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THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY

René Descartes was a French philosopher, who lived a.d. 1596–1650. He is often called “the father of modern philosophy.” He was reared in a Jesuit college, but became dissatisfied with the prevailing teachings of Scholasticism, and determined to abandon books and to clear his mind of what he had learned, and then begin his philosophical thought afresh. Discarding everything, he found that Thought still remained, and that he was conscious of his own existence, or the awareness of “I Am.” Thus arose his famous proposition, “I think , therefore I am .” Inquiring next into ideas, or “all that is in our mind when we conceive a thing, in whatever way we conceive it,” he regarded clearness and distinctness as the criterion of the true as distinguished from the false. He held—that the clearest idea in the human mind is the idea of God; therefore, there must be a God. Similarly he reasoned that God must be an absolutely perfect being, and that such a being could not deceive us in mathematical and metaphysical reasoning faculties, and that therefore these sciences must be trustworthy. From this he reasoned that the actual existence of the phenomenal world is proved by the prior truth of the existence of God. He held that there exists spirit and matter—thinking and extended substance—and that creation was and is a manifestation of divine will. He was practically the founder of the modern school of Rationalism, or the doctrine that reason is an independent source of knowledge, distinct from sense perception, and having a higher authority; and that in philosophy, certain elementary concepts are to be sought, and that the remaining principles of philosophy may be deduced from these fundamental notions. His philosophy was very popular during the latter half of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century. His ideas were developed by Spinoza and Leibnitz, and were finally refuted by Kant, who held that from concepts could be deduced only that which had previously been put in them, and that rational concepts must be applied to the material of sense gained through experience. Rationalism, however, still exists in philosophy in a modified form, even Kant, who gave it its death blow as a perfect method, endeavoring to combine its truths with those of Empiricism, or the doctrine that truth is to be sought only through experience.

SPINOZA

Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch Jew, who lived a.d. 1632–1677, was one of the greatest philosophers of modern times. Excommunicated from the Jewish faith, and persecuted in many ways, he supported himself by grinding lenses. His character was admirable, and he stands out in history as one of the most sincere and consistent of philosophers. His system was a complicated pantheism. He held that all things were of one Substance, and that that Substance existed independently of any external cause or power—consequently that Substance must be God. By Substance, however, Spinoza did not mean matter or material principle, but the underlying reality, or the self-sufficient and comprehensive basis for, or essence of, all reality, capable at the same time of manifesting as its attributes all temporal and phenomenal existence. He held to the possibility of an infinite number of attributes in Substance, but that only two kinds were known to us, namely: The attribute of extension, or matter; and the attribute of thinking, or mind. These two attributes were held to be parallel manifestations or attributes of the hidden substantial reality of God. All particular things, psychical or physical, are “modes” of God, according to Spinoza, and bear the same relation to him as does the stream to the ocean, or time to eternity. God, he held, was the natura naturans , and nature the natura naturata —the one the energy, the other the act. The “modes” he held to be ephemeral, while God is eternal, outlasting all changes of time or space. He taught that only by identification with the eternal verities, with Substance, with God, can immortality, or peace, be obtained. Spinoza founded no school, but his spirit lives in nearly all philosophies since his time; even Haeckel, the modern scientific monistic authority, freely acknowledges his indebtedness to the Jewish philosopher. Spinoza’s spirit is evidenced in his axiom: “To define God is to deny him.” Lewes says of him: “Neither in Holland nor in Germany has there been a Spinozist, as there have been Cartesians, Kantists and Hegelians, although German philosophy is in some sense saturated with Spinozism.”

LEIBNITZ

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz was a German philosopher, who lived a.d. 1646–1716. He was influenced largely by Descartes regarding the doctrine of innate ideas; by Spinoza regarding rationalism; and by Locke regarding individualism. He held that nothing comes to the soul from without, but that all knowledge is merely an unfoldment of ideas originally possessed and innate, as “the small, dark notions of the soul”— all ideas are innate—and not acquired, although the explicit consciousness of them is acquired. He holds to an infinite Substance, but breaks its unity up into an infinite number of monads—his reality exists in itself, but acts through its monads. The monads, or souls, he holds, have the whole universe mirrored in themselves. The nature of each monad is held to be the same, but they vary infinitely in their degrees of perception, the most obscure perception belonging to the monads which we call matter. While God is pure activity, the finite monads are in a state of imperfect realization, the passivity of the finite monads giving rise to the illusion of the material world. He held that God is the “Monad of monads,” and his influence causes the changes of the finite monads to harmonize. Leibnitz was a radical optimist, holding that the universe was the best of all possible universes, having been selected as such by God by reason of His infinite wisdom and goodness. He did not assert that the universe was perfect, but that as a whole the world was the best of all possible worlds, and that for this reason God was justified for selecting a world in which there was evil. The followers of Leibnitz sacrificed his fundamental principles, as above stated, and held merely to his rationalistic methods, the result being to reduce the philosophy to its Scholastic form. The result was the decline of dogmatic rationalism. A new school, that of Empiricism, was beginning to wage war on the rationalists, and a new era in philosophy was dawning.

LOCKE

John Locke was an English philosopher who lived a.d. 1632– 1704. He was the founder of the modern school of philosophy known as Empiricism, the principal doctrine of which is that all knowledge or truth, is to be obtained only through experience , as opposed to the “theory of innate ideas.” Locke developed the Baconian idea that experience was the true source of knowledge, and that general truths should be reasoned inductively from observed facts of experience. He held that in empirical facts we may find the only source of knowledge, since the mind has no innate ideas. His teaching was that the materials for thought and reason are impressed upon the mind from outside, and that the sole activity of the mind is that of linking and combining together the ideas so obtained. He argued from this that our knowledge of the external world, resting, as it does, upon sense-perception; must be merely upon the plane of probability. He, however, violated his fundamental principle by assuming a rationalistic ideal including the assertion that we have an intuitive knowledge of the existence of the self, the existence of God, and of mathematical and moral truths. While under the influence of Bacon, he was nevertheless largely influenced by the rationalism of Descartes. While apparently advancing the full doctrine of empiricism, he managed to point out the way for its reconciliation with rationalism, which way was pursued by Kant in after years.