-Add 3% to your exam grade... this will raise the letter grade for some, but not all of them
-Working draft 2 due to EEE dropbox Wednesday at 11 p.m.
-Take this midterm survey on EEE.
-Re-read Meditations #1-3... recommended study questions from Core website #s 1, 7, 9, 13, 18
-Each group from today should post three arguments for the Catholic Church v. Descartes trial. (Group A: Descartes' sins against Aristotle, Group B: Descartes' sins against God, Group C: defense of Descartes as a good Aristotlean, Group D: Defense of Descartes as a good Christian)
Here's Badiou, by the way. Like Descartes, he uses methodological "doot" to construct a philosophical system that can actually stand up to doot, although he is obviously dealing with newer kinds of doot that have developed in more recent philosophy:
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"... and of course I do not yet sufficiently know whether there is even a God..." pg. 71
I accuse you Descartes, of questioning the presence of a God and using this blasphemous claim as the backbone of your third meditation.
What's sufficient? All you need is the Bible, from God. We clearly have a bible so obviously God exists.
What do you mean he is not a believer of god? He clearly states he does believe God in that "[He] judge[s] God to be actually infinite, so that nothing can be added to his perfection"(pg. 77). You see he believes that God is perfect, thus he believe in God.
Hey, good job the two of you. But, uh, where's the rest?
In the defense of Descartes as a good Christian... Descartes' states his underlying purpose behind his meditations in his letter of dedication. Christian's believe in God's existence because "we must believe in the Holy Scriptures because they have come from God" (47), using faith and grace, which are given to us by God to believe that he exists. Descartes stands by this reasoning, but must convince unbelievers in another method, by using philosophy, because "certainly no unbelievers seem capable of being persuaded of any religion or even of almost any moral virtue, until these two are first proven to them by natural reason" (47). He has made it his duty, as a Christian, to convince the unbelievers of God's existence through the method of his discourses as a philosopher.
Descartes believes that the soul is detached from the body "we form a concept of the soul that is as lucid as possible and utterly distinct from every concept of a body" pg. 54
Descartes believe that the soul is immortal "see proofs for the immortality of the soul int his meditation" pg.54
He also does not believe that people are rational animals as Aristotle believes "Might I not say a "rational animal"? No, because then I would have to inquire what "animal" and "rational" mean." pg. 64
In defense of Descartes as a good Aristotelian, he argues that he wants to talk mainly about "God and the soul"-- the subject of God is meant to please the Church while the soul is a subject heavily discussed in ancient Greece. He also mentions that the two should be "demonstrated with the aid of philosophy rather than theology." He wants to prove that he doesn't want to contridict Greek philosophy, taking even so far as to put his cautiousness to not offend followers of Aristotle before his cautiousness to not offend the Church.
Descartes believes that our mind is distinct from the body and we can live without it as it is immortal. p.96
Descartes also believes the causes of nature to be useless. p.82
Descartes is a good christian because he believes "... God and the soul - are chief among those that ought to be demonstrated with the aid of philosophy rather than theology" (pg. 47). Theology is the study of the nature of God and religious beliefs while philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence. Descartes is using philosophy to prove that God does exist by showing its true physical being rather than just saying God is real.
Descartes makes it clear that he is one who BELIEVES in God.
"Moreover, I know that there are many irreligious people who refuse to believe that God exists and that the human mind is distint from the body.. By no means am I in agreement with these people" (pg.48).
on page 76 Descartes says that "'God' is a certain substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, and supremely powerful, and that created me along with everything else that exists...I must conclude that God necessarily exists."
Thus Descartes is acknowledging the fact that God, or a being that represents God, exists.
Aristotle: Descartes, I disagree with your statement that, "...we cannot understand the mind to be anything but indivisible. For we cannot conceive of half of a mind, as we can half of any body whatever, no matter how small." Don't you realize that the mind and body are inseparably connected? If I lost my head, my body would no longer have a mind (soul) as my purpose of pursuing greater knowledge would no longer be attainable. Descartes, you are a fool.
Differences between Aristotle and Descartes:
Descartes does not believe that the soul and the body are inter-related. This idea contradicts Aristotle's belief that the soul and body are dependent upon each other.
Descartes was obviously a good Christian boy since he says on page 47 "Granted, it is altogether true that we must believe in God's existence because it is taught in the Holy Scriptures, and, conversely, that we must believe in the Holy Scriptures because they have come from God." He uses this circulatory reasoning to show that he believes in God.
Descartes is a non-believer!
He states that" I easily convince myself that it can even be separated from God's essence, and hence that God can be though of as not existing." p.89
How could you, Descartes, even assume that God can be separated into separate things, and even to the blasphemous conclusion that he doesn't exist if he is separated?
God does not apply to your silly rules about everything else
Random Notes:
1) If I gave you the impression that the very idea of using philosophy as a defense of Christianity would have been considered unorthodox or blasphemous, let me correct that. The medieval church was highly invested in "apologetics," which meant using human reason (philosophy) not so much to justify church doctrine as to explain it to those who questioned it. So the philosophers at this time were operating inside of the Church and on its behalf. What's novel about Descartes' procedure, though, is a) where he starts, i.e. the scope and intensity of his initial doubt, and b) where he ends up, i.e. with a system of more reliable human reason, albeit founded on an abstract kind of religious concept.
2) Note that the immortality of the soul is a separate argument from the existence of God. The reason that this is particularly important in church doctrine - and it wasn't always in there by the way; I think it could be argued that it was introduced by neo-Platonists in the church and depends on a misunderstanding of the New Testament - anyway, the reason that it's important is because medieval Catholics thought it was impossible to have an ethics without immortality. Because there had to be eternal punishments and rewards. Think about how different this is than Aristotle's eudaemonia.
3) Descartes' disagreement with Aristotle's ontology/physics is much more technical, and to explain it I would have to take you through a lot more medieval philosophy than you and I have time for. It's not that he doesn't believe the mind and body are connected or interrelated, it's that he believes they can (and must) be analyzed separately. Of course Aristotle would not agree with this. Also Descartes is upfront that he isn't quite clear what their relation is. What he is really doing is clearing the way for science to proceed in two directions at once... think of his advances in mathematics on the "mind" side and his advances in medicine and other empirical sciences on the "body" side. What really matters here isn't necessarily his beef with Aristotle, but his beef with Catholicized Aristotle. In other words, he is contesting the idea that there's nothing more that can be learned in science. You can't just go by Aristotle, he's saying. There's more to be learned in math and in natural/empirical sciences. This is where you can begin to see why this was unsettling, if not immediately revolutionary. Once you say there are new things to learn and that you, as a single person, a single ego, have the authority and clarity to learn them, then you undermine the role of the church ( its leaders, doctrines, and rituals) as the exclusive source of all knowledge. And don't forget that in Catholic France, the church as a power structure is thoroughly entangled with the monarchy and the aristocracy. This is why the French Revolutionists, who (temporarily) overthrew the church and the government, looked to Descartes as an inspiration. He elevated the importance of individual reason (you could say restored it depending on your perspective). He didn't say, like later philosophers would, that man is the measure of all things, or that knowledge comes only from your senses checked against those of other people. But without the "cogito ergo sum" or something equivalent to it, it's hard to imagine that the feudal power monopoly could have ever been broken. Knowledge is power, as they say. To start a new club that basically has you and God in it, that gives you access to a new source of power. In that sense, D's Meditations is somewhat similar to Protestantism, the difference being that it comes from within the Catholic tradition and uses all of its standard modes of argumentation.
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