2014-07-09
26 分钟Hello,
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Rene Descartes is one of these people whose reputation precedes him so much
that to just dive right into the episode and start talking about his life,
it would be a little bit cavalier for me.
He's one of these names from philosophy that even people that have little to no experience trudging miserably through these philosophical treatises pretty much everybody has a little bit of an idea of who he was.
Most people I've directly spoken to typically can identify him correctly as the guy that said I think therefore I am.
Now maybe you'll listen to this show,
maybe you've downloaded this one episode to try to figure out what that even means.
But I'm here to tell you, Descartes is much much more than just this single sentence that he said famously.
He's often credited as being the father of modern philosophy and to truly understand why.
To truly understand why he's so influential.
I think it's important to talk about his life and the time period he was living through.
This is going to give us some good context.
So let's just take that sentence at face value.
I think therefore I am.
What does that even mean?
I mean it sounds like the most painfully obvious statement ever uttered in the history of the world.