Descartes And The Humanism Tradition

Descartes’s rationalism philosophy marks the birth of modern philosophy, the rationalism thephilosophy contained is also one of the thoughts origin of Enlightenment. Thus, withEnlightenment rationalism exposed a growing problem in modern society, academics tend toattribute the separation of subjectivity and objectivity caused by “philosophy of subjectivity” ofDescartes to considered crux of problem.Of a period of the Renaissance, the spirit of “individualism” is an important characteristic of“Humanism”, the essence of “individualism” is “freedom” and “rational” to carry forward, whichcan be traced back to ancient humanism tradition of Greek philosophy, which is pure andnon-utilitarianism. Descartes defined the philosophy as the “wisdom” of knowledge itself, andregard it as an organic whole, the ethics, which study human’s morality itself, is the mostimportant part of the knowledge system, and his “first principles”-“I think”, laid a foundation ofman’s nature, which is free and rational. Therefore, Descartes’ philosophy with the “individualism”of Renaissance belongs to “humanistic tradition”.However, there is a conflict and contradiction in the humanist thoughts. Due to religiousbeliefs, their thoughts are still supported by theological worldview, therefore, the motivation ofexploring world and discovering truth just is to grasp “mystery” of god; to criticize the church,just because “corruption” and “corrupt” of faculty, in order to return to original “ideal religious” ofgodfather era; to encourage the pursuit of wealth and honor, and praise the human nature, but bythe reason of “the human nature connect the divine”, and human nature is the gift of god.Humanist’s secular requirement of practice, therefore, is contradicted with its thoughts, it isbecause their secular practice requirement, as well as its intrinsic and devout religious faith, onlystay on the ideological level, and has not been put into practical action, they are not really awareof this contradiction, because of if “individualism” had been thoroughly performed, their religiousbeliefs should have been expense of it, and humanist is impossible to do this.Of Cartesian rationalism philosophy belongs to the humanism tradition, so its philosophyalso has similar contradiction between the rationality and belief of humanist. Descartes’s piousreligious belief is the precondition of his rationalism, to suspect certainty of knowledge, becauseof un-perfect reason of man, compared with god, who is absolutely perfect; based on the “cogito”which is confirmation of knowledge, is just because the confidence of man’s “conscience” thatgod has given. However, when Descartes was further abstracting fulfilling and alive human assingle existence of thinking, after replacing the whole nature world as mathematical symbols,making the world be rational and to be given rules and order, those consequences,theEnlightenment scholars took the reason rather than religious teachings as the only measure of truthof everything, human is an opposite poles of the world, the rational became the “technical reason”and “instrumental rationality”, has become inevitable.The contradiction between Descartes and humanist reflect characteristics of the transition ofits time, and this feature is “disenchantment”. Therefore, full understanding of those thinkers’thinking features and contradiction of this transitional era, is not only beneficial to restorea more “real”rationalism, but also conducive to deepening the Enlightenment rational reflection.