Rene Descartes

This paper focuses on Descartes both because many people today do not understand his theories because he is one of the most important of all of the modern philosophers in terms of his lasting influence on Western thought. His concept of dualism was not, of course, entirely original to him: One of the reasons that he is so important as a philosopher is that he chose to crystallize thinking about an epistemological issue that was already fundamentally important to Western society. However, through his thinking and his writing on this topic, he succeeded in making dualism and dualistic thinking even more deeply entrenched in Western thought than it would probably o

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as arguing that his ability to conceive of the divine proved that there was a real, objective world in which a real and perfect God exists, and because one may be sure of this (if one believes that his line of reasoning is, well, reasonable) he can also be sure of his own existence as a child of that God. However, the phrase today is used to signify the idea that one can be whatever one wants - which is a substantial shift away from a shift indeed from Descartes' original argument. Descartes was arguing for a God-centered universe while advertising argues that we ourselves as humans - and as humans with good credit lines - are the center of the universe. The irony of the ways in which what we might call Descartes-lite is now used is that it reflects some of the obvious consequences of his rather tortured thinking. Descartes argued that the only possible interpretation of his arguments (as was equally true of his existence) was the existence of an omniscient God. However, those who reject the circularity of his reasoning might well argue that in trying to prove the existence of God through the process of deconstructing human intelligence and thought, Descartes (centuries before the practice of deconstruction would rear its head) a
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Approximate Word count = 1786
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)