Descartes’ Meditations: New Approaches – Introduction

This Special Issue of The European Legacy focuses on Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, first published in Latin as Meditationes de Prima Philosophia in Paris, in 1641. The ten articles appearing in this issue address various topics, which in addition to their excellence in scholarship, provide new approaches to understanding Descartes’ philosophy, with particular emphasis on his Meditations. “New approaches” is taken in a broad sense to cover (a) new interpretations of Descartes’ philosophy, (b) new tools for studying Descartes’ philosophy, (c) new criticisms of Cartesian philosophy, and (d) new categories through which to understand the Meditations. I believe that each of the articles qualifies as a novel contribution to Descartes Studies on the basis of the above criteria.

Before I introduce these articles, a brief introduction to Descartes is in order. The philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650) is generally regarded as the beginning of the early modern period in philosophy. Descartes seeks a revolution or new beginning in philosophy. Breaking with his predecessors, he does not rely on connecting his method and philosophy to previous texts and philosophers. For example, at one point in the Preface to the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes proceeds to set out “the order which should be followed in our self instruction” (HR I, 210; CSM I, 185).¹ He recommends that we begin with logic, but note which logic he recommends that we should not study, and which logic he recommends that we should study:

[W]e should likewise study logic – not that of the Schools [Aristotelian Logic], because it properly speaking is only a dialectic which teaches how to make the things that we know understood by others, or even to repeat, without forming any judgment on them, many words respecting those that we do not know, thus corrupting rather that increasing good sense – but the logic [presumably in his “Rules for the Direction of the Understanding,” often referred to as the Regulae] that teaches us how best to direct our reason, in order to discover those truths of which we are ignorant. (HR I, 241; CSM I, 186)

Or again, in the opening sentence of the First Meditation, he informs us:

[I]t is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was convinced that I must once and for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I formally accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure in the sciences. (M 45; CSM II, 17)

In other words, Descartes is announcing a new beginning in philosophy, beginning with the discovery of the first principles of human knowledge.

Even the method that Descartes employs in the Meditations has no connection to previous philosophers. He tells us in the Preface to the Principles of Philosophy, that following the study of the logic that teaches us how to best direct our reason to discover truths of which we are ignorant, we should begin seriously to apply ourselves to the true philosophy, the first part of which is metaphysics, “which contains the [first] principles of knowledge, amongst which is the explanation of the principal attributes of God, of the immateriality of our souls, and of all the clear and simple notions which are in us” (HR I, 210; CSM I, 186). Descartes’ metaphysics is contained in his Meditations on First Philosophy.

Nowhere in the Meditations does Descartes explain the method that he utilizes for discovering the first principles of human knowledge. His explanation of the method he utilizes in the Meditations—he calls his method ‘analysis’—and the reason why he does not utilize the method of the geometer, which he calls ‘synthesis’, is provided in the Replies to Objections 11 (M 101–4; CSM II, 110). He explains that the geometer can proceed with deductions, as soon as the first principles or primary notions of geometry are known, because the first principles in geometry “harmonize with the use of our senses, and are readily granted by all” (M 102; CSM II, 111). The first principles or primary notions in metaphysics, on the other hand, are difficult to grasp, because they are contradicted by sensory prejudice. As a result, “if they alone were brought forward, it would be easy for anyone with a zeal for contradiction to deny them” (M 103; CSM II, 111). In order to grasp the first principles of metaphysics, the method of analysis is required, which enables the mind to withdraw from empirical matters, and guides the mind to attend to the first principles of metaphysics. Descartes speaks of analysis as showing the true way by which a thing is methodically discovered and derived, “so that, if the reader care to follow it and give sufficient attention to everything, he understands the matter no less perfectly and makes it as much his own as if he had discovered it. But it contains nothing to incite belief in an inattentive or hostile reader; for if the very least thing brought forward escapes his notice, the necessity of the conclusion is lost” (M 101; CSM II, 111). To make the first principles of metaphysics as much our own as if we had discovered them requires that we entertain the same innate ideas that Descartes is entertaining, and that we grasp the necessary relations between these ideas, as Descartes has done. Descartes emphasizes that only in this way can metaphysical first principles be understood to be self-evident and freed from controversy. For, to attempt to understand metaphysical first principles without the benefit of the method of analysis, and to confine oneself to sensory ideas in regard to this endeavor, will yield endless controversies, for example, regarding claims about the self and about God. Descartes’ employment of the method of analysis is idiosyncratic: it is utilized exclusively in his Meditations in order to discover the first principles of human knowledge, but has no other function in Descartes’ philosophy.

Sensory ideas can never lead to certainty regarding metaphysical first principles. The First Meditation was written by Descartes specifically to establish that the first principles of human knowledge cannot be obtained from, or be based on, what the senses reveal. In the Second Meditation, Descartes establishes that his essence is to exist as a res cogitans (lit. a thinking thing), and that the essential self is in no way corporeal. Early in the Third Meditation, he reflects on his knowledge of himself as a thinking thing, and asks what assured him of the truth of this claim. He answers that it is because he perceives clearly and distinctly that he exists as a thinking thing that he can be confident that it is true. However, there are other claims which he perceives clearly and distinctly, especially in mathematics, but he hesitates to generalize that whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly is true, inasmuch as a deceiving deity, if such a deity exists, could deceive him in regard to all matters which he conceives clearly and distinctly, except for his belief that his essential self is to think.

It is in the Third Meditation that Descartes sets for himself the task of proving that God exists as his creator, and that God is not a deceiver, because, as he points out early in this meditation, without a knowledge of these two truths, he cannot be certain of anything, other than that his essence is to exist as a thinking thing. Descartes then offers two proofs of God’s existence—the first to establish that God is the cause of his idea of God; and the second to establish that God is the cause of his idea of God, and the cause of the self, which possesses the idea of God. Toward the end of the Third Meditation, he realizes that he is unable to establish, through argumentation, that God is the cause of the self, but only that God is the cause of the idea of God which he possesses. In the last three paragraphs, Descartes resorts to meditation, rather than argumentation, in order to establish that God is his creator.

In the Synopsis to the Meditations, Descartes informs us twice that he has proved that all that he perceives clearly and distinctly must be true in the Fourth Meditation (M 42, 43; CSM II, 9, 11). This is a departure from what he said in the Third Meditation, that once he establishes that God is the cause of his existence, and that God is not a deceiver, he can be assured that whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly must be true. The question, of course, is why does he need to go beyond the Third Meditation to establish that whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly must be true? The Third Meditation establishes that God is the cause of Descartes’ idea of God and that God is the cause of Descartes, the one who possesses the idea of God. That Descartes must proceed to the Fourth Meditation to establish that whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly must be true is due to the fact that he still does not know the origin of his clear and distinct ideas. He already knows that his mind has been caused by God, and that God cannot be a deceiver; but his clear and distinct ideas may have originated from the Evil Genius, or from some other imperfect source. In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes establishes that God is the cause of all of his clear and distinct ideas (see especially the last paragraph). Having now shown that God created Descartes, that God cannot be a deceiver, and that God created all of his clear and distinct ideas, he can be confident that all of his clear and distinct ideas must be true.

In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes provides another proof for the existence of God—a version of the Ontological Proof. Unlike the two proofs of God’s existence in the Third Meditation, which have strategic importance in the context of his efforts to establish that whatever he perceives clearly and distinctly must be true, the proof of God’s existence in the Fifth Meditation is introduced without any such strategic intent. All that he tells us is this: “But now, if just because I can draw the idea of something from my thought, it follows that all which I know clearly and distinctly as pertaining to this object does really belong to it, may I not derive from this an argument demonstrating the existence of God?” (M 81–82; CSM II, 45). The importance of the Fifth Meditation is that it addresses a central concern that Descartes has about the certainty of geometrical proofs, namely, he establishes the manner in which the certainty of geometrical demonstrations is dependent on a knowledge of God.

Finally, in the Sixth Meditation, Descartes offers a proof for the distinction between mind and body, but also that mind and body are so closely connected that they form a single thing. And, finally, he offers the reasons which form the basis of his proof for the existence of material objects.

Although the Evil Genius hypothesis is introduced in the First Meditation, it is not brought up (at least not explicitly) in subsequent meditations. And yet, we would expect it to be brought up at the point at which this hypothesis is either refuted or shown to have no further significance within the Meditations. In the First Meditation, Descartes introduces two deceiver hypotheses, an all-powerful deceiving deity, and the Evil Genius, who is “not less powerful than deceitful, [and who] has employed his whole energies in deceiving me” (M 49; CSM II, 15). Although we know precisely where, in the Meditations, Descartes establishes that God is his creator and the creator of all of his clear and distinct ideas (the Third and Fourth Meditations), he does not reveal what has become of the Evil Genius hypothesis. To account for this, I argue that the doubt utilized by Descartes in the Meditations is hyperbolic, that is, the doubt always goes beyond the instance(s) of error and deception he has experienced, to include all instances of that type. So, for example, in light of the fact that he has made errors in judging objects which are “hardly perceptible or very far away,” he concludes that he should never trust perceptions of these sorts. Or again, as he sometimes imagines that others deceive themselves in the things they think they know best, he asks “how do I know that I am not deceived every time that I add two and three, or count the sides of a square, or judge of things yet simpler, if anything simpler can be imagined? (M 48; CSM II, 14). In the penultimate paragraph of the First Meditation, he urges that it is not sufficient to have raised hyperbolic doubts about his sensory beliefs, he must also be careful to keep them in mind to assist him in avoiding further errors:

That is why I consider that I shall not be acting amiss, if, taking of set purpose a contrary belief, I allow myself to be deceived, and for a time pretend that all these opinions are entirely false and imaginary, until at last, having thus balanced my former prejudices with my latter, my judgment will no longer be dominated by bad usage or turned away from the right knowledge of the truth … I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me. (M 49; CSM II, 15)

The point of the Evil Genius hypothesis is to serve as a counterbalance to his former sensory beliefs, thereby enabling him to reach a state of indifference—the true starting point of his philosophical inquiry. The Evil Genius is a shorthand way for Descartes to sustain his indifference, without the need to review constantly the extreme sceptical arguments presented in the First Meditation. For Descartes, the Evil Genius is therefore the personification of his hyperbolic doubt.

We are now able to establish the point in the Meditations where Descartes is able to emerge from hyperbolic doubt and the Evil Genius hypothesis. This can only occur when he has the requisite knowledge that a veracious God is the cause of his existence as a thinking thing, and that God is the cause of all of his clear and distinct ideas. As we have already learned, this is accomplished by the end of the Fourth Meditation. It is important to note, therefore, what Descartes has to say in the opening paragraph of the Fifth Meditation:

Now (after first noting what must be done or avoided, in order to arrive at a knowledge of the truth) my principal task is to endeavor to emerge from the state of doubt into which I have these last days fallen. (M 80; CSM II, 44)

It is here that Descartes realizes that hyperbolic doubt/the Evil Genius hypothesis is no longer needed, because he now knows how to proceed in his inquiries in order to arrive at knowledge of the truth.

From this overview of the aims and structure of the Meditations, I turn to the contributions included in this issue, each of which addresses a central aspect, theme, or question pertaining to the Meditations. The issue opens with Roger Ariew’s article, “A Metaphysical Element in Descartes and the First Cartesians: Non-Univocal Predication.” Descartes holds that what we say about God and about his creatures is not said in the same way, that is, “univocally.” But denying univocal predication is ambiguous as to whether it entails analogical or equivocal predication. While Descartes is usually thought to hold for analogy, the evidence for this is weak. As Ariew demonstrates by tracing the history of this debate up to the present, some of the first Cartesians, Antoine Le Grand and Pierre-Sylvain Régis, among others, interpreted Descartes’ view as entailing equivocity rather than analogy, one of the implications of which is, as Ariew concludes, that “the metaphysical foundations of Descartes’ physics” should be reconsidered.

In “A Necessary Preparative to the Study of Philosophy”: A Positive Appraisal of Descartes’ Universal Doubt,” Miguel A. Badia Cabrera reflects on Descartes’ own assessment in the Meditations and in other works, of the nature, extent, and value of his universal doubt, in order to explain why David Hume was right in recommending Cartesian doubt as “a necessary preparative to the study of philosophy.” In this sense, he argues, Descartes’ universal doubt is not artificial or a mere heuristic device to secure his metaphysical principles, but rather a methodical refinement of the serious, encompassing, proto-philosophical doubts that children sometimes entertain.

The following article centers on the cogito: Andrea Christofidou, “Descartes’ Flash of Insight: Freedom, the Objective World, and the Reality of the Self.” Christofidou first presents the main objection to the cogito—that it confines the self to consciousness, thereby preventing it from conceiving truths beyond itself in the objective world—in the strongest form, and then rebuts it by drawing on a substantive, but neglected, question of the self’s distinguishability. She argues that the discovery of the cogito provides the basis for the self’s distinguishability and thereby demonstrates the self’s reality, freedom, and openness to the objective world.

The question regarding the cogency of the cogito is further discussed and defended in Georges Dicker, “Cogito Ergo Sum: Proof or Petitio?” Dicker shows that the problem primarily arises when the cogito is approached as an argument—“I think, therefore I exist”—and by systematically analyzing and refuting the main objections to the Cartesian Circle, he concludes that since for Descartes “the first existential truth we know—‘I exist’—can be known without first knowing any other existential truth. … One might say that for Descartes, in the special case of the cogito, epistemology trumps logic.”

The refutation of the “charge of circularity” finds another form of rebuttal in Michael Moriarty’s “Knowing and knowing in Descartes.” The conceptual distinction between the particular knowledge of individual propositions that we clearly and distinctly perceive (which is not dependent on the knowledge of God) and the general knowledge that whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive is true (which is so dependent) is crucial to one line of defence against the accusation of circularity. Moriarty shows, by a detailed examination of the vocabulary in the Meditations, that Descartes does indeed operate with such a distinction. Descartes uses two sets of epistemic terms (cognitio and scientia, detailed in the article), and he distinguishes between them systematically, though not explicitly.

Stanley Tweyman’s “Reasoning and Meditation in Descartes’ Third Meditation” approaches the problem of the cogito by a close analysis of Descartes’ two proofs of God’s existence, the first to establish 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. The analysis reveals that Descartes understands that the second argument cannot establish that God is the cause of Descartes. Rather, for Descartes, the knowledge of God as his creator can only be obtained by meditating, rather than by reasoning, on the self as a thinking thing. Tweyman explores how Descartes utilizes meditation on the self with a view to gaining an understanding that God is his creator.

“The Uses of Thought and Will: Descartes’ Practical Philosophy of Freedom,” by Mark C. R. Smith, shifts the focus to Descartes’ notion of free will, understood as our ability to affirm, deny, or withhold judgement from any proposition. Since this psychologically unbounded freedom of choice is critical for both thinking and living, it poses a problem. Smith tracks some of the ways in which Descartes deals with this problem, via both the cognitive norms laid out in the Meditations and the moral and practical norms set out in it, and in some of Descartes’ other writings.

Samuel A. Stoner’s “The Moral Formation of Descartes’ Meditations” focuses on the distinction between Descartes as author of the Meditations, and the meditator as their narrator in order to illuminate the drama of the meditator’s progress from his initial state of confusion, uncertainty, and doubt, toward clarity, conviction, and knowledge. Stoner argues that the meditator’s search for truth is also a process of moral self-transformation, and that Descartes chose the genre of the meditation thanks to its ability to induce readers to think the line of thought that the meditator narrates. Stoner concludes that Descartes’ aim was to lead the readers of the Meditations to effect the moral self-transformation that the meditator had himself undergone, thus showing that the Meditations is primarily a work of moral philosophy.

In “Descartes’ Ontological Argument in Meditation V,” Daniel E. Flage returns to the question of Descartes’ metaphysics, that is, his idea of God. He argues that in this Meditation Descartes proves “that existence is an essential property of God rather than simply that God exists.” Flage further argues that Descartes needs this ontological proof in order to establish essential distinctions, such as that between mind and body. By a careful analysis of the conceptual relationship between the two cosmological arguments presented in Mediation III and the ontological argument in Meditation V, Flage concludes that the proof that existence is an essential property of God—that God always exists—is necessary for Descartes to prove the continuity of the material world.

In “Science contra the Meditations: The Existence of Material Things,” the article that concludes this issue, Emanuela Scribano discusses the Cartesian proofs for the existence of material things. While recent interpreters consider the proof from pain and pleasure as more substantial than the proof from the ideas of the existence of material things—since it centers on sensations and assumes the existence of one’s own body—Scribano demonstrates that the doubt raised in the Sixth Meditation regarding the deceptions of one’s internal senses, such as pain and pleasure, arises precisely from the science Descartes set out to validate in the Meditations. She concludes that paradoxically, Descartes’ novel theory of physiology makes “it impossible to radically eliminate the doubt that science itself has raised.”

Taken together, the articles that comprise this issue focus on the central questions Descartes set out to investigate in the Meditations—the cogito/self, mind and body, God, substance, truth and certainty, and the nature and implications of his method of universal doubt—as well as ranging over all six Meditations and drawing on several of Descartes’ other works. By illuminating particular aspects and/or problems that the Meditations continues to present, they not only shed new light on Descartes’ philosophy but also offer readers who are perhaps less familiar with his thought a particularly rich introduction to his world.

Finally, I wish to thank the contributors for submitting their work, and those who assisted in the evaluation of their papers along with the many more that were originally submitted for consideration. I want to acknowledge John David Lugtu for his assistance in preparing the papers for submission; and to thank the editors, Edna Rosenthal and Wayne Cristaudo, for inviting me to undertake this project, and for providing invaluable support and guidance in bringing it to fruition.

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.