THE ART OF DESCARTES’ MIND
How the french philosopher, mathematician and scientist detangles the concept of thinking
Even with a stagnant body, our mind wander freely. Searching for the value of life to the light of eternity, the meaning to the paradoxical words of good and evil. Human beings tend to think life as an oblivious ride to a pity of darkness, yet in those rides, we want to believe all the while that there is something significant in us. But could we decipher our souls? Could we learn to be content and wise? Those unanswered questions left an act of thinking, a philosophy.
We found our joie de vivre in philosophy, We found a mirage of desire in metaphysic. Plato called philosophy as ‘that dear delight’, because it adds lubricant to human beings’ systemised minds. Philosophy is the steps in a pathway to truth, and truth… truth will make us free.
After Copernicus rejuvenate science in Renaissance, a way of thinking shifted inwards. Modern philosophy was born when Descartes started doubting absolutely everything, he rejects the idea that man should accept that he knew nothing. Descartes crack his way through the relationship between body and mind, perceiving an answer that open the door of question 150 years later.
Descartes doubted that ‘what if the reality I’m living now is a dream?’. But shortly afterwards, he realised one thing had to be true, was that he doubted. When he doubted, he had to be thinking, and because he was thinking, it had to be certain that he was a thinking-being. Then the term ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am) evolve into one of the most popular phrase in history.
Descartes argue that there are 2 forms of reality or substances. First substance is thought, ‘mind’ and the second is extension, or what we simply called ‘matter’. The mind is conscious, but invisible, therefore it can’t be sub-divided. However, matter is always divided but never conscious. Descartes also claimed that human beings have a priori or innate knowledge not by any recollection, human beings posses a mind given by God to have an innate knowledge.
Descartes was a thinker, a voracious thinker. He once said, we have our mind to exceeds our material world, and he changed the world by his mind. We are given the ability to think, to contemplate. Human beings are gifted with a unique set of minds that constantly change. With every doubts one has, one can surely change the world.
