Rene Descartes

Richard Kennington begins his entry in History of Political Philosophy by noting a problem with how modern philosophy is often presented, particularly in its origins. While Rene Descartes is often described as the father of modern philosophy, he is not considered the father of modern political philosophy, with that honor going to Machiavelli. This appears to give modern philosophy and modern political philosophy a separate origin, and perhaps one that cannot be reconciled. But, for Kennington, such a view is overly simplistic as there is a common thread between the ideas of Descartes and Machiavelli. That thread, according to Kennington is Francis Bacon as Bacon was a Machiavellian in politics who attempted to give science a brand new grounding. As Kennington notes, this new grounding is very similar to the new grounding Descartes attempted to establish in philosophy. Though this link, Kennington then goes on to argue for Rene Descartes’ place in the history of political philosophy.

One of the first things that needs to be understood for Descartes’ political philosophy is that he tends to be very cautious in his political writings in an attempt to avoid getting into trouble with the actually existing political authorities, but still, several important ideas can be drawn from them. At the basis of Descartes’ thought is the idea that all of philosophy is a tree. The roots of this tree are metaphysics while the trunk is physics. The branches of the tree however were all the other sciences, which would of course also include political science. In Descartes’ system, man is seen as both the second metaphysical root as well as the highest branch.

Using this analogy, Descartes seeks to radically change the understanding of knowledge as for him, the Classical tradition of speculation must be overthrown in favor of what Descartes calls “useful knowledge.” For Descartes, the overreliance on speculation is why the Classicalists were never able to properly formulate the distinction between passion and virtue, thus allowing the distinction between the two to become blurred. But, it is not enough for Descartes to throw out speculation as he also thinks that the passion/ virtue distinction should also be thrown out in favor of a new distinction between good passion and bad passion. Descartes finds this distinction far more useful.

For the average person, Descartes is primarily identified with his elevation of human reason, and this has political implications. According to Descartes, there are seven examples of the mastery of reason. Those examples are as follows: 1) the single architect of a building, 2) the single engineer of the buildings of a city, 3) the general case of a single prudent legislator who gives laws to the city, 4) the special case of a single divine legislator, 5) the special case of the single human legislator of pagan Sparta, 6) the simple relationship made naturally by a single man of good sense, and 7) the final, hypothetical case of a single man who had perfect use of his unaided reason infancy, unaffected by appetite or preceptors. Part of the political applications of Descartes’ writing here is easy to see as three of the items listed here (3, 4, and 5) deal explicitly with matters of legislation while another one (2) while not dealing explicitly with legislation does deal with the functioning of a city, which is certainly a political matter. There is however another aspect to Descartes’ list that needs to be noted as under this system, the use of reason becomes tied up in work, and thus philosophy becomes a technique. What this means that is it though technique that the ability arises to make proper legislation.

The use of reason is where one of Descartes’ biggest impacts on political philosophy can be seen as Descartes untimely hopes that reason can be used to establish a completely neutral framework in which knowledge can be produced free from prejudice. In order to do this though, Descartes readily admits that a man must reform his views. There are two realms in which to do this, the private realm and the public realm. In order to reform his views in the public realm from prejudice, first his views in the private realm must be reformed. After this happens, Descartes feels that unity in knowledge will be attained. He applies this thought to the political realm as well as while Descartes does say that humans have a moral obligation to obey the laws of their particular area, he still thinks that the fact that laws vary wildly from country to country was a sign of imperfection. Descartes’ elevation of reason also has implications in his conception of the common good, as he does not seen the common good as being rooted in the relationship of citizens to each other or in the relationship of citizens to the sovereign, but rather in the mutual relationship between philosophy/ science and society.

The elevation of reason also touches Descartes’ conception of God, as absolutes are so important to Descartes as less that perfectly omnipotent or as a deceiver that could make 2+2=5 is he wanted to do so. What this means is that God’s goodness becomes equal to the existence of absolutes. Thus, under this system, God becomes the first principle for man’s knowledge. The second principle for man’s knowledge is seen as physics, two ideas that when taken together means that there is both a non-psychical and physical basis for man’s knowledge. But of course Descartes’ focus on the importance of absolutes also greatly raises the specter of doubt and indeed Descartes sees generosity as the highest virtue as it does not presuppose any other virtue, giving doubt when an absolute cannot be produced. With this in mind, it is no surprise that Descartes feels that political society should be from the perspective of the most generous and even thinks that it is though generosity that true glory can be attained.

It should also be noted that Descartes rejects the notion of the “best regime,” an idea which took up much of the time of Classical political philosophers. Instead, Descartes is more concerned with the establishment of a neutral framework as he feels this is the best system in which science can be allowed to flourish. What this means is that Descartes can be seen as an early advocate of the “open society,” which will be accepting to all who wish forgo their own prejudices. Despite this influence, Descartes’ ideas here show some very obvious limitations as he untimely fails to fully understand his own prejudices and thus becomes overly simplistic.