Rene Descartes and Lao Tzu Essay

Rene Descartes remains iodine of the most evidentiary philosophers of the West in the past few centuries. In his life time, the fame and popularity of Descartes is just equivalent that of a mathematician or a physicist. But today, he is considered as an true philosopher and his stems and thought argon one of the most studied in philosophy. Descartes do attempts to bring philosophy to a new direction. His school of though has rejected the thoughts of Aristotle and scholastic traditions that had dominion on the whole of philosophical thought during the mediaeval period.It instead make attempts to integrate fully his philosophy of with sciences that were considered at that time to be new. Descartes altered the relationship between theology and philosophy. These new directions that Descartes had initiated made him a philosopher that is revolutionary, The most famous of his ideas ar those that employ a manner of hyperbolic doubt. Hi stemma consist of the possibility that he whit ethorn doubt but he can non doubt that he exists. An essential feeling of this philosophical method is on the first of is ideas. In searching for the instauration of philosophy, whatever that has the possibility to be doubted must be rejected.He resolves the argument by saying that we must only trust what is clearly and distinctively seen that is free from doubt. It is in this expression that Descartes peels or takes away the layers of beliefs and ideas that would only check his perspective of the truth. His next philosophical thought is reconstructing familiarity little by little and by piece in such a way that the there willing be no instance that doubt will be back. Descartes has proven th he himself should encounter the basic qualification of thinking. This thinking mind is separate from the personate, the existence of God, nature and the outside domain.Descartes has shown that association is truly possible and that a scientific cognition of the material world is poss ible that is based on mathematics. Descartes also speaks about ingrained ideas. If outside(prenominal) objects argon known to earn any clarity and that they re altogethery are, thus there must be the existence of inherent ideas. These ideas do not come from imagination or from the senses. These ideas came from the operation of the mind on its own. only(prenominal) innate ideas have features of necessity or even universality. Ideas that are experienced are only contingent.He said that ideas do not have any similarity to the objects that they represent. Because of this statement, the mind is essentially a thinking entity and the body is just a substance that is extended and therefore essentially different. at that place is no idea of extension that can be formed in the mind using the senses. To have a thought of an extended substance, the idea of an extension must be innate or should first belong to to the mind. The theory of innate ideas basically speaks about certain pieces o f knowledge that are known to exist in man even before parentage and not acquired from experiencing the outside world.Descartes used this in his claim that man has innate idea of Gods existence and basic nature. These innate ideas are not immediately made known to man but contain reason in their discovery. The knowledge of God is innate because it is a ingathering of the faculty of faith (Kenny 1997). Lao Tzu, a famous Chinese philosopher, treats the learning of knowledge is dictated because it is based on language and lovingization. The composition of knowledge is of arbitrary, historically, accidental social systems of creating residuums, guiding desires and acting.Lao Tzu justifies the freeing of knowledge as a method of recovering the natural, genuine and spontaneous impulses of humanity. Society will cast off the desires through the use of words and differences. The acquisition of a sophisticated admiration will shape the desires of man and also actions and choices tha t man will take. populace will not desire things naturally because they are just innocent and few. Lao Tzu accepts the idea of having pre-social desires. If man will forget or abandon the learned desires that rose from language socialization, then man cam return to nature.The social analysis of knowledge come with the conceptualization of the natural or innate knowledge (Henricks 1989). Although the teachings of Lao Tzu cannot be considered as part of dualism, his ideas will calculate to support the primary idea of Descartes as evident in his book, Tao Te Ching. The book talks about the way of Tao that does not vary and compared it to something alike(p) a bellow that is inexhaustible but empty. In spite of this still way that makes the world to what it is, everything relies on this unchanging way because it completes everything. There are some similarities to the philosophy of Lao Tzu and Descartes on knowledge.Descartes believed on the innate knowledge of things that man has b efore he was ever born. Lao Tzu also believed on knowledge that is acquired before pre-socialization wherein man has knowledge before he is immersed in the context of a social world and language. They also have similarities in ideas of dualism. Tao is not extensive and to the worlds order, it has a spiritual entity as a factor by affecting it by using the mind. Te will become the tool that the unvarying way will employ to show the effects in the body or the natural world. Tao is the one controlling Te and Te follows what Tao says.Tao is be depicted here as God. The real Tao cannot be defined for when it can defined then it is not the real Tao. The Tao that cannot be named is the one who created heaven and earth. It is in reference of something that secret code greater can be thought of. Tao already existed before all the other macrocosms. For Descartes, the knowledge of Gods existence is innate because it is the leave alone of the faculty of faith. In man, there is this idea th at lies of a perfect being that Descartes is incapable of creating this idea on his own. This kind of idea must have a cause or a formal reality.This cause snappy not have come from a less than perfect being or reality. The attributes of God were of being independent, supremely intelligent and powerful and created everything else in this world. God exists necessarily. Note the similarities of Lao Tzu and Descartes of a supreme being. The only difference is that Lao Tzu did not call it a God. Descartes called it a God, being that it is something that cannot be explained or defined and one that existed before the world was created and the One who created everything else that is prime in the world. Lao Tzu did not identify with the being as a personal creator.