Reasoning and Meditation in Descartes’ Third Meditation

ABSTRACT

My article focuses on Descartes’ Third Meditation, in which he seeks to gain a knowledge of God as his creator. While Descartes offers two proofs of God’s existence in this meditation—the first to prove that God is the cause of his idea of God, and the second to prove that God is the cause of his idea of God and that God is the cause of Descartes, insofar as he is a thinking thing—I show that these proofs fail to establish that God is the cause of Descartes. This is not a failure on the part of these proofs, for ultimately Descartes intends the knowledge of God as his creator to be obtained through meditation, and not argumentation. The two proofs of God’s existence have a role to play in guiding Descartes to grasp, through meditation, the relation of his idea of God and the idea of the self qua thinking thing. Toward the end of the article, I show that my study is in accordance with Descartes’ account of the method he employs in the Meditations, as detailed in the Replies to Objections II.

KEYWORDS:

• Descartes
• God
• argumentation
• reasoning
• meditation
• knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All references to Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy are from the Routledge Philosophy in Focus series, edited with a critical introduction by Stanley Tweyman. The text of the Meditations on First Philosophy and the selection from the Replies to the Second Set of Objections in this edition are reprinted from the Haldane and Ross translation first published in 1911, and reprinted with corrections in 1931, 1956, 1970. References are cited as M followed by page numbers. All references to Descartes’ other writings are taken from the Haldane and Ross two-volume edition of The Philosophical Works of Descartes, cited as HR, followed by volume and page number. References to The Philosophical Writings of Descartes translated by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch are cited as CSM, followed by volume and page number.

2. See especially Rules 3, 7, and 11.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stanley Tweyman

Stanley Tweyman is University Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. He has published 38 books, authored and/or edited, and more than 50 articles. The main focus of his research is the philosophy of René Descartes and the philosophy of David Hume. He has also published work on George Berkeley and William Wollaston.