Descartes Disposal of Formal Causality

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on the Method ultimately desires to achieve deep understanding about the nature of everything including God, the physical world, and himself. Indeed, it is only with a clear and distinct knowledge of such things that he can then begin to understand his true reality. Through images such as a block of melting wax, Descartes proves the nature of any material thing is extended. Descartes denies the classical thought …

…in arrangement of matter. By rejecting formal causality, Descartes gives a new view of freedom. Descartes’ new understanding of freedom states that freedom is the condition of a thing that is able to choose its own end and to press nature into its service in attaining that end, thus leaving behind the classical idea of freedom as the condition of a thing which is able to achieve fully its end as determined by its form.