Philosophy 101 Unit 1

I’ll begin by saying that my first impression of Descartes’ first meditation is that he has a rather pessimistic outlook on his life.  He seems very intent on throwing everything into doubt, including his new opinions that he built after “[razing] everything to the ground and [beginning] again from the original foundations,” in other words, developing new opinions and beliefs.  Now I understand and agree, for that matter, that it is important to live an examined life, and to question things.  .  However, doubting something does not mean it is entirely false, along the lines of “innocent until proven guilty.”  We should doubt and question things, including our own core beliefs, but we should do so reasonably.  Honestly, I think Descartes takes it a little too far; for instance, towards the end of the passage he mentions believing in some supreme evil power rather than a divine power, solely because of some doubt.  It seems unnecessarily introspective to believe that the devil is trying to trick us with everything and everyone we see.  Indeed senses can be deceiving, but I trust my senses at least a little bit more than that.  Descartes says that “it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once.”  Again, I don’t agree (or “assent” as Descartes says).  While we can fool ourselves into seeing things that aren’t there, does that mean we can’t trust ourselves, that we can’t grow and learn to change things about ourselves so that we can perceive things as the really are?  I believe we can.  Also, the idea of believing in an evil power rather than a divine power is just very unsettling.  If that is indeed the case, then we are simply beings in a world full of illusions and then we die.  What the hell is that?  Really, if I accepted that like Descartes did, I probably wouldn’t be spending my time writing, I’d be killing myself.  So why does Descartes write?  If everything is illusion, then surely even his hopes of informing the uninformed about his meditations are just as unnatainable as anything else in a false world that is, on the surface, real.  I see a contradiction here.  Without hope, it seems like all is lost.  Many of us are not really happy with our lives exactly as they are now; we may want to change little things, or we may want to change big things.  Thus, I believe the biggest reason we wake up in the morning is because we believe that there is some way we can make changes in our lives for the better.  We have hope, regardless of uncertainty, and that is what is important.