Part Two of Descartes’ Discourse on Method begins with his retreat to an isolated, stove-heated room.
This is a metaphor for his philosophical method: temporary withdrawal from the world of the senses.
Descartes’ philosophical work requires the privacy and solitude of a single mind, not
engagement with the world.
The modern philosopher does his foundational thinking alone, not as a self-among-others
in a social context.
We might contrast Descartes’ stove-heated room with Socrates’ activity in the agora,
as models of living philosophy.
Descartes’ first insight is that for attaining excellence in complex things, unity of plan
is superior to continuity with tradition.
He gives examples of things that are better-designed and more perfect because they proceed from
a single mind rather than from the collaboration of many creators.
His first examples include architecture and city planning.
Then he give examples from complex social institutions like law codes and religion.
Finally, he applies this principle to education.
A traditional body of knowledge, being the work of many thinkers over a long period of
time, is inferior to the simple reasoning of a man of good sense, Descartes concludes.
(My questions for you: Is Descartes’ principle correct?
And is he correct to apply it to education as he does?)
Descartes’ second insight is that he should start his project with himself and his own beliefs.
No one tears down and rebuilds an entire city.
But sometimes a homeowner tears down and rebuilds a single house.
Sometimes he has to because the structure is unsafe and in danger of collapsing on him. (Hint, hint.)
Here Descartes is suggesting that his scholastic education in philosophy is false and dangerous.
Descartes explicitly repudiates any plan for revolutionary, large-scale change, which would
correspond to tearing down an entire city.
Instead, he will work with himself and his own beliefs.
But in working with himself, replacement is easier than piecemeal reform.
He writes: “as regards all the opinions to which I had until now given credence, I
could not do better than to try to get rid of them once and for all, in order to replace
them later on, either with other ones that are better, or even with the same ones once
I had reconciled them to the norms of reason.”
Note two things about this passage.
First, the difference scale makes: what would be unjustified presumption on a large scale,
revolutionary change in an entire civilization’s worldview, Descartes says is justified on
a small scale, when changing his own beliefs.
He can be radical because the stakes are so small, it seems.
Second, Descartes mentions that one possible outcome of his study is his adopting the same
set of beliefs as before, but only after reconciling them to reason.
This is going be the path he takes.
So Descartes will embark on a complete teardown and rebuild of his belief system, guided by
reason rather than custom or tradition.
Note Descartes’ attitude here toward the power of an individual intellect, and his
attitude toward the accumulated wisdom of past thinkers, and their claims to authority.
Reform is difficult because habit has accustomed us to the status quo, and made commonly accepted
things easier to endure.
Descartes turns this to his rhetorical advantage, saying he does not approve of troublemaking
reformers, but only plans to revise his own thoughts.
This will be a total rebuild of his beliefs, but because it is private, it can be ambitious,
while still claiming humility and obedience to social mores.
There is much irony here, of course, because Descartes obviously intends his readers to
follow him in this course of reform.
He goes on immediately to say that he will share his work in this Discourse, but does
not encourage imitators.
Furthermore, there are two sorts of people who should definitely not imitate Descartes:
the rash and the stupid.
First, people without the patience to follow through after doubting their beliefs should
not read any further.
This is Descartes’ indirect warning to the reader: if you read further, be prepared to
stick with the Cartesian project, do not abandon it too early.
Second, people with insufficient intelligence to reason things out for themselves.
These people, knowing their own weak minds, should trust the authority of their betters.
Given Descartes’ initial observation that good sense is equally distributed in the world,
we may wonder whether there are any people in this second category.
Certainly Descartes is inviting his readers to sharpen their intellectual powers, and
to prepare to do some difficult thinking in the sections ahead.
This brings us to margin note 16, about halfway through Part Two of the Discourse on Method.
We will discuss the second half in another video.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.