Analysis and Critique of Descarte's Method in Philosophy

Importance of Descarte's methodology and philosophy is an evident point which has been of great influences after him. Aiming to produce a single methodology to unify sciences and achieve philosophical certainty, in the first place, he criticizes methods of previous scholars, and then, mentions obstacles to man's philosophical knowledge and explains how to remove them. Then, he describes his own methodology. In Descarte's methodology, certain mental rules, finding simple concepts through analysis, producing combined concepts through synthesis, using clear and distinct concepts, and intuition and inference play important roles. He takes mathematical argumentation as the basis of his own philosophy, and tries, while applying mathematical properties to other sciences and unifying them through mathematical methodology, attain philosophical certainty. In his methodology, however, he faces fundamental and functional difficulties. For example, he tries to mathematicize certainty, whereas his most important philosophical principle (cogito) is a nonphilosophical one. His great attention paid to the role played by method in his own philosophy causes him to neglect importance and even priority of the subject-matter of knowledge to its method and important differences existing between subjects and methods of empirical sciences on the one hand and humanities on the other which will have unfavorable consequences. In the present article, the author tries to, while explaining Descarte's method, study some critiques of his method.