Why Did Descartes Turn Inward In the Search for Truth? - Descartes' "Discourse on Method" Part One

By Stephen Alexander Beach 

(942 Words)

Part One - Some Thoughts on the Sciences

Descartes starts his thoughts by noting that every person has the faculty of reason. They have the ability to make judgments, to seek what is true and reject what is false. 1 And so differences in people's opinion or belief result, not from the lack of reason in one's opponent, but rather from the means by which people approach the problem and information. If we start down the wrong path, we may have a great mind but are taking the information down into destruction. "... differences of opinion are not due to differences in intelligence, but merely to the fact that we use different approaches and consider different things. The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues; and those who walk slowly can, if they follow the right path, go much farther than those who run rapidly in the wrong direction." 

Descartes then mentions that he believes he has found a pathway of reason that has led to much fruit of discovery, and that it represents the most important of pursuits. 2 Descartes then admits that he is also very aware that he could be mistaken, and this work is in order to put the argument out there in order to receive feedback. He is writing about his process of discovery and hopes it may help others. 

Beginning in his youth, he says that he surrounded himself with books and learning. He attended the best school in France and learned what was taught there. And yet, when he had completed his studies he realized that he ended with more doubts and uncertainties than when he started his journey. 3 He still recognized that the different disciplines of academia were worth learning, but he was looking for a certainty and wisdom which he could not seem to acquire. Here is a beautiful quote about what he took from each of the disciplines (interesting is his cynical view of philosophy over all the others, painting it as something of rhetoric.) 

"I did not, however, cease to value the disciplines of the schools. I knew that the languages which one learns there are necessary to understand the works of the ancients; and that the delicacy of fiction (refines and' enlivens the mind; that famous deeds of history ennoble it and, if read with under. standing, aid in maturing one's judgment; that the reading of all the great books is like conversing with the best people of earlier times: it is even a studied conversation in which the authors show us only the best of their thoughts; that eloquence has incomparable powers and beauties; that poetry has [6] enchanting delicacy and sweetness; that mathematics has very subtle processes which can serve as much to satisfy the inquiring mind as to aid all the arts and to diminish man's labor; that treatises on morals contain very useful teachings and exhortations to virtue; that theology teaches us how to go to heaven; that philosophy teaches us to talk with an appearance of truth about all things, and to make ourselves admired by the less learned; that law, medicine, and the other sciences bring honors and wealth to those who pursue them; and finally, that it is desirable to have examined all of them, even to the most (543) superstitious and false, in order to recognize their real worth and avoid being deceived thereby." 4

There is a caveat, though, as Descartes recognizes that works from the past often may leave important circumstances or details out which make the work more readable or desirable to read, yet do not correspond fully to reality and may cause the reader to be more idealistic than he should be. Thus, he admits that while admiring parts of all these disciplines, it was only mathematics that provided the firm foundation of truth that he was looking for. "I was astonished that nothing more noble had been built on so firm and solid a foundation." Poetry and rhetoric were gifts of nature, not reason. The moral treatises of the ancients did not give adequate justification for their views and thus in contemporary day they call many things good which are abhorrent. 5 Theology seems too far beyond reason to subject it to the human mind and scrutiny. Philosophy had been studied for so long and yet had not produced anything but arguments between scholars. "Finally when it came to the other branches of learning, since they took their cardinal principles from philosophy, I judged that nothing solid could have been built on so insecure a foundation." Descartes does mention getting into disciplines which were on the fringes, such as alchemy, astrology, magic, and so on ... but they too yielded nothing. 

"This is why I gave up my studies entirely as soon as I reached the age when I was no longer under the control of my teachers. I resolved to seek no other knowledge than that which I might find within myself, or perhaps in the great book of nature." 6 And so he spent time traveling, seeing new cultures, making new friends, viewing the workings of other places and there too he found no certainty in the customs of men. Finally, this leads him solely to the study of himself as a bastion of truth. "... I eventually reached the decision to study my own self, and to employ all my abilities to try to choose the right path." 7

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1 - Descartes, Renes. Discourse on Method. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1960. 3

2 - 4

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4 - 6

5 - 7

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7 - 9