Morality Essay, Research Paper

Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and David Hume are well known philosophers of the time. These three men were after the truth. The truth about life. The truth about how one exists. The truth about the world around them. They questioned, thought, and reasoned. This is what they did. There goal was to arrive at true and certain knowledge.

Descartes and Hobbes were both rationalists. They did not trust their senses. Senses deceive and cover up the truth. The only truth was that based on reason and rational arguments. Hobbes used Descartes reasoning as some of his fundamentals for discovering the truth. He learned a lot from Descartes.

Descartes based everything he knew on Science. Science was the fundamental bases for everything he thought. Things have to follow a specific method, with no assumptions. For example, Mathematics, one plus one equals two. That is a basic fundamental of math that everybody can understand and cannot question. When is one plus one not equal to two? Never. It can also be proven that one plus one equals two.

Knowledge, for Descartes, was systematic. After establishing one point, through, of course a rationalists view, lead to another question, followed by a conclusion. He kept posing and answering questions he had. This went on until he reasoned everything he could have possibly questioned.

Hobbes uses Descartes for the bases for his voyage to find the truth. His quest is to find out why we all exists and why we all are here. Hobbes believes that pleasure is the sole objective of motivation. This would explain why people do the things they do. A good example of this would be if a wealthy person donated to a charitable organization. What was the persons motives for donating? The person probably felt good about doing it, or they are going to possibly use it as a tax write off.

Hobbes is different from Descartes in many ways, one being that he does not constitute a reason to doubt everything like Descartes did. Hobbes believes that things are not infinite. All things must have definition, even God, according to Hobbes.

David Hume is considered one of the greatest skeptics in the history of philosophy. Hume thought that a person can know nothing outside of experience. Experience is based on one s subjective perceptions and never provides true knowledge of reality.

For example, even the law of cause and effect was an unjustified belief. If a person drops a ball, he cannot be certain that it will fall to the ground. But, it is only possible, through past experience, that certain pairs of events, dropping a ball, and then the ball hitting the ground, have always accompanied one another.

Descartes seems the most correct of the three discussed. He uses fundamental reasoning for everything he questions. By rejecting the senses, he systematically rejects deception. We are constantly being fooled by our senses, unless we have previous knowledge. Hobbes, in my opinion, was partially wrong about the truth of knowledge. God is infinite, you cannot set definitions on God, who he is, and what he can and cannot do. God is not an object, and you cannot be objective about God. Hume cannot base everything on experience. Science has some weight in this, for example, going back to Mathematics. Hume would have to experience one plus one equals two to believe it? That is just a little insane. Experience does help, in many cases, but it cannot apply to all.

Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and David Hume all have excellent ideas. Combining them all together would create an awesome way of reasoning and gaining truth and certain knowledge.