The Role of God in Descartes Epistemology - 1356 Words

The presence of God, and more so the role god plays in our lives, has forever troubled philosophers. Some completely neglect the existence of god, others toy with the idea, and some use religion as the basis of their epistemology. Throughout this essay, I aim to critically examine the role of God in Descartes’ epistemology. Renà © Descartes’ epistemological contribution to western philosophy attempted to inaugurate a coherent method of questioning whereby knowledge of the world is attained independently of the authority of the Church or Bible. Strangely enough this separation had no intention on removing god from our lives or minds. Descartes’ project was to prove the existence of God, and to establish that only God can guarantee true knowledge (Skirry, 2011). Through critical observation of Descartes’ most prominent writings: Meditations on First Philosophy, focusing on his ideals concerning existence of God and the role God plays in the acquisition of c ertain knowledge, we are able to see that although Descartes’ belief in independent attainment of knowledge is extremely commendable, the occurrence of numerous philosophical discrepancies and presumptive speculation debilitated its legitimacy. Establishing the existence of god is critical within Descartes’ epistemology. Abiding by his own method of systematic doubt and absolute rejection of the products of sense experience, Descartes’ establishes God’s existence without referring to the perceptual evidence the worldShow MoreRelatedOrganizational Behaviour Analysis28615 Words   |  115 Pagesprocesses which are fundamentally related to the expectations, values and interests of all organisation members. Related to this, as a major theme of the workshop, is a consideration of the importance of understanding organisational politics and its role in maintaining organisations. Understanding Change Change and change processes are fundamental to many aspects of organisations, and, indeed, life itself. We will consider the appearance of change; social psychological approaches to change; macroRead MoreLanguage and the Destiny of Man12402 Words   |  50 Pagesmodern and somewhat unrestrained man (an image once promoted by Ferdinand Brunetià ¨re, and later by Georges 108 Åžtefan Afloroaei / Descartes and the â€Å"metaphysical dualism† Friedmann). To support this view, certain less speculative episodes in Descarte’s life are evoked, such as: a duel he fought over a beautiful lady, in 1625, at the age of 29; the longstanding suspicion (originated by Voetius) that he had fathered several illegitimate children; a secret affair with Hà ©là ¨ne Jans, a woman of means