Integrity Journal of Arts and Humanities

This work offers a reflective and analytical engagement with parts IV and V of René Descartes' Discourse on Methods, a foundational philosophical treatise in the history of modern thought. Rene Descartes was an exceptional charisma of knowledge and distinctiveness that altered the history of philosophy so decisively in the 17th century by combining (however unconsciously or even unwillingly) the influences of the past into a synthesis that was striking in its originality and yet congenial to the scientific temper of the age. His ability to achieve a remarkably significance by being able to make an indelible reordering of philosophical foundation (prior philosophical edifice before him) to a formidable, irrefutable, certain, and precise nature, is quite extraordinary. Descartes, in a blinding flash, saw the need to pursue a new method for putting all the sciences, all knowledge, on a firm footing. This method made clear both how new knowledge was to be achieved and how all previous knowledge could be certain and unified. This task he was able to achieve coherently in this rich and penetrating book, “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences,” where he developed a methodology for the discovery of the truth, more specifically, a methodology that accommodates the dictates of a mathematical physics for our view of physical reality. By employing a qualitative, textual-analytical methodology, this work critically examines Descartes' arguments through close reading, interpretation, and philosophical evaluation.  Thus, the thrust of this work is to concentrate on René Descartes' Discourse on Methods Parts IV and V.