English Science and Literature club🤓✍️📖

296.

November 22, 2024 (14266)
Reading Descartes Discourse (written in French) and Meditations (written in Latin) in the English translation, it’s clear that Descartes has in mind two distinct readers to whom he addresses his thoughts.
In the Discourse, he talks down to the reader, whom he also attempts to convince that he (Descartes) is the greatest thinker of all time. Flattering “the common man”, whose “good sense” is supposed to be no different than that of any great thinker, including Descartes himself, he then says, “When I cast a philosopher’s eye over the various actions and undertakings of mankind, there is hardly a single one that does not seem to me to be vain and futile.” After that he shows off how he was able to conduct his mind by his own principles, how much joy he got from it, how many truths – very important and generally unknown to other men – he discovered, etc. etc. He denounces everything he learned while studying Latin, saying, “As soon as I reached an age that allowed me to escape from the control of my teachers, I abandoned altogether the study of letters.”
All of this is very fun to read. He talks about his personal history and, multiple insults notwithstanding, forces the reader to appreciate the narrative, eliciting sympathy and sometimes even admiration. His assumed superiority does not at all come out as offensive.
In his Meditations, he is much more careful. Here he talks not to “the common man”, who doesn’t understand Latin, but to those “teachers” from whose control he seemingly escaped. Here we have a bunch of tedious arguments – vague and ambiguous – piled up on top of each other by which he demonstrates his piety, even if he deduces the Latin version of God from his own (a thing that thinks) existence: “I see that there is manifestly more reality in infinite substance than in finite, and therefore that in some way I have in me the notion of the infinite earlier than the finite – to wit, the notion of God before that of myself.”
This is what happens when two languages fight for power over one’s mind while there is a serious tension between societies based on these languages, and one has to choose which one of them to advance in writing.

www.tgoop.com/clubscience/77

6 viewsVladimir Svetashev, Nov 22 at 11:52

296.

November 22, 2024 (14266)
Reading Descartes Discourse (written in French) and Meditations (written in Latin) in the English translation, it’s clear that Descartes has in mind two distinct readers to whom he addresses his thoughts.
In the Discourse, he talks down to the reader, whom he also attempts to convince that he (Descartes) is the greatest thinker of all time. Flattering “the common man”, whose “good sense” is supposed to be no different than that of any great thinker, including Descartes himself, he then says, “When I cast a philosopher’s eye over the various actions and undertakings of mankind, there is hardly a single one that does not seem to me to be vain and futile.” After that he shows off how he was able to conduct his mind by his own principles, how much joy he got from it, how many truths – very important and generally unknown to other men – he discovered, etc. etc. He denounces everything he learned while studying Latin, saying, “As soon as I reached an age that allowed me to escape from the control of my teachers, I abandoned altogether the study of letters.”
All of this is very fun to read. He talks about his personal history and, multiple insults notwithstanding, forces the reader to appreciate the narrative, eliciting sympathy and sometimes even admiration. His assumed superiority does not at all come out as offensive.
In his Meditations, he is much more careful. Here he talks not to “the common man”, who doesn’t understand Latin, but to those “teachers” from whose control he seemingly escaped. Here we have a bunch of tedious arguments – vague and ambiguous – piled up on top of each other by which he demonstrates his piety, even if he deduces the Latin version of God from his own (a thing that thinks) existence: “I see that there is manifestly more reality in infinite substance than in finite, and therefore that in some way I have in me the notion of the infinite earlier than the finite – to wit, the notion of God before that of myself.”
This is what happens when two languages fight for power over one’s mind while there is a serious tension between societies based on these languages, and one has to choose which one of them to advance in writing.

BY English Science and Literature club🤓✍️📖