I chose to do a free post on Descartes because I’ve always found him to be a fascinating philosopher . His philosophical proposition, cogito ergo sum or (in english) I think , therefore I exist ,always seems to be  thought provoking. While reading the except from Discourse on the Method, It was interesting to get a more in depth look at this perspective. He seems to use the term “good sense” as the process in which people use to distinguish what we believe to be true from what is viewed as false.  Descartes talks about his experience with higher education and how it was one very small piece of the bigger picture. He believed that people possessed a “natural intelligence ” and sometimes learned traits or customs suppress that.  At the end of part 1 Descartes states that ” I at length resolved to make myself an object of study, and to employ all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths I ought to follow, an undertaking which was accompanied with greater success than it would have been had I never quitted my country or my books” , in which I found ties in to the theme of this course quite nicely. Descartes believes that “books should not be the basis of our knowledge” which i slightly disagree with. I believe that knowledge acquired through school is most beneficial when used in conjunction with our own ” natural light” or “natural intelligence. What we learn from books or institutionalized education can be the basis of our knowledge, it just shouldn’t be the extant of our knowledge.

Fast fowarding to part 4 we read as Descartes becomes consciously aware of what later will become his most notable ideology. He stated that “however clear and distinct our ideas might be ,we should have no ground…that they possessed the perfection of being true.” He’s basically saying that it is  presumptuous to think our ideas are true merely because its the popular. Although what we perceive to be fact may not be the irrefutable truth, Descartes comes to the conclusion that our very ability to convey thoughts must be evidence of his very existence. We think, therefore we exist…