Virtue, science and Happiness; The Foundation of Descarte's Ethics

This paper discusses the moral system in Rene Descartes’ thoughts. First, it will be shown that Descartes has undeniable ethical concerns even if we refuse to accept his systematic and coherent moral theory and, more precisely, that he has an independent book in moral philosophy. For instance, in several works he hints at or affirms various principles based on which we can attribute a moral theory to him.
Next, we will refer to the nature and structure of Descarte's moral theory. For this purpose, we explain our own interpretation of his moral beliefs and its fundamental elements as we study and criticize other points of view. During the discussion, we will briefly touch the categorization of his moral philosophy in relation with recent classifications in this area. As we will see, it has four fundamental elements: virtue, science, limited knowledge and happiness are four fundamental elements that we think Descarte's ethics containing them and without one of them our interpretation of this issue will be incomplete or even wrong.