Descartes - Discourse on Method

Discourse I The Problem

• Questions traditional (Renaissance) education in letters (Humanities)
  • The need for certainty
  • Why can't philosophers agree on truth?
  • Preference for mathematics
• Studies "book of the world"

Discourse II The Method

• Where perfection may be found
• Method of Doubt
  • 1. Accept nothing as true
  • 2. Divide into as many smaller units
  • 3. Analyze from simplest to most complex
  • 4. Omit nothing

Discourse III The Moral Code

• Before doubting the need established for a moral code
• Examples of the Code
• Importance of the code

Discourse IV The Doubting

• Proves his own existence at the outset
  • The senses and their ability to deceive us
  • Cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am
  • Forms the Mind-body dualism
• And God…?
  • God as perfection
  • Man as imperfection
• The nature of God vs the nature of man
• Distinction between Reason and Imagination

Discourse V Man's Supremacy

• The nature of animal
  • Corporal body as machine - a clock metaphor
  • The soul and its existence
  • Essay on the body machine
• Implications on immorality of the soul

Beyond Descartes

• Leibniz (1646 - 1716)
• The Principle of Sufficient Reason
  • "…for any occurrence, a being with sufficient knowledge would be able to give a reason sufficient to explain why it is as it is and not otherwise."
  • The Cartesian context
  • The future misapplication
  • The Enlightenment criticism

Humanities Resource of Mark Hunter