Rene Descartes: #2: (His Teaching)

TheGreatBibleReset.com focuses on studying classical authors to identify critical points in the development of legal history and theory in the West. The aim is to highlight the departure from biblical law to humanistic legalism. The Mosaic Law and its blessings and cursings are discussed, as well as the impact of diseases throughout history. Justinian's attempt to revive the Western Roman Empire and Descartes' shift towards the autonomous mind of man as the foundation of knowledge are also mentioned. Descartes' famous phrase "I think, therefore I am" and his proof of God's existence are explained. The shift towards the mind of man as the arbiter of truth is emphasized. Welcome, everybody, to TheGreatBibleReset.com, where our single focus is to study a chain of classical authors through history, Western civilization, to identify critical points in the development of legal history and legal theory in the West, and in particular those pivot points at which we departed from biblical law onto a secular path of humanistic legalism and litiguousness. Now, humanism is that religion which the ancient Greeks taught, where man is the major of all things. Sadly, too many conservatives, and even Christian conservatives, are more devoted to ancient Greek and Roman law than to Bible law. So we start with the Mosaic Law, which is summarized in Exodus 20-24, and the blessings and cursings that passages like Deuteronomy 28 promise for obedience or disobedience to that law. The cursings are specified in the Bible, and especially graphic terms of war and the famine and disease that follows in the train of war. I've got a book over here on the shelf called Armies of Pestilence, the Impact of Disease on History. We could start with Justinian's plague of 541-549 A.D. in Constantinople, which reoccurred in waves throughout the Mediterranean world until 750 A.D., the full 200 years. I refuse to abandon the Christian designation of A.D. or Anno Domini in the year of our Lord. The plague short-circuited Justinian's attempt to revive and reconquer the Western Roman Empire on the back of his faithful Roman general Belisarius. Bodies piled up in Constantinople, farmers and farms languished, but Justinian refused to relieve the tax burdened Romans, and especially the inheritance tax, on all those who were dying intestine, without a will. This is one of our first examples of a so-called Christian emperor who gave lip service to the law of God, but wrote very little of it into his Justinian law code. It is this Justinian code, this Justinian law code, that was taken up by the medieval schoolmen in the universities as some great revelation in the late 11th and 12th centuries, and their dialectic analysis has formed the backbone of much European law ever since. So René Descartes accelerated this process. Descartes was obsessed with the fear that he was being deceived about the nature of knowledge. He even fretted that an omnipotent demon could be fooling him. The nature of reality and even his own existence was in doubt. How could he be sure he wasn't just dreaming? So Descartes hit upon the axiom, I think, or doubt, therefore I am, and I must think even to be deceived. The alleged impossibility of denying this first principle was the proof he needed of his own existence, and this became the starting point of all knowledge for Descartes, man rather than God, or the sin-darkened mind of man rather than the revelation of God. He went on to prove deductively the existence of God with a variation of Ransom's ontological argument. Ontological, the word ontological refers to the nature of being. It may be reduced to a simple logical syllogism. The mind can conceive of the idea of a perfect being, and existence is an attribute of perfection. Such a perfect being must therefore exist, and if God exists, the material world must therefore exist. This proof of God's existence has been called proof by definition. It is a deductive a priori approach which proceeds from general to specific. By contrast an inductive or a posteriori approach proceeds from specifics to general conclusions. So Descartes is referred to as the father of modern philosophy because of this, because he initiated the shift toward the autonomous mind of man as the foundation of all knowledge. Prior to Descartes, the primary source of authority in the West was the revelation of God, although there were significant disagreements regarding its application. Everything else was justified and interpreted in light of God's revelation and God's self-existence and sovereignty, but Descartes sought to interpret the existence of God in terms of his own existence. Though Descartes believed that his meditation served to bolster faith in God and the Christian religion, his great reversal set the stage for subsequent thinkers to reject God as a useless appendage, indeed a hindrance to enlightened thinking, which came in the 18th century of the Enlightenment. So St. Anselm by contrast said, I believe that I might understand. Descartes by contrast said, I doubt that I may understand, yet both used a form of this ontological argument to allegedly prove the existence of God. So we might ask, in what important respect do their arguments differ? This was the essential difference. Anselm said, I believe, and Descartes said, I doubt. Having proved to his own satisfaction that he did in fact exist, I think, therefore I am, Descartes proceeded to prove the existence of God with a variant of the ontological argument. He reasoned that since God by definition is that being which possesses all perfection, and existence is an aspect of perfection, God must therefore exist. Anselm, on the other hand, is supposed to have started not with the autonomous mind, as did Descartes, but with the sovereign and autonomous God. Anselm starts from the fact that man has an idea or conception of a perfect being, God. He defines this as a being, quote, than which nothing greater can be thought, unquote, end quote. Such a being existing outside the mind would, in necessity, be greater than the idea in the mind alone. The being existing only in the mind cannot, therefore, be the being than which nothing greater can be thought. Such a being must exist, therefore, outside the mind. Brilliant. Okay, well still, Descartes was obsessed with this question of how he could be certain of his own existence. So let's try to follow his chain of reasoning. Sitting in his rocker in his living room, blazing fire, smoking his pipe in the comfort of his roaring fire, it occurred to him that he had experienced vivid dreams that placed him in that very rocker before that very fire or stove. How could he be certain that he was not now dreaming and that some evil demon was not keeping in a state of perpetual deception? In pursuit of a solution, he attempted to first place his mind into a state in which it doubted everything and thus knew nothing. As he meditated from this perspective, it occurred to him that if he were not thinking or doubting, he could not be deceived. It followed that even if he were being deceived, he was in fact thinking and therefore existing. What if you are deceived, he asked, for if I am deceived, I am for he who is not cannot be deceived, and if I am deceived, by this same token, I am. From this he derived his famous casito, I think, therefore I am. Descartes' casito may be cast in the form of a deductive syllogism. All thinking beings exist. I am thinking, therefore I exist. Critics have attacked the major premise, suggesting that thinking does not prove existence, but only that thought is occurring. Descartes replied that the verity of the casito rests not on logic, but on intuition. This is a presuppositional argument, which is no less circular than the objection that is commonly leveled against Christians' reasoning from the Bible. These beginning points are called presuppositions because we presuppose our beginning points are true. The strength of the Christian presupposition is that apart from the biblical worldview, no other thought is possible, no reality, no logic, no law, only chance and chaos. Inductive reasoning starts with an examination of particular things in the world and draws conclusions or makes general statements based on an analysis of the data. This is called posteriori reasoning because it proceeds from effects to causes. Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, starts with generalities and proceeds from there to conclusions about particular things. For example, we might start with the general rule that Republicans always lose in midwestern states. Iowa is a midwestern state, so the Republicans will always lose in Iowa. And this is known as a priori reasoning because it proceeds from causes to effects. Dicarty's system was rather obviously deductive because he started with a generalization, I think, therefore, I am, and worked out from there. So Dicarty, a continental rationalist, was possessed with this idea of an omnipotent demon who might be deceiving him about his own existence, concluding that he must think in order to be deceived, he arrived at his famous maxim, I think, therefore, I am. From there he went on to prove a priori the existence of God and the material universe using the ontological argument. So with this mental gymnastics, Dicarty shifted a playing field. The mind of man, rather than a revelation of God, became the final arbiter of truth. On the scientific front, Dicarty discovered analytic geometry, and this was prior to his philosophical musings. He also laid the groundwork for Newton and Darwin by looking for truth at the simplest level rather than the complex. So thank you very much for sticking with me today. 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