Aquinas and Descartes 81achieved. Therefore, he said that moral decisions should be
made on the basis of the application of the reason and will of the
mind to the appetites of the body. He derived a code of maxims
for dealing with the practical world.
- Obey the laws and customs of your country, your family,
your religion, and avoid excesses, which have a tendency to be
bad. When in doubt as to the relative merit of two courses of
action, the more moderate is to be chosen, and the results
evaluated. - Be firm and stand by your convictions once they have been
well thought out. He uses an analogy of travellers lost in the
woods. If they wander from place to place, or stay in one place,
they will not get out. But if they walk as straight as possible in
one direction, they will get out. He believes one should stick to
a premise, testing its virtues rather than wavering from opinion
to opinion. - His third maxim was “to try always to conquer myself
rather than fortune, and to alter my desires rather than change the
order of the world, and generally to accustom myself to believe
that there is nothing entirely within our power but our own
thoughts.” - Finally, choose a life’s work which is best suited to you.
And “cultivate (your) reason, and in advancing (yourself) as
much as possible in the knowledge of the truth.”
The influence of Aristotle and Epictitus is evident in Descartes ’
maxims for a moral life. Like Aristotle, he conceives the intel
lectual love of God as the highest happiness one can achieve.
Finally, we are moral to the extent that we can control our
passions by our reason.
Descartes’ contribution to philosophy has caused him, be
cause of his introduction of the scientific method, to be called the
“Father of Modern Philosophy.”