late bloom, Rene decided to meet the Queen early that morning and caught pneumonia. Rene Descartes died in Sweden on February 11, 1650. Rene made many discoveries and led to the advancement of two major subject in the world those of which are mathematics and philosophy. Descartes' most important theology was the existence of God. He believed God had absolute freedom in the world's creation and its living things. Because of this, Descartes was greatly looked down upon by the empiricist schools of thoughts, which included Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Today Descartes has influenced many philosophers, changing the way they

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