If people are fundamentally defined by their acts we will get a skewed notion of the human person. This not only changed the direction of philosophizing, but it marked the decisive abandonment of what philosophy had been hitherto, particularly the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and namely the philosophy of esse. To Descartes, however, the esse seemed secondary, and he judged the cogito to be prior. In the pre-Cartesian period, philosophy, that is to say the cogito, or rather the cognosco, was subordinate to esse, which was considered prior.
The cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) radically changed the way of doing philosophy. We have to go back to the period before the Enlightenment, especially to the revolution brought about by the philosophical thought of Descartes. As Blessed John Paul II said in his book Memory and Identity, Much of contempory cultural thought was born and continues to live and move in the upside-down world of cogito ergo sum and its inherently materialist and egoistic structure. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers after that, he had no more use for God.” Pensees As Descartes’ contemporary Blaise Paschal said, “I cannot forgive Descartes in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. However, none can doubt that his philosophical principle has had disastrous effect. He was also the personal tutor to Queen Christina of Sweden, who famously abdicated her throne to convert to Catholicism.
The man himself lived the life of a practicing Catholic and claimed faith until the day he died.
While I would never question the purity of Descartes intentions. Rather than beinghaving primacy in the defining conceptualization of the human person action, doing, has the primacy. The world of philosophy rested on this principle for over of two millenia until Descartes gave us a more familiar maxim – COGITO ERO SUM – translated, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ This flipped the world of philosophy on its head. This simple phrases constitutes the fundamental metaphysic of the human person as the Church sees the human person and, I would contend, the only maxim that metaphysically prevents using people as things and thus opening up a whole universe of abuses that can be perpetrated against human beings as well as create a cultural silliness wherein people are perfectly happy to tolerate these abuses. Some may know that the above is one of my most oft repeated maxims – AGERE SEQUITUR ESSE – translated, ‘action follows being.’
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