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Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings
'I shall imagine myself as if I had no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses at all'
Descartes was prepared to go to any lengths in his search for certainty – even to deny those things that seemed most self-evident. In his Meditations of 1641, and in the Objections and Replies that were included with the original publication, he set out to dismantle and then reconstruct the idea of the individual self and its existence. In doing so, Descartes developed a language of subjectivity that has lasted to this day and also took his first steps towards the view that would eventually be expressed in the epigram Cogito, ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am'), one of modern philosophy's most famous – and most fiercely controversial – claims.
The first part of a two-volume edition of Descartes' works in Penguin Classics, this edition includes extensive selections from the Objections and Replies, Part One of The Principles of Philosophy, Comments on a Certain Manifesto and related correspondence from 1643 to 1649.
Descartes was prepared to go to any lengths in his search for certainty – even to deny those things that seemed most self-evident. In his Meditations of 1641, and in the Objections and Replies that were included with the original publication, he set out to dismantle and then reconstruct the idea of the individual self and its existence. In doing so, Descartes developed a language of subjectivity that has lasted to this day and also took his first steps towards the view that would eventually be expressed in the epigram Cogito, ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am'), one of modern philosophy's most famous – and most fiercely controversial – claims.
The first part of a two-volume edition of Descartes' works in Penguin Classics, this edition includes extensive selections from the Objections and Replies, Part One of The Principles of Philosophy, Comments on a Certain Manifesto and related correspondence from 1643 to 1649.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1641
About the author
René Descartes
1,614 books2,451 followers
Meditations on First Philosophy
(1641) and
Principles of Philosophy
(1644), main works of French mathematician and scientist René Descartes, considered the father of analytic geometry and the founder of modern rationalism, include the famous dictum "I think, therefore I am."
A set of two perpendicular lines in a plane or three in space intersect at an origin in Cartesian coordinate system. Cartesian coordinate, a member of the set of numbers, distances, locates a point in this system. Cartesian coordinates describe all points of a Cartesian plane.
From given sets, {X} and {Y}, one can construct Cartesian product, a set of all pairs of elements (x, y), such that x belongs to {X} and y belongs to {Y}.
Cartesian philosophers include Antoine Arnauld.
René Descartes, a writer, highly influenced society. People continue to study closely his writings and subsequently responded in the west. He of the key figures in the revolution also apparently influenced the named coordinate system, used in planes and algebra.
Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul , a treatise on the early version of now commonly called emotions, he goes so far to assert that he writes on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." Many elements in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or earlier like Saint Augustine of Hippo provide precedents. Naturally, he differs from the schools on two major points: He rejects corporeal substance into matter and form and any appeal to divine or natural ends in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of act of creation of God.
Baruch Spinoza and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz later advocated Descartes, a major figure in 17th century Continent, and the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume, opposed him. Leibniz and Descartes, all well versed like Spinoza, contributed greatly. Descartes, the crucial bridge with algebra, invented the coordinate system and calculus. Reflections of Descartes on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought; much later, the invention of the electronic computer and the possibility of machine intelligence impelled this thought, which blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His stated most in §7 of part I and in part IV of Discourse on the Method .
A set of two perpendicular lines in a plane or three in space intersect at an origin in Cartesian coordinate system. Cartesian coordinate, a member of the set of numbers, distances, locates a point in this system. Cartesian coordinates describe all points of a Cartesian plane.
From given sets, {X} and {Y}, one can construct Cartesian product, a set of all pairs of elements (x, y), such that x belongs to {X} and y belongs to {Y}.
Cartesian philosophers include Antoine Arnauld.
René Descartes, a writer, highly influenced society. People continue to study closely his writings and subsequently responded in the west. He of the key figures in the revolution also apparently influenced the named coordinate system, used in planes and algebra.
Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul , a treatise on the early version of now commonly called emotions, he goes so far to assert that he writes on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." Many elements in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or earlier like Saint Augustine of Hippo provide precedents. Naturally, he differs from the schools on two major points: He rejects corporeal substance into matter and form and any appeal to divine or natural ends in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of act of creation of God.
Baruch Spinoza and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz later advocated Descartes, a major figure in 17th century Continent, and the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume, opposed him. Leibniz and Descartes, all well versed like Spinoza, contributed greatly. Descartes, the crucial bridge with algebra, invented the coordinate system and calculus. Reflections of Descartes on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought; much later, the invention of the electronic computer and the possibility of machine intelligence impelled this thought, which blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His stated most in §7 of part I and in part IV of Discourse on the Method .
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April 14, 2015
The Penguin Descartes
Acknowledgements
Note to Corrected Edition
Note on References to Descartes
Chronology
Introduction & Notes
Further Reading
Meditations on First Philosophy
Note on the Text and Translation
--Letter of Dedication to the Sorbonne
--Preface to the Reader
--Summary of the Following Six Meditations
--Meditations
--Objections and Replies (Selections)
The Principles of Philosophy
Note on the Text
--Letter to Princess Elizabeth
--Part One: The Principles of Human Knowledge
Note on the Text
--Descartes' Correspondence: Selections, 1643-9
Note on the Text
--Comments on a Certain Manifesto
Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
Note to Corrected Edition
Note on References to Descartes
Chronology
Introduction & Notes
Further Reading
Meditations on First Philosophy
Note on the Text and Translation
--Letter of Dedication to the Sorbonne
--Preface to the Reader
--Summary of the Following Six Meditations
--Meditations
--Objections and Replies (Selections)
The Principles of Philosophy
Note on the Text
--Letter to Princess Elizabeth
--Part One: The Principles of Human Knowledge
Note on the Text
--Descartes' Correspondence: Selections, 1643-9
Note on the Text
--Comments on a Certain Manifesto
Notes
Index
Read
October 14, 2017this man is the main cause of all my problems. just stop
April 12, 2023
3,75☆
Jestem, więc myślę o tej książce jak o czymś, w myśl czego jestem. Kartezjusz, mimo licznych zaplątań w teoretyzowaniu rzeczy ujawnianych naprzemian przez swoje przyczyny i skutki, potrafi mówić prawdzie w oczy (mrugając od czasu do czasu).
Jestem, więc myślę o tej książce jak o czymś, w myśl czego jestem. Kartezjusz, mimo licznych zaplątań w teoretyzowaniu rzeczy ujawnianych naprzemian przez swoje przyczyny i skutki, potrafi mówić prawdzie w oczy (mrugając od czasu do czasu).
September 27, 2023
Re-read this for my Metaphysics class. Descartes not only assumed we have a self but also that by virtue of imagining God this bred reason to believe he exists by pure ontology. Apart from these two fundamental criticisms of him, this book is clearly a monumental piece of skepticism which should be respected in its own right.
June 2, 2011
I was very pleased with this work not because of its conclusions but because of the breadth of mind that was necessary to relate to the reader the experience of thinking. "I think therefore I am" is a completely obvious and yet brilliant revelation of the mind. At the onset the work is so relate able to your own feelings and grasping with reality that it seems to be of your own making. As the work progresses however I think that Descartes really makes a lot of illogical proofs from thin air as it were. The relationships he builds between god and mathematics etc. are very poorly conceived, or if not at least poorly delivered. In taking into account his time frame and reference of upbringing however, it is hard not to admire the extent of his short meditations.
Was the portion of discussion by someone else in this work and was he answering someone in truth or in hypothetical terms? I did not understand that bit. If it was Descartes himself objecting to his own findings and then refuting those rejections I think he came across very strong indeed in his ability not to defend but to object to himself! He seemed to be full of the knowledge of his own lack of understanding and yet the effort put forth to ascertain the existence of god, was at least admirable if untrue.
Was the portion of discussion by someone else in this work and was he answering someone in truth or in hypothetical terms? I did not understand that bit. If it was Descartes himself objecting to his own findings and then refuting those rejections I think he came across very strong indeed in his ability not to defend but to object to himself! He seemed to be full of the knowledge of his own lack of understanding and yet the effort put forth to ascertain the existence of god, was at least admirable if untrue.
December 14, 2015
Someone said that Descartes' Meditations is a piece of stoner literature. And that, as funny as it sounds, is most certainly true. A highly accessible work of philosophy centering on the subjectivity of reality.
April 23, 2020
It feels quite inappropriate to provide a 'rating' to a collection of philosophical works which so entirely changed the direction and character of western philosophy. Descartes' methods were revolutionary and, in the form of the Principles of First Philosophy, perhaps their most developed methodological elaboration since the Greeks. Descartes wrote with a clarity and humility which is rare to find in philosophers, particularly those who so radically questioned not just the truth of doxa but its very conceptual foundations. Any rating lower than five stars does not do justice to how important this work is.
It is impossible to understand the last 370 years of western philosophy without understanding that is rooted in Plato and then routed through Descartes. An understanding cannot proceed without a familiarity with Descartes. The great philosophers and thinkers of the last few centuries - Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and many others - have to be understood as responding as much to Descartes as to Plato, compared to whom every other philosopher is often called 'a footnote'.
I want to say two brief things about Kant and Heidegger in this context. Descartes wrote that philosophy can, properly speaking, only proceed through introducing radical doubt into all preconceived beliefs (often referred to as doxa) and from beginning afresh from first principles. In this way, Descartes concluded that the first thing I can be certain of is that I exist, because in order to think there must be something that thinks. He then proceeds, having constructed certain foundations, to reason the existence of free will, of God, and of our ability to largely trust our senses. He distinguishes between two substances: mind (characterised by thought, not extended in space) and body (characterised by extension, bu does not think).
Kant wanted to go deeper than that and to ask something like this question: What things must be the case such that we can experience the world at all? Kant developed a highly sophisticated metaphysical system which outlined both what makes thought possible, and what limits it. A key concern of Kant's, then, was to try to understand how our use of reason can go wrong, and to be used in 'impermissible ways'. Kant concludes (not without thorough elaboration of course, I just don't have time to go into it here) that we cannot use reason to prove the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, or the existence of free will; these are essentially practical presuppositions for Kant. It is quite clear therefore that Kant must be understood as engaging as directly with Descartes as his famous rival and inspiration David Hume.
I will say even less of Heidegger, but one way of understanding his masterpiece Being and Time (1927) is to see it as an attempt to correct some of the errors of thought which Heidegger thought had been introduced into philosophical thought, by Descartes and by his predecessors and successors in philosophy. In particular, what many like Heidegger see arising out of Descartes' method is what is often called the 'subject-object' relation: the subject (me, the unique thinking substance) and the object (the physical, corporeal world beyond or 'outside' of me) are held to be two distinct and opposed categories. Such a distinction introduces an approach which necessarily tends towards a view kind of methodological individualism and subjectivism, a view of ourselves as disconnected, almost disembodied free agents, separate from and undetermined by the world going on around us.
For Heidegger (as with, for example, Hegel), the task is to collapse such a distinction entirely such that there is no longer any strong distinction made. For Heidegger, the 'subject' (what he refers to as Dasein) is always already 'thrown into' the world, to be what we are is to be 'Being-in-the-world. Our very being and capacity for agency is always historically conditioned. Descartes could no more have chosen to be an astronaut than Sartre could have chosen to be a Samurai. Heidegger criticises Descartes for claiming that our primary way of engaging with the world is through 'knowing'; to the contrary, for Heidegger our existence is characterised both by moods and by a fundamental interconnectedness and embeddedness. Frankly you'd be better off reading Being & Time to really see how Heidegger goes to town on Cartesianism.
There are many reasons to read Descartes, aside from the merit of his clarity, precision and prose, and foremost among them being the huge contributions he made and to better understand the history and context of the history of western philosophy up to this day. Descartes' influence did not end in the century in which he died: his influence can be felt and seen to this day.
It is impossible to understand the last 370 years of western philosophy without understanding that is rooted in Plato and then routed through Descartes. An understanding cannot proceed without a familiarity with Descartes. The great philosophers and thinkers of the last few centuries - Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and many others - have to be understood as responding as much to Descartes as to Plato, compared to whom every other philosopher is often called 'a footnote'.
I want to say two brief things about Kant and Heidegger in this context. Descartes wrote that philosophy can, properly speaking, only proceed through introducing radical doubt into all preconceived beliefs (often referred to as doxa) and from beginning afresh from first principles. In this way, Descartes concluded that the first thing I can be certain of is that I exist, because in order to think there must be something that thinks. He then proceeds, having constructed certain foundations, to reason the existence of free will, of God, and of our ability to largely trust our senses. He distinguishes between two substances: mind (characterised by thought, not extended in space) and body (characterised by extension, bu does not think).
Kant wanted to go deeper than that and to ask something like this question: What things must be the case such that we can experience the world at all? Kant developed a highly sophisticated metaphysical system which outlined both what makes thought possible, and what limits it. A key concern of Kant's, then, was to try to understand how our use of reason can go wrong, and to be used in 'impermissible ways'. Kant concludes (not without thorough elaboration of course, I just don't have time to go into it here) that we cannot use reason to prove the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, or the existence of free will; these are essentially practical presuppositions for Kant. It is quite clear therefore that Kant must be understood as engaging as directly with Descartes as his famous rival and inspiration David Hume.
I will say even less of Heidegger, but one way of understanding his masterpiece Being and Time (1927) is to see it as an attempt to correct some of the errors of thought which Heidegger thought had been introduced into philosophical thought, by Descartes and by his predecessors and successors in philosophy. In particular, what many like Heidegger see arising out of Descartes' method is what is often called the 'subject-object' relation: the subject (me, the unique thinking substance) and the object (the physical, corporeal world beyond or 'outside' of me) are held to be two distinct and opposed categories. Such a distinction introduces an approach which necessarily tends towards a view kind of methodological individualism and subjectivism, a view of ourselves as disconnected, almost disembodied free agents, separate from and undetermined by the world going on around us.
For Heidegger (as with, for example, Hegel), the task is to collapse such a distinction entirely such that there is no longer any strong distinction made. For Heidegger, the 'subject' (what he refers to as Dasein) is always already 'thrown into' the world, to be what we are is to be 'Being-in-the-world. Our very being and capacity for agency is always historically conditioned. Descartes could no more have chosen to be an astronaut than Sartre could have chosen to be a Samurai. Heidegger criticises Descartes for claiming that our primary way of engaging with the world is through 'knowing'; to the contrary, for Heidegger our existence is characterised both by moods and by a fundamental interconnectedness and embeddedness. Frankly you'd be better off reading Being & Time to really see how Heidegger goes to town on Cartesianism.
There are many reasons to read Descartes, aside from the merit of his clarity, precision and prose, and foremost among them being the huge contributions he made and to better understand the history and context of the history of western philosophy up to this day. Descartes' influence did not end in the century in which he died: his influence can be felt and seen to this day.
March 22, 2009
First read for A level philosophy, I loathed it. Descartes can be such an irritating read! My experience of this book was more like ploughing than reading. I understand and appreciate why this was - and of course still is - an extremely important text for modern philosophy. Certainly at the time, his thoughts and ideas were something special. His arguments are littered with flaws though - I worry about anyone who can take the ontological argument seriously what with its infinitely circular form and method of merely defining God into existence hardly without an argument at all! That said, I can see why it needs to be read and pondered on. If you are new to philosophy, it certainly sets a questioning tone which is hugely important for philosophy as a whole. Descartes' method of systematically removing any previously held belief and building his convinctions from scratch is a good one and he makes some good points about the unreliability of the senses. Worth reading if you want to take philosophy further or if you are merely interested in the ideas presented.
January 24, 2025
go fuck yourselves descartes
August 24, 2018
Rene Descartes’ın en önemli eseri olarak kabul edilen "Meditations / Meditasyonlar", ünlü filozofun kartezyen felsefenin temelindeki “Düşünüyorum; öyleyse varım.” sözüyle kuşkuculuğun önünü açtığı çağının oldukça ötesinde bir eser. Beden ile bilinç ayrımının yapılarak bilincin beden üzerindeki gücüne odaklanıldığı kitapta Descartes’ın insan beyninin vücut üzerindeki etkileri hakkında görüşleri resmen hayranlık uyandırıcı. Bilimin yeni yeni gelişmeye başladığı zamanlarda Descartes’ın bu kadar detaylı ve doğruya yakın analiz yapması ünlü filozufun neden bu kadar öne çıktığını kanıtlıyor. Sadece bilimsel değil aynı zamanda psikolojik analizleriyle de kendine hayran bırakan Descartes, sonsuzluk ve kusur kavramlarına da farklı bakış açıları getiriyor. İnsanın kusurlarıyla mükemmel olduğunu anlatan eserde hata kavramının ancak insanın bilmediği şeylerde aksiyon almasıyla ortaya çıktığını ve ancak Tanrı’yı bulduğumuzda hatalarımızın azalacağını belirtiliyor. Özellikle ilk kısmı yani "Meditasyonlar"la öne çıkan kitabın ikinci kısmı ise Descartes’ın Bohemia Prensesi Elizabeth’le olan mektuplaşmalarını okuyucuya sunuyor. Yine düşünerek Tanrı’nın bulunup bulanamayacağının tartışıldığı metinlerdeki psikolojik analizler oldukça düşündürücü. Beden ile ruh arasındaki ayrımın altını çizen Descartes’ın eserini okurken zaman zaman yazarın kendisinin de tezata düştüğünü görmek mümkün ki bu yüzden yazarın her ne kadar kaçınsa da zamanla dinsizlikle suçlanmaya başlamasına şaşırmamak gerek. Her edebiyat severin okuması gereken felsefi eserlerden biri olan "Meditations and the Other Metaphysical Writings"i Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları’nın "Descartes" biyografisinden sonra okumakta fayda var.
14.08.2018
İstanbul, Türkiye
Alp Turgut
http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...
14.08.2018
İstanbul, Türkiye
Alp Turgut
http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...
December 28, 2021
This is a collection of René Descartes’ (1596-1650) “metaphysical” (the branch of philosophy that studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility) writings.
The volume includes: “Meditations on First Philosophy,” “Principles of Philosophy,” “Comments on a Certain Manifesto,” and various correspondence involving metaphysical questions.
Aside from Descartes’ famous epigram, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) found in “Principles of Philosophy,” I find his work uninteresting, convoluted, long-winded, and often times nonsensical. His personal character and professional rigor are questionable as well, as he is unable to take criticism of his ideas well, his replies to various, very reasonable, critiques generally devolving into name-calling and overly defensive posturing. For being considered the “father of modern philosophy” his responses to criticism (aside from those of Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia) reveal surprising insecurity.
In fairness, this is the only collection of Descartes’ work I have read and concede his other writings, especially on mathematics, may be better.
The volume includes: “Meditations on First Philosophy,” “Principles of Philosophy,” “Comments on a Certain Manifesto,” and various correspondence involving metaphysical questions.
Aside from Descartes’ famous epigram, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) found in “Principles of Philosophy,” I find his work uninteresting, convoluted, long-winded, and often times nonsensical. His personal character and professional rigor are questionable as well, as he is unable to take criticism of his ideas well, his replies to various, very reasonable, critiques generally devolving into name-calling and overly defensive posturing. For being considered the “father of modern philosophy” his responses to criticism (aside from those of Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia) reveal surprising insecurity.
In fairness, this is the only collection of Descartes’ work I have read and concede his other writings, especially on mathematics, may be better.
August 22, 2024
After the very first principle, almost none of his arguments make sense, especially his argument for God's existence -- it's contained within the idea of God that he is supreme and necessarily existent therefore he necessarily exists. Okay original gangster, whatever.
March 31, 2023
Rene needs to get out of his head. Like he’s not saying anything wrong necessarily, but what’s the point if we can’t know anyways?
October 19, 2022
The purpose of the Meditations was to re-evaluate from scratch how we understand the universe around us. Descartes starts from the axiom that the act of thinking is sufficient to be sure of nothing but our own existence. He then goes on to elaborate how we can make correct or false judgements, how we can be certain of things beyond our own existence, and several other metaphysical discussions of modes, substances, etc. His proof of the existence of God didn't contribute much beyond an exercise in logic, presumably this was done as a means of legitimating his philosophy.
I really liked that the publisher included in the book some of Descartes' responses to criticisms and correspondence relating to his Meditations. This really helped flesh out his ideas and understand some of the more nuanced logic involved in his arguments.
Overall I found the actual metaphysics a bit too pseudo-sciencey for me to read without a fair bit of scepticism. What seemed much more important to me was the importance placed on carefully evaluating what we actually know.
I really liked that the publisher included in the book some of Descartes' responses to criticisms and correspondence relating to his Meditations. This really helped flesh out his ideas and understand some of the more nuanced logic involved in his arguments.
Overall I found the actual metaphysics a bit too pseudo-sciencey for me to read without a fair bit of scepticism. What seemed much more important to me was the importance placed on carefully evaluating what we actually know.
September 18, 2021
Fascinating when speaking on the nature of reality and the question of believing everything your senses tell you. Loses the plot when he then says the only other thing one can definitively say is true is the existence of god, because he is a perfect being and as imperfect beings we would not have the concept of a perfect “thing” without the existence of a perfect being vis a vis god.
And then of course one can then draw a direct line between cartesian philosophy and every single one of the world’s ills. But I suppose that’s not entirely René’s fault.
And then of course one can then draw a direct line between cartesian philosophy and every single one of the world’s ills. But I suppose that’s not entirely René’s fault.
Read
January 12, 2026DNF. 44 pages out of 108.
it was a dry rehash of Anselm & Aquinas' work.
Just read Pascal instead.
also, Augustine was the first to say "I think therefore I am" in his City of God. Descartes' context just forced his formulation of it to be more popular.
it was a dry rehash of Anselm & Aquinas' work.
Just read Pascal instead.
also, Augustine was the first to say "I think therefore I am" in his City of God. Descartes' context just forced his formulation of it to be more popular.
February 19, 2018
even flimsier second time round, post-kantishly
July 5, 2025
i like his name but how do i pronounce it
November 19, 2024
I started off really enjoying it and thinking I was reading something very similar to the Matrix, but as I read more, especially starting in Meditation 3, God (up for debate what exactly he meant by that, I know) became much more of a focus and the ideas became more confused and less clear to me. In the end I was left overall feeling a little frustrated with the answers he offered. Still an important work, if anything a little too important; I think I may have been too intimidated by it to enjoy it, especially given I didn’t take away all that much.
Some comments:
I was shocked to discover that “I think therefore I am” includes emotions! In fact, emotions are the truer part of thinking in Descartes’ opinion: “there is no danger of falsehood in volitions or in emotions; only judgements is where I have to be careful not to be mistaken.” Wonderful since I’ve always insisted that “feelings are our only fundamental truth”.
Infinite creation is a much better term than infinite creator because it depersonifies the process.
Most important takeaways (in order of appearance):
Editor’s Intro:
“One of the central issues that divided the churches was the capacity of human understanding to establish truths that are certain, independently of divine revelation or religious faith, and to specify the role of the senses in providing reliable information on the basis of which reason could reach reliable conclusions.” (my note: senses as a mean not an end)
“our cognitive faculties may be constitutionally unreliable because God or Nature designed them defectively” (my note: so what)
“Descartes tried to establish some very basic truths, the certainty of which was beyond the reach of even the most fundamental skeptical objections.” (my note: i.e. experience cannot be trusted to be true without first doubting it? Or is it doubt that puts it into question in the first place…)
“In what sense do we explain how human beings manage to think by attributing a 'thinking faculty' to them? Is explanation in metaphysics not subject to the same strict standards as explanation in physics?” (my note: what exactly do we mean by “thinking”?)
“Our knowledge of the external world is a hypothesis about the kinds of external realities that are most likely to cause our perceptions.”
Meditations - Intro:
“Since there are often greater rewards for vice than for virtue in this life, few will prefer what is right to what is profitable if they neither fear God nor expect an afterlife.” (my note: sounds like Plato’s Republic)
“even if all its variable features change so that it understands different things, wills different things, senses different things, and so on, the mind itself does not thereby become a different mind.”
“the knowledge of our own mind and of God are the most certain and evident of all the arguments that can be known by human intelligence.”
Meditation 1:
“Everything that I accepted as being most true up to now I accepted from the senses or through the senses. However, I have occasionally found that they deceive me, and it is prudent never to trust those who have deceived us, even if only once.” (my note: what is acquired via senses may be wrong but the senses themselves cannot be?)
“Whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together make five and a quadrilateral figure has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that one could ever suspect that such clear truths are false.” (my note: relative vs absolute truth: relative = logic; absolute = feeling? Can any truth be absolute? Relative truths will always be true)
“The author they assign to my origin” (my note: nice term)
“I am like a prisoner who happens to enjoy an imaginary freedom in his dreams and who subsequently begins to suspect that he is asleep and, afraid of being awakened, conspires silently with his agreeable illusions.” (my note: Matrix)
Meditation 2:
“I will set aside everything which is subject to the least doubt, until I discover something that is certain” (my note: search for fundamental truth)
“Am I so tied to a body and senses that I am incapable of existing without them?”
My note: sensing energy transfers i.e. signals; 5 senses + reason and emotion = 7 senses?
“However, I do not yet understand sufficiently who this 'I' is who now necessarily exists.” (my note: poetic)
“I thought that it did not belong in any way to the nature of body to have a power to move itself” (my note: very interesting: body intakes, mind controls i.e. outputs)
“It is possible that whatever pertains to the nature of bodies may be merely dreams” (my note: dreams and life are very similar at the end of either; on your death bed, what is the difference between the trip you took and the trip you dreamed you took?)
“But what, then, am I? A thinking thing. And what is that? A thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, and which also imagines and senses.”
“For example, I already see light, hear sound and feel heat. Those are false, because I am asleep. But I certainly seem to see, to hear and to get warm. This cannot be false. This is what is meant, strictly speaking, by me having a sensation and, understood precisely in this way, it is nothing other than thinking.” (my note: thinking is experience! It is the objects which are being doubted)
“It really is surprising that I understand more distinctly things which I realize are doubtful, unknown and foreign to me than what is true, what is known and, ultimately, what is myself.”
(my note: very interesting! How can I not know what I am?!)
“perceiving it is not a case of seeing, touching or imagining, it is an inspection of the mind alone” (my note: senses do not explain the world, they are primitive)
My note: human experience as a highly advanced radar machine
“even bodies are not perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagining, but perceived only by the mind, and they are not are perceived by being touched or seen but only by being understood”
Meditation 3:
My note: maybe thinking confirms feeling?
“I should examine whether God exists and, if he exists, whether it is possible that he is a deceiver. As long as this is unknown, I cannot see how I can ever be certain of anything else.” (God is Q#1)
“order seems to require that I classify all my thoughts into certain kinds and that I find out in which kinds truth or falsehood are properly found. [...] Some of these thoughts are called volitions or emotions, and others are called judgements. When ideas are considered only in themselves, since I do not refer them to anything else they cannot be false; there is no danger of falsehood in volitions or in emotions; only judgements is where I have to be careful not to be mistaken.” (my note: emotions i.e. feeling, judgements i.e. thinking; experience is truth!)
My note: “thought” = mental experience, either emotion or judgement
“When I say here that I was taught this by nature I only mean that I am led to believe it by some spontaneous impulse and not that I have been shown that it is true by some natural light. There is a big difference between the two. For whatever is shown to me by the reason - for example, that from the fact that I doubt it follows that I exist, and similar things - cannot in any way be doubtful, because there cannot be another faculty which I trust as much as that light and which could teach me that the conclusion is not true.” (my note: “true” reality depends on doubt, there is no false reality without doubt; doubt relates to acceptance/control)
“Falsehood can occur only in judgments” (my note: vs affection or perception)
“the ideas I have of heat and cold are so lacking in clarity and distinctness that I cannot learn from them whether cold is merely a privation of heat or heat is a privation of cold, or whether both of them are real qualities or whether neither of them is.” (my note: same as well-being and distress)
“Even though I have an idea of a substance from the very fact that I am a substance myself, it would not, however, be an idea of an infinite substance because I am finite, unless it originated from some substance that is genuinely infinite.” (my note: His logic for God)
My note: moments require time but time requires memory
“I am not concerned at this stage with the cause that produced me in the past but much more with the cause that maintains me in existence at present.” (my note: why do I continue to exist?)
Meditation 4:
My note: God aka infinite creation; creation i.e. having been created i.e. being
“Remember to abstain from making a judgment when the truth about something is not clear.” (my note: acceptance)
Rosenfeld: the self-referentiality of thinking is what confirms it is true.
My note: is metaphysics just the study of applied infinity?
Meditation 5:
“Are all the things that I am thinking about now any more true than what occurs to me when I am asleep? But even that does not change anything because surely, if I am dreaming, on condition that something is evident to my understanding it is entirely true.” (my note: logical consistency confirms truth)
Meditation 6:
“It was evidently reasonable to believe that I sensed various things which were clearly distinct from my thought, namely the bodies from which those ideas originated. For I experienced that those ideas would come to me without any consent on my part”
“Ideas perceived by sensation originated from other things [...] I easily convinced myself that I had absolutely nothing in my mind which did not originate in sensation.”
“I was aware of pain and the titillation of pleasure in its parts, but not in other bodies that were situated outside me” (my note: what about empathy?)
“many experiences undermined little by little all my faith in the senses” (my note: how can you not trust pain when you feel it?)
“There is also in me a certain passive faculty for sensing, or for receiving and knowing the ideas of sensible things, but I would not be able to use it in any way unless there also existed an active faculty, either in me or in something else, for producing or causing those ideas.” (my note: very interesting!)
“Sensory perceptions signify to the mind what is beneficial or harmful; I use them as if they were guaranteed rules for the immediate discovery of the essence of external bodies, whereas they provide only very obscure and confused perceptions of them.” (my note: emotional; thinking is for benefit later)
“I can also use my memory, which links present sensations with previous sensations, as well as my understanding, which has already looked into all the causes of error”
My note: memory is one of the senses?
Objections and responses:
“what is the cause of something which does not actually exist and which is nothing but a mere name?” (my note: i.e. what is creativity)
My note: are the 5 senses also relative truths? Yellow is only yellow relative to white or orange
“I want to know if the souls of those who are fast asleep and not dreaming are thinking. If they are not, then they have no ideas during that time.” (my note: if experience is existence, what about dreamless sleep, unconsciousness?)
“The substance that operates is still hidden from you. Hence the following comparison comes to mind: you could be said to resemble a blind person who, when they feel heat and are advised that it comes from the sun, think they have a clear and distinct idea of the sun in the sense that, if anyone asks what the sun is, they can reply: it is a thing that produces heat.”
My note: the black room + 1 sense
“One must distinguish three levels of sensation. When the bodily organ is merely affected by external objects, that belongs to the first level; and this can be nothing more than the motion of particles of that sensory organ and the change in shape or position which results from that motion. The second level includes everything that follows immediately in the mind from the fact that it is united with this bodily organ; this includes perceptions of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, colours, sound, taste, smell, heat, cold and so on, which in the Sixth Meditation were said to arise from the union and, as it were, the merging of the mind with the body. The third level includes all the judgements, that we have been accustomed to make about external things since our earliest years, on the occasion of motions in a bodily organ.”
“Nothing more than [affection - i.e. “motion of the brain” - and perception] should be included in sensation if we wish to distinguish it carefully from the intellect.”
“The judgements which we make in our maturity as a result of new observations are more certain than those we made uncritically in our earliest years; and that is undoubtedly true. It is obvious that the first or second levels of sensation are not at issue in this context, because there can be no falsehood in those.”
My note: if there were no other people around, could hallucinations ever be discredited?
===
11 more pages of notes on Google Docs.
Some comments:
I was shocked to discover that “I think therefore I am” includes emotions! In fact, emotions are the truer part of thinking in Descartes’ opinion: “there is no danger of falsehood in volitions or in emotions; only judgements is where I have to be careful not to be mistaken.” Wonderful since I’ve always insisted that “feelings are our only fundamental truth”.
Infinite creation is a much better term than infinite creator because it depersonifies the process.
Most important takeaways (in order of appearance):
Editor’s Intro:
“One of the central issues that divided the churches was the capacity of human understanding to establish truths that are certain, independently of divine revelation or religious faith, and to specify the role of the senses in providing reliable information on the basis of which reason could reach reliable conclusions.” (my note: senses as a mean not an end)
“our cognitive faculties may be constitutionally unreliable because God or Nature designed them defectively” (my note: so what)
“Descartes tried to establish some very basic truths, the certainty of which was beyond the reach of even the most fundamental skeptical objections.” (my note: i.e. experience cannot be trusted to be true without first doubting it? Or is it doubt that puts it into question in the first place…)
“In what sense do we explain how human beings manage to think by attributing a 'thinking faculty' to them? Is explanation in metaphysics not subject to the same strict standards as explanation in physics?” (my note: what exactly do we mean by “thinking”?)
“Our knowledge of the external world is a hypothesis about the kinds of external realities that are most likely to cause our perceptions.”
Meditations - Intro:
“Since there are often greater rewards for vice than for virtue in this life, few will prefer what is right to what is profitable if they neither fear God nor expect an afterlife.” (my note: sounds like Plato’s Republic)
“even if all its variable features change so that it understands different things, wills different things, senses different things, and so on, the mind itself does not thereby become a different mind.”
“the knowledge of our own mind and of God are the most certain and evident of all the arguments that can be known by human intelligence.”
Meditation 1:
“Everything that I accepted as being most true up to now I accepted from the senses or through the senses. However, I have occasionally found that they deceive me, and it is prudent never to trust those who have deceived us, even if only once.” (my note: what is acquired via senses may be wrong but the senses themselves cannot be?)
“Whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together make five and a quadrilateral figure has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that one could ever suspect that such clear truths are false.” (my note: relative vs absolute truth: relative = logic; absolute = feeling? Can any truth be absolute? Relative truths will always be true)
“The author they assign to my origin” (my note: nice term)
“I am like a prisoner who happens to enjoy an imaginary freedom in his dreams and who subsequently begins to suspect that he is asleep and, afraid of being awakened, conspires silently with his agreeable illusions.” (my note: Matrix)
Meditation 2:
“I will set aside everything which is subject to the least doubt, until I discover something that is certain” (my note: search for fundamental truth)
“Am I so tied to a body and senses that I am incapable of existing without them?”
My note: sensing energy transfers i.e. signals; 5 senses + reason and emotion = 7 senses?
“However, I do not yet understand sufficiently who this 'I' is who now necessarily exists.” (my note: poetic)
“I thought that it did not belong in any way to the nature of body to have a power to move itself” (my note: very interesting: body intakes, mind controls i.e. outputs)
“It is possible that whatever pertains to the nature of bodies may be merely dreams” (my note: dreams and life are very similar at the end of either; on your death bed, what is the difference between the trip you took and the trip you dreamed you took?)
“But what, then, am I? A thinking thing. And what is that? A thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, and which also imagines and senses.”
“For example, I already see light, hear sound and feel heat. Those are false, because I am asleep. But I certainly seem to see, to hear and to get warm. This cannot be false. This is what is meant, strictly speaking, by me having a sensation and, understood precisely in this way, it is nothing other than thinking.” (my note: thinking is experience! It is the objects which are being doubted)
“It really is surprising that I understand more distinctly things which I realize are doubtful, unknown and foreign to me than what is true, what is known and, ultimately, what is myself.”
(my note: very interesting! How can I not know what I am?!)
“perceiving it is not a case of seeing, touching or imagining, it is an inspection of the mind alone” (my note: senses do not explain the world, they are primitive)
My note: human experience as a highly advanced radar machine
“even bodies are not perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagining, but perceived only by the mind, and they are not are perceived by being touched or seen but only by being understood”
Meditation 3:
My note: maybe thinking confirms feeling?
“I should examine whether God exists and, if he exists, whether it is possible that he is a deceiver. As long as this is unknown, I cannot see how I can ever be certain of anything else.” (God is Q#1)
“order seems to require that I classify all my thoughts into certain kinds and that I find out in which kinds truth or falsehood are properly found. [...] Some of these thoughts are called volitions or emotions, and others are called judgements. When ideas are considered only in themselves, since I do not refer them to anything else they cannot be false; there is no danger of falsehood in volitions or in emotions; only judgements is where I have to be careful not to be mistaken.” (my note: emotions i.e. feeling, judgements i.e. thinking; experience is truth!)
My note: “thought” = mental experience, either emotion or judgement
“When I say here that I was taught this by nature I only mean that I am led to believe it by some spontaneous impulse and not that I have been shown that it is true by some natural light. There is a big difference between the two. For whatever is shown to me by the reason - for example, that from the fact that I doubt it follows that I exist, and similar things - cannot in any way be doubtful, because there cannot be another faculty which I trust as much as that light and which could teach me that the conclusion is not true.” (my note: “true” reality depends on doubt, there is no false reality without doubt; doubt relates to acceptance/control)
“Falsehood can occur only in judgments” (my note: vs affection or perception)
“the ideas I have of heat and cold are so lacking in clarity and distinctness that I cannot learn from them whether cold is merely a privation of heat or heat is a privation of cold, or whether both of them are real qualities or whether neither of them is.” (my note: same as well-being and distress)
“Even though I have an idea of a substance from the very fact that I am a substance myself, it would not, however, be an idea of an infinite substance because I am finite, unless it originated from some substance that is genuinely infinite.” (my note: His logic for God)
My note: moments require time but time requires memory
“I am not concerned at this stage with the cause that produced me in the past but much more with the cause that maintains me in existence at present.” (my note: why do I continue to exist?)
Meditation 4:
My note: God aka infinite creation; creation i.e. having been created i.e. being
“Remember to abstain from making a judgment when the truth about something is not clear.” (my note: acceptance)
Rosenfeld: the self-referentiality of thinking is what confirms it is true.
My note: is metaphysics just the study of applied infinity?
Meditation 5:
“Are all the things that I am thinking about now any more true than what occurs to me when I am asleep? But even that does not change anything because surely, if I am dreaming, on condition that something is evident to my understanding it is entirely true.” (my note: logical consistency confirms truth)
Meditation 6:
“It was evidently reasonable to believe that I sensed various things which were clearly distinct from my thought, namely the bodies from which those ideas originated. For I experienced that those ideas would come to me without any consent on my part”
“Ideas perceived by sensation originated from other things [...] I easily convinced myself that I had absolutely nothing in my mind which did not originate in sensation.”
“I was aware of pain and the titillation of pleasure in its parts, but not in other bodies that were situated outside me” (my note: what about empathy?)
“many experiences undermined little by little all my faith in the senses” (my note: how can you not trust pain when you feel it?)
“There is also in me a certain passive faculty for sensing, or for receiving and knowing the ideas of sensible things, but I would not be able to use it in any way unless there also existed an active faculty, either in me or in something else, for producing or causing those ideas.” (my note: very interesting!)
“Sensory perceptions signify to the mind what is beneficial or harmful; I use them as if they were guaranteed rules for the immediate discovery of the essence of external bodies, whereas they provide only very obscure and confused perceptions of them.” (my note: emotional; thinking is for benefit later)
“I can also use my memory, which links present sensations with previous sensations, as well as my understanding, which has already looked into all the causes of error”
My note: memory is one of the senses?
Objections and responses:
“what is the cause of something which does not actually exist and which is nothing but a mere name?” (my note: i.e. what is creativity)
My note: are the 5 senses also relative truths? Yellow is only yellow relative to white or orange
“I want to know if the souls of those who are fast asleep and not dreaming are thinking. If they are not, then they have no ideas during that time.” (my note: if experience is existence, what about dreamless sleep, unconsciousness?)
“The substance that operates is still hidden from you. Hence the following comparison comes to mind: you could be said to resemble a blind person who, when they feel heat and are advised that it comes from the sun, think they have a clear and distinct idea of the sun in the sense that, if anyone asks what the sun is, they can reply: it is a thing that produces heat.”
My note: the black room + 1 sense
“One must distinguish three levels of sensation. When the bodily organ is merely affected by external objects, that belongs to the first level; and this can be nothing more than the motion of particles of that sensory organ and the change in shape or position which results from that motion. The second level includes everything that follows immediately in the mind from the fact that it is united with this bodily organ; this includes perceptions of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, colours, sound, taste, smell, heat, cold and so on, which in the Sixth Meditation were said to arise from the union and, as it were, the merging of the mind with the body. The third level includes all the judgements, that we have been accustomed to make about external things since our earliest years, on the occasion of motions in a bodily organ.”
“Nothing more than [affection - i.e. “motion of the brain” - and perception] should be included in sensation if we wish to distinguish it carefully from the intellect.”
“The judgements which we make in our maturity as a result of new observations are more certain than those we made uncritically in our earliest years; and that is undoubtedly true. It is obvious that the first or second levels of sensation are not at issue in this context, because there can be no falsehood in those.”
My note: if there were no other people around, could hallucinations ever be discredited?
===
11 more pages of notes on Google Docs.
April 13, 2026
I’ll be honest of this collection I have only read the ‘Meditations on first philosophy…’ but I am certain that I will return to this in order to read the ‘other metaphysical works’ just as I am certain that at some point I will come back to read the meditations again.
Descartes writes the meditations at a time in which the certainty of religion is being questioned, the basis of society and knowledge and essentially everything in Europe. As a relatable king would, Descartes throws himself into an existential crisis and sets out on a thought experiment to free himself of everything he thinks he knows true and real, and then rebuild from the ground up until he has the things that he can be completely certain of.
It is written in a great to read eloquent french kinda way, and is a fun format in which he devotes 6 days to writing, one for each meditation, even at the ends and starts of meditations saying things like I am tired now I will rest on my ideas or I could not sleep last night troubled the ideas I reached yesterday. Idk if this was all literal or if he wanted to write it in a more romantic way but it adds a fun cuteness either way.
Descartes sets about to question everything he thinks he knows, and I mean everything, he says well I think I have hands, but then says well how can I be sure I am a being with hands. When I have fantastic dreams I am convinced that fantasies are real when in them, how can anyone be certain they have hands and aren’t handless creatures dreaming of having them. He says I think I can trust my senses in understanding the world around me however I trust my sight when I see the spire of a church thinking it is small but when closer realise in reality it is large, maybe you’ve seen a friend from afar then when they got closer you realised it was someone else. You were sure, due to what your senses told you, that that was your friend of that the church spire was small, but your senses were wrong, why can’t they be wrong about other things? Essentially in the first meditation he says well then I can’t actually be certain that the world around me is real, it could be a dream, and if it is real I can’t be certain that my senses are properly perceiving the reality of the world around me.
Sorry for anyone going through an existential crisis hoping that this text can give you a solid foundation, Descartes examines everything he thinks he knows and finally comes to the conclusion that all I can be certain of is that I am a thinking being. Descartes famously writes what may be philosophies most famous statement Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am. (This actually comes in a different text though in this one he does state the slightly less sexy and monumental statement of ‘I am, I exist.’ Not really as catchy and kind of obvious mate but he reaches the same conclusion all the same).
So anyway I can be sure that I am a thinking being, I cant be certain that I’m a being as I normally perceive it (that is a human), and to be honest I cant even be certain that my thoughts are mine, there could be an evil demon that exists that’s sole purpose of existence is to make me believe that I have hands when I actually don’t (yes that is an actual idea that Decartes presents)
Descartes was writing in a time were you could get blocked, arrested or killed for denying god’s existence so funnily enough when he questions everything he makes sure to say uhm dw guys I can’t be sure that I have hands but I can be sure that gods definitely real. I could’ve probably read his arguments for God slower and I will definitely read through these parts again (because they can be hard to understand quickly) (at least for me) (just a humble fella trying to understand the ideas of a man renound as a revolutionary mind of not just philosophy but maths aswell) but anyway he does have some complicated and eloquently ineloquent ideas to justify God that can be a bit tricky. The idea that nowhere around us can we see a being that is omnipresent and omnipowerful, so because we don’t see it around us but we can still fathom it we must be born with this idea and it must be innately instilled within us by this omnipowerful creator. Again I will reread but he has some complicated argument like that things have obvious existence such as a rock being grey and hard but also that objects have a further essence to them and something about how we can imagine objects having an infinite essence beyond physicality so there must be an infinite being beyond physicality. Bro got a lil creative what can I say, but he presents some fun challenging ideas to follow and he writes them quite elegantly so give it a go.
Pretty sure he’s supposed to be ‘that bitch’ when it comes to the school of rationalism and he does present interesting ideas of knowledge being created in the mind, instead of knowledge deriving from experience. He uses the example of a block of wax. Some would argue (Empiricists) that I know what a block of wax is because of the way it looks, feels, smells, sounds etc. However as Descartes hold the wax to flames the way the wax looks changes, it feels different, smells different, makes a different sound when you knock on it. However, despite the fact it no longer follows those original ideas presented by the senses that you originally related to a block of wax, you still know that it is a block of wax. So Descartes argues that in the mind you create the idea of the essence of the body of wax and its existence, not that its existence is what forms its idea.
To continue my wax-themed tangent he says that if you melt it the wax can take any number of shapes, more than I can know from experience ‘I (could not) correctly judge what this wax is unless I thought it could assume many more variations in extension than I have ever grasped in my imagination. I have to concede, then,… that I can perceive it only with my mind’ so then ‘perceiving… is not a case of seeing, touching, or imagining,… but an inspection of the mind alone.’ Or for another example, if I see a person with a hat and coat on from behind my senses in no way provide me with the properties of a person, my eyes do not see the properties tied to a human, my hands do not feel human properties, my nose not the smell and so on but yet I know that is a person.
That knowledge of an object is the idea of the object created in the mind that I then tie to that object instead of the knowledge of the object coming from the perceived experiences of it i.e the way it looks, feels, smells. So objects in reality are not necessarily tied to the ideas that our senses present to us and that we create the idea of that object and as recipients of human senses associate it with the senses that we feel as a result of its existence. For another example, you or I would say that fire is painful to be near. When we go near a fire, we feel pain, so fire must be painful. However the bricks in my fireplace are close to my fire but have no pain. The pain that comes from the fire is not an innate quality of the fire, it is how I as a human with nerves perceive the fire, and then as a result tie the idea of pain to the fire.
The essence of flames theorised in eloquent literary terms, call that a pretty fire idea 🔥🔥💯💯
He also presents the ideas of mind-body dualism. That my body, the sense it perceives, and the world around it are limited. My body, and the external world, are limited to the laws of physics. Whereas my mind is not. A rock cannot suddenly start randomly floating about, my body cannot lift buildings, the physical rock and my physical body are both limited to the things that they are and the things that they are capable of, due to those pesky laws of physics and nature that apply to them. However my mind, as the creator of ideas, and not limited to really any boundaries can go wild and imagine whatever it wants, things that are outside the laws of physics, for example wow in my head that rock has just decided to become a massive dragon isn’t that brilliant and totally implausible in the laws of the external world but completely possible in my limitless mind. Leads us to stoic Epictetus-style questions then, is my body an extension of me? Well i can control it. But what am I? Am I my mind and my body? Am I just my mind? But to some extent I can control my body? But my body is also at the whim of the physical world, which my mind is not, if you chop off all my limbs I am still me? If you removed my consciousness from my body is that still me? Lowk Descartes awnsers this. I am a thinking thing and I am my mind and despite my body being separate from my mind it would be ridiculous to say it is not an extension of me. My arms are more ME than a rock even though both are separate from my mind and in the physical world which my mind is not. Im like a human mech where my mech suit is limited to physics aswell as the suits sight, hearing, smell etc. perceived by its eyes, ears, and nose, and I as the passenger have access to the information it takes in through these and act on it to move through the physical world but am also capable of much more than my physical suits world and senses. (You may be shocked to hear that I’ve just made up this idea, that it is not presented by one of history’s smartest minds, in the 1640s)
Yh anyways he basically says that we can’t be certain that the world is real, I can’t be certain that the sky is blue, or that the sky exists, or that anything I perceive as the real world exists. But in the end he kind of ties stuff back to God and said well God is all good and powerful so he would not deceive me, and that my ideas of the essence of objects are tied to my ideas of the essence of God so while I cant be certain of my senses I can probably be pretty sure that they’re right, and he does explicitly states that only a madman would say that nothing around him is real. (Wth was the point of reading all that then mate)
So there you go only 50 something pages, a real whirlwind, some mind crunching ideas that will have you really flexing your brain muscle to fully realise. He sets in your mind the idea that well you cant actually be sure if you’re real or if the world is real. And after setting that wonderful terrifying precedent he basically leaves you to it and the only comfort he gives you to deal with this terrifying idea is essentially ‘eh idk ig its probably all real, God and that, you’ll be alright.’ Thanks René Descartes, thanks a lot.
Worth the read tho. 4/5
Descartes writes the meditations at a time in which the certainty of religion is being questioned, the basis of society and knowledge and essentially everything in Europe. As a relatable king would, Descartes throws himself into an existential crisis and sets out on a thought experiment to free himself of everything he thinks he knows true and real, and then rebuild from the ground up until he has the things that he can be completely certain of.
It is written in a great to read eloquent french kinda way, and is a fun format in which he devotes 6 days to writing, one for each meditation, even at the ends and starts of meditations saying things like I am tired now I will rest on my ideas or I could not sleep last night troubled the ideas I reached yesterday. Idk if this was all literal or if he wanted to write it in a more romantic way but it adds a fun cuteness either way.
Descartes sets about to question everything he thinks he knows, and I mean everything, he says well I think I have hands, but then says well how can I be sure I am a being with hands. When I have fantastic dreams I am convinced that fantasies are real when in them, how can anyone be certain they have hands and aren’t handless creatures dreaming of having them. He says I think I can trust my senses in understanding the world around me however I trust my sight when I see the spire of a church thinking it is small but when closer realise in reality it is large, maybe you’ve seen a friend from afar then when they got closer you realised it was someone else. You were sure, due to what your senses told you, that that was your friend of that the church spire was small, but your senses were wrong, why can’t they be wrong about other things? Essentially in the first meditation he says well then I can’t actually be certain that the world around me is real, it could be a dream, and if it is real I can’t be certain that my senses are properly perceiving the reality of the world around me.
Sorry for anyone going through an existential crisis hoping that this text can give you a solid foundation, Descartes examines everything he thinks he knows and finally comes to the conclusion that all I can be certain of is that I am a thinking being. Descartes famously writes what may be philosophies most famous statement Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am. (This actually comes in a different text though in this one he does state the slightly less sexy and monumental statement of ‘I am, I exist.’ Not really as catchy and kind of obvious mate but he reaches the same conclusion all the same).
So anyway I can be sure that I am a thinking being, I cant be certain that I’m a being as I normally perceive it (that is a human), and to be honest I cant even be certain that my thoughts are mine, there could be an evil demon that exists that’s sole purpose of existence is to make me believe that I have hands when I actually don’t (yes that is an actual idea that Decartes presents)
Descartes was writing in a time were you could get blocked, arrested or killed for denying god’s existence so funnily enough when he questions everything he makes sure to say uhm dw guys I can’t be sure that I have hands but I can be sure that gods definitely real. I could’ve probably read his arguments for God slower and I will definitely read through these parts again (because they can be hard to understand quickly) (at least for me) (just a humble fella trying to understand the ideas of a man renound as a revolutionary mind of not just philosophy but maths aswell) but anyway he does have some complicated and eloquently ineloquent ideas to justify God that can be a bit tricky. The idea that nowhere around us can we see a being that is omnipresent and omnipowerful, so because we don’t see it around us but we can still fathom it we must be born with this idea and it must be innately instilled within us by this omnipowerful creator. Again I will reread but he has some complicated argument like that things have obvious existence such as a rock being grey and hard but also that objects have a further essence to them and something about how we can imagine objects having an infinite essence beyond physicality so there must be an infinite being beyond physicality. Bro got a lil creative what can I say, but he presents some fun challenging ideas to follow and he writes them quite elegantly so give it a go.
Pretty sure he’s supposed to be ‘that bitch’ when it comes to the school of rationalism and he does present interesting ideas of knowledge being created in the mind, instead of knowledge deriving from experience. He uses the example of a block of wax. Some would argue (Empiricists) that I know what a block of wax is because of the way it looks, feels, smells, sounds etc. However as Descartes hold the wax to flames the way the wax looks changes, it feels different, smells different, makes a different sound when you knock on it. However, despite the fact it no longer follows those original ideas presented by the senses that you originally related to a block of wax, you still know that it is a block of wax. So Descartes argues that in the mind you create the idea of the essence of the body of wax and its existence, not that its existence is what forms its idea.
To continue my wax-themed tangent he says that if you melt it the wax can take any number of shapes, more than I can know from experience ‘I (could not) correctly judge what this wax is unless I thought it could assume many more variations in extension than I have ever grasped in my imagination. I have to concede, then,… that I can perceive it only with my mind’ so then ‘perceiving… is not a case of seeing, touching, or imagining,… but an inspection of the mind alone.’ Or for another example, if I see a person with a hat and coat on from behind my senses in no way provide me with the properties of a person, my eyes do not see the properties tied to a human, my hands do not feel human properties, my nose not the smell and so on but yet I know that is a person.
That knowledge of an object is the idea of the object created in the mind that I then tie to that object instead of the knowledge of the object coming from the perceived experiences of it i.e the way it looks, feels, smells. So objects in reality are not necessarily tied to the ideas that our senses present to us and that we create the idea of that object and as recipients of human senses associate it with the senses that we feel as a result of its existence. For another example, you or I would say that fire is painful to be near. When we go near a fire, we feel pain, so fire must be painful. However the bricks in my fireplace are close to my fire but have no pain. The pain that comes from the fire is not an innate quality of the fire, it is how I as a human with nerves perceive the fire, and then as a result tie the idea of pain to the fire.
The essence of flames theorised in eloquent literary terms, call that a pretty fire idea 🔥🔥💯💯
He also presents the ideas of mind-body dualism. That my body, the sense it perceives, and the world around it are limited. My body, and the external world, are limited to the laws of physics. Whereas my mind is not. A rock cannot suddenly start randomly floating about, my body cannot lift buildings, the physical rock and my physical body are both limited to the things that they are and the things that they are capable of, due to those pesky laws of physics and nature that apply to them. However my mind, as the creator of ideas, and not limited to really any boundaries can go wild and imagine whatever it wants, things that are outside the laws of physics, for example wow in my head that rock has just decided to become a massive dragon isn’t that brilliant and totally implausible in the laws of the external world but completely possible in my limitless mind. Leads us to stoic Epictetus-style questions then, is my body an extension of me? Well i can control it. But what am I? Am I my mind and my body? Am I just my mind? But to some extent I can control my body? But my body is also at the whim of the physical world, which my mind is not, if you chop off all my limbs I am still me? If you removed my consciousness from my body is that still me? Lowk Descartes awnsers this. I am a thinking thing and I am my mind and despite my body being separate from my mind it would be ridiculous to say it is not an extension of me. My arms are more ME than a rock even though both are separate from my mind and in the physical world which my mind is not. Im like a human mech where my mech suit is limited to physics aswell as the suits sight, hearing, smell etc. perceived by its eyes, ears, and nose, and I as the passenger have access to the information it takes in through these and act on it to move through the physical world but am also capable of much more than my physical suits world and senses. (You may be shocked to hear that I’ve just made up this idea, that it is not presented by one of history’s smartest minds, in the 1640s)
Yh anyways he basically says that we can’t be certain that the world is real, I can’t be certain that the sky is blue, or that the sky exists, or that anything I perceive as the real world exists. But in the end he kind of ties stuff back to God and said well God is all good and powerful so he would not deceive me, and that my ideas of the essence of objects are tied to my ideas of the essence of God so while I cant be certain of my senses I can probably be pretty sure that they’re right, and he does explicitly states that only a madman would say that nothing around him is real. (Wth was the point of reading all that then mate)
So there you go only 50 something pages, a real whirlwind, some mind crunching ideas that will have you really flexing your brain muscle to fully realise. He sets in your mind the idea that well you cant actually be sure if you’re real or if the world is real. And after setting that wonderful terrifying precedent he basically leaves you to it and the only comfort he gives you to deal with this terrifying idea is essentially ‘eh idk ig its probably all real, God and that, you’ll be alright.’ Thanks René Descartes, thanks a lot.
Worth the read tho. 4/5
October 28, 2016
In his Meditations Descartes tries to discard everything that he thinks he knows about what he is, and builds from the foundations up using his famous methodical doubt. Taking in what it is to be human, the Cogito principle, Cartesian duality, the existence of god, and the nature of error, he finally reaches a point where he can be secure about what it is possible to know in a clear and defined way.
Written in 1641, Descartes didn't have the full support of the theological colleges, and this edition helpfully attaches a selection from the Objections made to his Meditations.
For us, the kind of circular reasoning that Descartes demonstrates might not stand up, and certainly we have a very different view of the connection between mind and body following neuroscientific knowledge and ongoing research. But Descartes is important for the scientific methodology he tries to instil, and the fundamental nature of the questions he asks, even if some of our answers might be different.
His style isn't always the easiest to understand, as he tends to ramble and be quite repetitive - but for anyone wanting to get a handle on the early modern conception of the mind/body link, modern philosophy or the Enlightenment and the ideas which followed, Descartes is fundamental.
Written in 1641, Descartes didn't have the full support of the theological colleges, and this edition helpfully attaches a selection from the Objections made to his Meditations.
For us, the kind of circular reasoning that Descartes demonstrates might not stand up, and certainly we have a very different view of the connection between mind and body following neuroscientific knowledge and ongoing research. But Descartes is important for the scientific methodology he tries to instil, and the fundamental nature of the questions he asks, even if some of our answers might be different.
His style isn't always the easiest to understand, as he tends to ramble and be quite repetitive - but for anyone wanting to get a handle on the early modern conception of the mind/body link, modern philosophy or the Enlightenment and the ideas which followed, Descartes is fundamental.
January 29, 2023
This is one of the most overhyped, underwhelming and hilariously meandering books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. His entire premise is to question everything in existence and consciousness itself and arrives at “I think therefore I am”. This is one of the few bits of philosophy in western cannon that almost everyone believes to be true EXCEPT the fact that he never questions this conclusion.
What about people in coma’s? Vegetable states of living? Are they not because they can’t think?
It’s a cheap vague one liner that becomes stupider the more you think about it in context. The only reason I believe that it is popular is because most people haven’t read the book and are unaware of his mission, so it seems vaguely like a scrap of ancient wisdom.
No wonder the queen hated his lesssons and letters, I would have aswell.
What about people in coma’s? Vegetable states of living? Are they not because they can’t think?
It’s a cheap vague one liner that becomes stupider the more you think about it in context. The only reason I believe that it is popular is because most people haven’t read the book and are unaware of his mission, so it seems vaguely like a scrap of ancient wisdom.
No wonder the queen hated his lesssons and letters, I would have aswell.
March 30, 2018
I struggled with what to rate this book. The points for it are that the translation is very readable and therefore the arguments are as easy to follow as they could possibly be (which is often not very easy), and that the work itself is a seminal piece of philosophy that has informed most philosophy that came afterward. However, once Descartes “proves” the existence of God, he uses that to then prove almost everything else that he asserts. If you don’t agree with his God proof, most of the book can be said to rely on a faulty premise.
For those reasons I was torn between giving this book two or three stars. I ultimately decided to give it two because I don’t believe that the conclusions it draws stand up to scrutiny.
For those reasons I was torn between giving this book two or three stars. I ultimately decided to give it two because I don’t believe that the conclusions it draws stand up to scrutiny.
July 24, 2021
Descartes was incredibly bold in the strong conclusions he drew around Cogito Ergo Sum, and probably disregarded legitimate arguments against his primary conclusions to his detriment. That said, he has a humility in the face of a greater reality (which he understood as God) that I think his detractors ignore to their detriment.
All told, his philosophy is brilliant; it is a wonderful place to start for those plagued with doubt.
All told, his philosophy is brilliant; it is a wonderful place to start for those plagued with doubt.
Read
June 4, 2013Conflicted, in that it was a well-written and, given the time period, well-reasoned group of arguments which are currently rather easily dismissed by applying evolutionary theory and the best of neuroscience. It was worth reading, as I think many things are, for cultural literacy and in this particular case for an appreciation of one of the brightest minds of the mid-17th century.
October 11, 2012
Descartes: an innovator in stoner thinking. His sentences may, at times, run on far too long, but his ideas are very original and creative.
February 13, 2024
I don't care about this kind of philosophy - not at this time.
I actually did a review:
https://withfreedomandbooks.blogspot....
I actually did a review:
https://withfreedomandbooks.blogspot....
November 25, 2019
I would be happy to meet a person so patient and considered in their thought process, at some point in my life.
March 22, 2020
confirmed, descartes smokes weed, would probably be 10/10 quarantine buddy
March 8, 2026
Reputation of this 1641 text aside, the nature of the project and the language used is dense! Be warned, the best way to really get to the crux of his ideas is to read this slowly!
This particular edition of Descartes Meditations is translated by Desmond Clarke, including an introduction by the Philosophy professor describing Descartes influences growing up in terms of the cultural, political and philosophical movements starting in the 17th century, and served as a very reasonable introduction to the Meditations indeed.
The Meditations, of which there are six, are complex, thoughtful and reflective accounts centred around two main cores. One, the mind-body distinction (dualism), the mind as the thinking thing and the body as a separate entity to our intellectual imagination and understanding. Two, the argument for the existence of God through careful stripping away of what can be doubtful, unlikely, questionable to arrive at logical reasoning for God's existence.
Descartes reflections on the nature of reality, metaphysical considerations and the role of physics and mathematics in what reality must be based on is extremely fascinating when it does appear in the work because you know of the legacy and gargantuan influence his work had on mathematics in the centuries that were to follow.
Descartes is a deeply reflective intellectual and this is noticeable as you read throughout his six meditations, as a result not all of it will make the same sense to us as first time readers as his thinking made to him. Herein lies a small frustration and the appreciation of why his work is so hugely critique-able!
Aside from the logic of his arguments (or lack of) my favourite of all the Meditations was the Fourth based on 'Truth and Falsehood' because I found the argument in this very straightforward and logical in that you are able to appreciate why he thinks the way he does but I say that from the position of a God-believing, religious person.
The chapter with questions and answers pertaining to 'The principles of Human Knowledge' was very interesting and more relatable. A couple of chapters at the end of the book include correspondences and replies between Descartes and notable others about scientific and mathematical queries.
I think some time should be spent reading Descartes major works before assuming anything is known about his philosophy and particularly the insight behind his 'cogito' argument. Therefore this book will now open up a route to some of his others as well as the connection of his work to that of other giants in the field of physics, mathematics and epistemological, metaphysical and theological philosophy at the very least.
For anyone interested in spotting the 'cogito' quote, this is not the work from which it has been derived. This could be found in 'Discourse on the Method' written in 1637.
This particular edition of Descartes Meditations is translated by Desmond Clarke, including an introduction by the Philosophy professor describing Descartes influences growing up in terms of the cultural, political and philosophical movements starting in the 17th century, and served as a very reasonable introduction to the Meditations indeed.
The Meditations, of which there are six, are complex, thoughtful and reflective accounts centred around two main cores. One, the mind-body distinction (dualism), the mind as the thinking thing and the body as a separate entity to our intellectual imagination and understanding. Two, the argument for the existence of God through careful stripping away of what can be doubtful, unlikely, questionable to arrive at logical reasoning for God's existence.
Descartes reflections on the nature of reality, metaphysical considerations and the role of physics and mathematics in what reality must be based on is extremely fascinating when it does appear in the work because you know of the legacy and gargantuan influence his work had on mathematics in the centuries that were to follow.
Descartes is a deeply reflective intellectual and this is noticeable as you read throughout his six meditations, as a result not all of it will make the same sense to us as first time readers as his thinking made to him. Herein lies a small frustration and the appreciation of why his work is so hugely critique-able!
Aside from the logic of his arguments (or lack of) my favourite of all the Meditations was the Fourth based on 'Truth and Falsehood' because I found the argument in this very straightforward and logical in that you are able to appreciate why he thinks the way he does but I say that from the position of a God-believing, religious person.
The chapter with questions and answers pertaining to 'The principles of Human Knowledge' was very interesting and more relatable. A couple of chapters at the end of the book include correspondences and replies between Descartes and notable others about scientific and mathematical queries.
I think some time should be spent reading Descartes major works before assuming anything is known about his philosophy and particularly the insight behind his 'cogito' argument. Therefore this book will now open up a route to some of his others as well as the connection of his work to that of other giants in the field of physics, mathematics and epistemological, metaphysical and theological philosophy at the very least.
For anyone interested in spotting the 'cogito' quote, this is not the work from which it has been derived. This could be found in 'Discourse on the Method' written in 1637.
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