RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Dervish Descartes
abode, which he changed more than twenty times, was a secret known only to a few friends, particularly Marin Mersenne, his Paris correspondent. Descartes claimed that he was only seeking the quiet and seclusion necessary for study, but he was probably hiding from the Pv,oman Catholic Church. Professedly an orthodox Catholic, he did not wish to offend the Church with a theory of matter out of harmony with the doctrine of transubstantiation, or with his equally objectionable theory of the earth's motion. Indeed, he was long deterred from publishing his work by the experience of Galileo (q.v.).
In Holland Descartes had made enthusiastic disciples; and under the leadership of Henri Reneri, and his successor at the University of Utrecht, Henri Le Roy (Regius), the new phi-
3. Publica- losophy was triumphant. However, tions. Con- soon after the publication of the troversies. Discours de la methode (Leyden, 1637)
he began to experience opposition; and on the appearance of his Meditationes de 'prima philosophia (Paris, 1641), which was followed by his Principia pMlosopMce (Amsterdam, 1644), he found himself the center of the most bitter theological controversies. He was attacked by Protestants and Catholics alike. Gisbertus Voetius (q.v.), who had become rector of the University of Utrecht in 1641, led the Calvinist opposition. He stopped the teaching of Descartes's doctrine, induced the city magistrates to take action against Descartes, and all but succeeded in having his works burned by the public hangman. Descartes finally had to appeal to the Prince of Orange to end the persecution to which he was being subjected by the Voetians. In a measure he escaped these troubles by two visits to France, where, in 1644, he conciliated his old teacher, Father Bourdin, who had led the Jesuit opposition against him, and in 1647 received a pension of 3,000 livres from the French king.
On the occasion of his last visit to France (1648), the lukewarm reception accorded him at the court, due to the disorders of the time,
4. Death in caused him to abandon the intention Stockholm, he had formed of settling in Paris,
Works and in Sept., 1649, on the invitation of Proscribed. Queen Christina of Sweden, he set out for Stockholm to teach his philosophy to that eccentric sovereign. Less than four months after his arrival in Stockholm he succumbed to pneumonia. He died in the Roman Catholic faith and was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Stockholm. In 1667 his remains were reinterred with imposing ceremonies in St. Genevieve du Mont (the modern Pantheon), Paris, though the funeral oration prepared for the occasion was suppressed by the court. In 1819 his remains were removed to St. Germain-des-Pres, where they now rest. Despite the efforts of Descartes during his lifetime, and those of his friends after his death, to convince the Church of his orthodoxy, his works were placed on the Index at Rome in 1663, and in 1671 the teaching of Cartesianism at the University of Paris was prohibited by royal order. However, Cartesianism, which had now become an intellectual fad, remained the only philosophy of the day and
continued to be taught in numerous private academies in Paris, and also in tlie Dutch universities.
The pliilosophical views of Descartes will be found in the three works mentioned above. In reflecting over his scholastic studies at La Fleche, he came to the conclusion that all 5. His Skep- generally accepted knowledge is open ticism. The to doubt. From this sweeping in- Self and dictment he reserved morals and God. religion; but it was inevitable that, once enunciated, skepticism, as a method, would be extended to these fields. Both Father Bourdin and Voetius foiesaw this. Thus, rejecting all supposed knowlef!,q;e, Descartes set about to build up a philosophical system de novo. He begins by establishing the reality of the self. In questioning the truth of everything he finds at least one fact that he can not doubt; viz., the very fact of doubting itself. This doubt, of course, is a form of thought; but before there can })e any thought there must be a subject that thinks. Hence, his famous cogito, ergo sum, a modification of Augustine's fallor, ergo sum. From the reality of the self he then develops his proof of the existence of God. Among other innate ideas he finds the idea God, a perfect being, omniscient, omnipotent, infinite. Since an effect can not be greater than its cause, we ourselves, as finite beings, could not have produced this idea. In fact, only a perfect being could have produced it; but, since existence is an attribute of a perfect being, this being must necessarily exist — a form of Anselm's ontological argument, which was demolished by Kant (q.v.). In searching for the ground of the certainty of his knowledge regarding his own existence and that of God, Descartes finds that it lies in the clearness and distinctness of the idea. He then lays down the obscure and highly questionable rule that whatever is perceived clearly and distinctly must be true. Since he has already demonstrated that there is a God, God's veracity (another attribute of perfection) becomes the guaranty of our knowledge. Hobbes was the first to point out that this argument moves in a circle.
In addition to an infinite substance, or God, Descartes, retaining the dualism of the schoolmen, finds in existence two created substances, mind {res cogitans) and matter (res extensa). These are absolutely heterogeneous and not further 6. His reducible the one into the other. Dualism. While the essence of the one is think- Ethics. ing, the only quality of the other is extension, such supposed qualities as color, odor, etc., being merely subjective. The difficulty in conceiving of any causal relation between these two incompatible kinds of being does not seem to have presented itself to Descartes. Since in the case of man there is apparently such a relation there must be some point of contact between the spatial body and the non-spatial soul. This point Descartes locates in the pineal gland. The body itself he regards as an automatic mechanism, so far as the functions of digestion, circulation, and the affections of love, hate, etc., are concerned; though the immaterial soul, which God has fused into the body, directs all conscious movements.
Descartes
Descent of Christ into Hell