The Emergence of New Philosophy

How Descartes Defends Himself

The English scholar and politician Francis Bacon (1561—1626) is often inaccurately credited as the founder of new philosophy; indeed, the Renaissance philosophers, such as Lorenzo Valla, already began critiquing the entire tradition of preceding philosophy. The further we delve into the study of medieval philosophy, the more we recognize the myriad "modern" questions it raised.

For Bacon, Aristotle's flaw lay in his equal diligence toward both general scientific inquiries and specific scientific issues, which meant he could not truly systematize the sciences. Celestial phenomena could be classified under metaphysics, physics, and meteorology, and even if they were divided such that the unmoved mover pertained to metaphysics while terrestrial matters belonged to meteorology, this hierarchical division did not clarify the order of our knowledge; rather, it only indicated the location of our understanding. Bacon asserted that the new metaphysics should focus not on the structure of being but on finding common approaches to the material that are suitable for all sciences.

Descartes, on the other hand, constructs a model of knowledge that is, in essence, little different from that of the medieval period. He posits that a person can be misled for a long time and thus not be fully themselves, just as in Christian asceticism, a sinner is never wholly themselves but instead a victim of dark forces. However, one can also avoid error if one finds one's truth as the truth of one's being as a thinking substance. Hence, "I think, therefore I am" encapsulates how, from the capacity to think the truth—including the truth of one's existence—Descartes derives how a person can realize their independent existence. It is often noted that for Descartes, "I think" signifies not merely contemplation but an act that shapes consciousness; however, it is less frequently emphasized that "I exist" also transcends mere recognition of being, representing the capacity to relate oneself completely and independently to being, thus realizing one's existence solely as independent existence.

The trajectory of Descartes' thought was echoed by Kant, who asserted in the "Critique of Pure Reason" that the very term "being" adds no meaning beyond that of an existing thing; it is equivalent to stating "Kant exists," "Kant is," or "Kant is before us." Such reasoning would be incomprehensible to a medieval philosopher: God possesses a perfect and true being that does not need to be present before us; the being of God is infinitely superior to the being of the created things, thus "is" in the phrase "God is" adds to the conception of God what cannot be added to the concept of man, hence it holds immense significance. Kant contends that human consciousness already implies that things are considered in their being, rather than in their potential to acquire any being, thereby allowing us to know things as they are, including the ability to be aware of things.

Descartes insists that we can attain a clear and distinct idea of being; our mind is structured such that if truth exists somewhere and if we exist, then God has not deceived us, which allows us to assert truth. What for God is a simple affirmation or judgment, or to speak in the terms of 20th-century analytical philosophy, a "proposition," for man becomes interpretation: God creates truth as a possibility of not being deceived, while man becomes aware of himself at the moment he realizes he cannot be deceived. We must be cautious with the last term: the word "moment" in new philosophy, which Descartes does not use here, yet we cannot forgo, thanks to Isaac Newton (1642—1727), signifies not merely a span of time but a specific relationship to motion, as in the physical "moment of rotation," namely, identifying the point at which the motion of a more complex system begins or ends.

Thus, a person thinks of truth as credibility, persuading them that their consciousness is functioning meaningfully. The notion of "credibility" ceases to be the domain of individual sciences, such as physics or jurisprudence, and instead becomes an essential component of philosophy as a whole. Immediately, modern concepts of subject and object arise. Certainly, these words existed previously: the term "subject" referred to the grammatical subject of a sentence, the object of discourse, or generally, a substance. The term "object" denoted an obstacle to knowledge, something lying opposite, placed before one’s gaze, through which one must still strive to penetrate to true contemplation. In new philosophy, the subject and object are necessary characters of knowledge: the subject possesses sufficient consciousness to know objects, while the object can affirm its credibility, thus becoming known.

Like Aristotle, Descartes contended that a "first philosophy," or metaphysics, should precede individual philosophical and scientific disciplines, establishing the foundational concepts, relationships, and rules necessary for further reasoning. However, unlike Aristotle, Descartes did not start from the general capacity of humans to understand the surrounding world and to convince themselves of its heterogeneity through philosophy; instead, he began with persistent doubt.

What does this doubt entail? Before us stands a table with books upon it. We might certainly question the names of these things, declaring that it is not a table but a "part of a furniture set" or a "desk," and that these are not books but "books, brochures, and other printed materials." We can also recall the ancient skeptics who asserted that if we cannot fully express a thing in words, cannot fully perceive it, or do not entirely know its future, we cannot confidently assert the very existence of that thing. However, Descartes' doubt is much more radical: we can be deceived not only by words and our relation to words but also by our senses and our relation to our senses.

Following Descartes, Spinoza similarly argued that credibility is not mere everyday certainty: in daily life, one may feel confident and behave assuredly, but this does not mean that we will not confront questions of truth once we step outside this psychological self-satisfaction. Truth belongs not to the order of our senses or our capacity to know things, but to the order of being itself; our encounter with truth is always a questioning of our very existence—whether we exist sufficiently to be.

Spinoza explained that false ideas cannot be credible because we cannot even ascertain what we know. For instance, we might believe that somewhere people walk on their heads. Yet we cannot state where we learned this: from rumors, from a children’s book, or from our own assumptions. Consequently, we do not know this knowledge as knowledge and recognize its falsehood. At the same time, we can be assured of the being of God or matter; although we learn this from various sources, we would also know it well enough even without these sources, should they all vanish without a trace.

For Descartes, "to know" means "to be aware of something existing," while "to think" means "to recognize the credibility of this knowledge." If in the preceding philosophy both the existence of the intelligible and the possibility of comprehending it through the mind were derived from the structure of the world, for Descartes, this represents a certain method of constructing obviousness, allowing the most intricate scientific operations to be applied to the simplest material things, which in turn birthed modern science. Descartes himself created the "Discourse on the Method" as a prelude to his natural science treatises on "dioptrics, meteorology, and geometry" to explain what general laws can be perceived as entirely credible.

In this context, Descartes speaks of "internal (o)perception," which precedes the light of reason. For the light of reason is reflected light, elicited in us by the immediate vision of things. In contrast, primary inner consciousness constitutes the knowledge that we can perceive things as those that lead us to contemplate the obviousness of the thought about these things. It is worth noting that the word "method" existed prior to Descartes but meant something entirely different, specifically the rules for constructing a rhetorical argument—not a sequence of experience but merely a sequence of transition from less convincing arguments to more convincing ones.

In Discourse on the Method, Descartes asserts that philosophy is only truly useful when it contributes to correct and effective action. He claims that philosophy will enable us to "consciously understand the foundations of our arts (crafts)," and such a philosophy, aware of the forces and their potentials, surpasses the former contemplative philosophy. The earlier philosophy, we must note, aimed not at the efficacy of action but solely at the efficacy of contemplation: in examining various human actions, it was essential to ensure that our contemplation became sufficiently comprehensive, penetrating the very intelligible foundations of existence, thereby enhancing our understanding of how contemplation itself prescribes its own laws for our relations to things. The goal of philosophy was to attain a point of contemplation wherein the intelligible is understood with clarity, thus rendering individual actions within our world easily comprehensible and quickly grasped particulars.

In contrast, Descartes renders contemplation a methodological issue, while actions and their objectives become fundamental, such that knowledge of laws transforms into their effective utilization.

Of course, between Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes traverses a significant path. He is confronted with another dilemma: if physical certainty demands a critique of our sensory capacities and the intellectual faculties intertwined with the senses, how can we ascertain mathematical certainty if mathematical objects are conceived by our consciousness? Why are mathematicians so confident in their conclusions if they themselves create mathematics, not based on the contemplation of anything, but merely on the premise that their imagination of things might resonate with other imaginings? If we respond that the outcome applies directly to things, and through calculations, we ascertain how many things we possess, then this characterizes not mathematics but mere counting as such.

In truth, Descartes poses a crucial question regarding the distinction between scientific and everyday knowledge. One occasionally encounters their conflation: for instance, when it is surprising that a world-renowned mathematician miscalculates change at a store, even though proficient counting is the purview of a different profession—not that of a mathematician, but an accountant. Similarly, a globally recognized biologist may be asked to recommend cat food, while "scientists" in advertisements expound on the benefits of marketed products, despite the fact that only practical dieticians, who consider climate and a multitude of other factors, should engage in such matters. Furthermore, a scientist, in addition to climate and these factors, must take into account the specific processes occurring during the storage or digestion of products, thereby touching upon related theoretical questions—this distinction separates them from practitioners.