Descartes Skyline

Rene Descartes is a very interesting person to read about. His style of writing portrays a man who is intelligent, but is modest about it and does not brag. While reading the parts one, two and three in his A Discourse on the Method, what he cares about most is the application of one’s mind.

This is what Descartes cares about most because he makes many references to it within those three sections. He even begins his book with a statement about intelligence: “Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world” (Descartes 5). This sets the rest of the book up to hear about intelligence and mind application. Descartes discusses the two types of minds: the ones who are overly confident on their intelligence, and the ones who follow the overly confident ones. This proves that Descartes spends much time deciphering what people think and feel about opinions and how they express that feeling.

Descartes wants each human to use their mind well; not blindly following opinions of others, but searching for our own answers while simultaneously not jumping to our own conclusions. He says that although intelligence is wide spread, not many people know how to use it correctly which, as he points out, can be a problem, especially when it comes to interpretations.

This is what Descartes cares about because he is trying to end some conflict which seems to be similar to the Galileo/Church conflict. But Descartes is attempting to end to conflict from a different approach, one of trying to lead people to learn to interpret things with an open mind. Maybe we could all learn a little something from Descartes and apply it to our daily lives.