|
1. How does one attribute the "heresies" to Bertrand Russell and other philosophers who propose doubt as the basis for philosophy (as opposed to faith) without going back to place blame on Descartes? Follow-up question. . . How does Descartes relationship to philosophy influence his relationship with Christ (or vice versa)?
We may want to go back to Plato if we are going to blame someone.
Isn't the argument that "saying all truth is relative is a self-defeating argument" itself self-defeating? If one has already stated that there is no absolute truth then how does someone make a plea to the absolutes of logic in order to show the argument as self-defeating. Logic itself is on trial. Can one actually use it as the basis of the argument?
Modern thinking holds truth to be the highest good and logic to be the way to find it. Postmodern thinking simply takes truth off its absolute pedistal and replaces it with power. They would simply argue that the one in the power position is the one who dictates who's logic is logical and truths are absolute.
Has anyone ever convinced a relativist to believe in absolute truth? Or, alternatively, for those of us who have laid nearer to the relativist base camp, what have we grown to accept as absolute truth in our walks with and toward God?
It could be argued that God is in the Power position and dictates absolute truth. It may not be logical truth, but I must accept it on reject it. Christ comes and says he is the truth but gives me no logical reason why this is so. He simply calls me to follow. Truth can be absolute at one level and not on another. For example, I can say that a wooden chair is a solid piece of material that is safe to sit in - and this is an absolute truth - yet, if I look closer, I will discover that it is not solid material - it is a actually made up of slow moving molecules, and if I sit on it i might actually fall through.
Some of these excerpts below are from my own research in the past and others are stolen from history of Philosopy by alan woods. They shed a little light on Descartes and his influence on Philosophy.
The question of the relation of thought to being was posed by the French philosopher Descartes (1596-1650) in a different way to the English empiricists. Born into a moderately wealthy family, he had studied with the Jesuits. This taste of arid orthodoxy produced in him a lifetime’s aversion for dogmatism of any kind, and an impatience with received ideas. His scepticism, in contrast with the jaundiced pessimism of Hume, had a lively and positive character. He began to doubt, not the possibility of knowledge in general, but only the existing opinions put forward as infallible truths. From an early age, his motto was "Doubt everything."
"And, as I made it my business in each matter to reflect particularly upon what might fairly be doubted and prove a source of error, I gradually rooted out from my mind all the errors which had hitherto crept into it. Not that in this I imitated the skeptics who doubt only that they may doubt, and seek nothing beyond uncertainty itself; for, on the contrary, my design was singly to find ground of assurance, and cast aside the loose earth and sand, that I might reach the rock or the clay." (Descartes, Discourse on Method, p. 23)
While, in all probability, Descartes was a believer, when reading his works, one has the impression of a man all the time looking over his shoulder. In order to get round the Church, Descartes accepts the existence of God, but then says that religion is too lofty a subject to be "submitted to the impotency of our reason." When dealing with natural history, he accepts that God created the world, but then adds, as if hypothetically, that "it may be believed, without discredit to the miracle of creation, that, in this way alone, things purely material might, in course of time, have become such as we observe them at present; and their nature is much more easily conceived when they are beheld coming in this manner gradually into existence, than when they are only considered as produced at once in a finished and perfect state." (Ibid., p, 36.) To such subterfuges did the greatest French philosopher have to resort in order to publish his ideas.
Descartes' physics and biology seems to intrude on his thoughts and ideas. He is very excited about Harvy's discovery of circulation of blood, but when writing on how the mind and body are interlinked he ends up taking refuge in metaphysical concepts.
The problem with all this is that, if thought and matter are considered as completely separate, by what means are they united and kept together? The only option open to Descartes was to bring in an external agent—divine intervention. Even so, it is impossible to see how they can have any effect upon each other. By what mechanism could they interpenetrate? For example, the mind can will that I lift my arm, but how can it actually lift it? Descartes’ disciple, Geulinx, answered with admirable frankness that it could not, that the fact that the arm rises at the same time as I will it to was mere coincidence. This brings out the contradiction of the Cartesian philosophy, the unresolved dualism, which was its Achilles’ heel. |
