Essay on Six Meditations of Rene

In his book, Rene provided six meditations towards God, nature, mind and the soul. In the first meditation, Rene assessed those things that can be called into doubt. Rene believes we can doubt everything especially science and its discoveries. The second meditation, Rene argues that the mind cannot suppose non-existence of everything because the end rests on its own existence (Descartes, 1993). In essence, Rene supposes that if everything is unreal, then the mind itself must be unreal. In the third meditation, Rene strongly believes that there is God. Rene argues that just as the ingeniousness of an idea exists through a craftsman, so as too, the idea that God is supreme and the cause of everything, including his own existence. The fourth meditation is that what we perceive as true can only be explained by the falsity of nature. In fact, nature defines the course of all thoughts in science and what new scientists pretend to discover, has already been discovered by others (Descartes, 1993).

The fifth meditation proves the existence of God and in his assumptions; even the geometrical explanations depend on God. In Renes own understanding, even the science itself relies strongly on God. The sixth meditation of Rene provides an explanation of the existence of material things, and the distinction between the mind and the soul (Descartes, 1993). According to Rene, it is possible that the soul is believed to be a part of the complete system of the body, but with a proper imagination of the corporeal, one would understand that the mind is wholly or partially separate from the actual state of the body.

Philosophy of Kant

For Kant to explain his visualization on prolegomena, he employed the use of the metaphysic concept which helped in explaining that scientific knowledge is possible. He explained that one has to understand knowledge in terms of intuition where one gets the chance to understand the perception about a concept and in terms of reason where one gets the object of experience by the help of the mind which analyzes and organizes the present perception. Thus the metaphysic disposition of reason as indicated by Kant is that all philosophers should aim at achieving the three philosophy problems; what to know, to do and to hope when trying to dispose reasons why science and math are real. According to Kant (1783), Kant employed the prolegomena to any future metaphysic concept since it helped to come up with the concept of truth of reason where Kant defines that people should be universally moral and a reflection of moral law will aid people in gaining knowledge on concepts they do not know thus having hope to experiment. Therefore, the disposition of reason in proving that scientific knowledge is possible by Kant is successful since he outlines clearly how people are able to gain knowledge by studying science and then apply it in real life by taking some experiments that make them gain experience.

Conclusion

While Rene disputes the actuality of science and math by allowing people to doubt the existence of everything, Kant opposes such notions. Rene argues that science is a mere idea. However, Kant believes that human knowledge exists on proportions that are believed to be universally accurate and objective.

References

Descartes, R. (1993). Meditations on the First Philosophy. Indiana, U.S: Hackett Publishing Company.

Kant, I. (1783). Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Retrieved from http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20306/kant_materials/prolegomena8.htm