A History of the Origins of World Philosophy, Seventeenth Century Western Philosophy No. 4: René. Descartes 2

Seventeenth Century Western Philosophy NO. 4: René. Descartes 2

Descartes was born on 31 March 1596 in the western French province of Turan on the border with the province of Boisdou in a place called the town of Ella. His father was a lawyer and judge and had also served as a senator in brittany; his mother died prematurely, when he was about a year old. His father soon remarried and did not live with him.

　　Descartes' family was a typical gentleman's family. His grandfather and maternal grandfather were both doctors, and his matrilineal relatives mostly worked as judges. His family was wealthy and cultured. Such a family had mixed up descartes' upbringing. The good places are that he has advantages in his early childhood education; the bad places are that he is in his infancy and bereavement of his mother, his father does not care much, and in the depths of his soul he has planted the seeds of loneliness from an early age.

　　Descartes entered the Duchy of Lavry in 1604. The school is famous for studying here for a total of 8 years and laying a solid foundation of knowledge. He was exceptionally intelligent, his academic performance was outstanding, and his mathematical talents were outstanding, and no one could surpass him. He was physically ill, and because of his personality, he appeared to be even more ill. The dean of the academy obviously loved him for ten minutes, and especially allowed him to go to bed early, and was willing to get up at any time. This concession was in descartes' favor, and as a habit it remained unchanged throughout his life.

　　In 1612 he graduated from the academy and went to Paris. Mingling with a bunch of hakama in Paris, free and debauched, doing whatever it takes. But he soon became disgusted with this life and went into hiding. But these friends of his were all omnipotent people, and they had the strength to find him wherever he hid, and finally pulled him out again. By 1617, in order to get rid of the entanglement of this group of friends, he decided to join the army and serve.

　　The life of the army obviously had an important impact on him, and his own mentality also underwent an important change. According to his own account, he had three very special dreams on November 10 of that year, and because of these dreams, he really changed himself and began his brilliant academic career.

　　The content of the three dreams is really not grotesque enough, but in Descartes' view, it is very meaningful. In the first dream, Descartes was blown by an evil wind from his safe dwelling in the church or academy to the third place where the wind could not be shaken; in the second he found himself observing the fierce storm with an unstitious scientific eye, and he noticed that once he saw what was going on, it could not hurt him; in the third dream he was reciting the verse of Ossonius, the first of which was 'What path of life will I follow?' The second dream, in particular, he identified as "the dream revealed to him a magic key that opened the treasure house of nature and gave him at least the true basis of all science." It sounds ridiculous, but Descartes was serious.

If this is treated in a modern psychoanalytic way, it is obviously very much to say. In fact, this is probably mainly related to Descartes' inner contradictions and the pursuit of reality. His previous actions have irrefutably reflected the contradictions in his heart. If there is no particularly violent contradiction in the heart, then why be free and debauched. Why go into hiding after debauchery? Why does it have to be enlisted on a whim? And why do you have to get drunk even when you enter the barracks? He must be full of contradictions in his heart: the contradiction between the loss of love from an early age and the good education he received; the contradiction between academic prominence and emotional helplessness; the contradiction between debauchery and academic yearning, and the contradiction between striving for autonomy but being difficult to self-govern. He was lonely because of the lack of fatherly love and mother's love, and because of his good education, he could not resist this loneliness in a vulgar way, so he debauched himself; but debauchery was a blow to his excellent studies, so he repented; although he regretted and could not extricate himself, so he escaped; he could not really solve the problem, so he enlisted in the army; enlistment was not really what he wanted, so he was drunk; drunkenness added to his remorse, so he was helpless, so he wanted to enter the wrong, so the dream struck, so he thought that this dream was the revelation of heaven to him. So since then, the prodigal son has not changed his gold, and it did not take long to really write his famous "Methodology".

　　In 1621, he ended his military life and visited Italy again. Unfortunately, I never met Galileo. In 1625, he began to settle in Paris, but Paris never gave him peace. He absolutely needs to get up very late, and his friends must come to visit him before he gets up. In 1628, he had no choice but to go to the army again to "practice". However, the time is short. In 1629, he went to the Netherlands to settle down. Although in the Netherlands he still moved his home countless times in search of peace, this period in the Netherlands was the most peaceful and creative period of his life, and his most important philosophical works, "The First Philosophical Meditations", "Philosophical Principles" and "On the Passion of the Soul", were created here. He lived in the Netherlands for 20 years, and during 20 years, except for a few trips to France and england once, he has been engaged in the scientific research he cherishes and loves in the Netherlands.

　　It is worth mentioning that from 1641 onwards, he lived in the same place as Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of the exiled bohemian king, and formed a friendship with this princess. Princess Elizabeth was so intelligent and studious that historians say she was indeed a genius in learning, and after mastering 6 foreign languages, she also had to study mathematics and other natural sciences. So she asked Descartes to come and teach her a lesson. They had a close relationship with each other for a long time, but Descartes never proposed to her, nor did she show descartes love.

　　In 1648, Descartes was 52 years old. Queen Christina of Sweden insisted on inviting him to Sweden. Although he repeatedly refused, the Queen of The Dragon Was resolute, and he had to agree. In October 1649, warships sent by the Queen brought him to Sweden. Sweden, however, was cold, but he was very warm; he loved to sleep early, but the queen only had time to listen to his lectures at 5 o'clock in the morning. As everyone knows, getting up early and freezing cold are the nemesis of our philosophical master. And with his character, he would never whisk the queen's wishes—in fact, he had never offended even a priest in his life, and he would only bow to them with his hat off his hat and pay respect. Unfortunately, this time he paid for his life, and within 3 months of arriving in Sweden, he died at the age of 54.

　　Looking back at Descartes' life, most of the contradictions in his personality were caused by his time, but the family environment, his own personality, was naturally a very important reason, and these contradictions were very typical and very concentrated in his philosophical thought, thus eventually forming the dualistic characteristics of his philosophy.

3. Analysis of Cartesian philosophy

　　In the time of Descartes' life, the philosophies of both Bacon and Hobbes can be called the eminence of the world. Although their philosophical systems and views are not the same. In fact, the rise of any kind of philosophy requires a large number of acceptance and dissemination groups as the basis for society. The larger the group of receptivation and dissemination, the greater the influence of the philosophy. And acceptance and dissemination is also a kind of creation, only reading can accept, only acceptance can spread. One of the reasons why philosophers in history have distinguished between fortunate and unfortunate is that they have been judged by the speed and extent with which society has accepted their doctrines. Some philosophies, the author was already proud of the spring breeze before his death, and the world was famous; others, the author had little influence during his lifetime, and it was not until the author's death that the influence was increasingly revealed. Therefore, it is directly related to the attitude of the recipient's side.

　　Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes were all prominent scholars of the time, and their philosophies were accepted quickly and deeply. Although they did not achieve much political success, their ideas had a great influence on British, French and even European civilization.

　　In terms of the characteristics of three people, Bacon pays more attention to the role of knowledge and experimentation, and even the "New Tool", which is famous for its methodology, is actually a methodology with strong intellectual and experimental overtones. Knowledge is also a truth, but it is often a proven truth. This is what sets Bacon apart from Descartes, and where he can't compare to Descartes in terms of his scientific contributions. Hobbes's doctrine was focused on the political sphere, and he was a master of empiricist doctrines of the time and a categorical materialist, but his most important achievement was in political doctrine. Descartes is different, he himself is a great scientist, a great mathematician, his philosophy is both full of scientific spirit and strong speculative characteristics. In other words, his philosophy is closer to the narrow philosophy in the minds of later people.

　　The three differ in their attitudes toward medieval scholasticism. Bacon was the first person in the history of Western philosophy to draw a line with medieval philosophy, and Hobbes was a critic of all medieval philosophies. Cartesian philosophy is naturally the first modern philosophy in the West to mature. In this way, he did not adopt a completely negative attitude towards medieval scholasticism, and of course he did not bother to defend them, but only absorbed and retained the beneficial elements of scholastic philosophy in his own system. Whether this characteristic of his is good or bad is always difficult to determine.

　　For all these reasons, Descartes philosophy has developed its own unique system and style.

　　(1) A tree of knowledge that grows upside down

　　Descartes' philosophical system was based on metaphysics as the basis for all his doctrines. He has his reasons. He likened human knowledge to a great tree, and he saw that there were all kinds of intrinsic connections between the various disciplines. This is also different from bacon. Bacon also attached great importance to the division of disciplines, but his divisions were all based on his method of induction, and the results of induction, although they excluded theology, were too coarse to reveal the internal relations between the various disciplines. Descartes believed that human knowledge is like a tree, that metaphysics is the root of the tree, that physics is the trunk of the tree, and that the branches of the tree are numerous branch disciplines. The most important of these disciplines are mechanics, medicine and ethics. Why are these three disciplines more important? Because mechanics directly serves the needs of human life, medicine directly serves human health, and ethics directly serves human happiness and tranquility. Obviously, Descartes used the method of deduction, starting with the root of the tree, the metaphysical method, and through the deduction, and the roots and branches, forming a systematic system of knowledge with rank.

　　Descartes used metaphysics as the root of human knowledge and believed in the existence of innate truths. In his view, human knowledge, even if you do not know and grasp it correctly, it is inevitable, and its situation is like the existence of God. But the innate existence of this knowledge, and the human understanding of it, did not arise naturally. It takes man's own efforts, thoughts and doubts. On the one hand, he acknowledges the innate existence of human knowledge, and on the other hand, he argues that human beings can only attain the realm of knowledge through thinking and doubt. This is neither like traditional theological ideas nor empiricism. Although this transcendental conception of Cartesian philosophy never really satisfies the reader, its basic outlines are clear. He used metaphysics as the basis for the foundation of human knowledge. Unfortunately, Descartes' tree of philosophical knowledge is a tree that grows upside down, and the roots of his tree are not living matter, but a supernatural spirit.

　　Descartes believed in the existence of God while engaging in pure metaphysical thinking of independent man. Thus, his philosophical structure formed a dualistic nature: on the one hand, it emphasized the innate nature of human knowledge, and on the other hand, it emphasized the acquired nature of human cognition; on the other hand, it raised the status of metaphysics very high, and on the other hand, it recognized the central role of physics. From this point of view, Mr. Descartes is indeed a very unfortunate person. He was always on the move between God and science, one servant and two masters, which made him very nervous. No wonder Marx commented on his philosophy, arguing that he "completely separated his philosophy from his metaphysics", half idealistic and half materialistic.

　　(2) A religious view that is not without humor

　　Descartes claimed to be a devout Catholic, and in order to ensure his obedience and piety, he set himself a code of conduct. The code also guarantees "obedience to the laws and customs of our country" and "keeping to the religious beliefs that God has given me since I was a child". He considered himself faithful to his faith, loyal to God, and his attitude seriously proved that "God must exist." He said: "Since the contradiction of saying that something more perfect arises from and depends on something less perfect is really no less than that of saying that something arises from nothingness, I cannot create this idea from myself; therefore, it can only be said that it was a nature more complete than me that put this idea into my heart, and that this nature has all the perfection of what I can think of, that is, in a simple word, it is God." God cannot doubt, God cannot doubt, God is the Creator of all perfection, and therefore God must be the most perfect.

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