Section 9 Group 2: Descartes

Group Members

Jeremy Buma

Nader Issa

Ember Parr

Quint Qualls

Colin Szklarski

Well, there must be something in that spring air as it seems group 2 has taken some heavy casualties and for the second class in a row was unable to successfully meet and discuss our given topic. But here's a brief synopsis of what we should have covered, which was Descartes.First off, Descartes was not only a philosopher, but also and maybe more so, a mathematician and a scientist. But what really made him stick out among the others of his time is that he came to his believe in the existence of G-d through a new and altogether different method than anyone had thought of, either to prove or disprove Its existence. His reasoning was such: first of all, he could trust that he himself existed for as he said, Cogito Ergo Sum, or I think therefore I am. Through this he believes that he can recognize certainty elsewhere, namely in that his perception of G-d's existence must have been given to him by G-d Itself. Through this line of thinking, Descartes flips the reasoning that the existence of the world is proof that G-d exists to be that because G-d exists, then we can truly believe in our own existence along with that of the world around us. I'm not personally sure that this argument holds a whole lot of water, but it kind of makes a logical progression of reasoning at the same time. One thing though that I really didn't agree with though was when Hecht says, "Yet his work ended up forwarding the history of doubt in a big way. What he had done was to take G-d completely out of the world." I would disagree and say that the opposite is true and that doubt was increased now because G-d had a more fundamental role in our existence and we had a closer connection to It now. By flipping the view around to say that G-d was proof that WE EXIST seems to put It right in the middle of the world, not to take It out. But maybe that's just me, the ubertheist (yeah, I just coined that term.Think religious ubermench. Thanks Nietsche), finding G-d in everything and everywhere!

So, to play a little catch up since I didn't know what to post last time, here's the factual question I had for this section of the book:
Question -What was Descartes' first literary work even though it was not his most famous?
Answer - a scientific treatise called simply The World


And for next class, this is what I came up with looking at Voltaire:
Factual Question -JMH quotes Voltaire as saying, "The question of                  remains in remediless chaosfor those who seek to fathom it in reality."
Answer -"good and evil"
Discussion Question -Is there any chance that Voltaire could have been on to something when he said that, "The Socinians...dare to pretend, with the philosophers of antiquity, with the Jews, the Mahometans, and most other nations, that the idea of a god-man is monstrous"?