Who was Descartes trying to refute when he came up with his cogito?

Question

The IEP article on Descartes states that

Descartes states that his purpose in showing that the human mind or soul is really distinct from the body is to refute those “irreligious people” who only have faith in mathematics and will not believe in the soul's immortality without a mathematical demonstration of it.

And yet at the time (Early 17th century Europe) there would have been few if any openly irreligious or atheist philosophers. The Church still dominated European intellectual life, and people like Galileo got prosecuted for less radical transgressions than being atheist or declaring that men didn't have souls.

Moreover, literalist interpretations of one or the other monotheisms were so dominant and influential, that the idea that people had immaterial souls would have been so obvious as to be self-evident. The Enlightenment, with its questioning of existing dogmas, wouldn't start for a few more decades.

So who was Descartes exactly trying to refute when he came up with his cogito? Were there any openly materialist/atheist philosophers in his day?

Answer 1

The charge of atheism was a "living" issue in Reanaissance and Early Modern philosophy; see at least :

Natural Philosophy in the Renaissance

Pietro Pomponazzi

Francesco Patrizi

and of course Giordano Bruno, tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of several core Catholic doctrines (including the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and Transubstantiation). The Inquisition found him guilty, and in 1600 he was burned at the stake in Rome.

Descartes' friend, the French theologian Marin Mersenne devoted two huge books :

• L'Impieté des déistes, athées et libertins de ce temps (1624)

and

• La vérité des sciences contre les septiques [sic - it is a typo in the original frontespice; it must be: sceptiques] ou Pyrrhoniens : dédié à Monsieur, frère du roy par F.Marin Mersenne de l'ordre des Minimes (Truth of the Sciences against the Sceptics, 1624)

to confute : atheists, skeptics and "libertins", the purported members of a freethinking circle of French philosophers and intellectuals who were collectively known as libertinage érudit and which included Gabriel Naudé, Élie Diodati and François de La Mothe Le Vayer.

Following Galileo's sentencing in 1633, Descartes decided to withdraw the pubblication of his Le Monde; thus, the danger of an accusation of atheism was still high during Descartes' time.

Answer 2

The main opponents of Descartes were the advocates of Aristotelian metaphysics, many of them Jesuits.

Descartes learned the scholastic method of philosophy from his Jesuit teachers at the school of la Flèche.

I quote from Cottingham, John: The Cambridge Companion to Descartes 1992. Descartes later writes about the scholastic method of philosophy „despite being cultivated for many centuries by the best minds, contained no point that was not disputed and hence doubtful.“ (p. 3) Descartes in his youth was fascinated from mathematics and its method to obtain knowledge. Already as ayoung man Descartes solved three mathematical problems.
Descartes wrote „as far as principles are concerned, I accept only those which in the past have always been common ground among all philosophers without exception, and which are therefore the most ancient of all.“ (p.4) From here a direct path leads to accept only insights which are „clare et distincte“.

I would not overestimate Descartes‘ dedication of The Meditations to the theological faculty of the Sorbonne to be a proof for Descartes' apologetic religious intention. Already the first sentence of the dedication makes clear that Descartes' expects that the influential theologians defend his work and make it public.

Answer 3

Descartes' Meditations were aimed at two distinct philosophical schools:

• The Aristotelian Scholasticism of late medieval and early modern France;

• The Anti-Aristotelian Skeptics of his time;

In the 16th century Europe, Skepticism became fashionable. Specially some forms of Pyhrronic Skepticism, which sought to undermine all knowledge in general (as in Agrippa's De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio invectiva, and Francisco Sanches' Quod nihil scitur). Pierre Gassendi, a rival of Descartes, was a moderate Skeptic. So were the people in Gassendi's circle, which Mauro ALLEGRANZA refers to.

In his Meditations, Descartes sought to reply to such Skeptic concerns. Though assuming at first that he knew nothing, he nonetheless couldn't doubt he himself existed. Armed with this, and with a revived ontological proof, he aimed at turning the Skeptic's game against itself. By starting from absolute uncertainty, he would arrive nonetheless at truth, winning back the whole world which he doubted at first.

These are most likely the "irreligious" people he was referring to.

Answer 4

I think (1) that the IEP is not actually right in presenting Descartes' purpose and further (2) the question presupposes that he is trying to refute somebody which is not really the case.

(1) The introductory Dedication asks more or less directly the Doctors to endorse his Methode. What he presents to them is an example. He reminds them them that immortality of the soul is ultimately a dogma and the Church has asked for arguments that support it. He knows just as well as any other reader that Aristotle is not in line with the dogma.

(2) "Atheist" had became a snarl word since the Reformation and both Protestants and Catholics used it while killing each other. Skepticism was a stance that allowed cultivated people to avoid taking sides. Seen from the other side, people also wanted to know what is ultimately true - that was Descartes' motivation. (Steven Toulmin's Return to reason offers a good sketch of the historical context.)