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Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
Rene Descartes has often been called the father of modern philosophy, and it is certainly true that his influence has pervaded western thought at least until the present century. The "Discourse" is the exposition of the famous "Method" by which this brilliant mathematician tried to apply mathematical methods to - and thus to discover mathematical certainties in - all fields of human inquiry. Starting from universal doubt he passes, via the celebrated phrase "cogito ergo sum" to the certainty of the existence of God and hence of the reality of created nature.
This edition also includes the "Meditations" and the letter-preface to "The Principles of Philosophy".
This edition also includes the "Meditations" and the letter-preface to "The Principles of Philosophy".
103 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1637
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About the author
René Descartes
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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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March 7, 2025
There are times
When all the world’s asleep
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man!
-Supertramp
RELAX, folks!
Here, at last, is a Simple book with Simple answers - for ALL us Complex, struggling souls!
The Meditations of Descartes was one of the KEY books in my life. I read it to make my thinking clearer and, in time, it worked.
It was nice to have solid earth beneath my feet for a change!
My first really close reading of it was nearly forty years ago, at a time when I was learning about the practice of meditation in daily life. This book said it far better than any of the more occult and ´transcendental’ books that are out there.
And yet its ideas are identical - in essence - to Buddhist theory.
How so?
Buddha said there are three obstacles to clear thinking: Passion, Agression and Ignorance. And Descartes starts by dismantling Ignorance.
Why?
Because, he says, being retired from the military, he was now at an age where he could put the other two, more active obstacles - Passion and Agression - to rest. Now how many of US can say we have done that by the time we retire?
Very few of us, I suppose, because these two turbulent emotions help drive the economy. So maybe they are tacitly encouraged. But are they really necessary? Here’s one senior who’ll tell you they just get in the way of thinking clearly...
Listen, once you get to my age, thinking straight’s better and more valuable than any kid’s Saturday Night Fever! Especially with the cons around us all.
And aren’t these two turbulent passions at the root of our ignorance, and our confusion in public?
AND aren’t these two dangerous impulses the very progenitors of those faceless, ugly Ringwraiths that gallop through the dark forests of our minds and our uneasy slumber, as we try for dear life to get just a little rest from the grim ghosts of this spooky Middle Earth?
Waking up is hard, but in the end produces peace of mind. Unreality is easy - but it’s not Real, and it can Harm us. Watch out!
So here’s one simple rule Descartes uses when he begins to eliminate his ignorance: Keep the Faith!
Don’t abandon your core beliefs if you’re attempting to sharpen your mind.
You might really NEED them some day when things become TOO clear.
And nothing causes more confusion - and faster - than a mental free fall through this hyped-up world for the rest of your life...
Witness the story of Bill Livingstone, fellow Ontarian and international multiple medalist as a Scottish bagpiper. I knew him in the eighties, and back then he was so much like I used to be: an intense loner.
But a virtuoso.
In his memoir Preposterous - Tales to Follow, he describes his downward spiral into depression. His very storytelling belies it.
Insight brings clarity, but a Faithless clarity can invite disaster.
Bill’s autobiography is a remarkable book - not only for its glimpse into a star’s life, but also as a close study of how deep depression works, wreathing its subtle deceptions of daylight lucidity into the machinery of our minds.
So... if you try to focus your thinking, hold onto something that gives you solid hope.
Anyway, if you’re thinking clearly at this point, Descartes says, tell me, what do you Really know for sure?
Well - you know you’re here.
Right - you, and no one else - just simple, ordinary you... are here. You’re REAL.
The modern media smokescreens and all those bullying attempts to get you to doubt yourself - they’re all gone.
And you know that because you can now THINK FOR YOURSELF.
And That’s it.
That’s what you HAVE to do. Be the questioning and alert human being you were MEANT to be.
Like I said, it was forty years ago when I first started to pay close attention to this little book...
I knew I was being misled on many quarters back then, but I couldn’t grasp the root causes.
Isn’t it incredible how when we’re growing up we even put up our own smokescreens against self-knowledge? We buy all the easy truths - so we’re the ones doing it. And it’s a good thing in a way!
It’s sort of like Perseus refusing to look at the head of Medusa. For that Gorgon can undo you.
Sheer self-preservation! Common sense. Don’t dive off the deep end when you’re just learning to swim.
Take it slow.
But if you’re a committed reader, taking your time reading and assimilating, sooner or later in your life you’ll see things a lot more clearly - just like Descartes, who took his adjustment to the unvarnished facts of the world SLOW.
And once you can think clearly, you’ll be your OWN master.
We can learn a lot from this 17th century dude, you know.
And if you learn Descartes’ lessons clearly -
You’ll never be fooled again.
When all the world’s asleep
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man!
-Supertramp
RELAX, folks!
Here, at last, is a Simple book with Simple answers - for ALL us Complex, struggling souls!
The Meditations of Descartes was one of the KEY books in my life. I read it to make my thinking clearer and, in time, it worked.
It was nice to have solid earth beneath my feet for a change!
My first really close reading of it was nearly forty years ago, at a time when I was learning about the practice of meditation in daily life. This book said it far better than any of the more occult and ´transcendental’ books that are out there.
And yet its ideas are identical - in essence - to Buddhist theory.
How so?
Buddha said there are three obstacles to clear thinking: Passion, Agression and Ignorance. And Descartes starts by dismantling Ignorance.
Why?
Because, he says, being retired from the military, he was now at an age where he could put the other two, more active obstacles - Passion and Agression - to rest. Now how many of US can say we have done that by the time we retire?
Very few of us, I suppose, because these two turbulent emotions help drive the economy. So maybe they are tacitly encouraged. But are they really necessary? Here’s one senior who’ll tell you they just get in the way of thinking clearly...
Listen, once you get to my age, thinking straight’s better and more valuable than any kid’s Saturday Night Fever! Especially with the cons around us all.
And aren’t these two turbulent passions at the root of our ignorance, and our confusion in public?
AND aren’t these two dangerous impulses the very progenitors of those faceless, ugly Ringwraiths that gallop through the dark forests of our minds and our uneasy slumber, as we try for dear life to get just a little rest from the grim ghosts of this spooky Middle Earth?
Waking up is hard, but in the end produces peace of mind. Unreality is easy - but it’s not Real, and it can Harm us. Watch out!
So here’s one simple rule Descartes uses when he begins to eliminate his ignorance: Keep the Faith!
Don’t abandon your core beliefs if you’re attempting to sharpen your mind.
You might really NEED them some day when things become TOO clear.
And nothing causes more confusion - and faster - than a mental free fall through this hyped-up world for the rest of your life...
Witness the story of Bill Livingstone, fellow Ontarian and international multiple medalist as a Scottish bagpiper. I knew him in the eighties, and back then he was so much like I used to be: an intense loner.
But a virtuoso.
In his memoir Preposterous - Tales to Follow, he describes his downward spiral into depression. His very storytelling belies it.
Insight brings clarity, but a Faithless clarity can invite disaster.
Bill’s autobiography is a remarkable book - not only for its glimpse into a star’s life, but also as a close study of how deep depression works, wreathing its subtle deceptions of daylight lucidity into the machinery of our minds.
So... if you try to focus your thinking, hold onto something that gives you solid hope.
Anyway, if you’re thinking clearly at this point, Descartes says, tell me, what do you Really know for sure?
Well - you know you’re here.
Right - you, and no one else - just simple, ordinary you... are here. You’re REAL.
The modern media smokescreens and all those bullying attempts to get you to doubt yourself - they’re all gone.
And you know that because you can now THINK FOR YOURSELF.
And That’s it.
That’s what you HAVE to do. Be the questioning and alert human being you were MEANT to be.
Like I said, it was forty years ago when I first started to pay close attention to this little book...
I knew I was being misled on many quarters back then, but I couldn’t grasp the root causes.
Isn’t it incredible how when we’re growing up we even put up our own smokescreens against self-knowledge? We buy all the easy truths - so we’re the ones doing it. And it’s a good thing in a way!
It’s sort of like Perseus refusing to look at the head of Medusa. For that Gorgon can undo you.
Sheer self-preservation! Common sense. Don’t dive off the deep end when you’re just learning to swim.
Take it slow.
But if you’re a committed reader, taking your time reading and assimilating, sooner or later in your life you’ll see things a lot more clearly - just like Descartes, who took his adjustment to the unvarnished facts of the world SLOW.
And once you can think clearly, you’ll be your OWN master.
We can learn a lot from this 17th century dude, you know.
And if you learn Descartes’ lessons clearly -
You’ll never be fooled again.
February 10, 2012
Very unfortunate hair notwithstanding,
Rene “I think, therefore I exist” Descartes was one of the most influential contemplators in the history of philosophy and was instrumental in fomenting the modern modes of intellectual exploration known as deductive reasoning and the scientific method. While he was certainly not alone in the wilderness championing the transformation of knowledge accumulation methods, he was definitely among the significant trail-blazers dropping bread crumbs for the participants of the scientific revolution to follow.
His most important contribution to this endeavor was this treatise which hepenned quilled in 1637.
Now for those who love to take deeps breaths, fill their mouths with a lot of words and then allow them to spill out, all smart-like, in front of company, the full name of Descartes most famous work is "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences." It is a treatise intended not to convey specific factual knowledge, but rather is intended to provide the methodology through which knowledge may be obtained.
Descartes based his search for truth on ascertaining knowledge that could be derived from "first principals" and created a method (outlined below) from which all research into scientific principals, according to Descartes, should be based. He begins by saying that because so many different (and contradictory) theories have been set forth by learned and great men that it is impossible to "trust" anything that you can not verify yourself based on your own observations. This skepticism of all that has come before was the cornerstone for his approach and has remained an integral component of modern scientific thinking and experimentation. If you can’t prove it, it didn’t happen.
THE METHOD:
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
In Section II of Discourse, Descartes defines the "Method" he will use to establish knowledge of the world. It is comprised of the following four steps:
(1) Be skeptical of everything and do not accept anything as "truth" until you can be certain of its correctness and completely free from doubt (”The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.”;
(2) Divide each problem into the smallest parts possible so that you can be looking at its component parts which will be the easiest to understand (“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”);
(3) Start from most basic concept and add complexity slowly and in degrees so that you can be absolutely certain of each step along the way; and
(4) From your use of (1) through (3) create general rules applicable to the whole of the subject and that apply to the largest possible group. “Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
Descartes discussion of the method and its application is remarkable as a piece of insight into the mind of an intellectual juggernaut. The man could think his booty off.
THE MORALS:
Following his break down of the components of “the Method,” Descartes goes on the in Section III of The Discourse to identify three maxims, referred to as morals, that he will adhere to in his studies:
(1) Obey the laws of his Country (boring, yet practical);
(2) Be firm and resolute in the pursuit of knowledge; (a bit “Captain Obvious” but I think that is part of the point of returning to first principals); and
(3) Conquer self rather than fortune (i.e., don't pursue truth based on your own material advantage lest you avoid a line of reasoning that may be true but would lead to a disadvantage for you.) In other words, truth should be your only goal.
Here, Descartes does a nice job describing what should be the goal of men of learning and the importance of removing your own motivations from the equation. If only more people would take heed of this pearl of wisdom.
APPLICATION OF THE METHOD:
In Section IV, Descartes takes his Method and his Morals and applies them to derive the basic truth of his existence expressed in the famous utterance "Cogito ergo sum." He also uses this section to put forth his most controversial use of his system by proving the existence of God. Whew….I’m glad that’s settled now what’s for supper.
This last "proof" is called the negotiable ontological proof of the existence of God and centers on the idea that God’s existence is immediately inferable “a priori” from any contemplation of the idea of a supreme being. Let me stave off any religious discussion at this point by simply saying that Descartes application of the method here is a tad strained and I think even he saw that as his reasoning is more categorical than deductive.
THE REST (Sections V and VI):
Up through the end of Section IV, I would have given this 4 or 5 stars as it was both fascinating and presented in a fashion that was easily understood and digested. Section 5 and 6, comprising the half of this work, was cluttered and read like a pile of muddle. It was also mostly uninteresting and concerned the difference between man and animals and the working of the human circulatory system. I felt like I had stumbled into some ill-advised sequel that failed to pick up the plot from the earlier work.
My advice: skip that last two sections…I think you’ll be happier.
The meat of the work in is the first 4 sections and that is what I would recommend to anyone even remotely interested in evolution of modern scientific and philosophical thought.
Overall, 3.5 stars (though the first four sections get a strong 4 to 5 stars).
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (as long as you stop after Section IV).
P.S. Just to spike the ball on behalf of Mr. Descartes, he was also extremely influential in the field of mathematics and is considered the father of analytical geometry. Impressive is it not.
Rene “I think, therefore I exist” Descartes was one of the most influential contemplators in the history of philosophy and was instrumental in fomenting the modern modes of intellectual exploration known as deductive reasoning and the scientific method. While he was certainly not alone in the wilderness championing the transformation of knowledge accumulation methods, he was definitely among the significant trail-blazers dropping bread crumbs for the participants of the scientific revolution to follow.
His most important contribution to this endeavor was this treatise which he
Now for those who love to take deeps breaths, fill their mouths with a lot of words and then allow them to spill out, all smart-like, in front of company, the full name of Descartes most famous work is "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences." It is a treatise intended not to convey specific factual knowledge, but rather is intended to provide the methodology through which knowledge may be obtained.
Descartes based his search for truth on ascertaining knowledge that could be derived from "first principals" and created a method (outlined below) from which all research into scientific principals, according to Descartes, should be based. He begins by saying that because so many different (and contradictory) theories have been set forth by learned and great men that it is impossible to "trust" anything that you can not verify yourself based on your own observations. This skepticism of all that has come before was the cornerstone for his approach and has remained an integral component of modern scientific thinking and experimentation. If you can’t prove it, it didn’t happen.
THE METHOD:
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
In Section II of Discourse, Descartes defines the "Method" he will use to establish knowledge of the world. It is comprised of the following four steps:
(1) Be skeptical of everything and do not accept anything as "truth" until you can be certain of its correctness and completely free from doubt (”The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.”;
(2) Divide each problem into the smallest parts possible so that you can be looking at its component parts which will be the easiest to understand (“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”);
(3) Start from most basic concept and add complexity slowly and in degrees so that you can be absolutely certain of each step along the way; and
(4) From your use of (1) through (3) create general rules applicable to the whole of the subject and that apply to the largest possible group. “Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
Descartes discussion of the method and its application is remarkable as a piece of insight into the mind of an intellectual juggernaut. The man could think his booty off.
THE MORALS:
Following his break down of the components of “the Method,” Descartes goes on the in Section III of The Discourse to identify three maxims, referred to as morals, that he will adhere to in his studies:
(1) Obey the laws of his Country (boring, yet practical);
(2) Be firm and resolute in the pursuit of knowledge; (a bit “Captain Obvious” but I think that is part of the point of returning to first principals); and
(3) Conquer self rather than fortune (i.e., don't pursue truth based on your own material advantage lest you avoid a line of reasoning that may be true but would lead to a disadvantage for you.) In other words, truth should be your only goal.
Here, Descartes does a nice job describing what should be the goal of men of learning and the importance of removing your own motivations from the equation. If only more people would take heed of this pearl of wisdom.
APPLICATION OF THE METHOD:
In Section IV, Descartes takes his Method and his Morals and applies them to derive the basic truth of his existence expressed in the famous utterance "Cogito ergo sum." He also uses this section to put forth his most controversial use of his system by proving the existence of God. Whew….I’m glad that’s settled now what’s for supper.
This last "proof" is called the negotiable ontological proof of the existence of God and centers on the idea that God’s existence is immediately inferable “a priori” from any contemplation of the idea of a supreme being. Let me stave off any religious discussion at this point by simply saying that Descartes application of the method here is a tad strained and I think even he saw that as his reasoning is more categorical than deductive.
THE REST (Sections V and VI):
Up through the end of Section IV, I would have given this 4 or 5 stars as it was both fascinating and presented in a fashion that was easily understood and digested. Section 5 and 6, comprising the half of this work, was cluttered and read like a pile of muddle. It was also mostly uninteresting and concerned the difference between man and animals and the working of the human circulatory system. I felt like I had stumbled into some ill-advised sequel that failed to pick up the plot from the earlier work.
My advice: skip that last two sections…I think you’ll be happier.
The meat of the work in is the first 4 sections and that is what I would recommend to anyone even remotely interested in evolution of modern scientific and philosophical thought.
Overall, 3.5 stars (though the first four sections get a strong 4 to 5 stars).
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (as long as you stop after Section IV).
P.S. Just to spike the ball on behalf of Mr. Descartes, he was also extremely influential in the field of mathematics and is considered the father of analytical geometry. Impressive is it not.
January 12, 2023
Discourse on Method
I enjoyed the writing style of this being in the form of a journal on how Descartes set out and then arrived at his conclusions. Although many statements throughout were besides the point, at least in the first few chapters they were useful to observe. For example, the reasons for thinking and creating this, then the elaboration of using methodologies of mathematics to do so.
I can reaffirm that part one is most definitely a mirror image of ideas espoused by Buddhism. To the degree that specific part may have been independently discovered, perhaps Descartes should not be at fault but rather those who give Descartes more credit than he is due (such as those of us alive now). Although, such a statement may be said of numerous other examples of misplaced credit throughout history.
The famed "I think therefore I am" was interesting to finally observe. However, in all my prior exposure to this notion, I had built up a misperception that many fundamental observations and axioms were used and perhaps needed to eventually, in some grandiose manner, lead to such a conclusion. Instead, it seemed to be a relatively straightforward conclusion.
In the latter parts, I appreciated Descartes' thoughts on approaches to science. The notion of a collaborative enterprise to discover truths of nature is a notion well established now, but was not necessarily so in the time of Descartes. He also mentioned the notion of people reporting even those experiments which failed, which reminded me of how science collectively may in fact simply be the testing of every experiment to exhaustion until nature is completely understood (if it ever can be).
I was not expecting this to be as short as it was, and appreciated how Descartes deliberately tried to keep it brief by voicing an implicit comparison to the works of other philosophers at one point.
Meditations
This seemed to have much more content, focus, and organization overall compared to Discourse on Method.
The thought experiment of an evil spirit/demon and to forget all the senses one possesses was my favorite part here. I found this to be an incredibly clever approach and illustration for the discovery of truths. I suppose I would simply congratulate Descartes for such an approach, however simple it may be. Furthermore, this may also be said to be the classic example of rationalism.
The parts on God were not really useful for me, but nonetheless interesting. Topics touched upon here were the notion of a first cause, the notion of something continually supporting the world, the notion that a thinking being must have been created by another thinking being such as God, the notion that a little of God is in oneself, or the notion of attempting to understand the infinite as a finite being.
Towards the end, matters regarding mind and body were discussed which were not bad. Again, classic rationalism.
(As a side note, the phrase "infinite variety of knowledge" in particular was interesting to me.)
I enjoyed the writing style of this being in the form of a journal on how Descartes set out and then arrived at his conclusions. Although many statements throughout were besides the point, at least in the first few chapters they were useful to observe. For example, the reasons for thinking and creating this, then the elaboration of using methodologies of mathematics to do so.
I can reaffirm that part one is most definitely a mirror image of ideas espoused by Buddhism. To the degree that specific part may have been independently discovered, perhaps Descartes should not be at fault but rather those who give Descartes more credit than he is due (such as those of us alive now). Although, such a statement may be said of numerous other examples of misplaced credit throughout history.
The famed "I think therefore I am" was interesting to finally observe. However, in all my prior exposure to this notion, I had built up a misperception that many fundamental observations and axioms were used and perhaps needed to eventually, in some grandiose manner, lead to such a conclusion. Instead, it seemed to be a relatively straightforward conclusion.
In the latter parts, I appreciated Descartes' thoughts on approaches to science. The notion of a collaborative enterprise to discover truths of nature is a notion well established now, but was not necessarily so in the time of Descartes. He also mentioned the notion of people reporting even those experiments which failed, which reminded me of how science collectively may in fact simply be the testing of every experiment to exhaustion until nature is completely understood (if it ever can be).
I was not expecting this to be as short as it was, and appreciated how Descartes deliberately tried to keep it brief by voicing an implicit comparison to the works of other philosophers at one point.
Meditations
This seemed to have much more content, focus, and organization overall compared to Discourse on Method.
The thought experiment of an evil spirit/demon and to forget all the senses one possesses was my favorite part here. I found this to be an incredibly clever approach and illustration for the discovery of truths. I suppose I would simply congratulate Descartes for such an approach, however simple it may be. Furthermore, this may also be said to be the classic example of rationalism.
The parts on God were not really useful for me, but nonetheless interesting. Topics touched upon here were the notion of a first cause, the notion of something continually supporting the world, the notion that a thinking being must have been created by another thinking being such as God, the notion that a little of God is in oneself, or the notion of attempting to understand the infinite as a finite being.
Towards the end, matters regarding mind and body were discussed which were not bad. Again, classic rationalism.
(As a side note, the phrase "infinite variety of knowledge" in particular was interesting to me.)
February 7, 2025
I read this at the same time as a few other friends, and I discovered that there were different ways to approach the Discourse on Method. One friend preferred to read as a scientist, finding in the Discourse the beginnings of a method for proper scientific investigation; a second was the philosophical reader who enjoyed Descartes' demolition of his thinking and the following reconstruction of the 'house' from the ground up, to his triumphant declaration of cogito ergo sum.
As for myself, I found that the Discourse was unfolding for me as if it were a comical short story. I had in my mind an image of Descartes himself as a cartoon character, a caricature of a seventeenth century French mathematician troubled by what were (to me) ridiculous (and therefore comical) doubts as to his own existence. The image of Descartes sitting on the stove to keep warm, (placing him on a level with the image of Diogenes in the oil barrel) while working meticulously through all of his doubts and questions proved to be delightful reading.
I was afraid the book would be a miserable slog through a barren waste of uninteresting material, but I was happily disappointed. When my class went on to other books after the Discourse on Method, I continued reading his Meditations. These were even better than the Discourse itself. Descartes knows that those who have no faith in God will believe the proof of His existence in the fourth part to involve circular reasoning, but this is not so. Those who are willing to follow with attention the in-depth explanations included in the Meditations on First Philosophy, will find the reasoning sound: God exists & He is no deceiver. The writing is full of excellent and entertaining examples.
To end with something fun, here is a link to a BBC cartoon explaining Descartes' discovery of the cogito ergo sum idea, 'I think, therefore I am':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6UK...
I look forward to re-reading this again next year, and I shall be looking for the Discours de la Méthode in the original French (this will make my cartoon, wherein the Descartes that I envision is allowed to speak in his own French, all the better), and the Meditationes de Prima Philosophia in the original Latin.
As for myself, I found that the Discourse was unfolding for me as if it were a comical short story. I had in my mind an image of Descartes himself as a cartoon character, a caricature of a seventeenth century French mathematician troubled by what were (to me) ridiculous (and therefore comical) doubts as to his own existence. The image of Descartes sitting on the stove to keep warm, (placing him on a level with the image of Diogenes in the oil barrel) while working meticulously through all of his doubts and questions proved to be delightful reading.
I was afraid the book would be a miserable slog through a barren waste of uninteresting material, but I was happily disappointed. When my class went on to other books after the Discourse on Method, I continued reading his Meditations. These were even better than the Discourse itself. Descartes knows that those who have no faith in God will believe the proof of His existence in the fourth part to involve circular reasoning, but this is not so. Those who are willing to follow with attention the in-depth explanations included in the Meditations on First Philosophy, will find the reasoning sound: God exists & He is no deceiver. The writing is full of excellent and entertaining examples.
To end with something fun, here is a link to a BBC cartoon explaining Descartes' discovery of the cogito ergo sum idea, 'I think, therefore I am':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6UK...
I look forward to re-reading this again next year, and I shall be looking for the Discours de la Méthode in the original French (this will make my cartoon, wherein the Descartes that I envision is allowed to speak in his own French, all the better), and the Meditationes de Prima Philosophia in the original Latin.
February 22, 2020
جذابترین چیزی که برای فروختن این کتاب میتوان: شامل جملهایست که همگان شنیدهاند:
"فکر میکنم، پس هستم"
اصل این جملهی دکارت به لاتین:
"Cogito ergo sum."
دکارتِ فرانسوی، ظاهراً برای جلب نظر اهالی کلیسا که متولیان فلسفهی غالب در آن دوره بودند، ترجیح داده این کتاب رو به لاتین بنویسد.
این نسخه
نسخهای که من خواندم، شامل دو اثر از دکارت است. اولی را میتوان شرح روش دکارت برای فلسفیدن دانست و دومی را شرح فلسفهی«اولی» یا متافیزیکی دکارت.
بسیار خلاصه
دکارت به همه چیز شک میکند. و فلسفهی مدرن از دل این شک زاییده میشود. او به مرور از شک بیرون میآید. اول وجود خود را ثابت میکند، سپس خدا. و بعد در مورد چیزهایی دیگر از جمله ذهن و بدن، اشیای خارجی، زندگی، و درست و غلط حرف میزند.
اثبات وجود خدا
دکارت برای اثبات خدا، به برهانی آشنا و شناس متوسل میشود:
از آنجا که میتوانم کاملترین چیز را تصور کنم، و «وجود داشتن» بخشی از کمال است، پس آن چیزِ کامل وجود دارد و آن چیز خداست. اصل استدلال، بسیار دقیقتر است و مقدمهای طولانی در مورد واقعیت در ذهن و بیرون از ذهن و پندارهای ما دارد. همچنین به این میپردازد که هر پنداری، هر چقدر هم که خیالی، بخشی از واقعیت را در خود دارد که باواسطه یا بیواسطه از دنیای بیرون گرفته شده است.
دکارت ریاضیدان
ریاضیدان بودن دکارت، در بخشهای زیادی از کتاب کاملاً ملموس است. روش ورود دکارت به مسئله، شکستن، تلاش برای حل آن و جمعبندی، به وضوح همان روش مهندسها و برنامهنویسهاست.
منابع کمکی
کتاب تقریباً راحتخوان است، ولی گاهی سخت میشود. گهگاه سعی کردم از منابع بیرونی برای فهم کتاب کمک بگیریم. سه مورد از منابعی که استفاده کردم را در اینجا میآورم:
مدیتیشن سوم از فلسفهی اولی، جاییست که احتمالاً برای شما هم چالشبرانگیز میشود. بهترین راهنمایی که برای این بخش یافتم، اینجاست:
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/...
از خلاصهی کتاب در ویکیپدیا نیز کمک گرفتم:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditat...
من از دانشنامهی استنفورد هم کمک گرفتم.
"فکر میکنم، پس هستم"
اصل این جملهی دکارت به لاتین:
"Cogito ergo sum."
دکارتِ فرانسوی، ظاهراً برای جلب نظر اهالی کلیسا که متولیان فلسفهی غالب در آن دوره بودند، ترجیح داده این کتاب رو به لاتین بنویسد.
این نسخه
نسخهای که من خواندم، شامل دو اثر از دکارت است. اولی را میتوان شرح روش دکارت برای فلسفیدن دانست و دومی را شرح فلسفهی«اولی» یا متافیزیکی دکارت.
بسیار خلاصه
دکارت به همه چیز شک میکند. و فلسفهی مدرن از دل این شک زاییده میشود. او به مرور از شک بیرون میآید. اول وجود خود را ثابت میکند، سپس خدا. و بعد در مورد چیزهایی دیگر از جمله ذهن و بدن، اشیای خارجی، زندگی، و درست و غلط حرف میزند.
اثبات وجود خدا
دکارت برای اثبات خدا، به برهانی آشنا و شناس متوسل میشود:
از آنجا که میتوانم کاملترین چیز را تصور کنم، و «وجود داشتن» بخشی از کمال است، پس آن چیزِ کامل وجود دارد و آن چیز خداست. اصل استدلال، بسیار دقیقتر است و مقدمهای طولانی در مورد واقعیت در ذهن و بیرون از ذهن و پندارهای ما دارد. همچنین به این میپردازد که هر پنداری، هر چقدر هم که خیالی، بخشی از واقعیت را در خود دارد که باواسطه یا بیواسطه از دنیای بیرون گرفته شده است.
دکارت ریاضیدان
ریاضیدان بودن دکارت، در بخشهای زیادی از کتاب کاملاً ملموس است. روش ورود دکارت به مسئله، شکستن، تلاش برای حل آن و جمعبندی، به وضوح همان روش مهندسها و برنامهنویسهاست.
منابع کمکی
کتاب تقریباً راحتخوان است، ولی گاهی سخت میشود. گهگاه سعی کردم از منابع بیرونی برای فهم کتاب کمک بگیریم. سه مورد از منابعی که استفاده کردم را در اینجا میآورم:
مدیتیشن سوم از فلسفهی اولی، جاییست که احتمالاً برای شما هم چالشبرانگیز میشود. بهترین راهنمایی که برای این بخش یافتم، اینجاست:
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/...
از خلاصهی کتاب در ویکیپدیا نیز کمک گرفتم:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditat...
من از دانشنامهی استنفورد هم کمک گرفتم.
October 6, 2021
104th book of 2021.
3.5. Full review to come. I enjoyed Discourse far more than Meditations. I also read an older Penguin edition translated by Wollaston that I cannot find on GR for some reason, so this newer Penguin cover will suffice. Though I wanted to read Aristotle before branching out into Descartes, Aristotle is proving to be annoyingly hard to find (for a reasonable price, that is). Descartes is a good writer and his work is clearly written but some of his ideas are quite transparently outdated and no longer stand as they must have done at first. Nevertheless, I found this to be an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. Now to backtrack and find some Aristotle, which is the universe's intended order, no doubt.
3.5. Full review to come. I enjoyed Discourse far more than Meditations. I also read an older Penguin edition translated by Wollaston that I cannot find on GR for some reason, so this newer Penguin cover will suffice. Though I wanted to read Aristotle before branching out into Descartes, Aristotle is proving to be annoyingly hard to find (for a reasonable price, that is). Descartes is a good writer and his work is clearly written but some of his ideas are quite transparently outdated and no longer stand as they must have done at first. Nevertheless, I found this to be an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. Now to backtrack and find some Aristotle, which is the universe's intended order, no doubt.
February 5, 2015
It is a fault which can been observed in most disputes, that, truth being mid-way between the two opinions that are held, each side departs the further from it the greater
his passion for contradiction.
Back in my salad days I had a friend who taught Medieval Philosophy. We wound up moving the class of such to a pub. This appeared very progressive. He once enlightened us with his proof of the Absence of God. His premise was that God was so vast and so central. God couldn't possibly share any qualities with a pint of Guinness, which was so small, so banal in the grand scheme of things. Yet this pint was here, we could see it, feel it, taste it and even smell it. Thus God couldn't exist.
his passion for contradiction.
Back in my salad days I had a friend who taught Medieval Philosophy. We wound up moving the class of such to a pub. This appeared very progressive. He once enlightened us with his proof of the Absence of God. His premise was that God was so vast and so central. God couldn't possibly share any qualities with a pint of Guinness, which was so small, so banal in the grand scheme of things. Yet this pint was here, we could see it, feel it, taste it and even smell it. Thus God couldn't exist.
October 19, 2024
I wanted to read the “Discourse of Method” since a long time and get to know who wrote: “ I think therefore I am”. It is one of the most quoted philosophical references.
The writing style is amazing and very easy to understand compared to other philosophy books.
The writing style is amazing and very easy to understand compared to other philosophy books.
August 19, 2009
'I think therefore I am' Probably the most quoted philosophical reference around today. But people generally don't know what it means!
Descartes is reputed as the Father of Modern Philosophy, the bringer of new ways of thinking, of revising our beliefs. Though a blatant sexist, speciesist and bigot he was a man of his time. His philosophy however was not.
Imagine an evil genius, he has your brain in a jar somewhere and is manipulating it to make you believe all that you perceive around you. You can see, smell, feel, taste, hear and believe all of them. Descartes said that all of these senses could well be the creation of that evil genius and we have no reason to believe that the world around us it real. All that Descartes could safely assume was real was his mind. For if the mind was not real, how could the genius deceive you? Thought is the essence of man, it's reality.
Descartes believed in something known commonly as Two Substance Dualism, and more academically as Cartesian Dualism. This states that humans have a material and a mental substance, each being separate. When the body dies the mind will survive as it is not dependant on the body, though the body needs the mind to make it human.
At the time this was ground breaking, and it didn't contradict Christian orthodoxy (of whom Descartes was a pious believer). All of this is nowadays taken for granted, this knowledge of so pivotal a change in the book of history is equally relevant today.
Though not my favourite philosophy (preferring works of Mill and Sartre) it is none the less core stuff and should appear on every self respecting philosophers shelves.
Descartes is reputed as the Father of Modern Philosophy, the bringer of new ways of thinking, of revising our beliefs. Though a blatant sexist, speciesist and bigot he was a man of his time. His philosophy however was not.
Imagine an evil genius, he has your brain in a jar somewhere and is manipulating it to make you believe all that you perceive around you. You can see, smell, feel, taste, hear and believe all of them. Descartes said that all of these senses could well be the creation of that evil genius and we have no reason to believe that the world around us it real. All that Descartes could safely assume was real was his mind. For if the mind was not real, how could the genius deceive you? Thought is the essence of man, it's reality.
Descartes believed in something known commonly as Two Substance Dualism, and more academically as Cartesian Dualism. This states that humans have a material and a mental substance, each being separate. When the body dies the mind will survive as it is not dependant on the body, though the body needs the mind to make it human.
At the time this was ground breaking, and it didn't contradict Christian orthodoxy (of whom Descartes was a pious believer). All of this is nowadays taken for granted, this knowledge of so pivotal a change in the book of history is equally relevant today.
Though not my favourite philosophy (preferring works of Mill and Sartre) it is none the less core stuff and should appear on every self respecting philosophers shelves.
October 4, 2023
Obra del pensador francés René Descartes (1596-1650), escrita en latín, entre 1628 y 1629, publicada en 1641, traducida después al francés en 1647. Es la exposición más amplia y compleja de su doctrina dedicada a la Facultad de Teología de la Universidad de París, de la que esperaba recibir la aprobación oficial para su filosofía. Asimismo presenta a la comunidad intelectual de su época las bases de su Método.
"Las Meditaciones Metafísicas" estructuradas en seis meditaciones, exponen el camino intelectual que le lleva a establecer la certitud de la existencia de Dios y de las distintas naturalezas del espíritu humano y del mundo.
El texto contiene la formulación del famoso "cogito ergo sum" que Descartes desarrolla con fin de construir un método válido capaz de establecer verdades indudables y fomentar las bases del pensamiento racional y de la ciencia moderna.
Dirigiéndose a los decanos de la facultad de teología de París, Descartes expone las metas de su trabajo: Convencer a los infieles de la propia existencia de Dios por el conocimiento de las cosas mismas y demostrar la dualidad del espíritu y del cuerpo.
Asimismo Descartes advierte de la necesidad de liberarse de cualquier prejuicio para poder entender sus argumentos, e incluso concluye pidiendo a los lectores que le corrijan, afirmando que tras la publicación de su obra, la existencia de Dios y de la dualidad del alma y del cuerpo serán para siempre establecidas.
"Las Meditaciones Metafísicas" estructuradas en seis meditaciones, exponen el camino intelectual que le lleva a establecer la certitud de la existencia de Dios y de las distintas naturalezas del espíritu humano y del mundo.
El texto contiene la formulación del famoso "cogito ergo sum" que Descartes desarrolla con fin de construir un método válido capaz de establecer verdades indudables y fomentar las bases del pensamiento racional y de la ciencia moderna.
Dirigiéndose a los decanos de la facultad de teología de París, Descartes expone las metas de su trabajo: Convencer a los infieles de la propia existencia de Dios por el conocimiento de las cosas mismas y demostrar la dualidad del espíritu y del cuerpo.
Asimismo Descartes advierte de la necesidad de liberarse de cualquier prejuicio para poder entender sus argumentos, e incluso concluye pidiendo a los lectores que le corrijan, afirmando que tras la publicación de su obra, la existencia de Dios y de la dualidad del alma y del cuerpo serán para siempre establecidas.
December 3, 2020
I enrolled in Loyola University Chicago's graduate program in philosophy after two years of dead-end jobs upon completion of seminary. The motivation was primarily intellectual. Previous study had served to raise questions more than answer them and some knowledge of the history and thought of the modern West had served to raise questions about their foundations. More specifically, the study of continental depth psychologies had indicated a philosophical as well as an empirical basis for them. My roommate, Mike Miley, was attending Loyola as an adult undergraduate, was enjoying it and had informed me that it had the largest philosophy program in the United States. Besides, it was walking distance from our apartment.
Having already completed four years of graduate school, my transcripts and thesis were submitted for advanced standing consideration. That took a year. In the meantime, I enrolled in basic courses, aiming to fill in the gaps of a previously spotty study of philosophy. Plato, naturally, came up immediately as a concern as did Descartes.
In considering the teaching of philosophy, I've marvelled at how students at an introductory level are introduced to the field by such figures as Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. This is crazy. One cannot read them without knowing a good deal about their predecessors. What an undergraduate student can get into immediately are some of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Locke, Nietzsche and Descartes, particularly his 'Discourse' and his 'Meditations'.
Incidentally, Descartes was read for the History of Classical Modern Philosophy, taught by a barely competent woman fresh out graduate school whose name escapes me.
Having already completed four years of graduate school, my transcripts and thesis were submitted for advanced standing consideration. That took a year. In the meantime, I enrolled in basic courses, aiming to fill in the gaps of a previously spotty study of philosophy. Plato, naturally, came up immediately as a concern as did Descartes.
In considering the teaching of philosophy, I've marvelled at how students at an introductory level are introduced to the field by such figures as Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. This is crazy. One cannot read them without knowing a good deal about their predecessors. What an undergraduate student can get into immediately are some of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Locke, Nietzsche and Descartes, particularly his 'Discourse' and his 'Meditations'.
Incidentally, Descartes was read for the History of Classical Modern Philosophy, taught by a barely competent woman fresh out graduate school whose name escapes me.
July 19, 2020
"Permanecía el día entero solo y encerrado junto a una estufa, con toda la tranquilidad necesaria para entregarme a mis pensamientos"
August 12, 2008
In the Discourse Descartes is charming, down-to-earth, and his investigation of skepticism is exciting, fun and profound at the same time. That’s a rare combination in philosophy, at least in my experience - only Plato and Chuang Tzu come to mind as similar in this respect (maybe Nietzsche, but he’s such a ninny). Although Descartes’ skepticism is arguably a borrowing from ancient philosophy, his turning it into a method of investigation appears to be original, and it was enormously important in the development of modern science as well as modern philosophy.
I think his famous cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is flawed – perception of thought proves the existence of operating consciousness, but not the existence of an individual, thinking being. Hair-splitting and navel-gazing to some, a big deal to others. But all good, clean fun. The Meditations, on the other hand, is not so charming, it’s often boring, and it’s sometimes profound and sometimes not very. It has a couple weak and fallacious arguments for the existence of God - you get the impression that, after the relentless skepticism of his Discourse and the first couple meditations, and in light of Galileo’s travails, he’s trying to keep himself in the good graces of the Church and neither his heart or head are completely in the proofs of God and the things leading up to them. At least that’s the impression I get. If I exist.
But I’m a bit hard on Rene, and he lived in hard times. The Discourse, written in French, was aimed at a more popular audience while the Meditations, written in Latin, was for scholars. And it is more substantial. Speaking of Chuang Tzu, Descartes could have lifted his dreaming argument from the old sage, but it’s highly unlikely he’d ever heard of him (and his recollection-like a priori knowledge of mathematical objects is straight out of Plato’s Meno). This dreaming together with the evil god concept puts us in pretty shaky epistemological territory. The search for anything knowable is a logical next step, but beyond that Descartes tends to build his house with quite a few cards. Still, it’s probably not unreasonable to say that what he accomplished was revolutionary, and that it engendered a remarkable quantity and quality of further developments for hundreds of years. To be fair, Descartes’ mind-body dualism is pretty much from Plato as well; apparently he wasn’t big on attribution, but so it goes.
I think his famous cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is flawed – perception of thought proves the existence of operating consciousness, but not the existence of an individual, thinking being. Hair-splitting and navel-gazing to some, a big deal to others. But all good, clean fun. The Meditations, on the other hand, is not so charming, it’s often boring, and it’s sometimes profound and sometimes not very. It has a couple weak and fallacious arguments for the existence of God - you get the impression that, after the relentless skepticism of his Discourse and the first couple meditations, and in light of Galileo’s travails, he’s trying to keep himself in the good graces of the Church and neither his heart or head are completely in the proofs of God and the things leading up to them. At least that’s the impression I get. If I exist.
But I’m a bit hard on Rene, and he lived in hard times. The Discourse, written in French, was aimed at a more popular audience while the Meditations, written in Latin, was for scholars. And it is more substantial. Speaking of Chuang Tzu, Descartes could have lifted his dreaming argument from the old sage, but it’s highly unlikely he’d ever heard of him (and his recollection-like a priori knowledge of mathematical objects is straight out of Plato’s Meno). This dreaming together with the evil god concept puts us in pretty shaky epistemological territory. The search for anything knowable is a logical next step, but beyond that Descartes tends to build his house with quite a few cards. Still, it’s probably not unreasonable to say that what he accomplished was revolutionary, and that it engendered a remarkable quantity and quality of further developments for hundreds of years. To be fair, Descartes’ mind-body dualism is pretty much from Plato as well; apparently he wasn’t big on attribution, but so it goes.
February 28, 2015
Dude talks about robots more than I would have expected. There's also one point in the Discourse where he pretty forcefully tells you to close the book and not start reading again until you've dissected a cow.
July 3, 2017
Obviously this isn’t really a review, I don’t think that reviewing historically significant works of philosophy is something that can really be done outside of a proper academic environment, much less by someone like me, reading these works out of curiosity. This is why, what follows are just thoughts and impressions I got reading Descartes.
Descartes influence on philosophy can’t be understated and reading his works it is easy to see why: Discourse presents a very personal project, honest and modest convictions and objectives, while Meditations showcase a very clear reasoning process. It’s also very easy to empathise with his condition; I think Descartes was a scientist at heart, interested in studying the physical world around him and developing tools for understanding it, but met a hampering philosophical system, a legacy of thomistic scholasticism gone wild, pushed by people unsuited for philosophical or scientific arguments. In this environment it is easy to see why Descartes was interested in starting tabula rasa, removing all the baggage and building his own.
Descartes builds his system up from reason. Disregarding any perception, as any perception might be deceived, he creates the famous minimum positive statement: “I think therefore I am”. It’s interesting that he is not concerned about questions related to his ability to reason in the absence of perceptions (or in the presence of false perceptions). Can reasoning even take place if we separate the thinker from the world? Without answering this question, can we claim that any question can be answered without the influence of a potentially illusory world? These questions are answered when considering that he builds his model of thought on the scholastic one, which takes a clear separation between thinking and perceiving, but Descartes project was fundamentally moving away from that foundation.
In fact this is a recurring problem from what I can tell. Descartes is driven to integrate in his philosophical system a lot of necessary conclusions or premises from the system he is trying to replace. This is important, because these premises would constitute the basis on which to make further useful statements about the world, having a foundation and the concepts necessary to do those, without the overburdened inheritance which would stifle philosophical or scientific investigation. These necessary concepts are many, but the main ones are the existence of God and then the accuracy of perceptions/thoughts about the world. But in rushing to obtain these grounding concepts he uses sloppy or unconvincing arguments: he reasons as someone who is aware of the truthfulness of the statements he is making (because they are necessary in his project and because they have been proved sufficiently in other philosophical systems) so is not really concerned with studying potential counter-arguments, or various alternative paths his system might take (which in a simple system as his at this point, are many) only in so far as they might disambiguate what he intends to express.
Because of these “rushed” proofs, some concepts are altered by their new significance, properties or simply role they play in his project. The most central concept that Descartes uses and fundamentally changes from his predecessor is God. In his philosophy, God is the linchpin used to go from making a priori true statements to true statements about the physical environment. But Descartes’ God is not Aquinas’ God. Scholastic tradition anchored the concept of God in the physical world, so the presence and various other essential characteristics of God would then be used to make further statements about the world. Descartes reaches God by observing his own essential, fragmented qualities and seeks to determine their perfect cause. Since this cause is not found in the world he concludes that it must come from God. But hasn’t he done a leap here? He considers the virtues that are within him as finding their perfection in God, but a virtue-based approach is not warranted at this point, following his strict reasoning. Descartes uses here a scholastic approach (taking virtues as essential, and non-virtues as flawed/partial forms of those virtues), an approach that is formed and argued exactly by performing deductions from God. It’s like Descartes flips a logic chain, but in doing so loses coherence.
I think there are also some things to say about what further implications Descartes approach to God has. Because God is no longer understood as related to nature, essential arguments related to God’s existence can’t be applied:arguments from contingency and from causation are no longer admitted under Descartes method (though conclusions or concepts obtained by reasoning in that way are still used by him). This is because those arguments rely on making observations and reasoning about a world that is uncertain , extrinsic to the thinker, so outside Descartes philosophical “game”. This is important, because in this way, we have lost a perspective that fundamentally separates God from the creation and simply anchored Him in our qualities. Why the knowledge of the possibility of the perfection of these qualities can’t be determined or at least hinted by the world we live in is not seriously discussed. I think this discussion is useful to have, since it alone separates (or even justifies) the concept of God at this point, otherwise we might simply refer to God as the world itself and do away with the need of an idea of God altogether.
As I mentioned, Descartes then uses God to justify having some belief in the authenticity of the world, by using the argument “God is fundamentally good, God would not deceive me, therefore I am not deceived and am experiencing an authentic reality”. But what is this good that God should possess or contain? Couldn’t Descartes be deceived exactly by that, assuming what is good and what isn’t? Again, this is a different approach from his predecessors, Descartes judges the virtues of God with respect to what he is experiencing as good and bad. This is a consequence of centering his philosophy on the conclusions and models of his own reason, starting from a skeptical approach of the world and therefore unable to define virtues as aspects of God’s relationship to the world. In Descartes approach, he is very constrained in the amount of factors that he can investigate to obtain his conclusions and it is very easy to make the argument that though this will generate a very simple model, it will also be unable to explain or to reason about very many things, so very many things will hamper it.
What I really appreciated about Descartes, however, was his immense clarity and how inspiring reading him felt. Because he introduces his system as profoundly personal and gradually builds it up, I felt part of that construction, building my own thoughts on the matter as I went along. This quality of his work allowed philosophy to avoid the stagnation that was happening and for something new and better suited for physical discoveries to develop. Descartes left both a very clear system in place, so easy to understand as well as criticize and then further improve on, as well as made sufficiently vague claims to invite copious criticism and development to take place, placing him at an essential point in the history of philosophy.
Descartes influence on philosophy can’t be understated and reading his works it is easy to see why: Discourse presents a very personal project, honest and modest convictions and objectives, while Meditations showcase a very clear reasoning process. It’s also very easy to empathise with his condition; I think Descartes was a scientist at heart, interested in studying the physical world around him and developing tools for understanding it, but met a hampering philosophical system, a legacy of thomistic scholasticism gone wild, pushed by people unsuited for philosophical or scientific arguments. In this environment it is easy to see why Descartes was interested in starting tabula rasa, removing all the baggage and building his own.
Descartes builds his system up from reason. Disregarding any perception, as any perception might be deceived, he creates the famous minimum positive statement: “I think therefore I am”. It’s interesting that he is not concerned about questions related to his ability to reason in the absence of perceptions (or in the presence of false perceptions). Can reasoning even take place if we separate the thinker from the world? Without answering this question, can we claim that any question can be answered without the influence of a potentially illusory world? These questions are answered when considering that he builds his model of thought on the scholastic one, which takes a clear separation between thinking and perceiving, but Descartes project was fundamentally moving away from that foundation.
In fact this is a recurring problem from what I can tell. Descartes is driven to integrate in his philosophical system a lot of necessary conclusions or premises from the system he is trying to replace. This is important, because these premises would constitute the basis on which to make further useful statements about the world, having a foundation and the concepts necessary to do those, without the overburdened inheritance which would stifle philosophical or scientific investigation. These necessary concepts are many, but the main ones are the existence of God and then the accuracy of perceptions/thoughts about the world. But in rushing to obtain these grounding concepts he uses sloppy or unconvincing arguments: he reasons as someone who is aware of the truthfulness of the statements he is making (because they are necessary in his project and because they have been proved sufficiently in other philosophical systems) so is not really concerned with studying potential counter-arguments, or various alternative paths his system might take (which in a simple system as his at this point, are many) only in so far as they might disambiguate what he intends to express.
Because of these “rushed” proofs, some concepts are altered by their new significance, properties or simply role they play in his project. The most central concept that Descartes uses and fundamentally changes from his predecessor is God. In his philosophy, God is the linchpin used to go from making a priori true statements to true statements about the physical environment. But Descartes’ God is not Aquinas’ God. Scholastic tradition anchored the concept of God in the physical world, so the presence and various other essential characteristics of God would then be used to make further statements about the world. Descartes reaches God by observing his own essential, fragmented qualities and seeks to determine their perfect cause. Since this cause is not found in the world he concludes that it must come from God. But hasn’t he done a leap here? He considers the virtues that are within him as finding their perfection in God, but a virtue-based approach is not warranted at this point, following his strict reasoning. Descartes uses here a scholastic approach (taking virtues as essential, and non-virtues as flawed/partial forms of those virtues), an approach that is formed and argued exactly by performing deductions from God. It’s like Descartes flips a logic chain, but in doing so loses coherence.
I think there are also some things to say about what further implications Descartes approach to God has. Because God is no longer understood as related to nature, essential arguments related to God’s existence can’t be applied:arguments from contingency and from causation are no longer admitted under Descartes method (though conclusions or concepts obtained by reasoning in that way are still used by him). This is because those arguments rely on making observations and reasoning about a world that is uncertain , extrinsic to the thinker, so outside Descartes philosophical “game”. This is important, because in this way, we have lost a perspective that fundamentally separates God from the creation and simply anchored Him in our qualities. Why the knowledge of the possibility of the perfection of these qualities can’t be determined or at least hinted by the world we live in is not seriously discussed. I think this discussion is useful to have, since it alone separates (or even justifies) the concept of God at this point, otherwise we might simply refer to God as the world itself and do away with the need of an idea of God altogether.
As I mentioned, Descartes then uses God to justify having some belief in the authenticity of the world, by using the argument “God is fundamentally good, God would not deceive me, therefore I am not deceived and am experiencing an authentic reality”. But what is this good that God should possess or contain? Couldn’t Descartes be deceived exactly by that, assuming what is good and what isn’t? Again, this is a different approach from his predecessors, Descartes judges the virtues of God with respect to what he is experiencing as good and bad. This is a consequence of centering his philosophy on the conclusions and models of his own reason, starting from a skeptical approach of the world and therefore unable to define virtues as aspects of God’s relationship to the world. In Descartes approach, he is very constrained in the amount of factors that he can investigate to obtain his conclusions and it is very easy to make the argument that though this will generate a very simple model, it will also be unable to explain or to reason about very many things, so very many things will hamper it.
What I really appreciated about Descartes, however, was his immense clarity and how inspiring reading him felt. Because he introduces his system as profoundly personal and gradually builds it up, I felt part of that construction, building my own thoughts on the matter as I went along. This quality of his work allowed philosophy to avoid the stagnation that was happening and for something new and better suited for physical discoveries to develop. Descartes left both a very clear system in place, so easy to understand as well as criticize and then further improve on, as well as made sufficiently vague claims to invite copious criticism and development to take place, placing him at an essential point in the history of philosophy.
January 28, 2020
This must-read classic of modern philosophy lays out, in great detail, the primary skeptical challenge that philosophers are still trying to dig out of today. While the phrase “I think, therefore I am” is an important philosophical find (denying your own existence presupposes your existence), the deeper issue Descartes uncovered is that, beyond the certain knowledge of your own existence, you could still be wrong about everything else.
Descartes sought to reject any of his beliefs that introduced even the slightest degree of doubt. He began by finding reason to distrust the senses, along with his ability to distinguish dreams from waking life. He then imagined the possibility of being deceived by a “malicious, powerful, cunning demon” that convinced him of seemingly certain—albeit false—beliefs, such as the mathematical truth that 2+3=5.
The result was that Descartes had to reject all of his beliefs, as they were all subject to some degree of doubt. But there was one belief that was beyond doubt: the certainty of his own existence, which even the evil demon could not call into question. (It’s possible to think false beliefs, but it’s not possible to think you’re thinking when you’re not.)
Modern versions of “Descartes’ demon” include the possibility that we are all living inside a computer simulation or that we are “brains in a vat” manipulated by scientists to simulate artificial experiences. The unnerving thing about these scenarios—for those who have given them sufficient consideration—is that, despite their apparent implausibility, there is no way to disprove them. I may be certain of my own existence, but the nature of this existence is still left wide open. I could exist in a computer simulation, as a brain in a vat, or as an immaterial entity manipulated by an evil demon. How could I prove otherwise?
So how do you deal with this skeptical challenge? I see three main options: (1) deny the possibility of any knowledge at all, following the ancient Pyhronnian Skeptics, (2) ground knowledge in the idea that God is a perfect being and wouldn’t deceive you, as Descartes did, or (3) accept that certain knowledge is not possible but that certainty is not required for knowledge (the critical rationalist approach). I suppose the fourth possibility is to remain blissfully unaware of the problem at all.
Descartes pursued the second option, using a version of St. Anselm’s ontological argument to demonstrate that God is perfect and would never deceive him. This is ultimately a failed solution, as the ontological argument has so many valid objections and refutations that today it is not taken very seriously even by theists.
Further, Descartes ultimately argues in a circle to get out of his own dilemma. He tells us we shouldn’t trust our judgment regarding the basic truths of arithmetic, such as 2+3=5, but then tells us we should trust our judgment regarding the existence of a perfect being that wouldn’t deceive us. But since he tells us that we shouldn’t trust our judgments before establishing the existence of God, how can we then trust our judgments concerning the existence of God?
So Descartes introduced a critical philosophical problem but blatantly failed to resolve it. This is why I see his legacy as mixed. I also see Descartes as getting too much credit in two important respects.
First, Descartes is often referred to as the “father of modern philosophy,” yet Francis Bacon published his masterwork, the Novum Organum, in 1620, a full two decades before Descartes published the Meditations in 1641. Bacon laid out a new system of philosophy that influenced both the founding of the British Royal Society and later the Encyclopédie of the Enlightenment. Bacon’s attack on Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and his charting of a new path for philosophy and science based on inductive reasoning suggests to me that he is the real father of modern philosophy, not Descartes.
Second, Descartes is not the first philosopher to engage in a process of systematic doubt or to develop arguments against the reliability of the senses. The ancient Phyronnian skeptics, as well as Sextus Empiricus, hold that distinction, and would not have viewed his distrust of the senses as particularly innovative.
My recommendation would be to read the Meditations for Descartes’ systematic method of doubt, an understanding of the skeptical challenge, and the reasoning behind the certainty of your own existence. Beyond that, ignore his solutions and instead read the works of Karl Popper to see how critical rationalism is the only workable, albeit imperfect, solution to the skeptical challenge.
Descartes sought to reject any of his beliefs that introduced even the slightest degree of doubt. He began by finding reason to distrust the senses, along with his ability to distinguish dreams from waking life. He then imagined the possibility of being deceived by a “malicious, powerful, cunning demon” that convinced him of seemingly certain—albeit false—beliefs, such as the mathematical truth that 2+3=5.
The result was that Descartes had to reject all of his beliefs, as they were all subject to some degree of doubt. But there was one belief that was beyond doubt: the certainty of his own existence, which even the evil demon could not call into question. (It’s possible to think false beliefs, but it’s not possible to think you’re thinking when you’re not.)
Modern versions of “Descartes’ demon” include the possibility that we are all living inside a computer simulation or that we are “brains in a vat” manipulated by scientists to simulate artificial experiences. The unnerving thing about these scenarios—for those who have given them sufficient consideration—is that, despite their apparent implausibility, there is no way to disprove them. I may be certain of my own existence, but the nature of this existence is still left wide open. I could exist in a computer simulation, as a brain in a vat, or as an immaterial entity manipulated by an evil demon. How could I prove otherwise?
So how do you deal with this skeptical challenge? I see three main options: (1) deny the possibility of any knowledge at all, following the ancient Pyhronnian Skeptics, (2) ground knowledge in the idea that God is a perfect being and wouldn’t deceive you, as Descartes did, or (3) accept that certain knowledge is not possible but that certainty is not required for knowledge (the critical rationalist approach). I suppose the fourth possibility is to remain blissfully unaware of the problem at all.
Descartes pursued the second option, using a version of St. Anselm’s ontological argument to demonstrate that God is perfect and would never deceive him. This is ultimately a failed solution, as the ontological argument has so many valid objections and refutations that today it is not taken very seriously even by theists.
Further, Descartes ultimately argues in a circle to get out of his own dilemma. He tells us we shouldn’t trust our judgment regarding the basic truths of arithmetic, such as 2+3=5, but then tells us we should trust our judgment regarding the existence of a perfect being that wouldn’t deceive us. But since he tells us that we shouldn’t trust our judgments before establishing the existence of God, how can we then trust our judgments concerning the existence of God?
So Descartes introduced a critical philosophical problem but blatantly failed to resolve it. This is why I see his legacy as mixed. I also see Descartes as getting too much credit in two important respects.
First, Descartes is often referred to as the “father of modern philosophy,” yet Francis Bacon published his masterwork, the Novum Organum, in 1620, a full two decades before Descartes published the Meditations in 1641. Bacon laid out a new system of philosophy that influenced both the founding of the British Royal Society and later the Encyclopédie of the Enlightenment. Bacon’s attack on Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and his charting of a new path for philosophy and science based on inductive reasoning suggests to me that he is the real father of modern philosophy, not Descartes.
Second, Descartes is not the first philosopher to engage in a process of systematic doubt or to develop arguments against the reliability of the senses. The ancient Phyronnian skeptics, as well as Sextus Empiricus, hold that distinction, and would not have viewed his distrust of the senses as particularly innovative.
My recommendation would be to read the Meditations for Descartes’ systematic method of doubt, an understanding of the skeptical challenge, and the reasoning behind the certainty of your own existence. Beyond that, ignore his solutions and instead read the works of Karl Popper to see how critical rationalism is the only workable, albeit imperfect, solution to the skeptical challenge.
August 17, 2025
Descartes, can you shut up respectfully?
January 11, 2008
Written after I read this as a junior in college:
René Descartes spent much of his life in travel, studying the great works of philosophers and scientists. After the majority of his formal learning was completed, Descartes began writing prolifically. The Discourse on Method, written in Holland, and finished in 1637, was written not long after his previous works of, Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1629), and Treatise on the World (1633) were completed. In accompaniment to Discourse on Method, were three essays entitled Dioptric, Meteors, and Geometry. Although his philosophy was accepted by some, the majority of Holland found his works controversial and radical.
This work is a great representation of the thought that was evolving during this time period. The era of enlightenment was emerging, and the new approach was positivistic in scope–to verify everything with absolute fact. Descartes’ Discourse on Methods is a representative work of the important link between metaphysical thought and objective scientific discovery. Descartes believed that only things sensed can be defined as real, even more particular, only things that can be reasoned are legitimate. According to Descartes, even God is legitimized only to the degree that Descartes himself can sense and reason. The only way to know if something exists, argued Descartes, is that it can be measured. This is very significant because the emerging philosophy of all great minds of the time period, is that of scientific verification–of understanding the world through measuring, sensing, gathering, analyzing, and concluding. Through his study and thought, Descartes discovers that great advances may be made in the world as man discovers how to explain, and eventually control the things he can change; the physical things around him.
As with any other man who emerges with “enlightened” philosophy–new knowledge to the public, his work is not accepted by the majority at first. This method however, becomes the approach that many succeeding scientific minds adopt. As these scientists later implement these principles, they discover many scientific advances that greatly benefit society.
It was very interesting to read how Descartes went about finding truth in his own life. Although his singular use of reasoning led him to many important truths, it also resulted in a few false assumptions. His false interpretation about the mechanisms of the beating heart show us that even a man who’s life and thoughts were devoted to the power of reason, cannot always make an accurate deductive interpretation of all the facts that surround him. Science in all its forms requires constant testing and refining.
Descartes also admits that his knowledge came not from divine bestowal, as he believed it had come to many of the other philosophers and scientists. His knowledge, he claimed, came from the reading of many great books, his education, and his travels abroad. And yet with all of his knowledge and reasoning powers, he humbly admits that the more he learned, the more he found he didn’t know. This principle can be applied to all who don’t believe they have bestowed with intellectual treasures from God. Persistence and hunger for truth can lift any man to greatness.
René Descartes spent much of his life in travel, studying the great works of philosophers and scientists. After the majority of his formal learning was completed, Descartes began writing prolifically. The Discourse on Method, written in Holland, and finished in 1637, was written not long after his previous works of, Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1629), and Treatise on the World (1633) were completed. In accompaniment to Discourse on Method, were three essays entitled Dioptric, Meteors, and Geometry. Although his philosophy was accepted by some, the majority of Holland found his works controversial and radical.
This work is a great representation of the thought that was evolving during this time period. The era of enlightenment was emerging, and the new approach was positivistic in scope–to verify everything with absolute fact. Descartes’ Discourse on Methods is a representative work of the important link between metaphysical thought and objective scientific discovery. Descartes believed that only things sensed can be defined as real, even more particular, only things that can be reasoned are legitimate. According to Descartes, even God is legitimized only to the degree that Descartes himself can sense and reason. The only way to know if something exists, argued Descartes, is that it can be measured. This is very significant because the emerging philosophy of all great minds of the time period, is that of scientific verification–of understanding the world through measuring, sensing, gathering, analyzing, and concluding. Through his study and thought, Descartes discovers that great advances may be made in the world as man discovers how to explain, and eventually control the things he can change; the physical things around him.
As with any other man who emerges with “enlightened” philosophy–new knowledge to the public, his work is not accepted by the majority at first. This method however, becomes the approach that many succeeding scientific minds adopt. As these scientists later implement these principles, they discover many scientific advances that greatly benefit society.
It was very interesting to read how Descartes went about finding truth in his own life. Although his singular use of reasoning led him to many important truths, it also resulted in a few false assumptions. His false interpretation about the mechanisms of the beating heart show us that even a man who’s life and thoughts were devoted to the power of reason, cannot always make an accurate deductive interpretation of all the facts that surround him. Science in all its forms requires constant testing and refining.
Descartes also admits that his knowledge came not from divine bestowal, as he believed it had come to many of the other philosophers and scientists. His knowledge, he claimed, came from the reading of many great books, his education, and his travels abroad. And yet with all of his knowledge and reasoning powers, he humbly admits that the more he learned, the more he found he didn’t know. This principle can be applied to all who don’t believe they have bestowed with intellectual treasures from God. Persistence and hunger for truth can lift any man to greatness.
February 26, 2023
how do i put this nicely? this man is full of bs.
and i didn't even read all of his work. i only read his meditations on first philosophy (books 1-4 and 6) and i hated every single second of it. his ideas are so convoluted and complex they just make my brain hurt and he's literally making zero sense it's quite annoying. i hated reading descartes. he's like trying so hard to be a profound philosopher like Plato but he is failing so so so hard. he reminds me of those kids in class who think they sound smart but instead they're just spewing out nonsense and no one is eating up his ideas. (well, ig a lot of people were eating up his ideas back then. I'm not eating them up tho). what confuses me is that he starts off his meditations by saying that all he knows is that he thinks therefore he exists. but then he starts talking about god and all this other bs???? like where tf did you pull all this information from????? your ass????? bc clearly. like babe shut up and stick to simply existing for me. his arguments make no sense at all and then he tries to bring god into it????? ok I'm sorry but this is probably the worst proof of god's existence that i have ever heard. i have read way better proofs than this one. in this one he was like trying so hard to prove that a god exists that he failed miserably. no part of this book was entertaining at all. his ideas were stupid. like idk why people are still reading this today. we live in the 21st century where all of our science experiments are all based on our senses and observations made thru the senses so idk why descartes is trying to bring spirit and mind into science. like shut up. I've had enough of this boy. the last philosophy book I've read was Plato's Symposium and that book was absolutely marvelous. that book made me interested in philosophy. but this made me hate philosophy again. what a stupid book. i usually hate calling renowned thinkers stupid bc it makes me feel so weird calling one of the greatest thinkers in history stupid lol. but this guy is actually ridiculous. he's dead and his ideas should stay that way. not hating just stating. there was not a single part of his meditations that i could memorable or worth referring back to. all of it was just straight poo. i even wanted to read his discourse on method if i thought i'd enjoy his meditations after reading it in class. no. his meditations were enough to make me never read him ever again. forgive me if my review is wrong or offensive to you. forgive me if my ideas of what he is saying is wrong. bc if what i interpreted from descartes is wrong don't blame me. blame the man who decided to write the book in this stupid format. i hate meditations bc it's just a ramble. a rant. he's literally going nowhere. this format of writing is literally the worst thing ever to be made. his ideas are so unclear and convoluted and he decided to write it in the most confusing way possible. makes me just wanna chuck the book across the room. anyways that's enough hating from me i think LMFAO. ig this book was monumental to modern philosophy but who cares. descartes is a phoney. his meditations is just a really big fallacy. leave him in the past. thank you.
and i didn't even read all of his work. i only read his meditations on first philosophy (books 1-4 and 6) and i hated every single second of it. his ideas are so convoluted and complex they just make my brain hurt and he's literally making zero sense it's quite annoying. i hated reading descartes. he's like trying so hard to be a profound philosopher like Plato but he is failing so so so hard. he reminds me of those kids in class who think they sound smart but instead they're just spewing out nonsense and no one is eating up his ideas. (well, ig a lot of people were eating up his ideas back then. I'm not eating them up tho). what confuses me is that he starts off his meditations by saying that all he knows is that he thinks therefore he exists. but then he starts talking about god and all this other bs???? like where tf did you pull all this information from????? your ass????? bc clearly. like babe shut up and stick to simply existing for me. his arguments make no sense at all and then he tries to bring god into it????? ok I'm sorry but this is probably the worst proof of god's existence that i have ever heard. i have read way better proofs than this one. in this one he was like trying so hard to prove that a god exists that he failed miserably. no part of this book was entertaining at all. his ideas were stupid. like idk why people are still reading this today. we live in the 21st century where all of our science experiments are all based on our senses and observations made thru the senses so idk why descartes is trying to bring spirit and mind into science. like shut up. I've had enough of this boy. the last philosophy book I've read was Plato's Symposium and that book was absolutely marvelous. that book made me interested in philosophy. but this made me hate philosophy again. what a stupid book. i usually hate calling renowned thinkers stupid bc it makes me feel so weird calling one of the greatest thinkers in history stupid lol. but this guy is actually ridiculous. he's dead and his ideas should stay that way. not hating just stating. there was not a single part of his meditations that i could memorable or worth referring back to. all of it was just straight poo. i even wanted to read his discourse on method if i thought i'd enjoy his meditations after reading it in class. no. his meditations were enough to make me never read him ever again. forgive me if my review is wrong or offensive to you. forgive me if my ideas of what he is saying is wrong. bc if what i interpreted from descartes is wrong don't blame me. blame the man who decided to write the book in this stupid format. i hate meditations bc it's just a ramble. a rant. he's literally going nowhere. this format of writing is literally the worst thing ever to be made. his ideas are so unclear and convoluted and he decided to write it in the most confusing way possible. makes me just wanna chuck the book across the room. anyways that's enough hating from me i think LMFAO. ig this book was monumental to modern philosophy but who cares. descartes is a phoney. his meditations is just a really big fallacy. leave him in the past. thank you.
December 20, 2016
An interesting book, but I read only partly for my philosophy class. Will definitely re-read the full part some other time.
October 22, 2024
Favorite quote, very relatable: "But I had learned in my college days that one cannot imagine anything so strange or so little believable that it had not been said by one of the philosophers." - Descartes, Discourse on Method
The 5 star rating shouldn't be over-interpreted. This book is a nice edition of two hugely influential pieces of writing in the history of philosophy. I also enjoy reading Descartes, and I find his auto-biographical accounts engaging and relatable.
But his project to build an edifice of indubitable truths was doomed for failure from the start, representing a misguided approach to knowledge. Nevertheless, Descartes continues to be philosophically fruitful to this day.
The 5 star rating shouldn't be over-interpreted. This book is a nice edition of two hugely influential pieces of writing in the history of philosophy. I also enjoy reading Descartes, and I find his auto-biographical accounts engaging and relatable.
But his project to build an edifice of indubitable truths was doomed for failure from the start, representing a misguided approach to knowledge. Nevertheless, Descartes continues to be philosophically fruitful to this day.
October 30, 2012
مقال عن المنهج كُتِب عام 1637 بواسطة رينيه ديكارت أبو الفلسفة الحديثة وباعثها والفيلسوف الأشهر على الإطلاق بعد المعلم الأول أرسطو والأباء المؤسسين للفلسفة الإغريقية القديمة.
هدف ديكارت الوصول للـ"يقين" وأخذ من "الشك" طريقا للوصول لليقين المنشود.
تأمل ديكارت فوجد أن للمعرفة سببين وهما البداهة والقياس, وفي تأمله في العلوم وجد أن الرياضيات هي العلم الأقوى يقينا لأنه مؤسس على بديهيات, والبديهيات وهي المعارف البسيطة التي لا يراود العقل فيها شك مثل ان مجموع زوايا المثلث يساوي قائمتين.
فعزم ديكارت أن يؤسس منهج معرفي جديد قائم على البديهات, فيكون له متانة الرياضيات. وفي هذا, وضع ديكارت قواعده الأربعة للمعرفة وهي:ـ
1- قاعدة اليقين: وهو ألا يقبل شيئا على أنه حق, ما لم يعرف يقينا أنه كذلك.
2- قاعدة التحليل: أن المعضلة ينبغي أن تقسم إلى أجزاء بسيطة بقدر ما تدعو الحاجة لحلها.
3- قاعدة التركيب: أي أن يسير أفكاره بانتظام بادئا بأبسط الأمور واسلسها معرفة ثم يتدرج إلى المعارف الأكثر تركيبا.
4- قاعدة الاستقراء التام: أي ان يعمل من الاحصاءات الكاملة والمراجعات الشاملة بما يجعله على ثقة انه لم يغفل شيئا.
ولم يغفل ديكارت سعادته, فهو يرى ان السعادة والنجاح لا يجتمعان مع الشك, وحيث أن مبدأ ديكارت المعرفي قائم على الشك فهو يضع لنفسه ثلاثة قواعد مؤقتة للأخلاق, يلتزم بها في رحلة شكه حتى وصوله لليقين وهي:
1- أن يطيع قوانين بلاده ويحترم عاداتها مع الثبات في الديانة التي نشأ عليها.
2- أن يكون أكثر ثباتا في أعماله وأن يتجنب الشك والتردد في سياسته.
3- أن يجتهد في مغالبة نفسه, لا في مغالبة الحظ.
وبعد أن أعد العُدة, يمضي ديكارت في منهجه الشكي, ويصل للبديهة الأولى "أنا أفكر إذا أنا موجود" ـ
ومنها يثبت منطقيا تمايز النفس والبدن, ثم يضع 4 إثباتات منطقية يثبت بها وجود الله.
في رأيي شهرة ديكارت لا ترجع فقط لمنهجه أو كونه فذا, لكن بلاغة اسلوبه السلس والسهل ساعد كثيرا في انتشار كتاباته وتوصيل أفكاره للعوام دون تعقيد, حتى في قرائتك تشعر وكأنك تقرأ عمل أدبي وليس فلسفي.
هدف ديكارت الوصول للـ"يقين" وأخذ من "الشك" طريقا للوصول لليقين المنشود.
تأمل ديكارت فوجد أن للمعرفة سببين وهما البداهة والقياس, وفي تأمله في العلوم وجد أن الرياضيات هي العلم الأقوى يقينا لأنه مؤسس على بديهيات, والبديهيات وهي المعارف البسيطة التي لا يراود العقل فيها شك مثل ان مجموع زوايا المثلث يساوي قائمتين.
فعزم ديكارت أن يؤسس منهج معرفي جديد قائم على البديهات, فيكون له متانة الرياضيات. وفي هذا, وضع ديكارت قواعده الأربعة للمعرفة وهي:ـ
1- قاعدة اليقين: وهو ألا يقبل شيئا على أنه حق, ما لم يعرف يقينا أنه كذلك.
2- قاعدة التحليل: أن المعضلة ينبغي أن تقسم إلى أجزاء بسيطة بقدر ما تدعو الحاجة لحلها.
3- قاعدة التركيب: أي أن يسير أفكاره بانتظام بادئا بأبسط الأمور واسلسها معرفة ثم يتدرج إلى المعارف الأكثر تركيبا.
4- قاعدة الاستقراء التام: أي ان يعمل من الاحصاءات الكاملة والمراجعات الشاملة بما يجعله على ثقة انه لم يغفل شيئا.
ولم يغفل ديكارت سعادته, فهو يرى ان السعادة والنجاح لا يجتمعان مع الشك, وحيث أن مبدأ ديكارت المعرفي قائم على الشك فهو يضع لنفسه ثلاثة قواعد مؤقتة للأخلاق, يلتزم بها في رحلة شكه حتى وصوله لليقين وهي:
1- أن يطيع قوانين بلاده ويحترم عاداتها مع الثبات في الديانة التي نشأ عليها.
2- أن يكون أكثر ثباتا في أعماله وأن يتجنب الشك والتردد في سياسته.
3- أن يجتهد في مغالبة نفسه, لا في مغالبة الحظ.
وبعد أن أعد العُدة, يمضي ديكارت في منهجه الشكي, ويصل للبديهة الأولى "أنا أفكر إذا أنا موجود" ـ
ومنها يثبت منطقيا تمايز النفس والبدن, ثم يضع 4 إثباتات منطقية يثبت بها وجود الله.
في رأيي شهرة ديكارت لا ترجع فقط لمنهجه أو كونه فذا, لكن بلاغة اسلوبه السلس والسهل ساعد كثيرا في انتشار كتاباته وتوصيل أفكاره للعوام دون تعقيد, حتى في قرائتك تشعر وكأنك تقرأ عمل أدبي وليس فلسفي.
January 23, 2013
Descartes was the one of the best but mostly the worst of philosophers. His philosophy is extremely relevant historically but hasn't aged as well as Hume, Locke, Schopenhauer or Spinoza, mostly because it was so deeply Catholic. I read this when I was about 15 and thought it was brilliant, but now, despite a few good arguments, the thing feels like a skyscraper built out of toothpicks. Unlike Hume or Locke (who feel fairer than the others I mentioned, since they were closer to being his contemporaries), there's not much here for us now, especially if you aren't interested in a sort of dualistic Platonism.
May 7, 2025
I've heard some very silly arguments for the existence of God but these are among the worst. Some did make me laugh out loud, which is always appreciated, but this was mostly disappointing. It's just not possible to deny Descartes' impact in the world of philosophy. I'm not saying I have no respect for the man and his work at all. But He is low on my list of greats.
July 15, 2022
I waited quite some time before reading this one, but it was suggested as essential to get an idea of the role 'method' may play in philosophy. And, I am glad I waited so long, it was quite easy to appreciate.
Descartes is a goofy character, sort-of a comic book philosopher; another quintessential poor lad that ran away from home seeking the distance of other worlds, resorting to isolation and solipsism after years gone rouge with metaphysical answers to his grandest concerns.
His answers were timely and monumental--anticipating the age of reason, Descartes' Appreciation for the maths provided insights into methods of unifying the realm of God with the realm of nature. Math represented for Descartes an indispensable system with the capacity for producing proofs, thus a methodological mode of doubting and apodicticity. But hold on a second, a mere man bestowed with the powers of Knowledge? How is this possible? Why shouldn't we doubt that all this doubting and certainty is not within the scope of a veiled reality, that placed upon our seeing by an Evil Genius?
For Descartes, it's easy (but also complicated). The idea of being a man with the capacity to err but also the capacity for exactitude, implies the existence of a perfect being from which all is just and true. Man can be lead astray by his senses and thus also by his understanding, the final locus of the senses--however, it is also possible that man can correctly discern, for example, that two extended/material bodies are distinct from one another.* It becomes evident to the intellect then that this distinction, ultimately a logical one, is preceded by a distinction caused by God, for the mind did not impose the clearly distinct separation of the two bodies and for we are not within the dream of a deceiver.
Another important aspect of these two material bodies, and Descartes himself (his body), is that existence does not belong to its essence. Therefore, this distinction is contingent on the existence of the respective body: again, the contingency (present in the intellect) can only arise from some non-contingency, from that whose essence belongs existence and therefore is the result of God.
* Much like man understands that a mathematical object having three sides joined according to the sum of two right angles belongs to the essence of a triangle. That the judgement ‘two bodies are distinct’ is entailed by the category of body as opposed to that of mind: bodies are infinitely divisible whereas the mind is always one. This points towards the infinite domain over which God reigns and the singular creation that ‘I’ is.
Descartes is a goofy character, sort-of a comic book philosopher; another quintessential poor lad that ran away from home seeking the distance of other worlds, resorting to isolation and solipsism after years gone rouge with metaphysical answers to his grandest concerns.
His answers were timely and monumental--anticipating the age of reason, Descartes' Appreciation for the maths provided insights into methods of unifying the realm of God with the realm of nature. Math represented for Descartes an indispensable system with the capacity for producing proofs, thus a methodological mode of doubting and apodicticity. But hold on a second, a mere man bestowed with the powers of Knowledge? How is this possible? Why shouldn't we doubt that all this doubting and certainty is not within the scope of a veiled reality, that placed upon our seeing by an Evil Genius?
For Descartes, it's easy (but also complicated). The idea of being a man with the capacity to err but also the capacity for exactitude, implies the existence of a perfect being from which all is just and true. Man can be lead astray by his senses and thus also by his understanding, the final locus of the senses--however, it is also possible that man can correctly discern, for example, that two extended/material bodies are distinct from one another.* It becomes evident to the intellect then that this distinction, ultimately a logical one, is preceded by a distinction caused by God, for the mind did not impose the clearly distinct separation of the two bodies and for we are not within the dream of a deceiver.
Another important aspect of these two material bodies, and Descartes himself (his body), is that existence does not belong to its essence. Therefore, this distinction is contingent on the existence of the respective body: again, the contingency (present in the intellect) can only arise from some non-contingency, from that whose essence belongs existence and therefore is the result of God.
* Much like man understands that a mathematical object having three sides joined according to the sum of two right angles belongs to the essence of a triangle. That the judgement ‘two bodies are distinct’ is entailed by the category of body as opposed to that of mind: bodies are infinitely divisible whereas the mind is always one. This points towards the infinite domain over which God reigns and the singular creation that ‘I’ is.
September 16, 2020
Modern philosophy began in the Netherlands by a French mathematician inspired by the events of the Thirty-Years War in Germany. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy are the first two treatise by French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes that would that would not only start modern philosophy but also the use of reason which lead to the development of natural sciences both of which impact the world in the 21st Century.
The “founding” document of Cartesian philosophical and scientific method is “Discourse on Method” in which Rene Descartes tackles the problem of skepticism while also acknowledging that a truth can be found incontrovertible. Descartes started his line of reasoning, and thus his “method”, by doubting everything so to assess everything from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions. To test his new method, he uses it on itself which leads to the famous quote of the work, “I think, therefore I am”. Descartes second work, “Meditations on First Philosophy”, expands upon his philosophical system introduced in “Discourse” and presents Descartes metaphysical system at its most detailed level. Within this series of meditations, Descartes sets further the arguments for the three substances that all existence consisted of which formed the basis of Cartesian ontology—matter, mind, and God.
Rene Descartes significance to modern philosophy and the development of the natural science means this two-treatise collection is important in the history of the development of both philosophy and the scientific method. Yet this book is simply the two treatises without an introduction or explanation to the uninitiated about the importance of the works or the author. Also a significant element of “Meditations of First Philosophy” was missing at least from Descartes perspective, particular the objections from scholars around Europe that he submitted the unpublished manuscript to and his replies that were printed when he officially published the work. Though the book comes in at 130 pages without the two features, it hurts the overall product.
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy are the first two treatise of Cartesian philosophy that Rene Descartes and many after developed and refined over the course of the seventeenth century. While the treatise themselves are five-star worthy, without context or adherence to authorial intent the way they are presented in this book lessens their impact.
The “founding” document of Cartesian philosophical and scientific method is “Discourse on Method” in which Rene Descartes tackles the problem of skepticism while also acknowledging that a truth can be found incontrovertible. Descartes started his line of reasoning, and thus his “method”, by doubting everything so to assess everything from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions. To test his new method, he uses it on itself which leads to the famous quote of the work, “I think, therefore I am”. Descartes second work, “Meditations on First Philosophy”, expands upon his philosophical system introduced in “Discourse” and presents Descartes metaphysical system at its most detailed level. Within this series of meditations, Descartes sets further the arguments for the three substances that all existence consisted of which formed the basis of Cartesian ontology—matter, mind, and God.
Rene Descartes significance to modern philosophy and the development of the natural science means this two-treatise collection is important in the history of the development of both philosophy and the scientific method. Yet this book is simply the two treatises without an introduction or explanation to the uninitiated about the importance of the works or the author. Also a significant element of “Meditations of First Philosophy” was missing at least from Descartes perspective, particular the objections from scholars around Europe that he submitted the unpublished manuscript to and his replies that were printed when he officially published the work. Though the book comes in at 130 pages without the two features, it hurts the overall product.
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy are the first two treatise of Cartesian philosophy that Rene Descartes and many after developed and refined over the course of the seventeenth century. While the treatise themselves are five-star worthy, without context or adherence to authorial intent the way they are presented in this book lessens their impact.
March 22, 2021
i read this for shabbier ahsen's history of western philosophy class and the only thing i rmr is how my friend and i would sit together in that class and rub each other's feet under the desk for two hours twice every week??? (thanks for the foot fetish ****). sometimes we played ludo too. shabbir is very sweet and he ignored a lot of bad behavior from our side but he was just SO DULL and it was soooo hard to concentrate. the course content was v cool too and i rly enjoyed reading on my own n learning falsafa. it made me feel v cool to know all this filusufi, not that i remember any of it now
also this was during my most favourite semester at lums, it was sophomore fall, the pandemic hadn't hit, my mental health was pretty ok, nothing bad had happened yet, **** and i got to spend a lot of time together because we had a class in common and our schedules matched, it was really lovely. we spent a lot of time laying in the grass and talking in the law school lawn that has the tree with the white flowers, i have lovely pictures of **** from there <3
also this was during my most favourite semester at lums, it was sophomore fall, the pandemic hadn't hit, my mental health was pretty ok, nothing bad had happened yet, **** and i got to spend a lot of time together because we had a class in common and our schedules matched, it was really lovely. we spent a lot of time laying in the grass and talking in the law school lawn that has the tree with the white flowers, i have lovely pictures of **** from there <3
May 5, 2022
How does one possibly go about ranking the most influential works of the man who by most accounts started what we know today as Western philosophy? At what point should historical significance outweigh how personally persuasive one finds an argument in our judgement? I don't really know, maybe such works shouldn't be rated to begin with. I don't think it will hurt old Descartes's feelings if I give his work a 3/5 and stop thinking about the matter, so I think that's just what I'll do.
If nothing else, reading Descartes's is an illuminating experience in unearthing beliefs that are so ingrained in us as children that they often don't feel like beliefs at all. What feels obvious to us very simply wasn't to Descartes and to other men of his era, and it's humbling to witness these foundational ideas be generated. It feels as though the entirety of the Western mind has been built on the back of Descartes ideas, and the fact that no one agrees with Descartes fully today is predominately a function of the fact that, at this point, it would be virtually impossible to even have new ideas without them developing out of an unspoken dialogue with his thought.
Of course, it was exactly this Descartean framework that Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Dewey were all attempting to, in one form or another, overcome. For Marx, the duality of mind and body was reflective of the ritual experience in wage labor of the estrangement of the self from the activity of the self. For Nietzsche, the metaphysical death of God brought about by the ideas of Darwin made the religious underpinnings of Descartes thought wholly unsuitable. And, for Dewey, Descartes whole attempt at finding a first philosophy, principles in thought with which we could be wholly satisfied, was no longer viable in light of the realization that not only the brain but thought itself had its roots in natural processes.
We live in a world now where the communist society of Marx, the ubermenchian society of Nietzsche, and the instrumentalist society of Dewey have all failed to come about. For all three men, the philosophy's they envisioned were necessarily tied to processes of life, and the failure to meet the transformation of thought they brought about with an equally massive transformation in the organization of life has resulted in there being no place for their thinking to be realized. The strange retreat in philosophy from the practical makes all too much sense in light of this: the practical results of philosophy simply cannot be born, and so to survive philosophy became impractical. Truth be told, much is the same in the world of religious thinking: the Kingdom of God is no longer within us.
If this seems disconnected, it isn't. For better or for worse, we are still living in the era of Descartes... sort of. To read him is to read a version of ourselves, but a version of ourselves that is infinitely more content with this way of thinking. Descartes philosophy is to us common sense, and yet we all know it is wrong. We cannot move past it, and yet we cannot be satisfied with it. It's a bizarre place for social thinking to be, and it makes reading Descartes a strange but rewarding experience.
To discuss Descartes on his own terms for a bit, it is worth noting that he is not attempting here to complete philosophy as would Hegel 200 years after him, but instead to begin it. Descartes's "first philosophy" is an attempt to establish the possibility of certain knowledge and to discern a methodology for its production. It is not uncommon to frame this project in the light of the Protestant Reformation which had rocked the European intellectual world a mere century earlier. The Reformation resulted in many changes, but perhaps the most important change it brought about was simply change itself. Within a very short span of time, mankind went from knowing everything to knowing nothing, being confident in its certain knowledge to racked with doubt. Descartes found this doubt unpleasant, but deserved: Europe had rooted itself in intellectual foundations which were not secure and was now undergoing to difficult process of fixing its mistakes. In essence, mankind had found certainty in uncertain places, and Descartes was intent on ensuring that the same error never happened again.
To do this, Descartes strives to find fundamental axioms upon which further certain truths can be realized. In essence, he wishes to do in philosophy what Euclid did in geometry. This is what is meant when Descartes's philosophy is described as rationalist, he advocates for investigation into the implications of foundational knowledge which cannot be doubted. The primary error made here, in my view, is that seeking to safeguard our philosophical house from the earthquake of uncertainty by attempting to make our foundations as rigid as possible is counterproductive. To justify cognition before preforming it is an absurdity, although one whose appeal is obvious and understandable. In Nietzsche's playful reordering of Descartes's famous phrase: I am, therefore I think. Or, to phrase my point another way, Descartes errs when he mistakes certainty for knowledge. Despite being proven wrong in a number of crucial respects by Einstein, Newton's physics undeniably produced knowledge. Even the earlier mentioned Euclidean geometry has undergone significant revisions, but it would nevertheless be absurd to argue that knowledge was not gained from these errors.
I could go on, but this is a Goodreads review and not an essay.
If nothing else, reading Descartes's is an illuminating experience in unearthing beliefs that are so ingrained in us as children that they often don't feel like beliefs at all. What feels obvious to us very simply wasn't to Descartes and to other men of his era, and it's humbling to witness these foundational ideas be generated. It feels as though the entirety of the Western mind has been built on the back of Descartes ideas, and the fact that no one agrees with Descartes fully today is predominately a function of the fact that, at this point, it would be virtually impossible to even have new ideas without them developing out of an unspoken dialogue with his thought.
Of course, it was exactly this Descartean framework that Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Dewey were all attempting to, in one form or another, overcome. For Marx, the duality of mind and body was reflective of the ritual experience in wage labor of the estrangement of the self from the activity of the self. For Nietzsche, the metaphysical death of God brought about by the ideas of Darwin made the religious underpinnings of Descartes thought wholly unsuitable. And, for Dewey, Descartes whole attempt at finding a first philosophy, principles in thought with which we could be wholly satisfied, was no longer viable in light of the realization that not only the brain but thought itself had its roots in natural processes.
We live in a world now where the communist society of Marx, the ubermenchian society of Nietzsche, and the instrumentalist society of Dewey have all failed to come about. For all three men, the philosophy's they envisioned were necessarily tied to processes of life, and the failure to meet the transformation of thought they brought about with an equally massive transformation in the organization of life has resulted in there being no place for their thinking to be realized. The strange retreat in philosophy from the practical makes all too much sense in light of this: the practical results of philosophy simply cannot be born, and so to survive philosophy became impractical. Truth be told, much is the same in the world of religious thinking: the Kingdom of God is no longer within us.
If this seems disconnected, it isn't. For better or for worse, we are still living in the era of Descartes... sort of. To read him is to read a version of ourselves, but a version of ourselves that is infinitely more content with this way of thinking. Descartes philosophy is to us common sense, and yet we all know it is wrong. We cannot move past it, and yet we cannot be satisfied with it. It's a bizarre place for social thinking to be, and it makes reading Descartes a strange but rewarding experience.
To discuss Descartes on his own terms for a bit, it is worth noting that he is not attempting here to complete philosophy as would Hegel 200 years after him, but instead to begin it. Descartes's "first philosophy" is an attempt to establish the possibility of certain knowledge and to discern a methodology for its production. It is not uncommon to frame this project in the light of the Protestant Reformation which had rocked the European intellectual world a mere century earlier. The Reformation resulted in many changes, but perhaps the most important change it brought about was simply change itself. Within a very short span of time, mankind went from knowing everything to knowing nothing, being confident in its certain knowledge to racked with doubt. Descartes found this doubt unpleasant, but deserved: Europe had rooted itself in intellectual foundations which were not secure and was now undergoing to difficult process of fixing its mistakes. In essence, mankind had found certainty in uncertain places, and Descartes was intent on ensuring that the same error never happened again.
To do this, Descartes strives to find fundamental axioms upon which further certain truths can be realized. In essence, he wishes to do in philosophy what Euclid did in geometry. This is what is meant when Descartes's philosophy is described as rationalist, he advocates for investigation into the implications of foundational knowledge which cannot be doubted. The primary error made here, in my view, is that seeking to safeguard our philosophical house from the earthquake of uncertainty by attempting to make our foundations as rigid as possible is counterproductive. To justify cognition before preforming it is an absurdity, although one whose appeal is obvious and understandable. In Nietzsche's playful reordering of Descartes's famous phrase: I am, therefore I think. Or, to phrase my point another way, Descartes errs when he mistakes certainty for knowledge. Despite being proven wrong in a number of crucial respects by Einstein, Newton's physics undeniably produced knowledge. Even the earlier mentioned Euclidean geometry has undergone significant revisions, but it would nevertheless be absurd to argue that knowledge was not gained from these errors.
I could go on, but this is a Goodreads review and not an essay.
July 4, 2022
I found the methods portion of the book a lot better than the meditation. For someone who’s very sure and steadfast in his faith, I appreciate his perspective coming from a great sense of humility that the most certainty we have is we simply don’t know what’s best, and it’s impossible to know that. Still as relevant a concept today as 400 years ago.
Some of my favorite quotes: 1. never to accept anything as true… that’s to say, carefully avoid hasty judgment; 2. To follow the most doubtful opinions, once I had decided on them, with no less constancy than if they had been well assured; 3. to change my desires rather than the order of the world, … there’s nothing that’s completely within our power… after we have done our best. This prevented me from desiring anything but what I was to acquire, thus to make me content.
Some of my favorite quotes: 1. never to accept anything as true… that’s to say, carefully avoid hasty judgment; 2. To follow the most doubtful opinions, once I had decided on them, with no less constancy than if they had been well assured; 3. to change my desires rather than the order of the world, … there’s nothing that’s completely within our power… after we have done our best. This prevented me from desiring anything but what I was to acquire, thus to make me content.
June 23, 2022
God does a lot of the heavy lifting heh.
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