Descartes’ philosophical aspirations came in opposition to the skeptical mood common to the late Renaissance. Three centuries of Humanism and more than a century of Neo-Platonism brought to the Renaissance intellectual scene a whole constellation of marvelous ideas but they failed to resolve the crisis of Christianity still felt in Dante Aleghieri’s (1265-1321) De Monarchia and Divina Comedia. The spirit of Renaissance philosophy contributed to the final dissatisfaction with the Roman Church, which found expression in the Protestant Reformation followed by a corresponding attempt of reformation on the Catholic side. One of the most prominent figures in the Catholic reformation was St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) whose spirit and ideas were embodied in the Jesuit Order he founded. Descartes, who had graduated from the prestigious Jesuit College of La Flèche, realized that the knowledge humanity had at hand and perhaps even the spiritual grounds of morality were in a disastrous state. He made a commitment to reform the principles of logic and knowledge as a whole (and even dared to hope he would be able to improve the moral doctrine) believing he could do so without going astray from Christian teaching. St. Loyola’s attempt to discern a reliable criterion for distinguishing malign from benevolent spirits through spiritual exercises served Descartes as an example in his search for method and for his metaphysical meditations. Descartes’ confidence in the power of reason equipped with the right method and in the freedom of the human will won him the title of the founder of philosophical Modernity.
Several decades after Descartes took up the fight against skepticism, an Italian thinker, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), critically approached the Cartesian project of Modernity. While Descartes believed that the essence of a human being consists in applying reason properly and using free will according to its guidance in order to achieve the greatest success in science, mathematics, and philosophy, including logic, Vico insisted that human imagination and ingenuity ought to be directed towards the humanities and legal studies and should aim at practical results. This was the eighteenth century Humanistic reply to Descartes.
The purpose of the present essay will be to explain how the basic notions of Modern philosophy, forming Descartes’ enthusiastic attitude towards knowledge and human relations, were altered in order to be critically implemented into Vico’s much more sober position.
I. The basics of the Cartesian system
There are several concepts on which Rene Descartes (1596-1650) founded his system. It is a commonplace to begin the exposition of his philosophy with the notion of universal doubt. However, doubt is only a consequence of something more fundamental and this is free will. Descartes describes free will as an ability to assent to or deny the truth of something, or abstain from judgment.