Introduction
Meditations on First Philosophy (subtitled In which the existence of God
and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated) is a philosophical treatise
by René Descartes first published in 1641 (in Latin). The French translation
(by the Duke of Luynes with Descartes' supervision) was published in 1647 as
Méditations Métaphysiques. The original Latin title is Meditationes de prima
philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animæ immortalitas demonstratur. The
title may contain a misreading by the printer, mistaking animae immortalitas
for animae immaterialitas, as suspected already by A. Baillet.
The book is made up of six meditations, in which Descartes first
discards all belief in things that are not absolutely certain, and then tries
to establish what can be known for sure. He wrote the meditations as if he had
meditated for six days: each meditation refers to the last one as
"yesterday" (In fact, Descartes began work on the Meditations in
1639.) One of the most influential philosophical texts ever written, it is
widely read to this day.
The Meditations consist of the presentation of Descartes' metaphysical
system in its most detailed level and in the expanding of Descartes'
philosophical system, which he first introduced in the fourth part of his
Discourse on Method (1637). Descartes' metaphysical thought is also found in
the Principles of Philosophy (1644), which the author intended to be a
philosophy guidebook.
In 1641 Descartes published the Meditations on First Philosophy, in
Which Is Proved the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul. Written
in Latin and dedicated to the Jesuit professors at the Sorbonne in Paris, the
work includes critical responses by several eminent thinkers—collected by
Mersenne from the Jansenist philosopher and theologian Antoine Arnauld
(1612–94), the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and the Epicurean
atomist Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655)—as well as Descartes’s replies. The second
edition (1642) includes a response by the Jesuit priest Pierre Bourdin
(1595–1653), who Descartes said was a fool. These objections and replies
constitute a landmark of cooperative discussion in philosophy and science at a
time when dogmatism was the rule.
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The Meditations is characterized by Descartes’s use of methodic doubt, a
systematic procedure of rejecting as though false all types of belief in which
one has ever been, or could ever be, deceived. His arguments derive from the
skepticism of the Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus (fl. 3rd century CE) as
reflected in the work of the essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) and the
Catholic theologian Pierre Charron (1541–1603). Thus, Descartes’s apparent
knowledge based on authority is set aside, because even experts are sometimes
wrong. His beliefs from sensory experience are declared untrustworthy, because
such experience is sometimes misleading, as when a square tower appears round
from a distance. Even his beliefs about the objects in his immediate vicinity
may be mistaken, because, as he notes, he often has dreams about objects that
do not exist, and he has no way of knowing with certainty whether he is
dreaming or awake. Finally, his apparent knowledge of simple and general truths
of reasoning that do not depend on sense experience—such as “2 + 3 = 5” or “a
square has four sides”—is also unreliable, because God could have made him in
such a way that, for example, he goes wrong every time he counts. As a way of
summarizing the universal doubt into which he has fallen, Descartes supposes
that an “evil genius of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his
energies in order to deceive me.”
Although at this stage there is seemingly no belief about which he
cannot entertain doubt, Descartes finds certainty in the intuition that, when
he is thinking—even if he is being deceived—he must exist. In the Discourse,
Descartes expresses this intuition in the dictum “I think, therefore I am”; but
because “therefore” suggests that the intuition is an argument—though it is
not—in the Meditations he says merely, “I think, I am” (“Cogito, sum”). The
cogito is a logically self-evident truth that also gives intuitively certain
knowledge of a particular thing’s existence—that is, one’s self. Nevertheless,
it justifies accepting as certain only the existence of the person who thinks
it. If all one ever knew for certain was that one exists, and if one adhered to
Descartes’s method of doubting all that is uncertain, then one would be reduced
to solipsism, the view that nothing exists but one’s self and thoughts. To
escape solipsism, Descartes argues that all ideas that are as “clear and
distinct” as the cogito must be true, for, if they were not, the cogito also,
as a member of the class of clear and distinct ideas, could be doubted. Since
“I think, I am” cannot be doubted, all clear and distinct ideas must be true.
On the basis of clear and distinct innate ideas, Descartes then
establishes that each mind is a mental substance and each body a part of one
material substance. The mind or soul is immortal, because it is unextended and
cannot be broken into parts, as can extended bodies. Descartes also advances at
least two proofs for the existence of God. The final proof, presented in the
Fifth Meditation, begins with the proposition that Descartes has an innate idea
of God as a perfect being. It concludes that God necessarily exists, because,
if he did not, he would not be perfect. This ontological argument for God’s
existence, introduced by the medieval English logician St. Anselm of Canterbury
(1033/34–1109), is at the heart of Descartes’s rationalism, for it establishes
certain knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from
innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. Descartes elsewhere argues
that, because God is perfect, he does not deceive human beings, and therefore,
because God leads us to believe that the material world exists, it does exist.
In this way Descartes claims to establish metaphysical foundations for the
existence of his own mind, of God, and of the material world.
The inherent circularity of Descartes’s reasoning was exposed by
Arnauld, whose objection has come to be known as the Cartesian Circle.
According to Descartes, God’s existence is established by the fact that
Descartes has a clear and distinct idea of God; but the truth of Descartes’s
clear and distinct ideas are guaranteed by the fact that God exists and is not
a deceiver. Thus, in order to show that God exists, Descartes must assume that
God exists.
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