René Préval

In the Fifth Lecture: Man Seen from the Outside of Merleau-Ponty’s The World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty explores the assimilation between the understanding of ourselves and the understanding of others. He starts off his fifth lecture with Descartes and how he believes that we best understand ourselves through our own self-consciousness which is connected to our own physical body, which is located in physical space. Although Merleau-Ponty does agree with this, he fully cannot support it as a…

René Magritte was a Surrealist artist who has managed to retain his prominence with the simple, yet thought-provoking paintings that he created in his lifetime. By intertwining ordinary subjects with juxtapositions, Magritte was able to successfully force viewers into reconsidering what is often assumed. A well-known example of one of these artworks is The Lovers II which, as its title states, depicts two lovers – a man and a woman – kissing in the corner of a room. However, oddly enough, both…

Grace Lenthe 1 Grace Lenthe Professor Kigerl HUM 1001 9-6-16 Essay Paper 1 Painting Les valeurs personnelles: René Magritte Les valeurs personnelles (Personal Values) (80.01 cm x 100.01 cm) Oil Painting By René Magritte, 1952 Les valeurs personnelles is one of many paintings by Rene Magritte that challenges human views of reality by making ordinary objects become realistic and human-like. Magritte portrays a full room of everyday objects that are painted way out of proportion. He uses…

Throughout Meditations one and two, Descartes makes many arguments about many different topics within the area of philosophy. However one of the more important ones is the idea of “cognito”. This term basically means consciousness or mind when used in the context of Descartes’ Meditations. Furthermore, through his meditations, he seeks to create assurance that it is certain. He does this by making three main points to support his argument. The first point is one that involves this devil or…

Cogito ergo sum is perhaps the birth of the modern philosophical movement for multiple reasons. The famous phrase of Descartes’ when translated means, I think, therefore, I am, and was the first of a series of logical proofs that Descartes made to help prove his own existence. Up until this time, the history of modern philosophy had relied on arguments about or involving God. Descartes is credited with writing ““Meditations” as the rejection of medieval ways of thinking and the invention of the…

‘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…

Descartes begins his journey toward the truth is in a natural way by questioning and doubting his thoughts, that which he knows, and what he accept as truth. In trying to answer the question, “What is human nature?” he seeks to understand what we are and who we are as human beings. Descartes’ method is doubt; he states in the first meditation what “truths” we should doubt. He “attack[s] those principles upon which all [his] former opinions rested.” For this, the first thing that he realizes as…

Sagittarius is the ninth sign of the zodiac, is the home of the wanderers of the zodiac. Sagittarians are truth-seekers, and the best way for them to do this is to socialize, talk to others and get answers to what they are questioning. Knowledge is key to these sagittarius people , because it fuels their broad-minded approach to life. The Sagittarian-born are strongly interested in philosophy and religion and often have faith and are optimistic. The story of a sagittarian begins with greek…

A challenge to Skepticism Through Hilary Putnam's “Brains in a Vat” argument, he aims to refute the idea of philosophical skepticism introduced by René Descartes. At the conclusion of the first meditation in his First Meditations on Philosophy, Descartes argues that an evil demon may be artificially creating all of our life experiences. Through his hypothesis, Descartes exemplifies philosophical skepticism of the existence of an external world. Ideas, life events, experiences and beliefs that…

One of the most famous philosophers to argue for innate ideas was Rene Descartes. Descartes being a rationalist had completely different thoughts on innate ideas in comparison to Locke. It was his belief that we do in fact have ideas that are present in the mind when we are born. For Descartes, these ideas are considered…