Tuesday, February 5, 2008
4 Rules
Upon reading The Discourse Part Two, I took a great interest in Descartes 4 rules. He believed by formulating these rules, they would be very sufficient to him.. only if he made a firm and constant resolution not even once to fail to observe them. Rule 1: never accept anything as true that I did not plainly know to be such- Descarte, in my opinion, is trying to avoid prejudice and only believe what he thinks. The words and actions of others will not influence his own judgements. Rule 2: divide each of the difficulties I would examine into as many parts as possible and as was required in order better to resolve them- I feel that this rule follows along with rule 1. He will examine every little piece in order to come to a final conclusion. Like in rule 1, he will not just follow along with a crowd. He will stand out and say what he truly believes is right after he analyzes everything. Rule 3: conduct his own thoughts in an orderly fashion- Rather then trying to figure out the actions of others, he'll first try to figure out other things. I feel that Descarte is relating these 4 rules around the actions of others. He states in the text that when he was younger he studied a little bit of everything. By knowing that, I feel that he is very interested in what people are thinking and why people are interested in what they are interested in. Rule 4: everywhere to make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that I was assured of having omitted nothing- This rule is just to assure that he covered/understands everything.
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3 comments:
I now see it in a way that you have viewed it...I felt it interesting when you refer to rule one that he is being prejudice to others thoughts...He says don't believe what you hear unless you have proof...And I can see it in that way that he is being prejudice.
In Rule one i believe he is trying to say if you dont understand someone else dont believe it.. believe what you understand. I believe for rule two he is saying to divide the problem you dont understand into parts and maybe then it will make sence to you. Rule three I take this back to when he says a single person works better than a group because it says "Rather then trying to figure out the actions of others" Again he says the working as a single person is a better working method. And Rule 4: Now try to understand the problem that you didn't agree with or understand
I agree with you Codi when you stated what you feel about the rules. We are in agreement with this section about the 4 rules but you brought up a good point. I didnt even think about rule 3 the whole concept of a single mind vs. group thinking. Descarte is big on the whole 'single mind' concept but I was not sure he was refering to that in these 4 rules. It definitely is a good possibility that he was and I find it very interesting that he is bringing that same concept with him throughout the section.
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