Father of Modern Philosophy-Rene Descartes was a leading French philosopher. He is also a renowned scientist, mathematician and a writer. Rene Descartes has different point of views in various fields from his ancestors. He considered his writings exclusive and unique from others. He was of the opinion that no one has written anything like him before. But the reality is that a number of his philosophical writings show deep influence of philosophical approaches of Aristotle and Augustine. They belong to Greek school of philosophy and tackle about 16th century revisions of stoicism.
Natural philosophy of Rene Descartes differs from what people actually taught in schools. There are two aspects of this discrimination.
1. He rejected the physical matter analysis of forms and substances.
2. He also refused the appeal to divine ends, which give explanation of various natural phenomena.
But he did insist on God’s supreme freedom about creation in his theology. He is commonly known as a modern thinker who was first to provide the philosophical frameworks and support to natural sciences.
Rene Descartes also worked on Meditation and its techniques. It was his first Philosophical attempt in which he reached to the original and real set of ideologies. This original set of ideologies has been accepted as true across the globe and without any doubts. After this he worked for methodological doubts in which he was uncertain about any idea. In this way he wanted to remove doubts in his provided philosophy in order to make a solid base for reliable knowledge.
In the beginning, Rene Descartes had reached to a single principle of thought existence. It is the most important evidence of existence as thoughts cannot be completely separated from an individual. This is termed as cogito ergo sum in Rene Descartes Meditation on first philosophy.
As a result, he came to the conclusion that he actually exists.
His conclusions were based on recognizing his body by utilizing his senses. I previous studies these are verified as unreliable. Therefore, he concluded that the thinking sense in him is the only undoubted knowledge. Accordingly, he defined thinking as becoming instantly conscious of what is taking place in him and he is aware of it. Every person has an in-built thinking ability, which instantly becomes conscious.
In his advance work he made demonstrations about the limitations of human senses with the help of Wax Argument. He employed wax as an example and his natural senses provided all the characteristic features of wax including shape, color, texture and smell etc. These features change when wax is brought near flame. So, he concluded that his brain informed him of the changes in natural properties of wax rather than his senses. In point of fact, he grasped it exclusively with his power of his mind judgment. Thus, he continues to construct his knowledge system. This system rejects the perceptions as variable and own up the logics as a technique.
The basic of the Rene Descartes’ knowledge system is that Knowledge can appear in the form of ideas whereas philosophical studies meditate these ideas.
