Rene Descartes - Assignment Example

Module Philosophy: Rene Descartes The field of Philosophy was awakened by contributions of Rene Descartes, a French philosopher,who dedicated his life to teachings on concepts of truth, dualism and ethics among others. Central to his philosophy was the issue of truth in which he taught about the need to be entirely doubtful or skeptical as a basis of finding out truth. Descartes doubted everything including his own existence as the starting point in unveiling the truth about himself. His phrase ‘I think, therefore, I am’ is a popular statement that has been discussed for long because of it is logically founded and deep-rooted criteria of extracting the truth about phenomena in the world (Descartes 143).

The skeptical method as conceptualized by Descartes is a definite criteria or procedure through which truth can be found (Descartes 148). It abhors and condemns the tendency to merely believe things without any doubt faulting as a flawed method of digging into reality. Skeptical method involves unveiling the truth by first disbelieving and, thereafter, soberly researching and rationalizing them. The weight of thorough reasoning and evaluation on the skeptically pre-perceived objects and events determines the accuracy of the results.

Descartes’ argument about truth finding through skeptical method is undoubtedly genuine and accurate as people who do not doubt end up believing without thorough consideration. Doubt breeds research and further evaluation. His definition of human beings as thinking beings is as well true since what differentiates humans from other animals is the thinking capacity (Descartes 154). If it is the physical body, even some animals would be much better than us. This is why if a person behaves in abnormal manner, this can be termed as inhuman as humans act on the basis of reasoning.

The argument is, therefore, good.Work CitedDescartes, Rene. Discourse on the Method. Lanham: Start Publishing LLC, 2012.