According to Descartes, a philosopher is someone who uses philosophy to change his own life, to effect a form of life. This kind of philosophy as a form of life is Descartes's own specific flavor of rationalism. In a narrower sense, a philosopher is someone who only cares about the things which are in his own power. For Descartes, only one's own thoughts satisfy this criterion. Hence comes the necessity to divide one's own thoughts from the rest, i.e. from the corporeal, from the body. This in t…
Read moreAccording to Descartes, a philosopher is someone who uses philosophy to change his own life, to effect a form of life. This kind of philosophy as a form of life is Descartes's own specific flavor of rationalism. In a narrower sense, a philosopher is someone who only cares about the things which are in his own power. For Descartes, only one's own thoughts satisfy this criterion. Hence comes the necessity to divide one's own thoughts from the rest, i.e. from the corporeal, from the body. This in turn is the main goal of Descartes's meditation of doubt, which is ended with the cogito. To have established this in the first place, Descartes claims, is his original effort in the history of philosophy. The primary goals of meditation are, according to Descartes, self- transformation and a reconfiguration of habit. Thus, Descartes is much less a philosopher of the subject than a philosopher of the self. or in a Foucaultian vein a philosopher of the care of the self. Descartes testifies of the close connection between philosophical truth and his own life in a parrhesiastic way, just as Foucault had it analyzed, using autobiography. Autobiography shows his readers a way they can follow to attain the state of a genuine philosopher, as Descartes pictured him. Autobiography is especially dependent on reception. Meditation, on the other hand side, traditionally takes its start from reading. Therefore Descartes stresses time and again the importance of the right way to read his autobiographically displayed meditations. The cogito finally is no foundation stone of a philosophico-scientific system, but inherently imperfect und thus opens up on a process of epistemic and moral perfectionism, which in turn Descartes represents autobiographically.
