FREE ESSAY ON FOUNDING THE MODERN PROJECT

FOUNDING THE MODERN PROJECT

The Cogito Ergo Sum is the heart of Cartesian philosophy and represents the starting point
of his method. It set Descartes apart from the Scholastics who began with real things in
a really existing world. He was obviously influenced by the Protestant Reformation and
its challenge of authority, tradition and medieval Aristotelianism. Opposing himself to
this tradition, Descartes began simply within the certitude of self as a thinking being.
Like the pre-Socratics, Descartes was searching for the first principle. This
self-evident principle for him was the cogito ergo sum. If I doubt the existence of
things, then I think, and if I think, I am! This principle inaugurates the great
anthropocentric shift in philosophy (John Paul II, pg. 51) and links us to the first rule
of his method. 
The cogito had its beginning in small, hot German apartment where Descartes began to
reflect upon his own knowledge and its sources. He began by imagining the most perfect
building, of which he feels called to be the architect of, and which cannot be
constructed using the old walls (i.e. wisdom of the ages) of the past, but must begin
with an entirely new foundation and a sigle founder. Therefore, the founding principle of
his new method is to overturn and scatter to the four winds all that men had tried to
build up through past ages, and must make a clean sweep of all thinking that has been
possible up to his time (Maritain, pg 23). 
The first rule of Descartes' method then is to accept nothing as true which he didn't
clearly recognize to be so. He would only accept that which is clearly and distinctly in
his mind and the only thing which initially meets this mathematically certainty is
self-existence. Man is reduced to a thinking thing. We cannot even say that we are a
thinking being in a body, since our senses may be deceiving us into thinking we are
embodied. 
Though he claims to begin with an emptying of all pre-conceived notions, his method is
full of pre-suppositions. For example, he assumed that the principle of mathematical
certainty could step outside its boundaries and be applied to all things as if they were
all mathematical and quantifiable. He reversed the traditional order of acquiring human
knowledge. In reality, the mind begins with sense data from real objects and then
proceeds to concepts. In Descartes' dream world, the mind begins with clear and distinct
notions which will give it a true knowledge of all objects. Rather than physics advancing
to metaphysics, Descartes buries metaphysics below ground and focuses his attention on
the trunk of the tree (physics) which will, in his dream, branch out into the sciences
and give us the fruit of medicine, mechanics and ethics (Gilson, pg. 59). 
When I first read Descartes I was lured in by his apparent humility of speech. It
reminded me of Socrates self-depracating dialogue. His early thirst for knowledge was
fascinating and his survey of the academic disciplines was almost poetic. His intention
to discover truth by emptying his mind and re-examining each piece of knowledge is noble,
but it is hard not to believe his self-emptying included the loss of common sense and the
real world, which he can never get back again. There is no fault in testing their
veracity of each truth offered to us in our education. But Descartes fails to make an
important distinction which John Henry Cardinal Newman makes in his Development of
Doctrine. It is there that he distinguishes between questioning a truth and investigating
it. We may withhold our assent from a proposed truth while we try and discover whether it
is true or not. We can also investigate a doctrine when we assent to it but keep trying
to understand it better. In either case it is not required that we cast doubt upon it
immediately and seek to prove its veracity by unnaturally subjecting it to the principles
of mathematical certainty. That is one of the fundamental flaws in Descartes methodology.

To begin with a wholesale rejection of all previous knowledge is as foolish as trying to
separate oneself from his genetic history. Man cannot stand long in the winds that blow
when separated from the wisdom of the ages, in fact he will soon stoop to the frame of an
ape, returning to his basest passions and turn hopelessly in on himself. This is
precisely why John Paul II insists on the need for a close relationship of continuity
between contemporary philosophy and the philosophy developed in the Christian tradition
[which] is intended to avert the danger which lies hidden in some currents of thought
which are especially prevalent today (Fides et Ratio, para. 86). 
This false autonomy Descartes offers philosophy ends in the unraveling of any certitude
about anything. That is why Fides et Ratio correctly labels it as primal disobedience
which transports us back to that terrestrial paradise where man first decided he alone
would discern and decide what was good and evil (true and false). Our first parents
failed, how much more futile an enterprise for us with wounded reason. This exposes the
underlying pride in his feigned humility. 
Though touted to be a new method for the emerging science of his day, no serious
scientist of the 21st century could operate according to these principles. It would be
impossible to conduct research unless scientists first assent to the fundamental laws of
their discipline. 
There is nothing dangerous about a philosophy that includes a focus on the subject. The
great command of the pre-Christian Oracle at Delphi, know thyself is a valid pursuit.
Descartes failed in that he focused upon man in a way that overlooks or denies the fact
that there are truths that transcends us - which we cannot fully perceive by reason
alone. Experimental data and technological knowledge on their own, cannot lift us to full
truth and the purpose of our very existence. 
Beginning with the cogito ergo sum, Descartes developed a new science that promised
everything and denied everything...and which has made so many men, led astray by it from
the eternal verities, into sorrowful beings (Maritain, pg. 29). 
Bibliography
WORKS CITED
Ariew, Roger and Eric Watkins, eds. 1998. Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of
Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Co.).
Gilson, Etienne and Thomas Langan, Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant (New York: Image,
1963).
John Paul II. Crossing the Threshold of Hope. ed. by Vittorio Messori (New York: 
Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
Maritain, Jacques. The Dream of Descartes. tr. by Mabelle L. Andison (London: Editions
Poetry, 1946).