%%id:311%% %%start:review%% ## Review Discours de la Méthode, released in mid XVIIIth century, was a groundbreaking essay on epistemology's ideas and in general philosophy. Descartes, in search of the ultimate truth, will try to create a kind of method that will helps him to rationally understand how he knows what he know. This is the book where we first read the famous Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I'am ; *Je pense donc je suis*). It's a short essays divided in six different parts, that aim to be a method to point out the origin of the identity and the knowledge. For Descartes, everything starts with logic. According to him, the ability to create a simple reasoning is inate. If we take an exemple with height, it seems ok for everyone, that if we say Pierre is taller than Paul, and Jacques is taller than Paul, we could arguably and easily infer that Jacques is taller than Pierre. And this is not something we had to learn at some point in our life, it seems that, this kind of reasonning has always been natural to us. Once he demonstrate that, the important for him is to understand the substantific principle of identity. To achieve this Descartes will doubt of everything, and mostly, his senses. For Descartes, we can't trust our senses, because they can't be a reliable access to the reality. To prove that, he just take the exemple of a wood stick that we take through the water. By observing the surface, and because of the refraction, we could easily think that the wood stick is broken in two parts. We all know that the stick is intact, our perception kind of lies to us. For Descartes, this proves that we can't trust our perception, therefore, we need to question everything we know, even our own existence, as well as the things and ideas that surround us, and only the reason can lead us to the truth because of its inate aspect. Once we abstract everything by reasonning and putting out of sight every ideas that can arguably be false, what is the idea that last? The thinking process itself. Thinking and reasonning is, for Descartes, the starting point of any human mind, thus, to be sure we're not something abstract as a being, we can arguably say that, if I can think of something, therefore, I'am, as a being. That's the most important idea in this book. ## Controversial idea on proving the existence of god throught reasoning. Discours de la Méthode wasn't that much a success, as we may think, but has a lot of controversial part, either for the religious and the atheists. Descartes also applies his way to create reasonning to prove the existence of god. Which leads to a lot of counter-senses, because the arguments are easily breakable. Among others, David Hume, in his [Essays On The Human Understanding](Essays%20On%20The%20Human%20Understanding%20-%20David%20Hume.md), point out the inconsistencies inside Descartes' reasonning method on god and other subjects, such as the innate aspect of reason. (To mention, Hume think that nothing is innate, but everything derives from the experience, through what called the concept of inference.) Not at the opposite, but not truly in the same side, Pascal were approching the question of god existence a bit differently. Pascal know that the arguments of reasonning to prove his existence is vain. He would rather say that, God, as a transcendental being, can't be reached by something as human as reasonning. For him, God come from the faith, and the faith isn't something that belongs to the reason. It something from the "heart". The concepts of Heart's truths and Mind truths, not opposite, but working together to create the faith is something that seems central in Pascal way of thinking. We owe the quote "The heart have its reason that the reason ignore" from that Pascal's ideas. Pascal and Descartes was comtemporary. And even if Descartes seems to have his ideas most famously known than Pascal's ones, Pascal had win more adepts than Descartes, because he evacuated the aspect of reasonning on that transcendence. %%end:review%% --- _The following was auto-generated by [Books and Binders](Books%20and%20Binders.md) and relates to the copy I own_ ## Discours De La Méthode This book from René Descartes was edited by Librio and released 08/2013. I had it for 2.0€ from Fnac. I read the 78 pages. ## More on this book : - Buying date : 21/12/2022 - Buying condition : brand_new - Actual condition : very_good - Book type : physical - Binding : paperback - Language : French - Category : Philosophy - ISBN : 9782290262047 - Weight in grams :