Thursday, February 7, 2008
Discourse on Method: Chapter 6
In chapter 6 of the Discourse, Descartes has a long and winded discussion on why he should not publish any of his works, but then changes his mind and decides that there are reasons to why he should publish some of his works. He considers the most important reason to why he should publish his works as the futherment of knowledge among the various fields like engineering and medicine. He says this because he knows he won't have enought time to do this on his own. Descartes then decides to talk discuss why he wrote in french instead of latin and finished up Chapter 6 with why he dosen't want any praise, money or fame for his writings only the futherment of his writings and knowledge. I think this chapter is sort of misplaced because the rest of the chapters in the discourse have actual importance to philosophical discussion while this chapter talks about why he should or shouldn't publish his works
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3 comments:
I agree with you about this chapter being misplaced, and honestly, it seems a little stupid to me. I understand why he would want to wait to publish his work and why he would decide to do it now, but it seems like as he's writing he's changing his mind about it. Why would he leave that in his work? I think that part 6 could be completely omitted from the discourse and it really wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Yeah he should have really rethought this chapter before committing to put it in the book
notp really, i think that this part of the book, although out of place, still has a purpose. What might that be? It shows us that there are certain things that he left out and that this is not his whole idea on the subject matter. He had to revise it to show us at least some of what he meant.
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