Descartes was born in a bureaucratic aristocratic family in Toulon, France. His mother died of illness shortly after giving birth to him. He almost died, but thanks to the careful care of the nurse, he came back to life. Because I have lived among women since I was a child and been taken care of, I am sensitive, slender and a little neurotic. At the age of eight, Descartes began his education at Jesuit College in Lafleur. Besides studying scholasticism, he also studied literature, physics, astronomy, mathematics and other knowledge. He is most interested in mathematics, and among all his classmates, his math scores are the best. However, at that time, the courses offered by the school were mainly religious classics, and the teaching contents and methods of other courses were also saturated with scholastic habits. So, when he graduated, Descartes found himself surrounded by countless mistakes and doubts, but he was getting farther and farther away from the truth. So he hopes that one day he can find another way and get real knowledge from other aspects.
18 years old, Descartes came to Paris and entered the society. Here, he spends time practicing riding and fencing. But soon, he was tired of the life of the upper class, so he retired to a hidden place in the suburbs of Saint-Germain and concentrated on studying mathematics and philosophy. At the age of 2/kloc-0, he volunteered to serve in the army in order to seek knowledge and increase his knowledge. First served in the Dutch army, then joined the Bavarian army, and finally served in the French army. During this whole period, Descartes, on the one hand, went to European countries as a mercenary to inspect customs and improve his life experience; On the other hand, he concentrates on philosophical and scientific issues, and even in the army headquarters, people often find him meditating alone. 162 1 year, Descartes left the army, went to Italy first, and then lived in Paris for several years. 1629, in order to arrange the results of years of meditation into manuscripts, he sold his aristocratic hereditary territory, left the motherland and moved to the Netherlands, where his thoughts were more free at that time. Descartes lived in Holland for 20 years.
Descartes was unmarried all his life. He is always well dressed and carries a sword. He is timid and cautious, and he is a Catholic who pursues church rituals. 1649, Descartes moved to Stockholm at the invitation of Queen Christina Christie and became the Queen's teacher. Christine is a strong-willed, hardworking and manly young queen. She starts classes at 5 o'clock every morning and never stops in the morning and afternoon. The old philosopher couldn't stand such a tiring arrangement. The winter in Stockholm was cold and dry, and Descartes finally fell ill. 1650 February, Descartes died in Sweden.
Most of Descartes' works were written while living in Holland. 1637 anonymously published his first book, Philosophical Review, including three papers on methodology and refractive optics, meteorology and analytic geometry, in which methodology systematically expounded his rational deduction and preliminary philosophical thinking for the first time. 164 1 year, published by Descartes' metaphysical meditation. 1644 published the Principles of Philosophy, which summarized his whole philosophical system. On Emotion was published in 1649. After Descartes' death, Letters was published, covering philosophy, mathematics, physics, morality and other aspects. Descartes' works and articles are easy to understand, and some come straight to the point, describing their own thought process one by one very frankly; Some articles are as rigorous as mathematics, explaining his philosophy step by step.
Descartes once described his philosophy system like this: "All my philosophy is like a tree, in which metaphysics is the root, physics is the stem, and all other sciences are branches from the stem". So, how did Descartes cultivate his "roots" and "stems"? Descartes began with universal doubt, and he wanted to review all the views accepted so far before rationality. He believes that everyone is a child before adulthood, and has long been "dominated by our desires and our own teachers" and has not accepted his own rational guidance, so what he accepted as truth before is likely to be false. In addition, our feelings sometimes deceive us, so our feelings are also questionable. Descartes started from general doubt, and then came to the conclusion that when I doubted everything, I found that there was one thing that was beyond doubt, that is, I doubted the activity itself; Suspicion is a state of mind, so "I'm thinking" is beyond doubt. In thought, there must be a thinker-"ego", from which Descartes deduced his famous proposition: "I think, therefore I am." In his view, this is an unquestionable truth that he has obtained after extensive doubts, and it can be regarded as the "first principle" for establishing a philosophical system.
According to the first principle, Descartes continued to infer the existence of God. He said that when I generally doubt everything, I find that my existence is not perfect, because doubt itself shows that I don't understand, which is an incomplete performance; On the other hand, I am very aware that there is an infinitely perfect concept of God in my heart, which I can never create by myself, because it is impossible to create a perfect concept with imperfect things. Therefore, this idea can only be put into my heart by God himself, so God must exist. At the same time, since God is infinitely perfect, it must contain the attribute of existence, because existence is a complete basic element. If something doesn't exist at all, what is integrity? So God must exist. Descartes' statement is actually just a replica of the ontological proof of the existence of God by Anselmus, a medieval scholastic philosopher. This is the most negative content in Descartes' philosophy.
After affirming the existence of God, Descartes deduced the existence of the material world. He said that once I introduced the existence of God, things would be easy, because since God is infinitely perfect, he certainly won't lie, and the cognitive ability he gave me certainly won't lie to me, so as to ensure the authenticity of my thoughts and eliminate my doubts. Now, I clearly have a broad concept of material entity in my mind, and I clearly realize that there is something outside me, whose characteristics are different from those of God and mind. Therefore, it must be caused by an object different from God, the mind and outside our hearts. This object, that is, an extensive entity, is what we call "object" or "matter". Descartes thus deduced the existence of the material world and finally completed his philosophical system.
There are three entities in Descartes' metaphysical system: mind, God and matter. He believes that the essence of spiritual entity is thought, without any extension. The essence of material entity is extensive and incredible. Therefore, they are independent, parallel and have no influence on each other. In this way, Descartes established a dual worldview with mind and matter in parallel. Descartes dualism, on the one hand, reflects the weakness of the French bourgeoisie, on the other hand, it also reflects the limitations of the scientific development level at that time. At that time, natural science could not provide enough materials to explain the dependence of thinking on matter.
Descartes discussed the root part of his philosophy-metaphysics, and then discussed the main part of his philosophy-physics (that is, the theory about nature). In physics, Descartes studied the properties of physical entities. He believes that the fundamental attribute of matter is universality. From this, he deduced a series of important materialist conclusions. As he thinks, matter can be infinitely divided and the material world is infinitely unified. If Descartes constructed a dualism with parallel mind and matter in his Metaphysics and finally moved towards idealism, and regarded God as the highest absolute entity, then he left God aside and regarded matter as the only entity in Physics, giving full play to his mechanical materialism thought. As Marx pointed out: "Descartes thinks that matter has independent creativity in his physics, and regards mechanical movement as the expression of material life." He completely separated physics from metaphysics. Within the scope of his physics, matter is the only entity and the only basis for existence and understanding. "
Descartes and Bacon are pioneers of modern philosophy. Descartes' principle of universal doubt, like Bacon's criticism of "four illusions", is a powerful weapon against scholasticism. Bacon criticized the "four illusions" and denied scholasticism, while Descartes opposed blind faith with suspicion, shaking the sacred authority of scholasticism. Besides, his general skepticism is different from skepticism. He did not take doubt as an end, but as a means to establish a new philosophy.
Descartes, like Bacon, advocated scientific knowledge and made great contributions to epistemology and methodology. However, Descartes' epistemology and methodology are different from Bacon's. Bacon attached importance to experience and advocated induction; Descartes attached importance to reason and advocated deduction. His so-called rational deduction is to deduce other principles step by step from several self-evident axioms until a complete knowledge system is formed.
Descartes' philosophy has a great influence on the development of philosophy in the future. Meanwhile, Descartes is not only a famous philosopher, but also an outstanding scientist. He has made great contributions to mathematics, physics, astronomy and physiology. In the history of human cultural development, Descartes always radiates brilliant light.