Rene Descartes 'Meditations'

‘Meditations’ Review Rene Descartes’ meditations made me remind ‘Great Instauration’ of Bacon. Both of them wanted to strip an old and false knowledge and to gain a new and certain knowledge. However, the way to approach their goal is pretty different. Descartes, in the first meditation, explains that he studied a variety of studies during his lifetime, and judges the studies; ‘For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors…’. An interesting point is a conclusion of his skeptical assessment because his conclusion recalls Socrates. Descartes says ‘[I] resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world.’ I believe that this sentence is meaningful to understand his philosophy …show more content…
The first method of his finding seems to be important; ‘The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such…’, ‘to comprise nothing … more than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.’ The first method of Descartes with the presupposition in the first meditation might pull down the foundation of judgment toward the objective reality into himself or his mind. Through this method, he builds his own ‘a provisory code of morals’ from the third meditation. However, I believe that he might convince practically using his method because he believes that reason is credible; finally, he assumes a human being having the reason too much positively. Getting through these understanding, he confidently claims that he might accept the first principle of the philosophy that is ‘I think, therefore I am’ in the fourth meditation. After confirming this principle, he analyzes the physical world concerning the motion and shows his hope for new great advance in the knowledge of …show more content…
I could see how he replaces the subject of the world from God to himself. Also, he doubts everything and eventually decides thinking itself is the proof of his existence, but, at the same time, he would have to prove how the thinking could be the proof of existence; finally, he used God as a tool for supporting his reasoning. Although he argues that because of the reason, he proved the existence of God, I believe that he made a possibility to doubt God as making the reason the only measurement to discern outside of our mind. Then, he used the notion of God, but his thinking is completely man-centered. Contrastingly, Augustine also believed human’s reason, and used the existence of God to claim his idea; however, he could not solely depend on the reason because he understood the fact that human mind is defiled. Therefore, Descartes' change of philosophical perspective is not delightful to