The Meditations and the Objections and Replies (original) (raw)
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In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, Catherine Wilson examines the arguments of Descartes's famous Meditations, the book which launched modern philosophy. Drawing on the reinterpretations of Descartes's thought of the past twenty-five years, she shows how Descartes constructs a theory of the mind, the body, nature, and God from a premise of radical uncertainty. She discusses in detail the historical context of Descartes's writings, and their relationship to early modern science, and at the same time she introduces concepts and problems that define the philosophical enterprise as it is understood today. Following closely the text of the Meditations and meant to be read alongside them, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well suited to university-level courses on Descartes, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines.
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A short synopsis of Descartes' _Meditations on First Philosophy_. I've tried to capture the main moves of the Meditations with an eye to the most common interpretive difficulties.
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In this paper we argue that to adequately capture the complicated relationship between Descartes' work and late medieval thought, philosophers need to think not only about his ideas but also about his presentation and choice of genre. Reading the Meditations as a mere discursive treatise containing a progressive and consistent set of arguments intended to establish a particular philosophical position fails to appreciate the eponymous genre that Descartes explicitly chose to employ in writing them. Instead, we argue that reading the text in light of the long tradition of contemplative meditative literature opens up a radically new way of interpreting the Meditations as a “mystagogical” project of spiritual edification and epistemic and volitional transformation. During such a transformation, the meditator undergoes a series of revelatory experiences structurally similar to those we find in various so-called “mystical” or “mystagogical”literature, in the Christian West. We show how paying attention to these mystagogical aspects of the Meditations can open up new avenues for understanding the connection between the theoretical, practical, and theological aspects of Descartes' thought. Such a reading resolves a number of seemingly glaring problems and peculiarities in the Meditations including the Cartesian circle, and the tension in the Cartesian notion of the freedom of the will. We also argue that the odd detours the meditator takes in the Sixth Meditation through physiology are not mere digressions but rather mark an often overlooked aspect of the mystagogical story – the return to embodiment as a transformed self. Indeed, the overly intellectualist emphasis of contemporary scholars on both the contemplative aspects of mystagogical literature and the epistemological focus of Descartes' project in the Meditations have caused them to largely overlook the ways in which the aim of both medieval and Cartesian meditation involves a transformative re-orientation of the whole person and their understanding of the world – one which has practical, moral, and social consequences that have gone underexplored in discussions of these texts.
What is the Importance of Descartes's Meditation Six? 1
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In this essay, I argu e that Descartes considered his theory that the body is an inn ervated machine – in which the soul is situated – to be his most original contribution to philosophy. His ambition to prove the imm ortality of the soul was very poorly realized, a predictable outcome, insofar as his aims were ethical, not theological. His dualism accordingly requires reassessment.
Critique of descartes meditations
2019
INTRODUCTION Descartes in his first meditation, set out to show those things which can be called into doubt. In doing this, he doubted all his previously held beliefs after realizing that all his previously held beliefs formed from the senses were false. Descartes also doubted his beliefs formed from reason saying that it could that he is been deceived by an evil genius to think that they are true. But Descartes however argued that previous belief should not be jettisoned. In the second meditation, Descartes set out to establish an indubitable foundation for knowledge. Therefore he argued that since he has doubted the body, he had to be existent since he is doubting. Hence his cogito ergo sum, that is, I think therefore I am, which his indubitable foundation for knowledge is. He moves further to discover what he is and in so doing he divided his being into body and soul and averred that he is a mind. From this knowledge of the self, Descartes moves to establish other truths. He concludes that the body can only be known through understanding but the mind is the only thing that can be easily known to him. In his third meditation, Descartes continued his search for knowledge of himself. He posited that perceived things are nothing but imagination and perception which are modes of thought that dwell in him. He further examines mathematical and geometric truths and doubts them by using the argument of a deceiver who deceives him to think they are true. He argues for the existence of God, and such knowledge for him will be foundational to other things. In doing this, he divides his thought into two, ideas and images. He then moves further to establish that ideas are caused by something outside himself which he calls God. For Descartes, God necessarily exists because he has a clear and distinct idea of God on whom he is contingent for his being.
AN APPRAISAL OF DESCARTES' MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY.
Descartes’ disillusionment of the kind of knowledge he received from his predecessors, the scriptures and the senses made him set out his ingenious gigantic inquiry into the basis of not just acquiring certain knowledge but purifying the epistemic discipline by reining it from undue empirical infiltration; a discipline he felt had become toxic because of the uncritical and unscathed incursion of the traditional but paralyzed over-reliance on the information received from the senses. He was obsessed with the problem of intellectual certainty. Thus, the onerous task of building an edifice of knowledge that would be fortified enough that there will be no room for truths and doubts enveloped and led him to further seek to incarcerate as incriminating, the sensible data which was guilty of deception. Buttressing his reason for this, he opines thus: “…whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me, and it is unwise (as prudence dictates) to trust completely those who have deceived us even once… The Meditations on First Philosophy, evinces this Cartesian non-effaceable thesis. Being one of the most engaging collections of arguments in the history of philosophy, it was a masterpiece of Rene Descartes. It resembles in many ways St Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual exercises. It contains the most definitive and eloquent statements of Descartes’ philosophy. Throughout the meditations, Descartes’ primary concern was the undaunted search for epistemic certitude, but nevertheless, in the final three meditations he moves from the epistemological problem of certainty to metaphysical questions about reality. Here Descartes demonstrates the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul (i.e. mind) and body. The Meditations take the form of a challenging philosophical game. At each turn he produces a belief about which he is certain; then he uses his creative imagination to see if there is any way to see if he could be mistaken. The Meditations on First Philosophy is a vivid representation of Descartes’ thoughts.