René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz both espouse belief in a God that is infinitely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable and infinitely benevolent. Nonetheless, Descartes and Leibniz differently structure the hierarchy of those three defining...

Descartes’ Proof for the Existence of God and its Importance

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes describes his philosophical quest to find absolute, certain knowledge. His method for finding this knowledge is to start from the most basic...

In the meditations, Descartes aims to provide a sound basis for science, and to vindicate rationalism by proving that true source of scientific knowledge lies in the mind and not the senses. In order to prove that the mind should be the true...

David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian, thrived during the Enlightenment era. In this segment of history, which is also known as the Age of Reason, European scholars attempted to find the root of knowledge, often by working through one...

In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato asks us to consider that the world we are living is the equivalent of a cave; in order for us to enter into this “sensible realm” of truth and knowledge we must actively pursue these values. In his First...

As proposed by Immanual Kant, the Enlightenment consisted of having “the courage to use your own understanding,” and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Descartes’ Meditations, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote collectively provide instances that both affirm...

Over the course of his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes suspends belief in all material and metaphysical substance before rebuilding from the foundational element of the thinker’s existence, eventually concluding that God exists...

In René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, he argues that the senses do not accurately help us understand the world. Descartes writes that he has begun to doubt all of his ideas. He decides that all those ideas come from the senses, which...

In the Second Meditation of The Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes addresses the question of identity: “I am, I exist… But this ‘I’ that must exist––I still don’t properly understand what it is.” (Descartes 4) The only circumstance helping...

Human beings are social in nature, depending upon one another in order to truly thrive. Modern life, however, seems to work against the conditions needed for humanity’s success, forcing members of society into alienation while under the illusion...

Arnauld, within his objections to 'Meditations on First Philosophy', highlights what would come to be considered one of the most fundamental flaws in Cartesian reasoning; namely the evident circularity of reasoning from 'Clear and Distinct...

The kind of reasoning utilized by Descartes in order to arrive at his conclusion of the cogito has been questioned since its initial publication in The Discourse on the Method. The conjunction 'ergo' suggests the formula of an inference, that...

Since the publication of The Discourse on the Method, Renes Descartes appears to have become the poster boy for the position of mind/body dualism. Throughout the Discourse and his later works, Descartes postulates several arguments for the...

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, while the genetic makeup of the model does have some bearing on the life of the clone, it is severely limited by the increased importance of individual experience in the development of identity and...

In order to investigate the intricacies of Descartes’ method, we must first come to an understanding of what Descartes is hoping to accomplish by use of it, and the true immediacy with which he writes. The objectives he introduces, namely to prove...

The turn of the 17th century prompted a rolling new age of skepticism, in which individuals began to question unequivocal prior beliefs regarding the validity of the Catholic Church, and even the nature of reality. In response to an age echoing...

The beginning of the 17th century was a period marked by ideological upheaval. Previously, the Catholic Church and religious orthodoxy were the standard of knowledge, perpetuating the Aristotelian model on society and persecuting any objections...