Human knowledge of surrounding reality has evolved gradually over a long period of time. What is now perceived as a boring mediocrity once looked in the eyes of contemporaries as a radical breakthrough, the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. So, once upon a time, in the distant Middle Ages, the philosophy of dualism of Descartes Rene was adopted. Some lifted her up, others cursed her.
But centuries have passed. Now they talk about Descartes quite rarely and very little. But rationalism once appeared from the theory of this French thinker. In addition, the philosopher was also known as an excellent mathematician. Many scientists created their concepts on the thoughts that Rene Descartes once wrote down. And his main works up to the present time are included in the treasury of human thought. After all, Descartes is the author of the theory of dualism.
Philosopher's Biography
R. Descartes was born at the end of the sixteenth century in France in a family of eminent and wealthy nobles. Being a representative of the privileged French estate, Rene received a magnificent education (both for that time and for the present) in his childhood in the best educational institutions in the country. First, he studied at the Jesuit College of La Flash, then graduated from the University of Poitiers. He was awarded a bachelor of law degree.
Gradually, the idea of the omnipotence of science (not God!) In this world matured. And in 1619, R. Descartes finally and irrevocably made a firm decision to engage only in science. Already at that time he managed to lay the foundations of philosophy. At the same time, Rene Descartes emphasized the thesis of the close interconnection of all natural and human sciences.
After that, he was introduced to the mathematician Mersenne, who had a great influence on Descartes (both as a philosopher and as a mathematician). His fruitful activity as a scientist began.
In 1637, his most famous work, written in French, was published, The Reasoning on the Method. From that moment, the dualism of Rene Descartes became justified, the new European rationalist philosophy of the new era began to develop .
Mind priority
Dualism in philosophy is both opposition and union of idealism and materialism. This is a worldview that considers in the human world the manifestation and struggle of two factors antagonistic to each other, their antagonism forms everything that is in reality. In this indissoluble pair there are conflicting principles: God and the world he created; white good and dark evil; the same opposite white and black, finally, inherent in all living things, light and darkness - it is this dualism in philosophy. It is the philosophical basis of the theory of psychophysical parallelism.
Moreover, the concept of the superiority of reason and its basic priority in the basis of scientific knowledge and ordinary life was proved by Descartes as follows: in the world there are too many different phenomena and works whose contents cannot be comprehended, it makes life difficult, but it makes it possible to raise doubts about what seems simple and clear. From this it is necessary to deduce the thesis that there will be doubts at all times and under any conditions. Doubt is manifested by the lot of thought - a person who knows how to rationally doubt can know how to think. In general, only a person who exists in reality is capable of thinking, which means that the ability of thinking will be the basis of both being and scientific knowledge. The ability to think is a function of the human mind. From this we must conclude that it is the human mind that will be the main root cause of everything that exists. Thus came the rationalism and dualism of Descartes.
Foundation of being
Like many of Descartes's theses, the doctrine of dualism is philosophically vague. In studying the philosophy of human existence, Descartes for some time was looking for a basic definition that would make it possible to determine all aspects of this term. As a result of lengthy reflection, he deduces the factor of philosophical substance. A substance (in his opinion) is something that can exist without someone else's help - that is, for the presence of a substance, nothing is fundamentally necessary except for its existence. But only one substance can have this property. It is she who is defined as God. It always exists, it is incomprehensible to man, omnipotent and is the absolute foundation of everything that exists.
So reasoned Descartes. In this regard, dualism does not show its duality as weakness, but, on the contrary, as a strong side of the concept.
Principle of thinking
The scientist makes human thinking the basis of all the principles of general philosophy and science. It carries out transformations that have a secret meaning and are extremely important for human development and its true culture up to our time. The essence of these actions is characteristic of the philosophical dualism of Descartes.
Since that time, not only important values such as spirituality - the foundation of man, but also the unconditionally immortal human soul aimed at the path to God have been put in the base of human life and activity, existence and action (this was a sign of the whole medieval concept). New in this was the fact that such values were directly related to the activity of a person, his freedom, independence, and at the same time, the responsibility of each member of society.
The importance of such a turn in human thought was clearly and clearly noted by Hegel, who pointed to Descartes' search for the essence of the scientist himself on the basis of his scientific and even moral principles. Hegel pointed out that the overwhelming number of thinkers found the authority of the Christian church as a normalizing feature, but Descartes did not.
Thus, dualism in philosophy was one of the first and softest attempts to push aside the religious component in philosophy.
Cognitive principle
"I think, therefore, I exist." Similarly, philosophical science again found its own realistic soil. They decided that human thinking comes from the same thinking as from something necessary, materially reliable in itself, and not from a foggy external one.
The speculative philosophical form of rationalistic dualism by Rene Descartes, into which this global reform was wrapped up for the human being, did not isolate truly comprehensive social and great spiritual and moral results for her contemporaries and some descendants. Thinking helped the thinking person to consciously form his own Self, to remain free and at the same time responsible in thought and work, while considering himself not constrained by moral bonds and responsibility for any other thinking creature on Earth.
Although the scientist made only one indisputable statement - about the direct existence of the thinker, but in this thesis of Descartes' philosophy of dualism a large number of ideas are combined, some of them (in particular, mathematical) have a high understanding as ideas of human thinking.
Implementation Method
The French medieval philosopher R. Descartes solved the problem of correlation of real and ideal with the following method: in the framework of our thinking there is a concept of God as an absolutely Perfect Being. But all the previous experience of living people suggests that we humans, although rational, are still limited and far from perfect. And the question arises: "How did this not very simple concept get such recognition and further development?"
Descartes considers the only correct idea is that this idea itself was inspired by a person from outside, and its author, creator, is the almighty God who created people and put into the human mind the concept of himself as an absolutely Perfect Being. But this clear thesis also implies the need for an external world environment as an object of human cognition. After all, God cannot lie to his children, he created the world, obeying constant laws and understandable to the human mind, which he also created. And he cannot but allow people to study his creation.
Thus, God himself is made by Descartes a certain guarantor of understanding in the future by man of the world and the objectivity of this knowledge. Blind reverence for the almighty God flows into greater trust in the existing mind. Thus, Descartes manifests faith in God. Dualism appears as a forced weakness, turning into a strong side.
Production Substances
This concept was considered quite widely by Descartes. He considered dualism not only from the material side, but also from the idealistic component. Almighty God was once a creator who created the surrounding world, which, like God, shares his essence into substances. His own substances created by him are also able to be on their own, independently of other derivatives. They are autonomous, only touching each other. And in relation to the almighty God - only derivatives.
The concept of Descartes divides secondary substances into the following areas:
- material substances;
- spiritual components.
In the future, he identifies the signs of both directions of existing substances. For example, for material substances this is a usual material attraction, for spiritual substances - thinking. Rene Descartes dualism of the soul and body connects and shares at the same time.
In his thoughts, the scientist notes that a person is formed from both spiritual and ordinary material substances. It is by such signs that people are separated from other living unreasonable beings. These reflections push the idea of dualism or the duality of human nature. Descartes points out that there is no particular reason to look for a difficult answer to the question that interests many people about what might be the root cause of the appearance of the world and man: their consciousness or acquired matter. Both of these substances are combined in only one person, and since he is dualistic by nature (God), they in fact cannot be the real root cause. They existed all the time and can be all kinds of sides of the same being. Their interdependence is clearly visible and visible to everyone.
Cognition
One of the questions of philosophy that Descartes developed was about the method of cognition. Considering the problems of human knowledge, the philosopher constructs his main base for the search for knowledge precisely on the scientific method. He suggests that the latter has been used for quite some time in such fields as mathematical, physical and other sciences. But unlike them, in philosophy such methods are not applied. Consequently, continuing the scientist’s thought, it’s quite permissible to indicate that when using the methods of other natural sciences, one will be able to see something unknown and useful in philosophy. As a scientific method, Descartes adopted deduction.
At the same time, the doubt with which the scientist began his reflections is not a firm position of an agnostic, but only a preliminary methodological method of cognition. You can not believe that there is an external world, and even that there is a human body. But doubt itself in these terms undoubtedly exists. Doubt can be perceived as one of the methods of thinking: I do not believe, that is, I think, and since I think, it means that I still exist.
In this regard, the most important problem was to see the obvious truths that underlie all human knowledge. Here Descartes proposes to solve the problem, taking as a basis methodological doubt. Only with its help can one find truths that one cannot doubt a priori. It must be pointed out that the test for certainty is given very stringent requirements that in advance exceed those that completely satisfy a person, even if they are studying mathematical axioms. After all, the correctness of the latter can easily be doubted. In this case, it is necessary to determine such truths in which it is impossible to doubt.
Axioms
The philosophical concept of Descartes is basically based on the flow of the innate principles of the doctrine of being. The dualism of Descartes, his understanding of essence - lies in the fact that, on the one hand, people gain some of the knowledge in the course of some kind of training, but on the other, there are those that are indisputable without cognition; to understand them, you do not need to teach nor even look for facts and evidence. Such inborn facts (or theses) received the name of axioms from Descartes. In turn, such axioms are divided into concepts or judgments. The scientist gave examples of similar terms:
- Concepts: almighty God, human soul, ordinary number.
- Judgments: it is impossible to exist and not exist at the same time, the whole in the object will always be larger than its part, only ordinary nothing can succeed from nothing.
This is the concept of Descartes. Dualism is visible both in concepts and in judgments.
The essence of the philosophical method
Descartes defines his doctrine of the method in four clear points:
- You can not believe anything without verification, especially if you are not completely sure of something. It is necessary to shun any haste and prejudice, to take into the content of his theory only that which the mind sees so clearly and distinctly, so as not to provoke any reason for doubt in any case.
- Fragment any problem taken for research into as many parts as are necessary for its best resolution.
- Putting your ideas in a specific sequence, starting with the most uncomplicated and easily recognizable theses, and gradually complicate the text, as if at certain steps, to the presentation of the most difficult thoughts, assuming a clear structure even among those sentences that are not naturally connected with each other.
- Constantly create lists of descriptions so thorough and reviews so clear as to be sure that nothing is left aside.
Conclusion
What is the dualism of Descartes? For this scientist, the often interpreted “thinking” so far only vaguely combines such concepts that in the future will be clearly outlined as consciousness. But the framework of the emerging concept of consciousness is already looming on the philosophical scientific horizon. Understanding of their future actions is the main in the light of the Cartesian concept of a distinctive feature of thinking, intelligent human acts.
The thesis that a person has a body is Descartes and is not going to deny. As a specialist physiologist, he always studied man. But as a philosopher of his time, he firmly maintains that the significance of people is not at all that they possess a material, “material” body and can, like an automaton, produce purely physical actions and individual movements. And even though the natural course of the life of the human body is a reason without which any thinking is incapable of going, our life acquires a definite significance only when thinking begins, that is, the “movement” of rational thought. And then comes the next, clearly predetermined step of Descartes' research - the transition from the thesis "I think" to the definition of the essence of the Self, that is, the essence of the whole intelligent person.
It is worth noting that this French philosopher was a representative of pragmatic, and not abstract, "theoretical" knowledge. He believed that the essence of man should be improved.
Mainly, the philosopher Descartes in the history of science is known for substantiating the importance of reason in the course of cognition, formulating a theory of thoughts born, and advanced the doctrine of substances, principles and attributes. He also became the author of the concept of dualism. Most likely, by publishing this theory, the scientist tried to bring together idealists and materialists fiercely upholding their views.
Grades and memory
In honor of the scientist named his hometown, a crater on the moon and even an asteroid. The name of Descartes also has a number of the following terms: Cartesian oval, Cartesian leaf, Cartesian tree, Cartesian product, Cartesian coordinate system and so on. Physiologist Pavlov erected a monument-bust of Descartes near his laboratory.