I hope this is your area or please tell me if you know of any good online philosophy forum...
What was the point of Descartes' 'cogito', I mean having arrived at cogito ergo sum, what use / purpose did he think this had? I read that he was writing at the time of the Thirty Years War and was searching for certainty that was universal ie acceptable to all people whatever their culture, religious affiliation etc. However it might be certain that 2 + 2 = 4 but how is that relevant to disputes between Protestants and Catholics? How does his cogito arrive at the truth of Christianity? Or was he just concerned with science and philosophy and not religion?
thank you
Charles
Answer Charles,
Sorry for the delayed response.
Your mentioning of the Thirty Years War brings up some very relevant historical information that might very well factor into Descartes' motives but I have to admit that I am not well versed on D's biography. There are many written and I am sure some might fill in some personal details that would make sense of his interest in theoretical matters after a prior career in the military. (He did participate in active military duty during the 30 years war.)
I can speak, however, on the role that cogito ergo sum plays in his philosophical writings.
D's goal was epistemological. He wanted to establish a rock solid foundation for knowledge (as opposed to mere belief). (Perhaps the war that waged between the Protestants and Catholics that was based on differing beliefs did have a fundamental influence here. The Meditations were written about 20 years after his military experience.)
His reasoning,which is much too detailed to outline here boils down to several fundamental principles:
1. Sensory perception is too varied and unreliable to serve as the foundation for knowledge.
2. Reason, which makes use of universal principles and essences, is the only proper foundation for knowledge.
The one bit of knowledge that he could be absolutely certain of was that he was a thinking thing (cogito). For even if he doubted this fact, the act of doubting only confirmed that it was so since doubting is a mode of thinking.
Descartes is credited with being the father of Modern Idealism (the school of philosophy that holds that reason/ideas are the only sure foundation of knowledge) and has had a profound influence on later Idealists and Empiricists alike, e.g., Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel. Even the more recent phenomenology of Husserl and Sartre owe much to Descartes' discussion of the cogito or knowing consciousness.
