Renee Descartes versus Paul D’Holbach
The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment
have created many well-known figures in different realm. As the spreading and
development of the Renaissance idea , people got enlightened and developed
different new thoughts about things in the world, just like the totally
disparate ideas held by Renee Descartes and Paul D’Holbach in philosophy,
religion as well as virtue; and although they were born in different era,
different background, the thing in common is that those famous figures who
introduced new theories to their realm must be the one who were influenced by
Renaissance idea, like Descartes’ new theory in mathematics, physics and
astronomy, as well as Holbach’s opinion in politics, which all reflected human
creativity.
The
opinions held by Descartes and Holbach in philosophy are totally different, for
that Descartes is a dualist and rationalist, but Holbach is a materialist.
Renee Descartes has long been viewed as the founding father of modern
rationalism and modern philosophy. He began questioning truth and existence by
doubting everything, and ended with the fact that the only thing beyond doubt
was his own existence, therefore, he concluded his opinion as “I think,
therefore I am.” “The simple
meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence that is in and
of itself proof that he does exist.”[1]And as he explained in his
famous book: “But I immediately became aware that while I was thus disposed to
think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I who thus thought
should be something; and noting that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was
so steadfast and so assured that the suppositions of the skeptics, to whatever extreme they might all
be carried, could not avail to shake it, I concluded that I might without
scruple accept it as being the first principle of the philosophy I was
seeking.”[2](Smith
118-119), he valued thought and considered that the only thing he believed is
his mind. Because only the human reason and mind can be rational, the senses,
however, are not reliable at all. He proved that by doing a Wax Argument, in
which he concluded that the color, size, shape and smell are totally different
compare the wax before and after heated by flame, so the only way to judge the
characteristics of the wax is using his rational mind but not using senses. So
he thought that he need to doubt everything and could only accept the things
those his mind told him were true. Based on his first deduction, Descartes
deduced the other theory—the Cartesian dualism. Firstly, Descartes considered
that the mind and matter are not the same, in other words, they are separate.
Descartes argued that since ‘‘the mind cannot be doubted but the body and
material world can, the two must be radically different.’’[3]
(Spielvogel, 504) So the mind and matter are not the same and can be separated.
Secondly, he thought that the mind can be used to understand the world, because
the material world is a pure mechanism that dominated by its physical laws
created by “the great geometrician”. However, Paul D’ Holbach held the
different opinion to the Descartes, because he is a materialist. In his most
famous book “System of Nature”, written in 1770, he argued that everything in the
universe consisted of matter in motion, and human beings were simply machines. “Holbach's
metaphysics, then, is mechanistic, in that any correct explanation of an event
will refer only to matter, motion, and the laws which describe their
combination.”[4] He
considered that only the matter truly exists, and because the human beings are
simply machines, also matter, in this way human exists; besides, he thought
only those things can be felt by human senses can we be sure of their existing,
which is totally opposed to the theory held by Descartes, who thought “I think,
therefore I am.”. What’s more, Holbach takes nature to consist in matter and
motion and nothing else. Nature is known to us, when it can be known, as a
sequence of causes and effects: “The universe, that vast assemblage of every
thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our
contemplation nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and
effects. (System of Nature, 15)” In
these ways that Descartes and Holbach are different.
Since
Descartes and Holbach’s opinion are so distinct in philosophy, it caused the
huge divergence in religion, for that Descartes still believed that there
existed a creator in the world, while Holbach is totally an atheist. Descartes
thought that the reason why the mind is rational was because the creator is in
it, which makes the mind think rationally and will not get confused or affected
by external world. However, the creator, the god, he believed in, was not the
Christian God anymore, instead, it was a creator with rational mind. Besides,
though he proved the existing of the true world, he considered that the
universe contains two entities, the mind and the matter, they were essentially
from the creator; however, the creator was an independent existence. He also
deduced and concluded “in the
third and fifth Meditation
in which he offers an ontological proof of the existence of a benevolent God, who can have
some faith in the account of reality his senses provide him, for God has
provided him with a working mind and sensory system and
does not desire to deceive him.” In contrast to
Descartes, Holbach is a radical atheist in the Enlightenment. Because of his
materialistic viewpoints, he denied the existence of the god, he thought the
god was something that non-materialistic and could not be touched or felt, in
this way, he considered that the god does not exist. “In his
System of Nature, written in 1770, he wrote ‘God was a product of the human
mind and was unnecessary for leading a moral life.’ The only reason that people
live in this world is: ‘Let us persuade men to be just, beneficent, moderate,
sociable; not because the gods demand it, but because they must please men. Let
us advise them to abstain from vice and crimes; not because they will be
punished in the other world, but because they will suffer for it in this.’’[5]
Baron d'Holbach said
that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God."[6] Denying the existence of the deity, and refusing to admit
as evidence all previous arguments,
Holbach referred the universe as nothing more than matter in motion, bound by unchangable
natural laws of cause and effect. There is, he wrote "no necessity to have
recourse to supernatural powers to account for the formation of things."[7] However, both Descartes and Holbach had huge influences
in religion. In shifting the debate from
"what is true" to "of what can I be certain?", Descartes
shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity. “The
books written by Descartes were placed on the papal Index of Forbidden Books
and condemned by many Protestant theologians. The radical Cartesian split
between mind and matter, and between mind and body, had devastating
implications not only for traditional religious views of the universe but also
for how Westerners viewed themselves.”[8]
“This anthropocentric perspective, establishing
human reason as autonomous, provided the basis for the Enlightenment's emancipation from God and the Church. It also
provided the basis for all subsequent anthropology.”[9] During
the Enlightenment, Holbach shocked almost all of his fellow philosophers with his uncompromising
atheism, because most intellectuals remained more comfortable with deism and feared
the effect of atheism on society in that time. And his denouncement about the
religion had greatly attack the Catholic Church.
The
third distinction between Descartes and Holbach was the view about virtue; what
Descartes believed in is that the virtue consists in the correct reasoning that
can guide our actions, nevertheless Holbach deemed that virtues are temperance
and moderation. “For the Rationalist philosopher René Descartes, virtue consists
in the correct reasoning that should guide our actions. Men should seek the sovereign good that
Descartes, following Zeno, identifies with virtue,
as this produces a solid blessedness or pleasure. For Epicurus the
sovereign good was pleasure, and Descartes says that in fact this is not in
contradiction with Zeno's teaching, because virtue produces a spiritual
pleasure, that is better than bodily pleasure. Regarding Aristotle's opinion that
happiness depends on the goods of fortune, Descartes does
not deny that these goods contribute to happiness, but remarks that they are in
great proportion outside one's own control, whereas one's mind is under one's
complete control.”[10] “Holbach's ethics, as
Rousseau recognized, is not nearly as revisionary as his theology, his
conception of human virtue is quite traditional. Preservation and happiness, as
Holbach conceives them, involve most of the same practices that the religious
views Holbach denounces require for eternal preservation and felicity. Perhaps
the principal practical difference between morality as Holbach conceives it and
the Christian morality as Holbach understands it lies in the self-abnegation Holbach
finds valued in Christian morality. For Holbach, temperance, moderation and so
on are virtues that one acquires out of a love for pleasure and life. On the
other hand, he takes these virtues, as they are understood traditionally, to
involve an unhealthy denial of one's love for wine, food and other familiar
pleasures. Temperance and moderation, for Holbach are the best means to the
enjoyment of wine and food, whereas in the views he criticizes they are virtues
by which we deny the value of such enjoyment.”[11]
So in this way, the perspectives of
Descartes and Holbach in virtue are distinctive.
Compare Descartes
with Holbach, although they have many differences, their similarities lie in
all of their new thought are from the Renaissance idea, the human creativity
and the new style of thinking, which made them break the old, rigid thinking
and think rationally and critically, thus finding and introducing new thought
in different realm. Descartes
found and concluded four principles from his algebra, geometry and logics:
“In place of the numerous precepts which have gone to
constitute logic, I came to believe that the four following rules would be
found sufficient, always provided I took the firm and unswerving resolve never
in a single instance to fail in observing them.
The first was to accept
nothing as true which I did not evidently know to be such, that is to say,
scrupulously to avoid precipitance and prejudice, and in the judgments I passed
to include nothing additional to what had presented itself to my mind so
clearly and so distinctly that I could have no occasion for doubting it.
The second, to divide each
of the difficulties I examined into as many parts as may be required for its
adequate solution.
The third, to arrange my
thoughts in order, beginning with things the simplest and easiest to know, so
that I may then ascend little by little, as it were step by step to the
knowledge of the more complex, and in doing so, to assign an order of thought
even to those objects which are not of themselves in any such order of
precedence.
And the last, in all cases
to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I should be
assured of omitting nothing.”
And those four principles contributed the most to the establishment
of the analytical geometry; he successfully related the algebra with geometry
and built the famous Cartesian coordinates graph with x, y axes. Descartes'
work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, who applied
infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus
permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics. [12]As
for physics and astronomy, Descartes created the most popular theory on planetary motion and also
contributed to the theories of motion as well as the laws of nature. “Descartes also made contributions to the field
of optics. He
showed by using geometric construction and the law of
refraction (also known
as Descartes' law or more commonly Snell's law)
that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees (i.e., the angle
subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the ray passing from the
sun through the rainbow's centre is 42°).”[13] “He also independently discovered the law of
reflection, and his essay on optics was
the first published mention of this law.”[14] Paul, D’
Holbach, however, had his own opinions and theories in politics. He
named it in his own term “ethocracy,” which was founded for the purposes of
securing the general welfare.
Influenced by Rousseau, Holbach agreed with the idea of the social contract
theory and thought it is reasonable to revolute to overthrow the feudal autocracy
dominator, but he opposed either of the absolute monarchy or the Divine Rights
of Kings. And he divided his theory of social contract theory into two stages “The
first is social. When individuals realize that others are the greatest
helps to their own welfare, they make a pact with one another, uniting in order
to obtain personal and proprietary security and other benefits of society (Universal
Morality 1.86; Politique Naturelle, 1.1). The second stage of the
social contract is more narrowly political. It is a contract that society, in
order to secure the general welfare, strikes with a sovereign power, usually
understood by Holbach to be a king limited, or at least informed by, a body of
elected representatives (La politique naturelle 3.17). Holbach expects
that obedience to a sovereign will break down where individuals feel the need
to secure their own lives. This is also why sovereigns need to take care to
look after citizens' welfare and education.”[15]
Moreover, he had great
contributions to Diderot's Encyclopedia, for he translated many
important English works on religion and political philosophy into French. “His
salon, then, was at once a shelter for radical thought and a hub of mainstream
culture.”[16] So it
was the influence of Renaissance idea that inspired Descartes and Holbach to
create new thinking and made great contributions in different realm.
Although
Renee Descartes and Paul D’ Holbach have differences point of views in some
realm, their thoughts have broken the old rigid system of human thinking and
provided the basis for the thinking of the later generation, thus pushing
forward the history. The other thing is that even the theories of Descartes and
Holbach have their inaccuracies and mistakes mostly because of the historical
limitation, they are still of great value, for that they are the people who are
brave enough to doubt the traditional thinking and break the old thought, as
well as devote their whole lives to innovate, and defend the truth they find
out. And at last, no matter what realm are they from, both of them developed
humanism in their own way in their era.
Work Cited
2. Rene Descartes,
Philosophical Writings, ed. And trans. Norman K. Smith (New York, 1958),
pp118-119
3. Spielvogel, Jackson. Western
Civilization, Eighth Edition, Volume B:1300-1815.Boston: Suzanne Jeans. 504.
Print.
4. LeBuffe, Michael, "Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron)
d'Holbach", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/holbach/>.
5. Baron Paul d’Holbach, Common
Sense, as quoted in Frank E. Manuel, ed. The Enlightenment (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.1965), p. 62
6. d'Holbach, P.
H. T. (1772). Good Sense.
Retrieved 2011-04-07.
7. Paul Henri Thiry, Baron
d'Holbach, System of Nature; or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical
World (London, 1797), Vol. 1, p. 25
8. Rene Descartes,
Philosophical Writings, ed. And trans. Norman K. Smith (New York, 1958),
pp118-119
9. Heidegger
[1938] (2002) p.75 quotation
10. Blom, John J.,
Descartes. His moral philosophy and psychology. New York University Press.
1978. ISBN
0-8147-0999-0
11.Descartes,
Discourse on Method, in Philosophical Writings, p.75.
12.Gullberg, Jan (1997). Mathematics
From The Birth of Numbers. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04002-X.
13. Tipler, P. A. and G. Mosca
(2004). Physics For Scientists And Engineers. W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-4389-2
14. ("René
Descartes". Encarta. Microsoft. 2008. Retrieved 15
August 2007.
15. LeBuffe, Michael,
"Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron) d'Holbach", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/holbach/>.
16. LeBuffe, Michael,
"Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron) d'Holbach", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/holbach/>
[2] Rene Descartes, Philosophical Writings, ed. And trans. Norman K. Smith (New York,
1958), pp118-119
[3] Spielvogel, Jackson. Western Civilization, Eighth Edition, Volume B:1300-1815.Boston:
Suzanne Jeans. 504. Print.
[4] LeBuffe, Michael, "Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron) d'Holbach",
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/holbach/>.
[5] Baron Paul d’Holbach, Common Sense, as quoted in Frank E. Manuel,
ed. The Enlightenment (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.1965), p. 62
[7] Paul Henri
Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, System
of Nature; or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World (London, 1797), Vol. 1, p. 25
[8] Rene Descartes, Philosophical Writings, ed. And trans.
Norman K. Smith (New York, 1958), pp118-119
[10] Blom, John J., Descartes.
His moral philosophy and psychology. New York University Press. 1978. ISBN
0-8147-0999-0
[12] Gullberg, Jan (1997). Mathematics
From The Birth of Numbers. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04002-X.
[13] Tipler, P. A. and G. Mosca (2004). Physics For Scientists And
Engineers. W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-4389-2
[14] ("René Descartes". Encarta. Microsoft. 2008. Retrieved 15 August 2007.
[15] LeBuffe, Michael, "Paul-Henri
Thiry (Baron) d'Holbach", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/holbach/>.
[16] LeBuffe, Michael, "Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron) d'Holbach",
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/holbach/>.
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