Diary of Renee Descartes

I, Renee Descartes, wish to record a final summary of my theories as the strength to go on leaves my body on this day of the ninth of February in the great year of our Lord 1650 in my fifty-third year of life (School of Life, 2015). I have been a fierce rationalist whom trusted in nothing more than the human power of logic instead of god, and I have learned all ideas should be grounded into individual reason and experience rather than tradition and authority. Even though I believe we should rely more on our innate knowledge that god, I have kept him in my works to appease society and remain an accepted part of culture. All knowledge can be found within myself or within the great book of the world. I spent my life visiting other countries and foreign courts to observe the wide variety of people on our beautiful Earth (The School of Life, 2015). I learned many valuable lessons on my journeys.

My Method of Doubt involves breaking large problems down into smaller parts. Such as a large bucket of apples containing bad and good apples mixed together with a philosopher who is akin to going through the bucket of apples and throw away the bad apples to keep the good ones (The School of Life, 2015). Upon analyzing the whether-fores of "am I here" or "do I only think I am here" I realized that the very act of thinking proves that I am here so I coined the term"I think therefore I am" (The School of Life, 2015, 13sec). My work in dualism has regrettably eluded my conclusion.

I ascertain that the body and soul are separate and call it dualism (The School of Life, 2015). In regards to the soul, "there is a certain part of the body where it exercises its functions more particularly than in all the others. […] The part of the body in which the soul directly exercises its functions is...rather the innermost part of the brain, which is a certain very small gland situated in the middle of the brain's substance" (Skirry, n.d., para.26). There are, indeed, times when I became irritable upon the questioning of my unfinished theories. To this I reply, “how can the soul move the body if it is in no way material, and how can it receive the forms of corporeal objects? The most ignorant people could, in a quarter of an hour, raise more questions of this kind than the wisest men could deal with in a lifetime; and this is why I have not bothered to answer any of them" (Lokhorst, 2013, para.5). "Lastly, as regards the soul and the body together, we have only the notion of their union, on which depends our notion of the soul’s power to move the body, and the body’s power to act on the soul and cause its sensations and passions" (Skirry, n.d., para.48). The pineal gland and its care is the link that latches the body and soul and the way to connect dualism. I bid you Adieu.



Lokhorst, Gert-Jan. (2013). Descartes and the Pineal Gland. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/ 

 Skirry, Justin. (n.d.). René Descartes:The Mind-Body Distinction. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: a Peer-Reviewed Academic Source. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/  

The School of Life. (11 Sept, 2015). Philosophy - René Descartes. The School of Life. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAjWUrwvxs4