All right, today we’ll be talking about Descartes’ Discourse on Method, Part 1.
I have given you some video content to look at prior to class, so I’m assuming that
everybody has read these six pages and zeroed in on some of the points I identified in the
videos to pay attention to.
So I’d like to take some time today, in lecture and discussion, to walk through the
main points that we’re seeing in this work Descartes has written, and to apply them to
where we are right now in our class.
We just finished with Bacon and Galileo.
We’re taking a look at the difference that this new scientific attitude is making in
our philosophy.
So the three topics I’ve picked out on the board here: I’ll talk about Descartes’
modesty at the beginning of the Discourse.
We will see something similar when we read the Meditations next week.
Descartes goes to a great elaborate show of talking about the limits of his intellectual
powers, and about how his rule that he’s giving here (he will give us rules for his
method in Part Two) are only for himself and he’s just sharing this with people in the
hopes that perhaps people might find themselves in a similar situation and be able to profit
from some of his introspection and thought.
But he’s not by any means presenting himself as an authority, from whom people should learn,
or after whom they should model their behavior.
So we’ll a look at his professions of modesty and talk about what function they serve and
to what extent we should take them seriously.
Second point: the emphasis on method.
This is the Discourse on Method, or specifically the Discourse on *the* Method for Conducting
One’s Reason Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences.
We’ll talk about Descartes’ method, his idea that there is a *single* method that
is best for the human mind for acquiring knowledge in the sciences, and that this is the method
that we should follow.
The third point: the assumptions that Descartes makes.
This is one of the things I asked you, especially looking at his evaluation of his prior education
at the University of Paris.
He goes through each subject and offers a kind of witty, sometimes zinger, type commentary
on the value of it.
We find him praising mathematics, we find him being fairly dismissive towards philosophy
and languages and some other fields of study.
And we get an idea of what he is planning to do with his own education.
He tells the story of how he became the man he is today, and he’s presenting it as a
kind of story or fable, he says, an account of his own intellectual development.
So let’s tackle those topics in order if we can, starting with his modesty.
Do we take Descartes seriously?
Should we take him seriously, when he talks about the limits of his own mind? Thoughts?
I’ll be specific: on page two, the second paragraph, he says: “For myself I have never
presumed that by my mind was in any respect more perfect than that of ordinary men.” [Pause]
What’s he doing here?
(Student: He hasn’t said he’s not like everyone else, but he’s [unintelligible] everyone else.)
Yeah, he says, “I’m not… I don’t think I’m better than everyone else.”
Right, so it begins by saying: this is not a work that’s coming from a position of
superiority or a presumption of superiority What else should we take from this?
“I’m not smarter than you.” What’s the effectiveness?
Why would someone say that at the beginning of a Discourse on *the* Method for Conducting
Your Reason Well?
(Student: Could he mean you don’t have to follow it if you don’t want to?)
Okay, so… optional advice for you, the reader: if you’ve decided to pick this book up and
spend some time with it, maybe you’ll get something out of it that’s valuable, maybe you won’t.
But you don’t have to follow me.
I’m certainly not going to tell you that you should model yourself on my behavior.
What else? (Student: Could he be trying to say just because his method works for him
doesn’t mean [unintelligible]?)
Okay, so it works for me. It might work for you. You can decide for yourself.
That’s the other implied… decide for yourself, that may be the other implied message here.
A question: If this is the way he feels about his findings, why not call this this “Discourse
on *A* Method for Conducting One’s Reason Well?” [Pause]
Maybe I’m a stickler for grammar, maybe that doesn’t make a big difference.
Does this fit with the character of the work he’s giving?
We’ll look at this more deeply, I guess, when we get to Part Two of the Discourse.
But I’ve suggested it’s false modesty and false humility.
Any ideas what the reasons for that might be?
Entertained as a hypothesis perhaps, then: He’s pulling his readers’ legs a little
bit here, he’s pretending to be more modest than in fact he is.
If that’s the case, why would he do that?
Okay, so this could be a kind of way of increasing his appeal to the public.
They could think of this…
I mentioned Socrates in one of the videos, this guy who is teaching us by reassuring
us that he has literally nothing to teach us.
This is only about what works for him.
So maybe there’s a certain kind of appeal.
He disavows having any intellectual authority to actually speak in a way that people should follow.
So what do we have then instead, what’s the appeal of this work?
Well, there may be a kind of ironic appeal.
We see this in Socrates as well: the fact that he goes on and on about having nothing
to teach gives us an idea that perhaps he is… really does have something to teach.
You guys read Euthyphro, perhaps, some of you? I know in my sections we did, in 103.
In Euthyphro, Socrates begins by saying, “I know nothing about piety.”
Right, the big innocent eyes.
And by the end of the dialogue both Euthyphro and we, the reader, conclude that Socrates
in fact knows a great deal about piety, and did at the beginning of the conversation.
And he’s lured Euthyphro into a trap, of sorts.
Is something similar going on here?
Descartes may in fact have a, an agenda and a source of authority that he’s concealing
for the sake of selling it.
It may even be perhaps that his readers, being 17th century French intellectuals (in the
sense that they’re literate and have leisure time to buy and read this book), are aware
of this irony.
It’s the fact that he’s pretending to have nothing to teach, and we’re pretending
to believe him.
But we all know that it’s a bit of a sham, it’s a show, this is something very big
and very revolutionary.
Let me jump ahead to paragraph five.
Let’s take a look at page two again. Quote.
In paragraph two he says: “I have never presumed that my mind was in any respect more
perfect than” ordinary men.
Third paragraph: “I shall have no fear of saying that I think I have been rather fortunate
to have been led on certain paths, by which I have formed a method, which seems to me
I have the means to increase my knowledge by degrees and to raise it little by little
to the highest point which the mediocrity of my mind will allow it to attain,” et cetera.
So we have… he’s laying it on very thick here.
Paragraph four: “It could be that I’m mistaken.
… I should be very happy to show the paths I have followed, so that everyone may judge
it for himself.”
And then the very bottom of page two, paragraph five: “Thus my purpose here is *not* to
teach the method that everyone ought to follow in order to conduct his reason well,” which
the title may belie, “but really to show how *I* have to tried conduct my own.
Those who take it upon themselves to give precepts must regard themselves as more competent
than those to whom they give them,” et cetera.
“Putting forward this essay merely as a story, or as it were a fable, in which one
will perhaps find some examples one has reason not to follow, or follow, I hope I can be
useful to some without being harmful to anyone, and everyone will be grateful to me for my frankness.”
What’s Descartes’ goal here?
Is it to get taken seriously in a sort of ironic literary culture?
It’s to… something also I’ll note here.
He disavows intellectual authority and by not making use of it himself, he calls that
same authority into question.
That is, he seems to be suggesting that anyone who does what I’m pretending not to do right
now is someone of whom you should be at least a little bit suspicious.
So I’m going to, reader, just sort of set open the workings of my mind; you can decide
whether it’s good for you or not.
And unlike those professors in Paris, unlike the other people who might not speak to you
in this sort of democratic way, as equals, I’m not going to tell you what you should
think or how you’re wrong for not agreeing with me.
So this is a sort of rhetorical appeal, meant to sort of draw the reader in, I think to
help the reader identify with Descartes, an ordinary guy just like me.
And he’s presenting the method in such a way that we can go through the same sort of
thought experiments that he’s going through, and he thinks arrive at the same conclusion.
Now, claiming you don’t have intellectual authority is not the same thing is not having
intellectual authority.
So I think we need to read this with an awareness of the levels of irony that are at work here,
that I think are entirely expected and accounted for by his audience in the 1630’s.
That Descartes is playing a bit of a Socratic game with us, by pretending to have nothing
to teach and then teaching us great deal, and giving us some…
(Student: Paradox.) Paradox.
(Student: Paradoxical.) Paradoxical, and you know, super-ironic.
But also an educating irony.
His goal is to convince us of something.
If we’re not aware of that, and the way he’s trying to do it, we’re likely to
find ourselves sort of going along with it without evaluating it sufficiently.
So we don’t want to sort of read this as naïve readers.
We want to be aware of the fact that Descartes is putting on a bit of a show for our benefit.
Still you want identify the intellectual content of what he’s saying, and the authority…
If he doesn’t say… he isn’t saying: “because I’m a professor” – he’s
not but (unintelligible) – “because of my professorship I have authority, you should
listen to me. Because I am super-intelligent you should listen to me.”
What’s the source of his authority then, if he has any? [Pause]
This will be a major theme of the Discourse. [Pause]
Why should anybody read this book then? Apart from the fact that they want to, right?
It might work for you, maybe you are curious, maybe you’ve heard that this guy Descartes
has written a sort of interesting book.
This work is published in French, in the vernacular, so it’s accessible to non-scholars in the
1630’s and 1640’s.
(Student: Because he’s studied?)
Okay, we should immediately then start talking about his education.
We could ask: source of his authority?
He does talk about his education, but mostly to criticize it, and to say: it was mostly
worthless, the mathematics part was okay.
I really think we need to, I needed to go out into the world, the world of experience.
So he’s going to talk about his education.
He’s going to talk about the world of common experience, from which he is drawing most
of his insights.
We’ll see this especially in Part Two, which we’ll read for next time.
We see this democratic spirit again, where he says: I think just the ordinary reasonings
of common people, without a lot of education, without a lot of philosophical training, are
generally more accurate, more worthwhile, and more valuable than highly refined reasonings
of professors at university.
I think the other source of intellectual authority for this work is going to be the actual content
the Discourse, presented in a way that you can check it for yourself.
So we went back to this idea that each reader should keep reading and decide for himself
whether this is going to work or not.
He’s not necessarily going to need to be concerned with whether this work is going
to fit into his overall system of thought or his prior understanding.
He should read it, Descartes is suggesting, with an open mind, drawing upon what he has
in common with Descartes and with everyone else, and to judge for himself whether the
Discourse has any sort of authority.
One of the major themes the Discourse that I want to introduce today, and talk about
today and next time, is the sense of intellectual autonomy that Descartes emphasizes.
The fact that everybody should judge his work for him- or herself on whatever grounds seem
best, drawing upon common sense and common experience, without relying upon the authority
of any kind of established institution, body of thought, or school of philosophy.