Philosophy of Rene Descartes - Essay Example

15 April Rene Descartes was one of the most popular historic scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers. Descartes was born in the year 1595 and died in 1650 (“Rene Descartes”). In his short life of 55 years, Descartes has produced a number of publications including Les Passions de láme and Passions which are read and referred to even today. The last three centuries have been greatly inspired by Descartes’s opinions of certainty, knowledge, and the link between mind and body.

Rene Descartes is known as the “Father of Modern Philosophy” (Skirry). This entitlement can be attributed to both a move from the conventional scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy and the projection and spread of the contemporary mechanistic sciences for which Descartes made effort. Descartes deviated from the scholastic philosophies in two ways. Firstly, the scholastic method was doubted because it draws upon sensation as the origin of knowledge. Secondly, Descartes desired a replacement of the scientific explanation’s causal model with the contemporary mechanistic model.

Descartes used a method of doubt to achieve this. The fundamental strategy Descartes proposed to evaluate any kind of philosophy was to consider it false if there is even the slightest doubt about it. “This “hyperbolic doubt” then serves to clear the way for what Descartes considers to be an unprejudiced search for the truth” (Skirry). Concluding, Descartes introduced a rational way of evaluating arguments by measuring them on the scale of skepticism. I personally think that Descartes has influenced our thinking and accordingly our lifestyles in the modern age.

He is indeed the first main philosopher who has made a concerted effort for the decline of skepticism in the modern age.