Derrida, Foucault and Cogito
19/Dec/2014 10:07 Filed in: Philosophy | Culture
The overall approach of Derrida is on Cogito and the history of madness. Derrida starts his analysis based on Foucault’s reference to Descartes’s Meditations (Foucault 1965, 184-187, Derrida 1978, 32). Philosophical dignity has nothing to do with madness and insanity, they do not have entrance into the philosopher’s city (Derrida 1978, 32). By its essence Cogito cannot be mad. Read More...
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Husserl and Descartes on Ego cogito
Husserl admires Descartes and follows him up to a point, but from there on he goes on a different path. Husserl goes that far that he is willing to speak about phenomenology as a new twentieth century Cartesianism (Husserl, 1973, 3). According to Husserl the themes in Meditations are timeless and can give birth to what is characteristic of phenomenological method (Husserl, 1973, 3).
Continuity
Read More...Again on Descartes' Method
Descartes method of doubting exposed in the Mediations worked in the following way. His intention was to doubt every proposition he was able to. For that he used two conjectures: the conjecture of the dream, and the conjecture of the evil demon. All his knowledge can be just a dream or all his knowledge can be a big lie because some evil demon is devoted to deceive him. Descartes’s point with these two conjectures was to show their bizarreness. He needed a measure of certainty that goes beyond everything, even reaching the incredible and the bizarre. Read More...
Descartes's Arguments for the Existence of God
Descartes in Meditation III offers two separate arguments for the existence of God. The first starts with the fact that everyone of us has an idea of God, and the second starts with the fact that it is certain that I exist.
The steps of the first argument are like this:
I have an idea of an infinitely perfect substance / such an idea must have a cause / from nothing nothing comes / so the cause of an idea must have at least as much formal reality as there is subjective reality in the idea / I am a substance, but I am not perfect / so I could not be the cause of this idea / so there must be a formal reality that is an infinitely perfect substance / so God exists. Read More...
The steps of the first argument are like this:
I have an idea of an infinitely perfect substance / such an idea must have a cause / from nothing nothing comes / so the cause of an idea must have at least as much formal reality as there is subjective reality in the idea / I am a substance, but I am not perfect / so I could not be the cause of this idea / so there must be a formal reality that is an infinitely perfect substance / so God exists. Read More...
Descartes and his Method
The overall method of Descartes is a method of doubt. He dismisses knowledge derived from authority, senses, and reason (Watson, 2014). His demonstration is one of clarity and absolute certainty (Skirry). He is determined to bring any belief based on sensation into doubt because they might be a dream; mathematics included, because of the existence of an evil demon with supreme power of cunning about everything.