great thinkers, great ideas

78 Moral Philosophy: Ideas of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong

Aquinas to show that Aristotle did not threaten the Christian’s

faith but complemented it. The greatest mind of antiquity met

with the greatest mind of the middle ages, and the result was the

Neo-Aristotelean Christian philosophy that dominated the west­

ern world for over five hundred years.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Rene Descartes was bom in 1596 in the village of La Haye,
France. He was educated by Jesuits and was well trained in
Scholastic philosophy. His forte was mathematics, at which he
excelled, especially in the area of analytical geometry. As a
matter of fact, Descartes is credited with creating analytical
geometry.
In addition to an excellent education, his background in­
cluded extensive travel throughout Europe. He settled in Hol­
land for about twenty years. The liberal philosophical climate
there was suitable for an energetic mathematician/philosopher.
His Meditations and Principals o f Philosophy were published in
French, contrary to the tradition of publishing major works in
Latin. His Discourse on Method, also published in Holland,
completed a trilogy of his most important philosophical works.
He later traveled to Sweden and in 1649 moved to Stockholm
where he became tutor to Queen Christiana. He developed
pneumonia and died in 1650, the victim of an inhospitable
climate.
Descartes believed that the only reliable knowledge existed
within mathematics. Instead of separating mathematics and
philosophy, he attempted to combine the two, thinking that
mathematical principles underlie all other areas of investigation.
His basic approach to all areas of study rested on a skeptical
predisposition to doubt everything except “self-evident” truths.
He was not a skeptic, however; his doubt was a suspension of
judgment, not a denial of judgment.
The moral philosophy of Rene Descartes is based primarily on
his method of logic. He had four basic precepts which he
employed:

1. Accept nothing as true which is not clearly and recogniz­
   ably so.


2. Divide complex problems into as many simpler parts as