Question d'origine :
Bonsoir,
Comment expliquer à des jeunes, de façon aussi concise et didactique que possible, les notions de démarche et d'esprit aristotélicien et cartésien, en soulignant différences et similitudes.
nb:ceci n'est pas un sujet de dissertation (j'en suis à bac +40!), et je ne suis pas, hélas, prof de philo. merci.
Réponse du Guichet
gds_ah
- Département : Équipe du Guichet du Savoir
Le 31/10/2011 à 14h46
Réponse du service Guichet du Savoir
Bonjour,
Laroutledge encyclopedia of philosophy apporte plusieurs précisions quant à la philosophie d’Aristote et de Descartes :
Descartes a eu une éducation qui visait à combiner la doctrine chrétienne avec la philosophie d’Aristote. Ce qu’il apprit était un système interconnecté de philosophie, incluant la logique, la physique, la cosmologie, la métaphysique, la morale et la théologie. Mais Descartes aurait rejeté la philosophie d’Aristote juste après avoir quitté l’école. Selon les propos de Beeckman, ce qui déplaisait le plus à Descartes était la philosophie naturaliste. Pour un Aristotélien, la compréhension du monde naturel était fondée sur une conception du corps comme composé de matière et de forme. La matière (substance) était ce qui demeurait constant même pendant la corruption des corps, et était ce qu’il y avait de commun entre les corps de toutes sortes. La forme était ce qui était responsable des propriétés caractérisant des différentes sortes de corps. Par exemple la forme explique pourquoi la terre tombe et à tendance à être froide, et pourquoi le feu monte et à tendance à être chaud. Descartes adopte la vision mécanique du monde. Pour lui, les propriétés des corps doivent être expliquées en termes de taille, forme et mouvement des petites parties qui les composent. Descartes rejeta le fait de faire appel aux tendances innées des comportements, ce qui est un fondement de la vision d’Aristote.
Un autre aspect de la philosophie de Descartes est sa distinction entre le corps et l’esprit. Il défend l’idée selon laquelle l’esprit, une chose pensante, peut exister au delà de son corps. L’esprit est une substance distincte du corps, une substance dont l’essence est la pensée. Ainsi, selon la tradition Aristotélienne, le corps est composé de matière et de forme. La matière est ce qui reste constant dans un changement, et la forme est ce qui donne au corps les caractéristiques qu’il a. Mais pour Descartes, tout corps est de même nature, une substance qui contient des propriétés géométriques. Les caractéristiques des formes particulières du corps sont expliquées en termes de taille, forme et mouvement. De plus, selon Aristote, l’âme est le principe de la vie, qui distingue une chose vivante d’une chose morte. L’esprit est la partie rationnelle de l’âme, qui peut survivre la mort du corps grâce à l’intervention divine. Pour Descartes, la majorité des fonctions vitales sont expliquées en termes d’organisation physique du corps organique. Ainsi, l’esprit n’est pas un principe de vie, mais un principe de la pensée. It implique la raison, comme l’implique l’âme rationnelle des Aristotéliens, mais inclut aussi d’autres variétés de pensées. De plus, il est une substance authentique et survit à la mort du corps de façon naturelle et non par une intervention spéciale du divin.
Voici le détails (en anglais) des articles de La routledge encyclopedia of philosophy :
“Descartes’ thought developed and changed over the years. But even so, there are a number of threads that run through it. Like most of his lettered contemporaries, Descartes was educated in a scholastic tradition that attempted to combine Christian doctrine with the philosophy of Aristotle. Indeed, at La Flèche, where he first learned philosophy, Aristotle as interpreted by Aquinas was at the centre of the curriculum. What he learned was an interconnected system of philosophy, including logic, physics, cosmology, metaphysics, morals and theology.
On his own account, Descartes rejected the Aristotelian philosophy as soon as he left school. From the notes Beeckman took on their conversations, it is probable that what dissatisfied him most in what he had been taught was natural philosophy. For an Aristotelian, the understanding of the natural world was grounded in a conception of body as composed of matter and form. Matter was that which remained constant even during the generation and corruption of bodies of different kinds, and that which all bodies of all sorts have in common; form was that which was responsible for the characteristic properties of particular sorts of bodies. For example, form was to explain why earth falls and tends to be cold, and why fire rises and tends to be hot. In contrast, though he came to reject Beeckman’s rather strict atomism, Descartes seems to have been attracted to the kind of mechanistic view of the world that his mentor espoused. Descartes held from then on that the manifest properties of bodies must be explained in terms of the size, shape and motion of the tiny parts that make them up, and rejected the appeal to innate tendencies to behaviour that lay at the foundation of the Aristotelian view. »
Source : rep.routledge.com
« One of Descartes’ most celebrated positions is the distinction between the mind and the body. Descartes did not invent the position. It can be found in various forms in a number of earlier thinkers. It is a standard feature of Platonism and, in a different form, is common to most earlier Christian philosophers, who generally held that some feature of the human being – its mind or its soul – survives the death of the body (see Plato §13 ). But the particular features of Descartes’ way of drawing the distinction and the arguments that he used were very influential on later thinkers.
There are suggestions, particularly in the Discourse (Part IV) and in the Principles (Part I §§7–8) that the distinction between mind and body follows directly from the Cogito Argument, as discussed above. However, in the Meditations Descartes is quite clear that the distinction is to be established on other grounds. In Meditation VI he argues as follows: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. Whatever I can conceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create. So, Descartes argues, the mind, a thinking thing, can exist apart from its extended body. And therefore, the mind is a substance distinct from the body, a substance whose essence is thought.
Implicit in this argument is a certain conception of what it means to be a substance, a view made explicit in the Principles (Part I §51) which defines a substance as ‘nothing other than a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence’ , no other thing but God, of course. In so far as the mind can exist independently of the body, it is a substance on this definition. (God is the third kind of substance, along with mind and body, though because of his absolute independence, he is a substance in a somewhat different sense.) On Descartes’ metaphysics, each substance has a principal attribute, an attribute that characterizes its nature. For mind it is thought, and for body it is extension. In addition, substances have modes, literally ways of instantiating the attributes. So, for Descartes, particular ideas, particular volitions, particular passions are modes of mind, and particular shapes, sizes and motions are modes of body.
Descartes’ conception of mind and body represents significant departures from the conceptions of both notions in the late scholastic thought in which he was educated. For the late scholastics, working in the Aristotelian tradition, body is composed of matter and form. Matter is that which remains constant in change, while form is that which gives bodies the characteristic properties that they have. For Descartes, however, all body is of the same kind, a substance that contains only geometric properties, the objects of geometry made concrete. The characteristic properties of particular forms of body are explained in terms of the size, shape and motion of its insensible parts (see §11 below). For the late scholastics, the mind is connected with the account of life. On the Aristotelian view, the soul is the principle of life, that which distinguishes a living thing from a dead thing; it is also taken to be the form that pertains to the living body. The mind is the rational part of the soul, that which characterizes humans, and not usually considered a genuine substance, though by most accounts, with divine aid, it can survive the death of the body (see Nous; Psychē). For Descartes, the majority of the vital functions are explained in terms of the physical organization of the organic body. The mind, thus, is not a principle of life but a principle of thought. It involves reason, as does the rational soul of the Aristotelians, but it also involves other varieties of thought, which pertain to other parts of the Aristotelian soul (see Aristotle §17 ). Furthermore, it is a genuine substance, and survives the death of the body naturally and not through special divine intervention.
Source : rep.routledge.com
Un autre site considère que Descartes a en fait, détruit la philosophie d’Aristote : Selon Descartes, les mathématiques avec des applications dans le monde naturel. Ce qui va à l’encontre d’Aristote dont la philosophie n’insistait pas sur la certitude irréfutable et dépendait du consensus comme base du savoir. De plus, la philosophie naturaliste d’Aristote ne se prêtait pas aux mathématiques. En revanche, Descartes avait pour objectif de souligner sa connaissance du monde avec des fondements inébranlables en important la certitude des mathématiques dans les sphères physiques et métaphysiques. Descartes décida de ne pas se fier aux opinions populaires, ou aux écrits des ancients. Il mit même en question ses propres perceptions, opinions et connaissances. Il condamna l’expérience perceptuelle. Il estima que ses facultés de perception le menaient vers l’illusion.
« Descartes set out to destroy Aristotelian philosophy. He was entranced by the certainty that mathematics conferred upon its conclusions, and Kepler and Galileo had shown that mathematics had application to the natural world. Aristotle's philosophy placed no emphasis upon irrefutable certainty and relied upon consensus as a basis for knowledge. Nor did Aristotelian natural philosophy lend itself to mathematicisation. It was Descartes's aim to underpin his knowledge of the world with unshakable foundations by importing the certainty of mathematics into the physical and metaphysical spheres.
This was no simple task - where was the purity of mathematics in the chaos of experience? To find the wanted certainty, Descartes had to remove any hint of doubt from the premises upon which he would build his new knowledge. It was his methodology at this point that set him apart from his predecessors. He chose not to rely upon popular opinion, or the writings of the ancients. He even questioned his own perceptions, opinions and knowledge.
Rather than review each of his opinions individually, Descartes examined the foundation on which they were all based - perceptual experience. If this foundation was found wanting, the structure built upon it should be dismissed. Descartes recognised that his perceptual faculties misled him through illusion and hallucination. In dreams he had experiences which were not veridical. Perception produced only dubitable beliefs. »
Source : philosophers.co.uk
Pour plus de précisions, vous pouvez consulter les articles en lien avec la notion de dualisme.
Voir notamment : fr.wikipedia.org
Bonjour,
La
Descartes a eu une éducation qui visait à combiner la doctrine chrétienne avec la philosophie d’Aristote. Ce qu’il apprit était un système interconnecté de philosophie, incluant la logique, la physique, la cosmologie, la métaphysique, la morale et la théologie. Mais Descartes aurait rejeté la philosophie d’Aristote juste après avoir quitté l’école. Selon les propos de Beeckman, ce qui déplaisait le plus à Descartes était la philosophie naturaliste. Pour un Aristotélien, la compréhension du monde naturel était fondée sur une conception du corps comme composé de matière et de forme. La matière (substance) était ce qui demeurait constant même pendant la corruption des corps, et était ce qu’il y avait de commun entre les corps de toutes sortes. La forme était ce qui était responsable des propriétés caractérisant des différentes sortes de corps. Par exemple la forme explique pourquoi la terre tombe et à tendance à être froide, et pourquoi le feu monte et à tendance à être chaud. Descartes adopte la vision mécanique du monde. Pour lui, les propriétés des corps doivent être expliquées en termes de taille, forme et mouvement des petites parties qui les composent. Descartes rejeta le fait de faire appel aux tendances innées des comportements, ce qui est un fondement de la vision d’Aristote.
Un autre aspect de la philosophie de Descartes est sa distinction entre le corps et l’esprit. Il défend l’idée selon laquelle l’esprit, une chose pensante, peut exister au delà de son corps. L’esprit est une substance distincte du corps, une substance dont l’essence est la pensée. Ainsi, selon la tradition Aristotélienne, le corps est composé de matière et de forme. La matière est ce qui reste constant dans un changement, et la forme est ce qui donne au corps les caractéristiques qu’il a. Mais pour Descartes, tout corps est de même nature, une substance qui contient des propriétés géométriques. Les caractéristiques des formes particulières du corps sont expliquées en termes de taille, forme et mouvement. De plus, selon Aristote, l’âme est le principe de la vie, qui distingue une chose vivante d’une chose morte. L’esprit est la partie rationnelle de l’âme, qui peut survivre la mort du corps grâce à l’intervention divine. Pour Descartes, la majorité des fonctions vitales sont expliquées en termes d’organisation physique du corps organique. Ainsi, l’esprit n’est pas un principe de vie, mais un principe de la pensée. It implique la raison, comme l’implique l’âme rationnelle des Aristotéliens, mais inclut aussi d’autres variétés de pensées. De plus, il est une substance authentique et survit à la mort du corps de façon naturelle et non par une intervention spéciale du divin.
Voici le détails (en anglais) des articles de La routledge encyclopedia of philosophy :
“Descartes’ thought developed and changed over the years. But even so, there are a number of threads that run through it. Like most of his lettered contemporaries, Descartes was educated in a scholastic tradition that attempted to combine Christian doctrine with the philosophy of Aristotle. Indeed, at La Flèche, where he first learned philosophy, Aristotle as interpreted by Aquinas was at the centre of the curriculum. What he learned was an interconnected system of philosophy, including logic, physics, cosmology, metaphysics, morals and theology.
On his own account, Descartes rejected the Aristotelian philosophy as soon as he left school. From the notes Beeckman took on their conversations, it is probable that what dissatisfied him most in what he had been taught was natural philosophy. For an Aristotelian, the understanding of the natural world was grounded in a conception of body as composed of matter and form. Matter was that which remained constant even during the generation and corruption of bodies of different kinds, and that which all bodies of all sorts have in common; form was that which was responsible for the characteristic properties of particular sorts of bodies. For example, form was to explain why earth falls and tends to be cold, and why fire rises and tends to be hot. In contrast, though he came to reject Beeckman’s rather strict atomism, Descartes seems to have been attracted to the kind of mechanistic view of the world that his mentor espoused. Descartes held from then on that the manifest properties of bodies must be explained in terms of the size, shape and motion of the tiny parts that make them up, and rejected the appeal to innate tendencies to behaviour that lay at the foundation of the Aristotelian view. »
Source : rep.routledge.com
« One of Descartes’ most celebrated positions is the distinction between the mind and the body. Descartes did not invent the position. It can be found in various forms in a number of earlier thinkers. It is a standard feature of Platonism and, in a different form, is common to most earlier Christian philosophers, who generally held that some feature of the human being – its mind or its soul – survives the death of the body (see Plato §13 ). But the particular features of Descartes’ way of drawing the distinction and the arguments that he used were very influential on later thinkers.
There are suggestions, particularly in the Discourse (Part IV) and in the Principles (Part I §§7–8) that the distinction between mind and body follows directly from the Cogito Argument, as discussed above. However, in the Meditations Descartes is quite clear that the distinction is to be established on other grounds. In Meditation VI he argues as follows: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. Whatever I can conceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create. So, Descartes argues, the mind, a thinking thing, can exist apart from its extended body. And therefore, the mind is a substance distinct from the body, a substance whose essence is thought.
Implicit in this argument is a certain conception of what it means to be a substance, a view made explicit in the Principles (Part I §51) which defines a substance as ‘nothing other than a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence’ , no other thing but God, of course. In so far as the mind can exist independently of the body, it is a substance on this definition. (God is the third kind of substance, along with mind and body, though because of his absolute independence, he is a substance in a somewhat different sense.) On Descartes’ metaphysics, each substance has a principal attribute, an attribute that characterizes its nature. For mind it is thought, and for body it is extension. In addition, substances have modes, literally ways of instantiating the attributes. So, for Descartes, particular ideas, particular volitions, particular passions are modes of mind, and particular shapes, sizes and motions are modes of body.
Descartes’ conception of mind and body represents significant departures from the conceptions of both notions in the late scholastic thought in which he was educated. For the late scholastics, working in the Aristotelian tradition, body is composed of matter and form. Matter is that which remains constant in change, while form is that which gives bodies the characteristic properties that they have. For Descartes, however, all body is of the same kind, a substance that contains only geometric properties, the objects of geometry made concrete. The characteristic properties of particular forms of body are explained in terms of the size, shape and motion of its insensible parts (see §11 below). For the late scholastics, the mind is connected with the account of life. On the Aristotelian view, the soul is the principle of life, that which distinguishes a living thing from a dead thing; it is also taken to be the form that pertains to the living body. The mind is the rational part of the soul, that which characterizes humans, and not usually considered a genuine substance, though by most accounts, with divine aid, it can survive the death of the body (see Nous; Psychē). For Descartes, the majority of the vital functions are explained in terms of the physical organization of the organic body. The mind, thus, is not a principle of life but a principle of thought. It involves reason, as does the rational soul of the Aristotelians, but it also involves other varieties of thought, which pertain to other parts of the Aristotelian soul (see Aristotle §17 ). Furthermore, it is a genuine substance, and survives the death of the body naturally and not through special divine intervention.
Source : rep.routledge.com
Un autre site considère que Descartes a en fait, détruit la philosophie d’Aristote : Selon Descartes, les mathématiques avec des applications dans le monde naturel. Ce qui va à l’encontre d’Aristote dont la philosophie n’insistait pas sur la certitude irréfutable et dépendait du consensus comme base du savoir. De plus, la philosophie naturaliste d’Aristote ne se prêtait pas aux mathématiques. En revanche, Descartes avait pour objectif de souligner sa connaissance du monde avec des fondements inébranlables en important la certitude des mathématiques dans les sphères physiques et métaphysiques. Descartes décida de ne pas se fier aux opinions populaires, ou aux écrits des ancients. Il mit même en question ses propres perceptions, opinions et connaissances. Il condamna l’expérience perceptuelle. Il estima que ses facultés de perception le menaient vers l’illusion.
« Descartes set out to destroy Aristotelian philosophy. He was entranced by the certainty that mathematics conferred upon its conclusions, and Kepler and Galileo had shown that mathematics had application to the natural world. Aristotle's philosophy placed no emphasis upon irrefutable certainty and relied upon consensus as a basis for knowledge. Nor did Aristotelian natural philosophy lend itself to mathematicisation. It was Descartes's aim to underpin his knowledge of the world with unshakable foundations by importing the certainty of mathematics into the physical and metaphysical spheres.
This was no simple task - where was the purity of mathematics in the chaos of experience? To find the wanted certainty, Descartes had to remove any hint of doubt from the premises upon which he would build his new knowledge. It was his methodology at this point that set him apart from his predecessors. He chose not to rely upon popular opinion, or the writings of the ancients. He even questioned his own perceptions, opinions and knowledge.
Rather than review each of his opinions individually, Descartes examined the foundation on which they were all based - perceptual experience. If this foundation was found wanting, the structure built upon it should be dismissed. Descartes recognised that his perceptual faculties misled him through illusion and hallucination. In dreams he had experiences which were not veridical. Perception produced only dubitable beliefs. »
Source : philosophers.co.uk
Pour plus de précisions, vous pouvez consulter les articles en lien avec la notion de dualisme.
Voir notamment : fr.wikipedia.org
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