Ojuice5001

Almost all biographers of Descartes agree that he was afraid of the Inquisition, and realized that he was creating a non-Christian philosophy that the Church might not like. Unless this idea is false, Descartes doubtless engaged in a lot of self-censorship to veil his true beliefs.

Since he had such a great effect on all subsequent thought, I find this fascinating--after all, any significant change in his philosophy would probably alter the nature of his influence without decreasing its magnitude. What are your thoughts about what kind of ideas he could have been hiding from the public?

Entropic_Gnosis

Descartes spent quite some time expaining how God had to exist so i think we have to take that as a given for him. That being said one could easily assume that Descartes was something of a closet Deist as he was never specific on what god his god was. I will have to look into his writings in more detail and see what i can come up with.

Interesting topic.

Amos

Well he contradicted his own philosophy when he nearly crawled into a stove to keep warm. I think this happened in Belgium when he was in exile.

Pyrrho

Most philosophers of the past have engaged in self-censorship for one reason or another. In Descartes' case, he would have been extremely foolish to say certain kinds of things, no matter what he believed, and even with his extensive efforts to prove that there is a God, he still got into trouble, probably because the Catholic Church did not want people reasoning about the question of whether there is a God or not; people were supposed to just have faith (i.e., believe without evidence), and reasoning about something always brings doubt into a question, as there may be errors in someone's reasoning. (Spinoza was called an "atheist", though in his most famous work, The Ethics, "God" is mentioned with extraordinary frequency.) Even today, there are consequences for saying the "wrong" thing, though, in the U.S. today, these consequences are far less than they were in most places in the past.

Unfortunately, this means that there will always be some doubt regarding the exact beliefs of any particular philosopher. This is why prudent and rational people do not pretend to know absolutely what any philosopher believed; usually, words like "probably", "it seems that", or some other such expression is used when describing someone else's beliefs. No one can know absolutely what Descartes, or anyone else, really believed.

Clutch

Why would you equate "afraid of the Inquisition" with "had a non-Christian philosophy"?

I had no idea that approval by the Inquisition was the gold standard for Christian doctrine!

Descartes was almost certainly afraid of the Inquisition because he had novel and radical ideas, as novel and radical as Galileo's, and the Inquisition was unpredictably hostile to such ideas. At the same time, nobody could read the Meditations without recognizing Descartes' commitment to the standard Thomistic conception of a god.

Xeno

The belief of a philosopher is irrelevent to the judgement of that philosophers writings. Let their arguments fall based on the argument and not the personal agency.

Amos

Good point and that can the stretched to exclude history from the bible.

Xeno

That is to imply the Bible is not arguing history.

Is "The exodus took place" an assertion of historic nature or otherwise?

If otherwise, then all assertions in the Bible can be evaluted upon the same grounds as other novels such as "A Tale of Two Cities".

Clutch

This does not seem relevant to the thread. The OP is quite explicitly a musing about whether Descartes might have held views that he censored or watered down out of fear of persecution. Nobody is suggesting that what he actually wrote should not be considered on its own merits.

Amos

Right and just as Genesis does not relate to a historic day in time so does the Exodus not relate to a historic day in time. The Exodus is a good example how we must not flee from the final battle and forcefully enter the promised land but we must become subjects in the final battle where our religious identity must be slain = religion as a means to the end and not an end in itself.

Notice here that Moses parted the waters instead of walking on the water as Jesus did. The water is a metaphor for our subconsious mind and we must first learn to 'go' by it (walk on water) before we should gain intimacy with our higher consciousness in the born-again identity switch. So Moses was wrong to lead the children of Israel into their born again expirience because they were not ready for it and hence they failed to mature and become one with God. The obvious evidence is that they remained torn between the law and their faith just as born again people today remain torn in the saved sinner paradox.

Correct, the bible must be prior to us by nature before it can make sense and should never be studied because that will prevent nature to do its thing in us first.