Reason vs. Subjectivity—A Glance at Descartes’ Discourse

Congratulations! You’re a freshman in college and super excited about starting your new journey. You’re ready to spread your wings, get out on your own, perform on an athletic team or in an ensemble, find your significant other, and hopefully gain a plethora of knowledge in the field you are most interested in.

Ok. Let’s think hypothetically for a minute. Suppose you have the same teacher for all your English classes. This teacher has the same opinion about everything pertaining to the study of English, literature, and writing, and isn’t willing to budge or compromise on his beliefs and ideas. He only views his opinion as valid and expects you to do the exact same. After all, he is an expert in the field of English and knows a lot more about it than you; why should you question his teaching? Think about it for a minute. You are currently being given only one opinion and are required to believe it. What if your teacher’s opinions concerning the world of literature and writing are flawed, misinformed, or biased? What if the information he gives you is good, but subjective? Do you truly have a thorough understanding of the subject? It doesn’t sound like it. While you may have plenty of information and a binder full of notes, you would only have one man’s idea of what is true concerning English, and would lack differing opinions on the subject to which you can compare, contrast, and choose for yourself which belief seems the most valid.

In René Descartes’ A Discourse on the Method, he addresses the issue of traditional schooling and so called “book knowledge” versus pursuing knowledge through the method of reasoning. While Descartes does not necessarily undervalue his more formal education, he suggests that one can “discover more truth from the reasoning that we all make about things that affect us...than from the speculations in which a scholar engages in the privacy of his own study” (Descartes 11). In short, Descartes argues that the art of reasoning and reasoning well are more qualified to aid when it comes to expanding one’s knowledge of the real world.

In the beginning of Part One, Descartes briefly describes the education he had in his early years, painting a picture for the reader of his pressing crave for knowledge and his surety that an education in classical studies would satiate his desires (Descartes 7). However, he quickly follows by describing how, by the end of his studies, he was burdened by doubts of his knowledge and felt the need to escape from the control of his teachers, abandon his more traditional studies, and pursue the knowledge he could gain simply by reasoning within himself or in the “great book of the world” (Descartes 7, 10). He describes how he felt a “constant burning desire to learn and distinguish truth from false, to see [his] actions for what they were, and proceed with confidence through life” (Descartes 11). Referring to our hypothetical example about the English professor, we could say that it would be important to pull away from the professor’s subjective teachings to be able to fully distinguish true from false, opinion from absolute. To accomplish this, however, would require a new method of thinking.

Descartes describes this method of breaking from book knowledge to pursue reasoning in several different ways. One example in particular he uses is an illustration of a building. He begins by painting a picture for the readers of an ancient city containing none but old, aging structures that, although once stood tall and proud, serving well the people who built them, now are considered a burden and cloud up the view of the city. Naturally, if a structure is no longer an asset to a city, the logical solution would be to tear it down. But tear it to what degree? “This example,” Descartes explains “convinced me that it would be not reasonable for an individual to set out to reform a state by changing everything from the foundations up...but rather, I could do no better than to set about ridding myself of them once and for all, with a view to replacing them afterwards either with better ones, or even the same ones, once I had tested them with my reason to ensure that they were set straight” (Descartes 14). So, breaking this down, we can say that Descartes’ idea was to completely tear down what he had been taught—even the very foundation—to start to reasoning through all he had been educated in up to that point, testing through his own method of thinking to reveal if it were all true or not. Then, once he had been able to clarify, he could rebuild his “tower of knowledge”, either on a similar foundation to previous, or completely different from the one before. Applying this to our example about the English teacher, we might say it would be important for the student to pull away from his teachings completely to insure that the student’s fresh start to reasoning would not be seasoned with the biased beliefs of the teacher.

Throughout the remainder of his Discourse on the Method, Descartes records the results of his new method of thinking. He describes that by employing reason to the situations he previously may have relied on a teacher for, he was able to see his mind gradually shifting to thinking ideas and concepts out more clearly and logically (Descartes 19). He touches on the idea that through reason, we can prove that God exists, simply by being able to perceive the idea of perfection and a God Who is perfect (Descartes 30). He eventually reaches a point in his method where he is able to engage in metacognition, the act of thinking about thinking, in which he coins his famous saying “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes 29). Descartes realizes that through pure reason, we are able to prove our existence simply by reasoning that if we are cognitively recognizing that we are thinking, then we must exist. He later concludes his experiment by stating that “...these notions have made me see that it is possible to attain knowledge which is very useful in life, and that unlike speculative philosophy which is that is taught in school, it can be turned into practice” (Descartes 51).

Descartes highlights the importance of reasoning throughout his entire work, but just as importantly, although perhaps not as blatantly, does he commend the act of doubting what has been taught. Doubt, he acknowledges, is not the end of reasoning, but conversely, the beginning (Descartes 29). If one is able to doubt what they have been taught and not blindly follow the teachings of perhaps misinformed or biased teachers, their mind will be open to a spirit and a hunger for reasoning, in which they will be able to figure for themselves what they believe to be true. Returning to our example of the English professor and the student, there may be many students who are willing to blindly believe the biased teachings of the professor, simply because they lack the desire to think or discover for themselves what they truly believe. Heeding Descartes’ method, however, a truly good student of knowledge would be able to see the value in pulling away from biased information and claiming their own beliefs based on reason alone.