41 pages • 1 hour read
René DescartesDiscourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1637A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Discourse on Method: Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
In this chapter, Descartes gives an account of the conclusions he reached during that winter in Germany. As he recounts, there are times in one’s life where one is unsure of the correct opinion to hold, and, when in doubt, a person goes along with the most popular. However, says Descartes, his method will be the precise opposite. Instead, Descartes will “reject as being absolutely false everything in which I could suppose the slightest reason for doubt, in order to see if there did not remain after that anything in my belief which was entirely indubitable” (53).
Thus, because Descartes has committed himself to treating as false any opinion or belief that, when put into doubt, leaves the individual no longer certain of the true value of their beliefs, Descartes proceeds by doubting (or rejecting as false): 1) any knowledge gained from his senses; 2) knowledge derived by his own capacity for reasoning; and 3) the knowledge he has gained from waking life.
What is found after subjecting everything he thinks he knows to doubt, writes Descartes, is that he immediately:
became aware that, while I decided thus to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought thus must be something; and observing that this truth: I think, therefore I am, was so certain and so evident that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were not capable of shaking it, I judged that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking (53-54).
Once having discovered the fact that even when subjecting everything he knows to doubt, the fact of his doubting persists and thereby proves his own existence, Descartes inquires into just what it is that renders a proposition like “I think, therefore I am” true, in order to be better able to identify true propositions in the future. For Descartes, a true proposition is identifiable when it can be conceived of “very clearly and very distinctly” (54). In other words, to conceive of the existence of something whose existence depends on nothing other than itself and who existence can be defined regardless of all other entities that exist.
Given what has been said, Descartes then turns to examine the idea of God. According to Descartes, the existence of an infinitely perfect being must be distinct from the existence of a finite and imperfect being (i.e., the human mind). It is for this reason that if we have the idea of God, then that idea of an infinitely perfect being cannot depend on the aptitude of the human mind for its existence. In this way, says Descartes, we can conclude that God necessarily exists.
Thus, says Descartes, whether it is with respect to the existence of the idea of God or the idea of the immortal soul, we fail to grasp their nature insofar as we continuously subject these ideas to their verification by way of their correspondence to a corporeal object. And this fault, which is ours alone, gives rise to confused and obscure ideas, rather than clear and distinct ideas (since the truth of ideas are given not because they are adequate representations of things in the world but by virtue of being logically consistent with themselves as pure ideas). Thus, writes Descartes:
[I]f we often enough have ideas which contain errors, they can only be those which contain something confused and obscure, because in this they participate in nothingness, that is to say they are in us in this confused way only because we are not completely perfect. And it is evident that it is no less contradictory that error or imperfection, as such, should proceed from God, than that truth or perfection should come from nothingness (58).
Chapter 5 Summary
In this chapter, Descartes begins with a disclaimer regarding his further findings related to the nature of the universe, the movement of the planets, and the biological functioning of plants, animals, and humans:
I should be very pleased to continue, and to show here the complete chain of the other truths that I deduced from these first ones; but as in order to do this it would now be necessary to speak of several questions about which the philosophers with whom I have no wish to embroil myself are in dispute, I believe it will be better for me to abstain, and mention them only in general terms, in order to leave the more judicious to decide whether it would be useful that the public were informed of them in greater detail (61).
And so, in order to avoid any controversy and to abide by his moral maxim of living according to the norms of the society he finds himself within, Descartes outlines the fact that from his proof of the existence of God, he is also able to demonstrate that if God were to create a world, the chaos that marked the birth of that world (or universe) would eventually develop into a material order very much like our own, including the natural classification of plants, animals, and human beings.
The reason for is that insofar as we have an idea of God, we can derive laws of nature that would cohere with an infinite and perfect being. Thus, we can observe that such laws would most likely pertain to our world as well because the existence of imperfect, finite beings depends upon infinitely perfect beings for their existence, and not vice versa:
I have observed certain laws which God has so established in nature and of which he has impressed such notions in our souls, that having reflected on them sufficiently, we cannot be in any doubt that they are strictly observed in everything which exists or which happens in the world. Then, by considering the series of these laws, it appears to me that I have discovered many truths more useful and more important than anything I had learned before or even hoped to learn (61).
Throughout these studies, says Descartes, the crucial discovery made is that the movement of the planets and of plant and animal bodies abide by the logic of cause and effect, since this follows from the logic that only God can bring into existence in finite beings like plants and animals.
Chapter 6 Summary
In this chapter, Descartes outlines how his theoretical discoveries regarding 1) the existence of God, 2) the existence of the mind as possessing the ability to think, and 3) the existence of the human soul can inform more practical human affairs.
For Descartes, it is not a problem that the existence of God as an idea fails to correspond to any given object or experience we have of the world. Rather, these ideas are significant insofar as they are ideas that provide the correct order to reasoning about the world and our experiences therein. Thus, God, the self as thinking substance, and the immortal soul are ways of establishing the correct use of our cognitive faculty in light of the fact that when it comes to practical and corporeal matters such as nature—and regardless of the inevitability of the trial and error of the scientific method—we will always be able to understand the correct placement of our conclusions regarding the world. This is because we understand that perfection precedes imperfection, infinity precedes finitude, and so forth.
Hence, Descartes can claim that his discoveries help found a more practical philosophy whose promise is that of giving birth to:
[…] the invention of an infinity of devices by which we might enjoy, without any effort, the fruits of the earth and all its commodities, but also principally for the preservation of health, which is undoubtedly the first good, and the foundation of all the other goods of this life; for even the mind depends so much on the temperament and on the disposition of the organs of the body (77-78).
However, says Descartes, because this text’s overall aim is to provide the general public with an overview of Descartes’s method and discoveries, he ends on a hopeful and promissory note:
In conclusion, I do not wish to speak here in detail of the progress I hope to make in the sciences in the future nor to make any promise to the public that I am not certain of being able to fulfil; but I will say simply that I have resolved to devote the time left to me to live to no other occupation than that of trying to acquire some knowledge of Nature, which may be such as to enable us to deduce from it rules in medicine which are more assured than those we have had up to now (91).
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Chapters 4-6 of Discourse on Method provide a general outline for the arguments that will be given, in detail, in his Meditations on First Philosophy. These include: doubt as the method of achieving indubitable and certain truth; the proof of the existence of the mind; and the proof of the existence of God.
However, what is also included that is not featured in his Meditations on First Philosophy, and is found in Chapters 5 and 6, is how Descartes envisions his own philosophy in relation to other sciences during his time. Descartes believes that a philosophy that can offer science and art immutable and timeless truths is akin to the practice of medicine, insofar that it can act as the guide toward a healthier society. In other words, and as Descartes puts it, his intention here is to outline how his is a philosophy that is practical as opposed to speculative, and whose insights may be applied to the benefit of the all humankind.
Descartes writes:
[A] practical philosophy can be found by which, knowing the power and the effects of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens and all the other bodies which surround us, as distinctly as we know the various trades of our craftsmen, we might put them in the same way to all the uses for which they are appropriate, and thereby make ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature. Which aim is not only to be desired for the invention of an infinity of devices by which we might enjoy, without any effort, the fruits of the earth and all its commodities, but also principally for the preservation of health, which is undoubtedly the first good, and the foundation of all the other goods of this life (78).
