Thought and Argument in Descartes, Locke and Kant, Essay Example

Descartes, Kant and Locke are all crucial figures within the history of philosophy and the Enlightenment. While the three thinkers provide radically different approaches, as demonstrated in their respective philosophical systems, it can be suggested that Descartes, Kant and Locke are inspired by two founding moments that are consistent with the general principles of the Enlightenment: firstly, the liberation of the possibilities of thought and reason from dogma; and secondly, the replacement of dogma by a methodology of radical questioning and inquiry that is in turn to generate truth. How the philosophers conceive of these two moments is what separates them: Descartes, Kant and Locke assume this spirit of the Enlightenment, yet nonetheless employ different processes of thinking and argument to engender their own theoretical and philosophical conclusions. In the following essay, we shall examine the thought and arguments of these thinkers, summarizing the content and forms of their proposals, while also critically evaluating some of their approaches and conclusions. We will conclude by providing a general account of all three thinkers in relation to each other, and also in relation to the Enlightenment.

In considering our thematic, it can be useful to begin with a discussion of Kant, to the extent that he explicitly addresses the phenomenon of the Enlightenment in his text “What is Enlightenment?” In this work, Kant clearly attempts to delineate some general principles of the Enlightenment that will allow one to understand what exactly is at stake in the latter’s movement. Furthermore, Kant’s own philosophical project may be understood precisely in terms of how he interprets the essence of the Enlightenment. Kant is strikingly clear in his opening definition of the Enlightenment: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without the direction from another.” (Kant, 1)  In this dense statement, Kant compacts a wide number of concepts that initially frame both the Enlightenment and his own philosophical project. Firstly, following Kant, we may identify the Enlightenment as a process: it is “man’s release”. Hence, the Enlightenment is immediately defined according to a break with a previously existing paradigm; Enlightenment in this sense is highly critical. Taking in mind Kant’s own “critical philosophy”, we can see the clear parallels between this denotation of Enlightenment and Kant’s own thought. An enlightened thought must distance itself from an inherited paradigm, an inherited paradigm defined by Kant as tutelage. Kant is also quite lucid as to what he means with the term tutelage: tutelage is the influence or the effect of the other on the thought of an individual. Hence, the critical philosophy of Kant is made acute when considered in terms of his account of the Enlightenment: to say that one is to break is from tutelage is to say that one is break from the very influence of the other on individual understanding. As such, it can be understood that one of the basic motifs of the Enlightenment and Kant’s own project is that it is possible for anyone to be enlightened: the Enlightenment is radically individualistic in its essence. That is to say, if anyone is capable of using his or her own understanding, enlightenment is possible insofar as the individual breaks from the influence of the other and renders their own understanding autonomous. As Kant writes, making this point overtly clear: “Have courage to use your own understanding” is the motto of the Enlightenment.” (Kant, 1) We can thus recapitulate Kant’s imperative as the break from dogmatic influence; moreover, the residual utilization of one’s own understanding essentially evokes a certain tabula rasa from which one begins to think autonomously and individually.

But what does this understanding itself consist of? What does it mean to use own’s own understanding and own reason? What is the object of this reason? Certainly, taking into account Kant’s vast philosophical work, this question can be quite difficult to articulate. Kant was a thinker of great breadth, and he comments on many topics. Moreover, his masterwork Critique of Pure Reason precisely limits the capabilities of human understanding according to a priori possibilities that are not delineated or determined by the human being. Nonetheless, when considering Kant’s remarks on the Enlightenment, what is apparent is that Kant is attempting to lay the foundations for such a radical critique: his goal is to break from paradigms, to criticize their dogmatic inclinations. The question remains, however, what such a radical criticism implies.

Certainly, Descartes is a relevant reference at this juncture, insofar as his own project begins with the same radical doubt and criticism that informs Kant’s thought. Descartes recalls Kant’s denotation of Enlightenment with the following remark: “Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, since my youth, many false opinion for true, and that consequently what I afterwards based on such principles was highly doubtful.” (Descartes, 181) Yet one may suggest that Descartes’ general argument and thought–despite being grounded in the same hostile impulse to what Kant would term “tutelage”–is an even more radical form of philosophy than Kant’s. For while in Kant’s definition of the Enlightenment he leaves room for the individual and understanding as the basic starting concepts of his project, Descartes employs a radical form of doubt to guide his methodology. Descartes is to explicitly doubt everything, in an effort to unearth a founding principle that could inform his system. This first principle is precisely Descartes’ famous syntagm, “I think, therefore I am”, Cogito Ergo Sum, which is for Descartes irrefutable. When considering all the reasons to doubt everything–to the point of a deceptive God that deliberately would mislead the philosopher–Descartes believes that the notion that one thinks and the existence that he deduces from this thought is irrefutable. Certainly, this conclusion has been subject to criticism in the history of philosophy, specifically in regards to its claim to an apodeicticity that may ground Descartes’ philosophy. However, in the context of our discussion, there are essentially two aspects to Descartes’ argument. Firstly, the radical doubt that is shared by Kant; secondly, what arises from this radical doubt, the principle “I think therefore I am.” Descartes’ uses the second moment to assert the existence of an individual being, an individual I, from the notion that he himself is thinking. Kant, on the other hand, differs from Descartes insofar as he essentially does not require the absolute doubt of Descartes, but focuses his doubt in terms of a separation from the concept of tutelage in order to realize the understanding individual, an understanding individual that Kant presupposes already exists.

Locke also begins with the same impulse as both Descartes and Kant, but like the latter, he assumes the existence of an individual understanding. Locke is explicit when he writes that, “it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings.” (Locke, 185) Thus, Locke also feels that this understanding does not require to be proven as Descartes does. Rather, Locke’s task is to precisely delineate what constitutes this understanding itself. As Locke notes, his aim is “to inquire into the original, certainty and extent of human knowledge” (Locke, 186) and moreover: “if we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view…we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state.” (Locke, 186) Thus, Locke is interested, as is Kant, with beginning from the phenomenon of understanding and determining how it functions. However, Locke appears to be more inclined to a general form of understanding, as opposed to the radical critique of Kant’s project that contrasts understanding with tutelage.

As such, Descartes, Kant and Locke all share a common methodological impulse or beginning point, which consists of the notion of a certain doubt and resistance to inherited knowledge. In this manner, they all can be considered as thinkers that are consistent with the phenomenon of the Enlightenment, to the extent that the latter encourages, as Kant notes, the encouraging of individual reason. However, all three thinkers differ in how they use this initial doubt to inform their arguments. For Descartes, doubt must be explicitly radical; but nevertheless he is able to generate from this absolute radicality what he believes is the irrefutable axiom of the Cogito. For Kant and Locke, one may say that they share this same doubt, but are not as radical in its application as Descartes. Kant rather attempts to situate his doubt against the tutelage of the other, and present a critical philosophy grounded in individual understanding. Locke, meanwhile, is interested in providing a general account of human understanding. It is thus a common antagonism to dogma that conditions all thinkers’ systems, however, it is how they interpret the subsequent movement away from such dogma that differentiates their systems, while cementing them as unique thinkers in the history of philosophy.

Works Cited

Kramnick, Isaac. (1995). The Portable Enlightenment Reader. New York: Penguin Books.