Descartes: Impact on Philosophy and the Existence of God

Descartes' Impact on Philosophy and the Existence of God

Due to the great importance of Descartes, we can relate his ideas to many authors in the history of philosophy, both past and present. We could relate him to St. Thomas Aquinas and focus primarily on his theory of knowledge and the demonstration of the existence of God.

For Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, knowledge starts from experience; there is nothing in the understanding that has not gone through the senses. For Descartes, the senses are deceptive, and truth is the evidence that reveals reason. Thomas Aquinas' proof of the existence of God starts from the observation of facts. Descartes made his proof from the innate idea of infinity, which does not come from experience.

Descartes and Contemporary Philosophy

In relation to contemporary philosophy, we can compare the concept of reason that Ortega had with that of Descartes. Descartes defined reason as a Kantian pure reason, that is, the subject is outside the world and is timeless. Reason for Ortega is a vital, historical reason; there is no isolated self. For this reason, Ortega's vital, historical reason carries a much different concept of truth than the Cartesian one. For Ortega, there is no single truth (for Descartes, there is a first truth, cogito ergo sum; the second, the existence of God; and the third, the existence of the world). For Ortega, truth is based on the perspective of each subject that views a fact. This means that there is not only one truth, but as many truths as there are subjects covering that aspect of reality. Ortega also appreciated how reason is a particular reason for the story and how this will change. For Descartes, truth is absolute and eternal; there is only one truth that is discovered by reason.

Descartes and English Empiricism

We can relate Descartes to English empiricism. Both share the problem of our thinking capacity to know what reality is, a problem that focuses on the relationship between our representations and the existence of external reality, yet determined differently for each stream. For empiricism and for common sense, external reality exists independently of our awareness of it or not. What modern philosophy tries to do (Descartes and all of English empiricism) is figure out how reality is. Rationalism says that the senses show us a distorted view of reality, while empiricism says just the opposite.

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

Rationalism bases all its knowledge on reason, and empiricism on experience, but what do we mean by one stream and another? For empiricism, knowledge is based on sensitive representations; for rationalism, the principles that the mind has are innate.

As proof of the existence of God, Descartes starts from an innate idea, while empiricism denies that it can demonstrate God's existence because there are no innate ideas (idiots have no mind and no innate ideas). Besides, everything that is in the mind must have a corresponding sense impression, and God is not represented phenomenally, with a sensible referent outside of my mind.

Personal Reflection

From my personal perspective, this topic deals with issues that are still a problem in the theory of knowledge today, and it remains a major problem and one of the great questions of philosophy: the existence of God. Regarding this latter problem, we see that there are even some Christian philosophers who say it is impossible to prove the existence of God, for example, Tertullian, because he says that God is so superior to us that it is absurd to try to demonstrate His existence.

The validity of this issue varies from one society to another. There are secular societies where religion has lost its social importance, and demonstrating the existence of God is not actually important for any thinker. For example, Enrique Tierno Galván was a Spanish philosopher of the late twentieth century whose attitude was agnostic, and certainly the most accepted and respectful attitude toward his fellow citizens.