Rene Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

Name
10 November 2016
PHIL 201.002
Essay
Philosophy of Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes was a philosopher of French descendent. He served in the Dutch Army for a good deal of his life until one day he had a dream about advancing physics and mathematics. Not to long after his dream Descartes wrote one of his more famous works
Meditations on First Philosophy. The Meditations show his ideals on how we know who we are and what our purpose is for this life.
Descartes states many ideals in his book Meditations of First Philosophy. These beliefs come because he starts to realize that everything he was taught as a child is not what his teachers later in life were teaching him. Descartes starts to doubt what knowledge he has is true and what is false.
He first doubts that whatever he may be even exists. Descartes tries to doubt that he exists but concludes that since he can even try to doubt that he exists he must exist. The term applied to this belief is “cogito ergo sum” which means “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes).
Next, Descartes explains that to him freedom is not being given the choice between two oppositions. Instead, Descartes feels that true freedom is when the decisions are already made for us (Descartes). Furthermore, Rene Descartes goes on to try and prove the existence of God. The only thing Descartes knows for sure is that he is a “thinking thing” and he can doubt. Descartes then goes on to explain that he is imperfect due to his ability to doubt in the first place. Since he can perceive himself as imperfect he believes that there must be some all-powerful, perfect being that he compares himself to. The being he compares himself to can be no other than God.
Furthermore, the third meditation along with the following three meditations all deal with
Descartes proving the existence of God. In the fourth meditation Descartes says that God gave us a choice of free will. Therefore, we can still make mistakes. The fifth meditation deals
Wittgenstein and Descartes have completely opposite principles on how we learn what we are and how we gain knowledge. However, Descartes has many refutations on how we can doubt everything.
Moreover, Descartes believes that he can doubt everything about himself except his existence. He believes that our perceptions can be deceiving and that some higher being can be deceiving us into believing ideals about our lives. For example, Descartes describes that he cannot tell if he is dreaming or awake. If he cannot tell he cannot know if everything he is seeing is just imagination or not. He explains that “every though I was having while awake I can also think of myself having while asleep” (Descartes). However, Rene Descartes does conclude by the end of his Meditations that it is possible to distinguish between dreams and reality.
Furthermore, Descartes also questions that the higher being/God that he assumes he is comparing himself to can be a deceiver. One statement he makes is as follows “God could have given me a nature such that I was deceived even in matters which seemed most evident” (Descartes). He says that this deceiver could be planting in our minds the idea that we live in this world