Rene Descartes

The Father of
Modern Philosophy
 RENE DESCARTES
• Born in Touraine in 1596.
• He studied in La Fleche from 1604-1612.
• His education included Mathematics, Logic, and
Philosophy.
• He went to Sweden in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina in
Philosophy.
 RENE DESCARTES
• Descartes was concerned chiefly with the problem of
intellectual certainty.
• Because the Church was disenfranchised, Descartes
doubted everything.
• His philosophical endeavor was to base truth in a
bedrock of certainty.
 RENE DESCARTES
• Descartes was concerned chiefly with the problem of
intellectual certainty.
• Because the Church was disenfranchised, Descartes
doubted everything.
• His philosophical endeavor was to base truth in a
bedrock of certainty.
 METHODIC DOUBT
• He used the method of doubt in order to find an absolute
certain starting point for building for our knowledge.
• Not doubting for the sake of doubting, but doubting to
arrive at certainty.
• Through this, he showed how uncertain our knowledge is.
• But he wanted knowledge as exact as Mathematics
 COGITO ERGO SUM
• “Though I can doubt that my body exists, or that I am
awake, or that I am being deceived, in short that all is
illusion or false, one thing remains about which I can have
no doubt at all, that I think.”
• To doubt is to think…
• “it must be necessarily be that I who [think am]
something; and remarking that this truth, I think,
therefore I am…”
 TH E EXISTENCE OF GOD
• Descartes must prove God’s existence solely in in terms
of his rational awareness…
• He demonstrated the existence of God by exploring what
the very idea of God implies.
• A perfect being.
• But the very idea of perfection implies existence.