The Moral Formation of Descartes’ Meditations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy seems to be an especially theoretical work, this essay argues that reading the Meditations as a work of pure theory conceals an important dimension of Descartes’s philosophical project. I begin by examining the distinctive genre of the Meditations and by distinguishing Descartes, the author of this work, from the meditator who narrates it. I then highlight that the meditator describes his pursuit of scientific knowledge in moral terms and argue that the meditator’s search for truth is a self-conscious attempt at moral self-transformation. After tracing out the development of the meditator’s moral self-transformation, I conclude that the Meditations is a work of moral philosophy—not because it seeks to articulate ethical principles that are normative for particular choices or actions, but because Descartes composes the Meditations in such a way that the very act of reading it imparts a moral education to its readers.