608 - Cartesius, Part 1, Italy, 1974. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.

Friday, February 7, 2020

608 - Cartesius, Part 1, Italy, 1974.  Dir. Roberto Rossellini.

Renee Descartes is restless.

Descartes considers himself to be like a pilgrim.  He wanders through his own thoughts as he roams across Europe.  Living off his maternal inheritance.  Nomadically searching for a place to stay where few people know him.  So that he may be at peace to work through his thoughts.

For the purpose of observing men and things.  In order to discover "the infinite faces of the truth, and those of error."

He misses the comfort of his own bed, though.

He goes from Paris to Holland to Italy and back to Paris, only to prepare to leave again.

Descartes has decided to throw out all of his assumptions and begin anew.  As if he were a man with a barrel of apples.  He throws out all the apples at once, and then studies them one by one, placing only the healthy apples back in the barrel and leaving out the rotten ones.

As a young man at school, Descartes was precocious.  He read more voraciously than anyone before him.  He requested special permission from his Jesuit mentor, Father Marsenne of La Fleche, to check out books ahead of time and to read at a faster pace.

He got in trouble for talking during his fencing lessons.  Because his mind was on the latest ideas about which he was reading, and he wanted to discuss them.

Descartes meets Theophile de Viau, the poet.  The libertine.  They have different backgrounds, different approaches to life, and different temperaments, yet they get along.  They are both in search of a kind of freedom whereby man might determine his own fate.

When Descartes returns to Paris after some time abroad, he finds Theophile's effigy being burned, along with his writings.

Descartes watches from a distance.  "Intolerance is like the plague," he says to his friend.  He has returned after three years away, in Holland and in Italy, but already he wishes to leave again.

French Parliament has passed laws condemning men to death who teach ideas that run against those which are officially received.  "Death to the libertines!" the people shout.  Descartes' friend informs him that Theophile has already escaped Paris, so that his effigy is all that will be burned.

Descartes is developing 21 rules on how to think.

Whereas the scientists of his day typically focus on nature--the customs of man, the virtues of plants, the movement of the stars, the transformations of metals--Descartes has decided to study the mind itself.

The human mind is the source of knowledge.

Without the mind, there would be no knowledge.

Therefore, Descartes seeks knowledge of the mind.

How it works.

And how it should work.

He does not know when it will be published.  He has more travelling to do first.

Throughout Europe.

And through his own thoughts.


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It is absurd to compare Galileo and Aristotle.

Aristotle built his doctrine on a perfect system of syllogisms, whereas Galileo's science originates from his observation of the universe.

Cornelius Agrippa, Natural Magic.
    magnetism, the camera obscura
Giovanni Battista Della Porta.

You are in too much of a hurry, my dear Descartes.

Our goal is to acquire knowledge to help souls with God's favor.

Latin, the Humanities, Logic, Natural and Moral Philosophy, Metaphysics, Theology.

He is convinced that if the new sciences approach the truth, they will help us discover and love God, who is the ultimate truth.

You are a lover of physics.

But truthfully you have always been diligent in every subject.

I have been a student in this college for nine years.  There is no place in the world where philosophy is better taught.

The most important thing is that you not lose yourself in the world, and that everything you do be for the greater glory of God.

My God, how I adore your hair.  It lies in soft waves on your brow, gently caresses your beauty, and makes me jealous when I kiss you.  Your mouth is amber and rose, but your words pierce me if you do not tell me now, while kissing, that to love is an act sublime.
-- Theophile de Viau.

And what to think of those who forego prayer to God and the saints, only to address magical prayers to the stars?

What would we think of those astrologers who would dare make up a horoscope for our Lord Jesus Christ?

A learned man is neither a fortune-teller nor a wizard.  He is a lover of truth.  And like Aristotle, he believes that nature clearly reveals it to us in the study of causes and in the succession of phenomena.

Aristotle is an eagle.  The others are mere chicks.

In the search for truth, Aristotle says one thing.  Plato says another.  Epicurus yet another.  Augustine seems to indicate a way that differs from that of Thomas Aquinas.  Telesio, Campanella, Bacon, and the other innovators have yet other theories.  You say apart from Aristotle they are all chicks.  Are you not perhaps exaggerating?

The summae of the scholastics founded on Aristotle's doctrines seem to be perfect constructions that lead to the truth when examined within the cloistered walls of a library or a college.  But they appear quire far from it when compared to the thousand upon thousand phenomena that constitute the reality of our world.

Who among these men will teach us something whose truth is absolute and cannot be doubted?

The first rule:  The aim of our studies must be to direct our mind toward solid and true judgments on whatever matters may arise.  If a man is seriously intent upon finding the truth, he must not apply himself only to one particular science, because all the sciences are connected and dependent on each other in a unity of knowledge.

The second rule:  We must occupy ourselves only with those objects whose certain and indubitable knowledge we feel we can achieve by means of our intelligence.  On this subject we must realize that of the sciences known today, only arithmetic and geometry are free of falseness and uncertainty, because they consist entirely in the logical deduction of a series of consequences.  They focus on a pure and simple subject matter and do not rely, in order to exist, on anything that concrete experience may have rendered uncertain.  With their help, only through a lack of attention, can man fall into error.

The third rule:  We must not pause to study the opinions and conjectures made by others or by ourselves, but attempt to intuit, aided by the clarity of evidence, the true content of things.  To this end, we will rely on intuition and deduction.

By intuition I do not mean the inconstant result of perceptions or of our imagination, but the concept that flows from a pure and attentive mind, so clear and distinct that no doubt remains surrounding it.  For example, two and two are the same quantity as three and one, and that is four.

As for deduction, it is all that which we accept as necessarily true as a consequence of previous knowledge that has already been obtained with absolute certainty.

From this rule all the others are derived, and most notably the fourth, which I deduce from the previous three.

"The search for truth requires a method, a method that can guide our thoughts with order, proceeding from the objects that are simpler and easier to know and gradually ascending to the more difficult ones.  Once we have intuited a certain number of simple propositions, if they result in clear and distinct concepts, with one continuous movement of our thought we shall go on to reflect on their mutual relations.

In this methodical search for truth we shall make use of our intellect, our imagination, our sense, and our memory, both to intuit distinctly the simple propositions and to rightly compare the things we seek with those already known.

I believe that all things that can be within reach of man's knowledge follow one another in the same manner as those long chains of simple and easy reasons which geometers usually employ to craft their most difficult proofs."