Rene Descartes Regulae

Rene Descartes was a French philosopher born in 1596 who is famous above all for coining the phrase “Je pense donc je suis”, or “I think therefore I am.” Aside from this, however, he was made famous for countless other reasons. More specifically he still holds much relevance to a modern audience due to the fact that he was a strong rationalist thinker. This is during a period of time when religion and the existence of an omnipotent and all-powerful God was used to answer many of the questions facing humanity at the time. As if God must have a reason for events unfolding in the manner in which they do. Descartes relied instead on the Human capacity for logic, reasoning and critical analysis. This is how he began his book “Regulae ad direction

He believed that much of the world's problems such as war and poverty were caused by us not using our minds properly. He strove to help educate others to better equip their minds for thinking and reasoning.

Descartes believed that to better understand a large problem you must first divide it into smaller and more understandable sections. He called this his “method of doubts.” He said that we get bogged down in the grand questions because we fail to divide these into their more basic elements. It is frequently written that Descartes compared his system of methodical doubt to a barrel of apples, where fresh and rotten apples are mixed together. His role as a philosopher was to remove and inspect each apple individually and to discard the bad ones until only apples of the highest calibre

“How does one know that they, or anything for that matter, really exists.” He tackled the subject of existence using his system of methodical doubt. He begins to doubt everything because he acknowledges the possibility that an evil demon may have altered his perception of reality and made him believe in things that are untrue. He understood that his senses were unreliable as a source of information. All it takes is for you to go outside on a hot day to see your sight playing tricks on you in the form of mirages. The example that he gave was how he could not trust his senses to tell him if he was sitting in his room wearing his dressing gown next to a fire, or if he was simply dreaming that he was. One thing he knew for certain, though, was that he was thinking and therefore he had irrefutable proof of his existence. He could not be thinking and questioning his existence if he did not exist and therefore his thinking was undeniable proof of his