Rene Descartes: His philosophy, its impact on the Church & society at large during the Age of Enlightenment

Background of the Enlightenment

In the 17th century the  Age of Enlightenment swept across the continent of Europe . This became the age of discovery, and the social fibre of Europe was being transformed from that run by the church and the aristocrats to that being influenced by merchants who had new wealth.

 They used this wealth starting from the Renaissance to revive classical Roma-Graco thinking back into mainstream Europe, and this had an impact as now philosophy and theology became two separate entities although  they had previously existed as one thing.

Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was the great French mathematician and philosopher of the 17th century and he is known as the father of modern-day philosophy. He was the pioneer of rationalism a key philosophical characteristic of the Enlightenment

For reasoning, Descartes wanted to start on a clean slate and wipe everything that he had known before which was quite radical at the time as this means he was challenging the authority of reason which had largely been the Catholic church as he was educated and influenced under the Jesuits in France due to his wealthy background as the son of a nobleman.

One of his methods was that he never accepted anything to be true unless there was evidence that  had been tested, he achieved this by sub-dividing what was being investigated and structuring them in an orderly way first dealing with the simplest to the most complex and he reviewed them leaving nothing out.

He elevated the mind above the material world as according to him “knowledge of the mind and its contents is, therefore, more certain than knowledge of the external world” (Norman, 2019, p. 201). In the age of the Enlightenment reason was king and it became the benchmark for truth.

For Descartes the problem of knowledge and truth could be solved by following a model of mathematical reasoning as his famous philosophical principle as the foundation of all knowledge sits on this principle “I am thinking, therefore I exist “ (Byrne, 1996, p. 58).

His prolegomena here concerning God is that since I exist it must mean that God also exists and he bases this on the premise that God would not allow us to be deceived by our own senses. Descartes needed to first search if God exists and an opportunity to do this must present itself if God does exist he must fit the category that he is not a deceiver. He creates god from a philosophical point of reason and not what God has revealed of Himself through the Bible.

Descartes says this regarding God “ Something cannot come from nothing and that the more perfect ( God) cannot come from the less perfect (human mind)” (Byrne, 1996, p. 62). He concluded that God exists but thus owed to the idea of God who was in his mind and even though he is finite he can conceive an idea of an infinite being he attributes this being given to him by an infinitive substance which he does not name.

Critique of Descartes's theories

Positive

Descartes's method of testing what is truth and only accepting it when there is evidence to back it up and his meticulous methodical way of structuring ushers us into modern science Isaac Newton will take this further in his scientific formulas which some of them were influenced by Descartes.

The fact that he was willing to start his mind on a blank state has to be commended especially in an age where the authority of the church and the monarch was absolute, and this created all sorts of problems in Europe. This challenge of authority was instrumental in the French Revolution which changed Europe and the world.

Negatives

For Descartes reason has been moved to the centre of the universe and everything revolves around it to an extent that our idea of God begins in the human mind which for us Christians is a problem as God himself reveals to us who he is through general revelation (Romans 1:18-32) and in special revelation through Scripture and ultimately through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

For Descartes, to obtain certain knowledge of anything outside himself he first must be content finding it solely from his consciousness (reason). This sounds like a contradiction as how can he find knowledge about something from outside himself and get this knowledge within himself it makes no sense as it contradicts him as he was someone who wanted evidence for knowledge and this is not evidence-based it sounds very speculative.

Influence of the Enlightenment on Modern Christianity and the world

Without Descartes's separation of the mind from the world, we would not have the internet and movies like Avatar and The Matrix. I would change Descartes's statement of I think therefore I am to a modernized version of I feel therefore I am. Today I might be born a male but I feel female therefore I am female and I think this line of thinking in our modern world is influenced by Descartes's type of thinking even though they might have taken it a step too far.

Bibliography

Byrne, J., 1996. Religious Thought in the Enlightenment. London: SCM Press Ltd.

Norman, M., 2019. Philosophy. Cape Town: Unpublished.