Descartes's Meditations Research Articles

Transubstantiation As A Test Case For Desgabets's Cartesianism

Transubstantiation is a philosophical term used to describe what takes place in the rite of the Eucharist. The rite was proposed as a test case by Arnauld in his objections to Descartes's Meditations. The most credible, well-founded response came from Robert Desgabets, who in his account of transubstantiation appealed in one fashion or other to five principles variously found among other Cartesians as well as Descartes himself—principles of intentionality, clear and distinct perception, the status of sensible qualities, exemplification, and cognitive transcendence.

Black Universals and Alain Locke's Notion of Value

Black Universals and Alain Locke's Notion of Value

The Decartes’ paradox and the modern philosophy as the foundation farse

In this article the author identifies a paradox at the heart of Descartes? foundationalist project. The components of the paradox are as follows: on the one hand, ontological certainty of cogito, on the other hand, its epistemic uncertainty: it is impossible for the solus ipse to establish the elementary truth: at present it is impossible to determine whether it is now night or daylight. For Descartes the solution consists of introducing God and in believing in His existence. But this is no solution whatsoever, for a subject would require direct contact with God in order to receive clear and distinct ideas, which are at the same time marks of their truth. The author concludes the following: firstly, Descartes managed to establish a foundation for nothing; secondly, the Cartesian project that includes the necessity of contact with God as a way to attain the Truth, becomes completed only in Hegel?s philosophy of Absolut Knowledge (in Wiss. der Logik), along with his justification provided in the Phenoimenologie des Gesites. The post-Hegelian philosophy, however, has engendered its own paradox by abandoning Hegel?s own solution despite it being fully Cartesian in its character. This was the consequence of abandoning God and declaring Hegel?s philosophy as a deplorable conservative revival of theology; something that was beyond understanding by modern philosophers. The abandonment of God had as its consequence the return to the Cartesian paradox, which reopened the question of truth - connected to the Cogito, and the question of sense (Sinn) - connected to the sum of human subject. The neglect of God leads to the departure from ratio-centrism in two ways: the epistemic perspectivism and relativism, on the one hand, and Nihilism, voluntarism with decisionism, along with existentialism, on the other. Consequently, with the death of God, and the fall of Hegel?s system, the modern metaphysics of subjectivity reveals itself as founded merely on the Will to power - as a will for God, until Hegel, and a will against God, subsequently. Thus, Heidegger was right when he said that Nietzsche?s Will to Power was the end of the Western metaphysics. The author complements this finding by adding that this kind of metaphysic had already been concealed within the Descartes Meditations from the start, in the forms of the will for the Reason and the will for God. Finally, the author concludes that the modern philosophy completes its own Odyssey of looking for a foundation by abandoning the Hegelian solution, blind to the fact that Hegel?s solution was the only consequent Cartesian one. The ultimate result was the fall of ratio-centrism into nihilism, voluntarism, and existentialism, as promoted under a thin vail of Picodellamirandolian humanism.

데카르트의 『성찰』을 둘러싼 해석의 논쟁 : 푸코와 데리다를 중심으로

데카르트의 『성찰』을 둘러싼 해석의 논쟁 : 푸코와 데리다를 중심으로

A theologian teaching Descartes at the Academy of Nijmegen (1655–1679): class notes on Christoph Wittich’s course on the Meditations on First Philosophy

ABSTRACT This article studies the extant class notes of a course on Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) and (part of) the Principles of Philosophy (1644), which was given by the reformed theologian Christoph Wittich (1625–1687) at the former Dutch University of Nijmegen (1655–1679). This manuscript contains dictata, taken (presumably in 1664) under the title Observationes in Renati Descartes Meditationes de prima philosophia. Observations in ejusdem Principiorum philosophiae partem primam. This article mainly considers three themes surfacing in Wittich’s classes: (a) doubt and scepticism; (b) “vulgar” and “proper philosophy”; (c) philosophy and Scripture. On the one hand, this study explains how Wittich tried to harmonise Cartesian metaphysics with his Calvinist faith by defining them as two autonomous fields of knowledge. On the other hand, Wittich’s ideas are shown to have met with much resistance on the part of some of his contemporary theologians. The study of Wittich’s course supplies new knowledge concerning the teaching of one of the first theologians to openly seek to combine Descartes's ideas and Copernican astronomy with the Bible. In so doing, this article offers direct insight into the way in which the new philosophy was taught in Nijmegen, and in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic in general.

Rhetorizing Philosophy: Toward a “Double Reading” of Philosophical Texts

ABSTRACTPhilosophy consists primarily in or of texts. The implications of this very basic fact for the subject—both as a writer and as a reader—and philosophy's conception of itself as a privileged form of argumentation and for establishing the truth have, however, been largely neglected. In order to address these issues, the article reconsiders Foucault's “double reading” of Descartes's Meditations as “demonstration” and “exercise” that both affects and transforms the meditating subject. I argue that such a double reading is not only proper to the Meditations but constitutive of all philosophical texts. This leads to a revised notion of truth that derives its argumentative consistency precisely from the entanglement of demonstration and exercise.

From desire to encounter: the human quest for the infinite

AbstractThe article begins with the journey towards knowledge of the infinite that is traced out in Descartes'sMeditations.Drawing on Levinas's construal of the argument in the Third Meditation, I argue that Descartes's reflections on God as infinite can be a starting point for deepening our understanding of the religious quest – the paradoxical human search for that which, by its very nature, is incomprehensible to the human mind. The second half of the article argues that this search is from first to last structured by desire and longing, and that somethingprima facienon-cognitive and non-epistemic, namely thedesirefor God, has a cognitive and epistemic role to play. Perhaps desire can be our human way, orahuman way, whereby we can (in Descartes's words) ‘in a certain manner attain to’ the infinite perfection that is God.

Necessary Error: Pascal on Imagination and Descartes's Fourth Meditation

One of the most renowned pages of Pascal's Pensées offers an astonishing phenomenology of the all-powerful action of imagination in human life. This article retraces the genesis of this text and reassesses the sources of Pascal's conception of imagination. It argues that Pascal builds up his definition of the imagination as an ‘anti-theodicy’ which carefully recalls and then criticizes the Cartesian ‘theodicy of error’ and the foundation of the ‘general rule’ of truth proposed by the Fourth Meditation. In doing so, Pascal undermines the major aim of Descartes's Meditations, which is to secure human nature against any doubt as to its intrinsic perfection. Where, according to Descartes, human knowledge is finite yet perfectly secured in its accomplishments when we use the faculties of our mind correctly, Pascal describes imagination as a deceptive faculty that seems to have been given to us specifically to lead us into necessary error.

Temporality and Alterity in Descartes's Meditations

Temporality and Alterity in Descartes's Meditations

The Wax and the Mechanical Mind: Reexamining Hobbes's Objections to Descartes's Meditations

Many critics, Descartes himself included, have seen Hobbes as uncharitable or even incoherent in his Objections to the Meditations on First Philosophy. I argue that when understood within the wider context of his views of the late 1630s and early 1640s, Hobbes's Objections are coherent and reflect his goal of providing an epistemology consistent with a mechanical philosophy. I demonstrate the importance of this epistemology for understanding his Fourth Objection concerning the nature of the wax and contend that Hobbes's brief claims in that Objection are best understood as a summary of the mechanism for scientific knowledge found in his broader work. Far from displaying his confusion, Hobbes's Fourth Objection in fact pinpoints a key weakness of Descartes's faculty psychology: its unintelligibility within a mechanical philosophy.

Mark Twain, Nietzsche, and Terrible Truths That Can Set Us Free

Mark Twain, Nietzsche, and Terrible Truths That Can Set Us Free

Introduction: Idées Fixes and Fausses Idées Claires

This essay, coauthored by the editor and a member of the editorial board of Common Knowledge, introduces the fifth installment of the journal's symposium “Fuzzy Studies,” which is about the “consequence of blur.” Beginning with a review of Enlightenment ideas about ideas — especially Descartes's argument that a mind “unclouded and attentive” can be “wholly freed from doubt” (Rules III, 5) — this essay then turns to assess the validity of counter-Enlightenment arguments, mostly Russian but also anglophone and French, against the association of clarity and certainty. A line of descent is drawn from the speaker of Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy to Dostoevsky's underground man, and the latter is shown to differ from the former mainly in that the underground man sympathizes consciously with Descartes's bête noire, the “evil deceiver” (Descartes's speaker sympathizes perhaps unconsciously). Enlightenment, in other words, is not as it appears to be, for rationalists too insist on their caprice. Hyperrationality, it is argued, can be a form of madness, a mania over clarity, distinctions, rules, principles, and unquestionable truths. Examples from Russian and anglophone literature are given of how easily the distance from idée claire to idée fixe is to traverse. The end product of un-self-doubting rationality tends to be delay or stoppage of the intellect, which this essay terms noostasis (and proposes is the opposite of ekstasis).

Descartes, Scientia and Pure Enquiry

In Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Bernard Williams supplies an interpretation of Descartes's Meditations in which the meditator's clean sweep of initial beliefs is justified by a stance that abrogates all practical pressures: the stance of pure enquiry. Otherwise, Williams explains, it would not be reasonable to set many of the initial beliefs aside. Nowhere, however, does Descartes assert that his approach is in this sense ‘pure’. It would of course be preferable if the meditator's rejection of all the initial beliefs did not require an abrogation of the conditions that govern everyday belief-formation and assessment. I supply a reading that accomplishes this. The key to this reading is recognition that Descartes is a thinker of his time, a time when the pre-modern worldview was being systematically rejected. I show, in this regard, that when Descartes characterizes a belief as ‘uncertain’, this has the implication that the belief is false. And, certainly, the rational policy, without need for any special stance, is to reject falsehoods.

Descartes and the Augustinian Tradition of Devotional Meditation: Tracing a Minim Connection

Contemporary discussions on the literary format of Descartes's Meditations typically focus on two issues. The first is whether Descartes's text resembles and is possibly influenced by the genre of religious devotional exercises, and the second is whether the stylistic devices employed by Descartes are philosophically significant. Building upon the efforts of Gary Hatfield, Bradley Rubidge, and Martial Gueroult, I argue that Descartes is influenced by an Augustinian tradition of spiritual exercise and that this influence is philosophically important for how we understand the cogito . I examine, in particular, the relevance of Marin Mersenne's recently rediscovered treatise L'usage de la raison (1623). This work exhibits features of an Augustinian style of religious meditation, and it is a text that can be easily connected to Descartes.

Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations, by John Carriero.

Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations, by John Carriero.

Camus’s Skeptical Trial: From La Mort heureuse to L’Étranger

Ni oui ni non, le langage est seulement une machine a fabriquer du doute. (1) publication in 1994 of Camus's final, unfinished novel, Le Premier Homme prompted a renewal of interest in his work, and particularly in his relationship to Algeria. Ata time when colonial and postcolonial studies were becoming increasingly influential, Le Premier Homme reminded readers that Camus was first and foremost an Algerian writer. It encouraged a more sympathetic and better-informed reassessment of his ambivalence toward French Algeria and Algerian independence. In a comprehensive reevaluation of the significance of Algeria in Camus's work, David Carroll records how reading Le Premier Homme led him to revise entirely his earlier views. (2) By contrast, the posthumous publication of Camus's first completed novel La Mort heureuse more than two decades earlier in 1971 elicited a relatively muted response. It attracted some scholarly attention, but nothing comparable to the continuing academic and commercial interest occasioned by Le Premier Homme. (3) novel was seen an interesting failure. Camus had worked on it between 1936 and 1938 but left it unpublished in his lifetime. Encouraged by the similarity of the protagonist's name, Patrice Mersault, to that of Meursault in L'Etranger, most readers have regarded La Mort heureuse at best a stage along the way to the later novel. (4) current article does not aim to challenge this assessment in itself. Rather, by placing La Mort heureuse and L'Etranger in the context of philosophical skepticism, it argues that the deadlock at the core of La Mort heureuse is an unresolved tension between a desire for lyrical possession of the world and a sense that reality and experience elude narrative; moreover, the article suggests that this unresolved tension is in fact the condition that all Camus's subsequent literary works, up to and including Le Premier Homme, continue to negotiate. According to Stanley Cavell, skepticism in its modern philosophical form can be traced to Descartes's Meditations (1641). Cavell argues that Descartes's work signals a reorientation of the skeptical problematic: The issue posed is no longer, or not alone, with earlier skepticism, how to conduct oneself best in an uncertain world; the issue suggested is how to live at all in a groundless world. Our skepticism is a function of our now illimitable desire. (5) Descartes himself sets out to refute the claim that the world is groundless, but be begins by throwing doubt onto everything that can be doubted. In the attempt to salvage the possibility of knowledge, be accepts that he must proceed by first conceding that everything we think we know may be wrong. very existence and constitution of the external world that I believe I inhabit cannot be known for certain: I may be dreaming, or mad, or the victim of an evil deity. (6) Out of Descartes's enquiry, however, there soon emerges the certainty of the cogito, that is, the conviction that since I think, I can at least be assured that I exist a thinking subject. Descartes hoped that from this grounding, further certainties could be established; other philosophers, however, have not been convinced. In Barry Stroud's words, in modern rimes skepticism has come to be understood as the view that we know nothing, or that nothing is certain, or that everything is open to doubt. (7) stance toward its two principal concerns--what we know of the external world and what we know of other minds--is susceptible to a range of formulations extending from the flat denial of knowledge (we know nothing) to a more modest caution about truth claims (it is always possible we might be wrong). Since Descartes, philosophy has proved incapable of settling once and for all its dispute over skepticism; Cavell puts it, Philosophy left to itself has been unable to determine whether skepticism is refutable (Descartes, Kant, Moore) or irrefutable (Hume, Wittgenstein) or unworthy of refutation (Husserl, Heidegger, Quine) or self-refuting (Austin, Strawson, Dewey). …

Between two worlds: a reading of Descartes's Meditations

Preface ix Note on Translations xv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The First Meditation 27 Chapter 2: The Second Meditation 65 Chapter 3: (I) The Third Meditation: The Truth Rule and the Chief and Most Common Mistake 128 Chapter 3: (II) The Third Meditation: Two Demonstrations of God's Existence 168 Chapter 4: The Fourth Meditation 223 Chapter 5: The Fifth Meditation 280 Chapter 6: The Sixth Meditation 359 Notes 427 Bibliography 489 Index Locorum 495 Subject Index 505

Subjectivism and Blame

My own conclusion is that “One ought to be moral” makes no sense at all unless the “ought” has the moral subscript, giving a tautology, or else relates morality to some other system such as prudence or etiquette. I am, therefore putting forward quite seriously a theory that disallows the possibility of saying that a man ought (free unsubscripted “ought“) to have ends other than those he does have.- Philippa FootH.A. Prichard's “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”, like Descartes Meditations, is remembered better for the skeptical moment in the author's thinking than for its unskeptical conclusions. Prichard's paper is complicated, but the lore about its message is simple. The lore is that Prichard pointed out that in trying to vindicate the reason-giving power of morality we might do so by appealing to moral norms or to non-moral norms. If we appeal to moral norms, then we are only justifying a standard in terms of that standard and just about any old standard could survive such a test.

Descartes's Meditations: an introduction

1. Introduction:about the Meditations 2. Meditation one 3. Meditation two 4. Meditation three (I) 5. Meditation three (II) 6. Meditation four (I) 7. Meditation four (II) 8. Meditation five 9. Meditation six (I) 10. Meditation six (II) 11. Meditation six (III) 12. Descartes in context.

True and immutable natures and epistemic progress in Descartes's Meditations

True and immutable natures and epistemic progress in Descartes's Meditations