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Volume 34:

Discourse on Method (full text) by Rene Descartes

Descartes' Discourse on Method might have the lowest difficulty to intellectual-historical importance ratio of any work in the Shelf. In about sixty pages of lucid, readable prose, the whole world is changed. Descartes takes only a page or two to lay out the central problem his method hopes to address -- that is, his dissatisfaction with received knowledge.

From my childhood, I have been familiar with letters; and as I was given to believe that by their help a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life might be acquired, I was ardently desirous of instruction. But as soon as I had finished the entire course of study, at the close of which it is customary to be admitted into the order of the learned, I completely changed my opinion. For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance.

Descartes' method for addressing this problem was at once simple and radical. It had four steps:

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.
The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.
And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.

Everyone knows what happened next.

I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, hence I am, was so certain and of such evidence, that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the Sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the Philosophy of which I was in search.

Less generally known perhaps, is the step that comes immediately after the famous cogito. After his own existence, the second thing of which Descartes in his radical skepticism can be absolutely certain is the existence of God. Basically, his argument goes like this. The one thing I know for certain, besides the fact that I think and therefore am, is that I am uncertain about what I know. This uncertainty implies that I am imperfect, which in turn implies the notion of imperfection. From here, we arrive quickly at a variation on St. Anselm's ontological proof: it is better to exist than not to exist, therefore existence must be one of the characteristic of a perfect being. Thus, if we can conceive of something that is perfect in every way -- i.e., God -- it must exist.

This is frankly a bit of a disappointment. It isn't just that the ontological proof is one of the flimsiest of the logical proofs for the existence of God. More than that, there's something fishy about Descartes' hurry to get there. He seems not really to have set out to answer the question, What can I prove for certain independent of received sources? but rather to answer the very different question Can I prove the existence of God independent of received sources? Even if the answer is yes, you've stacked the deck by allowing yourself to ask the question.

Letters on the English (full text) by Voltaire

On the Inequality among Mankind (full text) & Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar (full text) by Jean Jacques Rousseau

To my mind, Rousseau has a much better solution to this problem in his Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar. To begin with, he admits up front what he's really trying to do. A neglect of all religious duties, his fictional vicar writes, leads to a neglect of all moral obligations. Once we've allowed for the practical efficacy of religion, the question for an Enlightenment rationalist becomes whether we can arrive at our belief in God without revelation. Rousseau's answer is not so unlike Descartes:

Had I been born on a desert island, or had never seen a human creature beside myself; had I never been informed of what had formerly happened in a certain corner of the world; I might yet have learned, by the exercise and cultivation of my reason, and by the proper use of those faculties God hath given me, to know and to love him. I might hence have learned to love and admire his power and goodness, and to have properly discharged my duty here on earth. What can the knowledge of the learned teach me more?

Though their conclusions are similar, Descartes and Rousseau have drastically different methods. While one builds a proof out of abstract logic, the other rolls up his sleeves and looks at the world. But they share an unwillingness to accept the knowledge they've inherited without testing it first. And they have no desire for their own writing to be accepted in such a way. My present design, then, Descartes writes, is not to teach the Method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his Reason, but solely to describe the way in which I have endeavoured to conduct my own. Or as Rousseau says, I will not enter into any disputation, or endeavor to refute you; but only lay down my own sentiments in simplicity of heart. Consult your own during this recital: this is all I require of you.

One of the most exhilirating traits of the great books -- of Descartes' and Rousseau's as much as Thoreau's or Emerson's -- is how insistently they turn you away from the great books and back towards the world, towards what Rousseau calls the the book of nature. What can the knowledge of the learned teach us more?

Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan (full text) by Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes famously took a harsher view of the state of nature:

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Where Rousseau thought society was a corruption of men's natural tendency to be good and happy, Hobbes saw it as man's best chance at overcoming the conditions of his nasty and brutish life. Rousseau thought that religion wasn't necessary in the state of nature, because it was society that led us towards the immorality. But Hobbes had the surprisingly modern understanding that there could be no morality without society:

To this war of every man against every man [i.e., the state of nature] this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude.

--CRB, September 30, 2007

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