Meditations on First Philosophy

Summary

Meditationes de prima philosophia, published in Paris in 1641, compresses Descartes's metaphysics into six meditations, each imagined as a day's reflection by a solitary thinker seated by the fire in a dressing gown. The book was issued with six sets of Objections from learned readers (Caterus, Mersenne's circle, Hobbes, Arnauld, Gassendi and others) and Descartes's Replies, which are longer than the Meditations themselves; a second edition (Amsterdam, 1642) added the Jesuit Bourdin's Seventh Objections. The first meditation clears the ground. Since the senses sometimes deceive, the meditator resolves to withhold assent from everything that can be doubted. He considers madmen who believe they are kings when they are paupers or that their heads are made of earthenware or their bodies of glass, and rejects the comparison, only to recall that in dreams he has believed himself dressed by the fire while lying undressed in bed. Even mathematics might be false if an all-powerful God, or an evil genius supremely powerful and cunning, deceives him. The second meditation finds a fixed point: however much he is deceived, he must exist in order to be deceived, so the proposition 'I am, I exist' is necessarily true whenever it is thought. What he is, so far, is only a thinking thing, one that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, imagines and senses. A piece of beeswax, which keeps its identity through melting when its every sensory quality changes, shows that bodies too are known by the intellect rather than the senses. The third meditation argues from the idea of an infinite, perfect being in his finite mind to the existence of God as its only possible cause, and the fourth explains error as the result of a finite intellect combined with an unlimited will that assents beyond what it clearly perceives. The fifth meditation offers a second proof of God, that existence belongs to the essence of a supremely perfect being as necessarily as three angles equal to two right angles belong to a triangle, and argues that the certainty of geometry depends on knowing God. The sixth meditation restores the material world: because a non-deceiving God has given us a strong inclination to believe our ideas of bodies come from bodies, bodies exist, though they are only what geometry describes, extension in length, breadth and depth. Mind and body are really distinct substances, since each can be clearly conceived without the other. Yet the meditator is not lodged in his body like a pilot in a ship; hunger, thirst and pain show that mind and body form a kind of unity. The meditation ends with a physiology of error: pain felt in an amputated limb, the thirst of a patient with dropsy, and the transmission of motion along nerves to the brain show how a well-designed body can sometimes mislead, and the closing paragraph dismisses the hyperbolic doubt about dreaming, since waking experience coheres with memory as dreams do not.

Plot or Argument

• Dedicatory letter and Synopsis

  Descartes addresses the theology faculty of the Sorbonne, presenting the work as a proof of God and of the soul's distinction from the body against unbelievers, and summarises each meditation.

• First Meditation: what can be called into doubt

  Sensory error, the madmen with heads of earthenware or bodies of glass, the dream argument, and finally a deceiving God or evil genius bring everything into doubt.

• Second Meditation: the mind better known than the body

  'I am, I exist' survives every doubt. The self is a thinking thing; the wax example shows that even bodies are grasped by the intellect's inspection, not by sense or imagination.

• Third Meditation: the idea of God

  Classifying ideas as innate, adventitious or invented, Descartes argues that the idea of infinite perfection must be caused by an actually infinite being, the 'trademark' left by the maker.

• Fourth Meditation: truth and falsity

  God is no deceiver; error arises when the will, which is infinite in scope, affirms what the finite intellect does not clearly and distinctly perceive. The remedy is to suspend judgement.

• Fifth Meditation: the essence of material things and God again

  Mathematical essences are discovered, not invented; the ontological argument shows that a supremely perfect being must exist; all certain knowledge depends on knowing God.

• Sixth Meditation: the body, the senses and the union

  Imagination differs from pure understanding; bodies exist; mind and body are really distinct but closely joined. Nature teaches through sensations that serve preservation, and errors such as phantom pain and dropsical thirst are explained by nerve mechanics.

• Objections and Replies

  Critics press the circularity of relying on clear and distinct perception to prove God who guarantees it (the 'Cartesian circle', Arnauld), challenge whether a thinking thing could be a body (Hobbes, Gassendi), and question the idea of God; Descartes answers each in turn.

Characters

• The meditator, first-person narrator

  A thinker who resolves once in his life to demolish all his opinions and rebuild knowledge on certain foundations.

• The evil genius (malin génie), hypothetical deceiver

  A supremely powerful and cunning spirit imagined in Meditation I to make every belief, even mathematics, doubtful.

• God, guarantor of knowledge

  The perfect, non-deceiving being whose existence Meditations III and V prove and whose veracity restores trust in clear perception and the senses.

• The objectors, critics in the Objections

  Including Thomas Hobbes, Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Gassendi, Marin Mersenne and Pierre Bourdin, whose criticisms were printed with Descartes's replies.

Lessons

• Doubt used as a method, not a mood

  Descartes doubts systematically and temporarily, in order to find what cannot be doubted. The Meditations distinguish a disciplined procedure of suspending belief from the sceptic's lasting uncertainty.

  • Why does Descartes reject the comparison with madmen but accept the dream argument?
  • Is the evil genius hypothesis a real possibility or just a tool?
  • What survives Descartes's doubt, and is it enough to rebuild knowledge?

• The self known as a thinking thing

  The second meditation identifies the self with its thinking before establishing that it has a body. That starting point has shaped centuries of debate over whether minds can be understood apart from brains.

  • Does 'I am, I exist' prove that a self exists, or only that thinking is occurring?
  • What does the wax example show about how we know physical objects?

• Not a pilot in a ship

  Even after arguing that mind and body are distinct substances, Descartes insists that sensations like hunger and pain show an intimate union. The sixth meditation is less dualist in feeling than its reputation suggests.

  • How does pain show Descartes that he is not merely lodged in his body?
  • Can a substance dualist explain how a thought moves a limb?

• When a healthy design misleads

  Descartes explains phantom limb pain and the thirst of dropsy as cases where a mechanism that usually serves survival produces false signals. The argument anticipates modern ideas of adaptive systems misfiring in disease.

  • Why does Descartes think these errors are compatible with a benevolent creator?
  • How might his nerve-and-brain explanation of phantom pain compare with current neuroscience?

Context

The Meditations appeared amid the scientific revolution and the condemnation of Galileo (1633), which led Descartes to suppress his own physical treatise The World. Revived Pyrrhonism, transmitted through Montaigne and Charron, made scepticism a live challenge, and the Catholic and Protestant establishments were wary of new philosophy. Descartes hoped the Meditations, approved by theologians, would win acceptance for the mechanical physics they quietly underwrote.

Composition

Descartes drafted a short metaphysical treatise in 1629 and sketched its arguments in Part IV of the Discourse on Method (1637). He wrote the Meditations in Latin around 1639–1640 and sent them through Marin Mersenne to scholars for objections. The first edition (Paris, Michel Soly, 1641) carried six sets of objections and replies; the second (Amsterdam, Elzevir, 1642) added the seventh. The French translation by the duc de Luynes, revised by Descartes, appeared in 1647. John Veitch's English translation was published in 1853 and frequently reprinted.

Reception

The Meditations made Cartesianism the dominant new philosophy in Europe and provoked lasting controversy; Utrecht and Leiden banned teaching it in the 1640s, and Descartes's works were placed on the Index in 1663. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia's letters of 1643 pressed the question of how an unextended mind can move a body, still called the mind–body problem. Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke and Hume all responded, and twentieth-century critics such as Gilbert Ryle ('the ghost in the machine') and Antonio Damasio (Descartes' Error) made the book a symbol of disembodied rationalism.

Comparisons

• discourse-on-method

  The Discourse tells the autobiographical story of Descartes's method and gives the French 'je pense, donc je suis'; the Meditations rework the same argument in Latin without the 'therefore', for learned readers.

• the-passions-of-the-soul

  Descartes's last book develops the union of mind and body only gestured at in the sixth meditation, introducing the pineal gland and the animal spirits to explain emotion.

• essays-montaigne

  Montaigne's 'Apology for Raymond Sebond' assembles the sceptical arguments, dreams and deceiving senses included, that the first meditation deploys and then sets out to defeat.

• ethics

  Spinoza wrote a geometrical exposition of Descartes's principles before rejecting his two substances in favour of one, abolishing the interaction problem the sixth meditation leaves open.

• leviathan

  Hobbes wrote the Third Objections, arguing that a thinking thing may be corporeal; Leviathan builds a wholly material psychology against which Descartes's thinking substance stands.

• an-essay-concerning-human-understanding

  Locke rejects Descartes's innate ideas and grounds knowledge in experience, while retaining a similar distinction between primary and secondary qualities of bodies.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The dedicatory letter to the theology faculty of the Sorbonne, where Descartes presents the book as a defense of God's existence and the soul's distinction from the body. Keep it in mind when the first meditation seems to doubt everything.
• The three escalating grounds for doubt in Meditation I: the senses that sometimes deceive, the madmen and the dream of sitting by the fire, and finally an all-powerful deceiver or evil genius. Notice what each new stage puts in doubt that the last one could not.
• The fixed point in Meditation II, that the meditator must exist whenever he thinks it, followed at once by the question of what this I is. Watch how he moves from the fact that he exists to the claim that he is a thinking thing.
• The piece of beeswax in Meditation II, which loses its taste, smell, color, shape, and hardness by the fire yet remains the same wax. Ask what faculty Descartes thinks actually knows it.
• The examples at the end of Meditation VI: pain felt in an amputated limb and the thirst of a patient with dropsy. Notice how Descartes uses them to show that the body, though well designed by God, can still mislead.

Key terms and names

Method of doubt

Descartes's resolution in Meditation I to withhold assent from any belief that admits the slightest doubt, so as to find what cannot be doubted. It is a deliberate exercise, not a statement that he actually believes nothing.

Evil genius (malin génie)

The supremely powerful and cunning deceiver Descartes imagines at the end of Meditation I. It lets him doubt even arithmetic and geometry, which neither dreams nor sensory error could touch.

Thinking thing (res cogitans)

Descartes's answer in Meditation II to the question of what he is: a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, imagines, and senses. He argues that he knows this self more clearly than any body.

Clear and distinct perception

The standard of truth Descartes draws from the certainty of his own existence in Meditation III. In Meditation IV he argues that error comes only when the will affirms what the intellect has not perceived clearly and distinctly.

Trademark argument

The proof in Meditation III that the idea of an infinite, perfect being in a finite mind must have been placed there by such a being, as a craftsman leaves his mark on his work.

Ontological argument

The second proof of God in Meditation V: existence belongs to the essence of a supremely perfect being as necessarily as the sum of its angles belongs to a triangle, so such a being must exist.

Cartesian circle

The objection, pressed by Arnauld in the Fourth Objections, that Descartes uses clear and distinct perception to prove God and then uses God to guarantee clear and distinct perception. His reply is one of the most debated passages in the book.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does the meditator set aside the comparison with madmen in Meditation I, and why does the dream argument succeed where that comparison did not?
2. Comprehension What changes in the beeswax when it is brought near the fire in Meditation II, and what does Descartes conclude remains the same?
3. Comprehension How does Meditation IV explain human error if God is perfect and does not deceive?
4. Interpretation Descartes says the self is not lodged in the body like a pilot in a ship, yet he also holds that mind and body are really distinct. Can both claims be true?
5. Interpretation The book is dedicated to theologians as a proof of God and the soul, but its first move is to doubt everything. Does the method of doubt serve faith or put it at risk?
6. Interpretation Hobbes and Gassendi argued in their Objections that a thinking thing might be a body. What in Meditations II and VI would Descartes point to in reply, and is his reply convincing?
7. Interpretation Why does Descartes need God to restore trust in the senses in Meditation VI, and what would be left of the material world without that step?
8. Big Question Descartes begins from the certainty of his own thinking and reasons outward to God and the world. Is the self the right place to begin the search for truth?

Faith Connections

• Hebrews 6:18 (Scripture)

  The writer of Hebrews says it is impossible for God to lie. Meditation IV builds on the same conviction: because God is no deceiver, errors must come from the misuse of human freedom, not from the way God made the mind.

• Romans 1:19-20 (Scripture)

  Paul says that God's invisible attributes are clearly seen through the things that are made, so that those who deny him are without excuse. Descartes cites this passage in his dedicatory letter to support his claim that God's existence can be shown by natural reason.

• Augustine, City of God XI.26 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine answered the skeptics by saying that if he is deceived, he exists, since one who does not exist cannot be deceived. Arnauld pointed out this anticipation in the Fourth Objections, and comparing the two shows how Augustine's certainty leads to the Trinity in the soul while Descartes's leads to a method.

• Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Great Conversation)

  Pascal, a younger contemporary and a mathematician himself, judged Descartes's philosophy useless and uncertain for the questions that matter most, and in his Memorial set the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob against the God of the philosophers. His objection is aimed at the very proofs of Meditations III and V.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Whatever can be doubted cannot serve as a foundation for knowledge, and the senses, dreams, and the possibility of an all-powerful deceiver put almost everything in doubt. Yet one thing survives: whenever I think, I must exist, so I am at least a thinking thing. Among my ideas is the idea of an infinite, perfect being, which my finite mind could not have produced, so God exists, and a perfect God is no deceiver. Therefore what I perceive clearly and distinctly is true, and from this I can rebuild knowledge of mathematics, of the distinction of mind and body, and of the existence of the material world.

Rhetorical device: hypothetical thought experiment. At the end of Meditation I, Descartes imagines an evil genius of utmost power and cunning who employs all his energy to deceive him. The device turns an abstract skeptical worry into a vivid adversary the reader can picture, and it raises the stakes so that whatever survives the test will seem beyond doubt.

Debate: Resolved: Descartes's method of doubt does more to strengthen religious belief than to weaken it.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Meditation II claims that the mind is better known than the body. Using the evil genius, the I am, I exist, and the example of the beeswax, reconstruct Descartes's argument and evaluate whether it proves that the mind is distinct from the body or only that we know it differently.

Comparison with Pensees: Descartes reasons from the certainty of his own thinking to the existence of God; Pascal insists that the heart has reasons and that the God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham. Compare how each understands the relation between reason and faith, and argue which offers the stronger account of how a person comes to know God.

Medical Lens

The Meditations are the classical statement of mind–body dualism, the position against which much of modern psychiatry, neurology and psychosomatic medicine has defined itself, often polemically (Damasio's Descartes' Error). Close reading shows a more embodied Descartes: the sixth meditation insists on the felt union of mind and body and gives mechanistic explanations of sensation via nerves and brain. The first meditation's madmen, who believe their heads are earthenware or their bodies made of glass, refer to the 'glass delusion' recorded by early modern physicians, a historically specific form of delusion. Meditation VI discusses phantom limb pain reported by amputees and the pathological thirst of dropsy (oedema) as examples of nature's signals misfiring. The dream argument makes dreaming a central problem for epistemology. Retrospective readings of Descartes's own 1619 dreams as evidence of a mental crisis are speculative.

• Meditation I

  The meditator considers madmen whose brains are disturbed by black bile, who believe they are kings, or that their heads are earthenware or their bodies glass.

  Madness PsychosisHumoral Medicine
• Meditation I

  The dream argument: no certain marks distinguish waking from sleeping.

  Dreams NightmaresSleep Insomnia
• Meditation II

  Identification of the self as a thinking thing whose existence is certain independent of any knowledge of the body.

  Mind BodyPsychology Unconscious
• Meditation VI

  Argument for the real distinction of mind and body, followed by the claim that the mind is not in the body as a pilot in a ship, as hunger, thirst and pain show.

  Mind BodyPainStarvation Nutrition
• Meditation VI

  Phantom pain felt by those whose arm or leg has been amputated, used to show that the senses can mislead about the location of pain.

  PainSurgeryDisability Deformity
• Meditation VI

  Nerves compared to a cord whose pull at any point produces the same motion in the brain; the dropsical patient's thirst as a natural signal that harms the sick body.

  Anatomy DissectionMind BodyPhysicians Doctors

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Is the familiar charge that Descartes split mind from body fair? Use the 'not a pilot in a ship' passage to argue for a more embodied reading.

• Fiction

  Write a short story about one of the 'glass men' Descartes mentions in Meditation I, a seventeenth-century patient who believes his body will shatter if touched.

• Dialogue

  Dramatise the 1643 correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes as a face-to-face conversation about how a soul can move an arm.

• Classroom

  Run a six-day reading in which students keep a meditation journal, matching one day to each meditation and recording what they find they can and cannot doubt.

Further Reading

• Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, Princess Elisabeth and René Descartes, ed. Lisa Shapiro

• Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Bernard Williams

• Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, Stephen Gaukroger

• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Antonio Damasio

  A neurologist's critique of Cartesian dualism.

• The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle

  Coined 'the ghost in the machine' against Cartesian dualism.