Sumary: Rene Descartes - Carl Friedrick Gauss - Essay Example

In 1606, Descartes joined the Jesuit Royal Henry-Le-Grand where he learnt and developed in mathematics, physics and importantly, Galileo’s work. His life and works were influenced and inspired by a plethora of persons including Plato, Aristotle, Alhazen, Ghazali, Averroes, Avicenna, Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham, Suarez, Mersenne, Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne Golius, Beeckman, Duns Scotus and many others (Cottingham, 1998). Descartes considered himself a devout Catholic, with a sworn purpose to defend the Christian faith – something many have continued to debate as some accuse him of harboring secret deist and atheist beliefs.

Descartes believed his existence was certain since he thought. He said, ‘thought exists. Thought cannot be separated from me, therefore I exist.’ This concept came to be known as the ‘corgito ego sum’ meaning ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes concluded that if he doubted, the very fact that he doubted proved his existence, that is, if one is skeptical of existence, that is in itself evidence that he exists. Using both ontological argument and trademark argument in his third and fifth meditations, he provided ontological evidence of the existence of a benevolent God.

He argued that since God is benevolent, he gave him a functional mind and senses with no intentions to deceive him, he can therefore have some faith in the account of reality his senses provided him (Descartes & Anscombe, 1970). He can therefore also be considered in terms of epistemology to have contributed to foundationalism and the possibility that reason is the only way of attaining knowledge. In his response to skeptism, Descartes notes that sensory perceptions come involuntarily and not by will power as they are outside his senses – proving the existence of something outside and consequently an external world