Socrates Meets Descartes: The Father of Philosophy Analyzes the Father of Modern Philosophy’s Discourse on Method

by Peter Kreeft

Publisher:

Ignatius

, 2007

Overview

According to Peter Kreeft, Socrates and Descartes are perhaps the two most important philosophers who have ever lived, because they are the two who made the most difference to all philosophers after them. These two fathers of philosophy stand at the beginning of the two basic philosophical options: the classical and the modern. Through an imagined dialogue between Socrates and Descartes, Kreeft focuses on seven features that unite these two major philosophers and distinguish them from all others.

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Key Features

• Provides a helpful introduction to philosophy
• Uses the dialogues of Plato to help the reader grow into a love of wisdom
• Focuses on the Apology as a model partner for the reader to dialogue with

Contents

• The Meeting
• The Main Point
• The Beginning
• Is Philosophy a Science?
• Descartes’ Hidden Agenda
• Knowledge’s Goal
• The Search for Certainty
• The Reason for the New Method
• Who Can Use the New Method?
• The Method Itself
• Descartes’ Mathematicism
• Descartes’ Provisional Morality
• Step One of Descartes’ Philosophical System: Universal Doubt
• Step Two of Descartes’ Philosophical System: ‘‘I Think, Therefore I Am’’
• Step Three of Descartes’ Philosophical System: ‘‘What I Am’’ (Descartes’ Anthropology)
• Step Four of Descartes’ Philosophical System: The Criterion of Truth
• Step Five of Descartes’ Philosophical System: Proofs for God’s Existence
• Step Six of Descartes’ Philosophical System: The Proof of the Existence of the Material World
• Descartes and the Future of Mankind
• Descartes’ Legacy

Top Highlights

“We ancients thought that happiness, or the greatest good, consisted in conforming the human soul to objective reality” (Page 76)

“Third, each made the quest for the knowledge of the self the central philosophical quest” (Page 12)

“First, each was an initiator, a revolutionary, virtually without predecessors.” (Page 11)

“Technological knowledge perfects material things in nature that we use: things like water wheels, ships, or cooking stoves. Moral knowledge perfects something much more important and much more intimate to us, more close to home, so to speak, namely, our very actions, our lives. That is why it is more important than technology: because our lives are more important than the lives of ships or pots.” (Page 226)

“Our essence itself—which you yourself locate in thought. Speculative knowledge perfects our mind, enlarges the mind, which is even more intimate and interior than our actions.” (Page 226)

Product Details

• Title: Socrates Meets Descartes: The Father of Philosophy Analyzes the Father of Modern Philosophy’s Discourse on Method
• Author: Peter Kreeft
• Series: Socrates Meets …
• Publisher: Ignatius
• Print Publication Date: 2007
• Logos Release Date: 2013
• Pages: 237
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Descartes, René, 1596-1650 › Discours de la méthode; Socrates
• ISBNs: 9781681494371, 168149437X
• Resource ID: LLS:SCRTSMTSDSCRTS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T20:50:43Z

About Peter Kreeft

Peter John Kreeft, Ph.D., (born 1937) is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King’s College, and author of numerous books as well as a popular writer on philosophy, Christian theology, and specifically Roman Catholic apologetics. He also formulated together with Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ, “Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God.”