Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (Part IV)

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Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (Part IV)

Rene Descartes introduces to the reader that he is no doubt the propriety of the meditation on “Discourse on the method”. Descartes compares the thoughts people experience when they are dreaming and the thought they have when they are awake in trying to understand the geometry of the existence of object in the real world and which hitherto, is the founding father of the metaphysic certitude. Besides Descartes, great philosophers such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon challenged authorities which were deeply rooted in the society during the age of enlightenment and, used social and cultural aspects some of the historical changes known today. During the Age of Reason, there were a lot of talks by the philosophers to liberate people from the dogmatic state of ignorance and the affinity for democracy, as well as the monarchy of the Catholic Church. As such, philosophers used social and cultural tools as the music and the philosophy of arts which have shaped and defined the Western cultures. In Part IV of “Discourse on the Method”, Descartes considers everything can be made false (Descartes, 2012).

However, there has been the need to understand the development of philosophical thoughts from the great philosophers. For example, Aristotelian culture of arts has been important when comparing the enterprise of Descartes and Aristotle in understanding the existence of God. During the Age of Enlightenment, the dominant element of intellectualism led to major developments in the realm of knowledge and release of man from the catholic culture in the year 1783. For instance, the Enlightenment was generated for the purpose of a political goal in order to break away the largely shared culture of core faith, tradition and authority. Up to date, there have been historical developments that trace their way to the Renaissance period and which have contributed to the modern cultures. For example, the monarchy culture that was practiced during the Renaissance period has evolved to liberal and democratic cultures in the modern society (Pancaldi, 2005).

I have found the words Descartes uses are very oblique. At the end of part IV of the topic on “Discourse on Methods”, Descartes has used the symmetry of the dreams and reality thoughts to proof the existence of God. He presents a more slanting explanation of the existence of God which leaves the reader perplexed. Descartes use of the words such as “ordinary error of dreams” to explain how the geometer militates sleep against the truth. He surprise me we he explains that unlike the Infinite Being, our unconscious senses are often prejudicial to our external senses. It is this infallible nature of the immaculate Infinite Being that demonstrates how much the humans are different from Him. Surprisingly, we lack the continuum of thoughts from sleep to awakening and for this reason, we are infrequently deceived in the manner we understand truth and Reason. Descartes introduces the reader to understand the existence of infinite power beyond our understanding. Nonetheless, he further surprise me when he there things we will never understand because we cannot be certain whether we understand what is truth and Reason. He uses the sun to explain that we only imagine how big it is, but we are never certain if our Reason presents the truth about the sun. Further, he explains that we understand the weight of truth only by how much our senses of sight present, same way we can think and believe chimæra exists. Eventually, he concludes that we cannot escape from our impartial imperfection since the truth in our dreams is never transcended to our waking moments (Descartes, 2012).

References

Descartes, R. (2012). Discourse on the Method. New York, NY: Start Publishing LLC

Pancaldi, G. (2005). Volta: Science and ulture in the Age of Enlightenment. New Jersey:

Princeton University Press