_living each day*

sophie's world

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

sophie's world is quite a handful.. giving me cellulose indigestion.. its really creative how the author introduces the mystery of hilde to spice up the philosophy lesson.. i'm less than halfway through the book, but i'm determined to continue ploughing thru the book.. the book is really taking me quite long to read.. it's been a couple of weeks.. really quite hard to digest the info inside.. :)

descartes today..
"i think, therefore i am"

To him, life was a dream. He doubted everything, and that was the only thing he was certain of. But now something struck him: one thing had to be true, and that was that he doubted. When he doubted, he had to be thinking, and because he was thinking, it had to be certain that he was a thinking being. Or, as he himself experssed it: Gogito, ergo sum, meaning " I think, therefore i am".

Descartes then asked himself if there was anything more he could perceive with the same intuitive certainty. He came to the conclusion that in his mind he had a clear and distinct idea of a perfect entity. This was an idea he had always had, and it was thus self-evident to Descartes that such an idea could not have originated from one who was himself imperfect, he claimed. Therefore the idea of a perfect entity must have originated from that perfect entity itself, or in other words, from God. That God exists was therefore just as self-evident for Descartes as that a thinking being must exist.

Descartes meant that we all possess the idea of a perfect entity, and that inherent in that idea is the fact that this perfect entity must exist. Because a perfect entity wouldn't be perfect if it didn't exist. Neither would we possess the idea of a perfect entity if there were no perfect entity. For we are imperfect, so the idea of perfection cannot come from us. The idea of God is innate.

so, that is how Descartes came to a conclusion that he, and God exist. During the Baroque period, many people felt that life was like a play, or a dream, they did not know what was real, and what was not. Hence, Descartes had cleverly came out with this funny yet true logic to justify the existence of this reality and of God. On first sight, it sounds ridiculous, but i guess i will never have the intellectual capacity to link all these so intricately together. Cheers to Descartes and all the other philosophers!

__pondering* 10:53 PM :)