Shame On You Voltaire!

“With Descartes the culture of modern times, the thought of modern philosophy begins to appear.” Hegel says. Whereas what Voltaire says about Descartes seems much more interesting, besides its unfair nature, one to me.

Voltaire starts by praising the imagination of these remarkable philosopher by saying that “Descartes was born with a lively and strong imagination, which made of him a singular man in his private life, as well as in his manner of reasoning; this imagination could not be hidden in his philosophical works, where at every moment we see ingenious and brilliant comparisons; nature had almost made of him a poet...”, and he adds that this situation led him to the wrong path in science and philosophy. Nevertheless, he also needed to note that these mistakes are rational, the results are false though. What Descartes did in his work, in short, was to follow a rational and methodological way and establish his own arguments on this basis. The mistakes he had done, however, does not possess any threat to philosophy itself. Philosophy, in fact, benefits from those faults of Descartes, as they demonstrate what a philosopher should refrain from in a philosophical progress. From Voltaire, we can conclude a commonsensical idea that human is the being who has the ability draw lessons from his or his ancestor’s mistakes.

Descartes considers himself as fortunate due to his chance to increase his knowledge and develop his own discourse. Descartes, thus, does not neglect the chance of its deficiency and he says “… my purpose here is not to teach the method that everyone ought to follow in order to conduct his reason well, but merely show how I tried to conduct my own.” (4) Therefore, the accusations made by Voltaire against Descartes seems a little unfair. The philosophy, from my perspective at least, is an individual activity. The methods may differ for each individual and this should not be any concern for anybody but the individual himself. Thus, the arguments held by Voltaire, regardless its validity, are harsh and unfair.