Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College!

Let’s continue to talk of Descartes’s Meditations.

I described in last unit that Descartes’s philosophical Meditations share a similar structure to religious meditation which comprises a two-way practice of descending and re-ascending, or reduction and reunion. Therefore, after making sure the Archimedean point of human knowledge “I think therefore I am” in Meditation II and the Archimedean lever “God exists and He is not a deceiver” in Meditation III, Descartes starts to regain the validity of human knowledge that has been put into radical doubt in Meditation I. The overall thinking process of Meditation IV to VI can be summarized as follows: in Meditation IV, Descartes presents his theory of making good judgment: whenever we correctly use our freewill to judge vividly and clearly perceived ideas, we human beings would not make mistakes. Then, in Meditation V, using this theory, Descartes proves that mathematical knowledge is certain, and in Meditation VI, still using the same theory, Descartes proves the existence of body and the value of sensory perceptions of it. During the process, fundamental issues such as the existence of God and the distinction between mind and body are frequently revisited, and eventually, what Descartes contributed in his six Meditations counts nothing less than a prototype of modern philosophy: he demolishes all previous beliefs inherited from the scholastic past, and constructs something new that seems to provide solid knowledge on three most basic substances of the world: soul, body and God.

Although whether Descartes succeeds to argue in the most rigorous and impeccable way all the claims he intends to make in Meditations is up to debate, his thought on several major themes of Meditation IV-VI is of immense value for us to comprehend the nature of modern philosophy as a whole.

Firstly, Descartes resorts to old scholastic strategies to explain why God, as an omnibenevolent supreme being, allows the human creatures to be able to make mistakes in our cognitive activities of pursuing knowledge. Descartes says that as a creature, humans inherit “non-being” or “nothingness” in their nature, and thus, cannot avoid imperfections; moreover, imperfections of human beings serve the overall perfection of all creations by God. Therefore, there is really no reason for humans to blame God for human imperfections. However, since the overall creation can explain away human imperfections, Descartes asks a further question in Meditation IV that since this is the case, what is the overall purpose of God to put human beings in such a humble position among all his creations? At this juncture, Descartes indicates again the nature of his modern thought, that is, he would utilize pre-modern terms of theological thinking to argue for his modern cases. In other words, Descartes thinks that since God is infinite and humans are finite, there is no way for humans to understand the overall purpose of divine creation. Because of this, the just asked question has no way to get an answer from human intelligence, and as a consequence, there is no basis either to use “teleological” explanation in natural sciences.

We once read Aristotle’s Physics and On the Heavens where Aristotle characterizes “nature” in four connotations: a nature of an object can mean its material, form, efficient cause and purpose. For Aristotle, the cause of “purpose” is the most important since it indicates the overall order of worldly phenomena. However, for Descartes, since the purpose of God’s creation is unfathomable for human beings, nature just means “a fixed order in the sequence of cause and effect which operates upon things in the world.” In other words, Descartes’s understanding of “nature” becomes purely mechanical; the natural world is therefore thoroughly “disenchanted,” and this disenchanted worldview paves the way for the flourishing of modern natural science which is premised upon mechanistic explanation and mathematical reasoning. In this sense, the metaphysics of Descartes really serves as a “root” for his “physics” and other applied sciences, just as they are described in the “tree of philosophy.”

Secondly, although “I think therefore I am” speaks to the essence of “thought” or “thinking” for the substance of “soul” or “mind” in Descartes’s metaphysics, if we read carefully Meditation II and Meditation IV together, we would find such an essence would boil down to an acknowledge of “free will” as the genuine distinction of human beings from other beings. In Descartes’s theory of judgment, he instructs two forms of human freedom. One form is negative, which implies human will can suspend its approval or disapproval to ideas presented by human intelligence, and thus remain “indifferent” to the truth of those presented ideas. One best example of this negative freedom is when humans would simply doubt any piece of human knowledge, and thus, refuse to make any choice among presented ideas. Another form of freedom is a positive one, which implies the will of human beings approves or disapproves strongly the ideas that have been vividly and clearly perceived by human intelligence, and thus, is able to make swift decision regarding a variety issues of human life. For Descartes, the more knowledge humans have, the freer humans can be positively. However, the negative freedom is also fundamental, since it speaks to the fact that humans are not programmed machines, and can hence withhold judgments whenever our will would like to do so. Isn’t the “hyperbolic doubt” used by Descartes’s Mediation I such an example of the application of the negative form of human will? Yes, it is, since “doubting” is the activity of human will when ideas perceived by human intelligence are judged as not vivid or clear. In this sense “I think therefore I am” is actually “I doubt therefore I am,” which is furthermore equal to “I am free therefore I am.” In other words, the Archimedean point upon which all Descartes’s philosophical meditations are based upon is actually the self-affirmation of the freedom of human will, definitely a very strong indicator of the modern nature of Descartes’s thought.

Thirdly, one most interesting idea that Descartes contributes to his metaphysics is actually the one he mentions in the last Meditation, and he also didn’t address quite well. While asking himself what is the value of sensory perceptions such as the feelings of pain and pleasure caused by outside objects if most of these perceptions are so confusing and unclear that do not tell the truth of these outside objects, Descartes concludes that these perceptions mainly tell whether these objects are beneficial or harmful to humans, and therefore, speak to the close “union” of mind and body. Otherwise, Descartes continues to muse that, if mind and body are not closely united, then, if something hurts our body, we can just intellectually and abstractly perceive the body is undergoing certain damage without actually feeling the pains. Since we are indeed feeling the pains, this means the relationship between body and mind is different from the one where body is like a machine and mind is like an operator sitting in an air-conditioned control room to monitor the process of body movement. No, since we feel the pains on top of our intellectual perception of the damage of body, Descartes concludes that the real nature of human existence is actually neither body nor mind, but a close union between the two. However, if mind and body have been argued by Descartes in previous Meditations as two completely different substances, each of which has its distinctive nature called “extension” or “thought,” how can they be closely “united” and interact with each other? If we take the aforementioned concept of “free will” into consideration, then the asked question will indicate a further dimension: how can an utterly free human being live a life that is fully embedded in the world of machine-like “bodies” which, as Descartes argues in his concept of “nature,” follow exact mechanical and deterministic laws of causality? Furthermore, if “feelings,” “emotions,” and sensory perceptions are so important for the good human life , doesn’t it do a disservice to ourselves to mention this unique kind of worldly phenomena in the last place of the Meditations, and hence, get a somewhat perfunctory treatment in Descartes’s metaphysics in general?

I hope these last few questions can help to generate reflective thoughts on the nature of Descartes’s thought in particular, and of modern philosophy in general, so that perhaps, whenever you feel somewhat dissatisfied by the way of living of a modern human, you can find some clues or even make some breakthroughs through reading Descartes’s foundational modern thought.