DESCARTES’S MEDITATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION

Published by Philosophy Today, February **, 2025

Noted linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky refers to Descartes’s Meditations as propaganda. He has a point. Descartes wrote the Meditations as a kind of insurance policy. He was all too aware of Galileo’s political difficulties; the Italian had recently gotten himself in some hot water because his writings about heliocentrism rankled among church elite. And Descartes was not about to go down that road. So, he penned the Meditations, basically covering his posterior, by making it clear God was included in his analysis, which I will elucidate below.

Despite Chomsky’s comment, I feel the Meditations are a valuable contribution to the philosophy of the mind. In my undergraduate classes, we have a good time discussing Descartes’s piece of wax and all that this illustration invites.

In this brief essay, I wish to run through why Descartes wrote the Meditations, and then I would like to provide a primer on the six meditations contained therein.[1]

Descartes has three discernible motives in play while writing the Meditations. These motives can be considered as personal, political, and philosophical. The personal motive is that Descartes was a devout believer and sought to include God in his metaphysical system. The political motive was to, as mentioned, keep himself out of trouble and not suffer the same difficulties Galileo had. His philosophical motive, on the other hand, was to rescue the mind (or soul) from the prevailing mechanical view of the world.

If the mind was subsumed into the mechanical, then it too would merely exist as part of the clockwork of reality. In other words, freedom of will and thought would disappear, and mind would be no different than one’s kidneys or circulatory system. (It must be borne in mind that philosophers and scientists of this era subscribed to the mechanical philosophy, where humans, animals, plants, and the planets were viewed as basically gears in a machine.) Descartes wished for the mind to exist in its own metaphysical department, as it were.

In addition to the three motives, we must also bear in mind the predominant philosophical worldview that prevailed for centuries and still did in seventeenth-century Europe. This view was that of scholasticism.

Scholasticism was the medieval school of thought that had been dominant throughout Europe at the time. This movement, also referred to as the School Men, emphasized Aristotle and was tantamount to theology with some Aristotelian thought stirred in.

It must be kept in mind that there was not much Plato to read in Europe until the fifteenth century. When the works of Plato were finally transmitted and flooded Europe, many Renaissance scientists, artists, and intellectuals became quite enthusiastic about Plato’s thought. Descartes can be viewed as a member of “Team Plato” as well as part of the movement showing Aristotle the door.

Descartes shared the following thoughts with friend and confidante the friar Marin Mersenne:

But I think I included many other things besides [in the Meditations]; and I may tell you, between ourselves, that these six Meditations contain all the foundations of my Physics. But please do not tell people, for that might make it harder for supporters of Aristotle to approve them. I hope that readers will gradually get used to my principles and recognize their truth, before they notice that they destroy the principles of Aristotle.[2]

It is therefore clear where Descartes is coming from.

So, Descartes wishes to essentially reboot philosophy. In doing so, he must clear absolutely everything and start over. He arrives at three separate metaphysical substances: Mind, God, and Body (physicality). This brings us to the first meditation.

MEDITATIONS I-II: MIND

In the first meditation, Descartes endeavors to begin philosophically clearing the table, so to speak, of everything. He must do this if he is going to decide what goes back on it; remember, he is rebooting philosophy, and must filter out all nonessentials. He decides that he can doubt just about everything. So, he goes whole hog and dispenses with even the existence of God; he doubts God’s existence, who is the source of truth,

… but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have these things.[3]

Well, that’s it. Everything whatsoever has been cast into doubt. As a result, Descartes begins the second meditation in a distressed state: “What follows from this?” He feels like he has fallen into a “deep whirlpool;” he is experiencing disorientation.

Descartes can be certain of nothing anymore. Two plus two might not equal four, triangles might not have three sides, the sky might not be blue. And who (or what) is he? No body, no memories—no self! He is completely at the mercy of this cunning and powerful demon. Surely, something must be true.

There is something. “He” is most assuredly having these experiences. Therefore, Descartes cautiously concludes “I am, I exist.”[4] He cannot doubt this. He is an “I.” There is no doubting that. Despite the demon’s manipulations, the demon is manipulating what Descartes experiences as a self.

This of course gets Descartes to thinking about how this “I” (mind) operates. He contemplates the difference between the objects around him—which at this point in the Meditations, might not be there—and this ”puzzling I.” Descartes turns his attention to the objects to see what he can learn about his experience of them.

He presents the reader with a piece of wax. It possesses a list of properties: it is sweet, fragrant, white, and so on. He then places it by the fire and it melts and burns. The properties it now possesses are completely different from the properties it possessed before. “But does the same wax remain?” Descartes ponders.[5] My experience of the world must not ultimately be through my senses. The wax has completely changed properties—the things that enter my senses—yet I know it’s the same piece of wax. Descartes concludes it is my intellect that understands the world. 

A student of mine suggested the character Princess Fiona from the film Shrek as another comparable consideration. Fiona transforms from human to ogre form and back to human and so on. Little children know it’s always Fiona. You could even change the actress’s voice, and it would not matter. Descartes is onto something. We don’t work down a list of properties and conclude “Ah, that must be a dog or a duck or a bicycle.” We have a conceptual grasp of the objects in the world—a psychic continuity—that grasps and understands objects like tomatoes and helicopters and ashtrays.

Okay, mind goes back on the table. But what about that demon?

MEDITATIONS III-V: GOD

Descartes has concluded that he is a thinking thing. He now in the third meditation undertakes an examination of what this means. He interrogates his mind. “Among my ideas, some appear to be innate [internal], some to be adventitious [external], and others to have been invented by me [unicorns].”[6] It is this innate grasp of the world that gets Descartes’s attention. For Descartes, I have certain ideas that are internal to my mind. That is to say, they are not dependent on external factors. If I see three lemons on the table—and thus have an idea of those lemons—this is external to me. Descartes pays particular attention to the fact that he seems to have knowledge of an infinite and perfect substance. Something must be causing this knowledge. Descartes concludes the following:

Now it is manifest by the natural light [reason] that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient cause and total cause as in the effect of that cause. … and also what is more perfect … cannot arise from what is less perfect.[7] 

Descartes goes on to say:

It is true that I have the idea of a substance in me in virtue of the fact that I am a substance; but this would not account for my having the idea of an infinite substance, when I am finite, unless this idea proceeded from some substance which really was infinite.[8]

Descartes then concludes his argument: I have innate ideas. I have the innate idea of a perfect, infinite substance. This idea must have been caused. It could not have been caused by an imperfect being like Descartes. It must have been caused by a perfect being, a cause Descartes likens to the “mark of the craftsman stamped on his work.”[9] Therefore, God must exist.

Descartes also takes into consideration that he himself exists. How can this be? Did he create himself? Nope. Did he always exist? Nope. Did his parents create him? Well, they facilitated the process, but cannot claim to have created him. Did a less than perfect being create him? This refers us back to the innate idea implanted by God. It looks like he was created by God. God exists again. Adios demon.

Descartes finally concludes that God is no deceiver. This would be a defect, and God, it stands to reason, has no defects.

Meditation III is challenging. If reading it, take your time—and notes.

The fourth meditation is much smoother going. And in my view starts off a bit comically. Descartes begins by wondering that if God is perfect and infinite, why did he make me as I am? That is, neither of those. In essence, Descartes is wondering, “Why did God make me stupid?” He then investigates this mystery and decides that my will exceeds my intellect. The will is indeed perfect, but my intellect is finite. As a finite being, I am halfway between God and nothingness. A finite intellect is by definition imperfect, hence my mistakes and lack of understanding.

The fifth meditation is short, and it touches on material things and posits another proof for the existence of God. As mentioned, God is no deceiver. And because of this, he has “drawn the conclusion that everything which [he] clearly and distinctly perceive[s] is of necessity true.”[10]

So, he ponders triangles, and in terms of the basic facts about them, he can be certain because God would not play tricks on him.

Descartes then lays down the ontological argument for God’s existence. It goes as follows: God is eternal and perfect. Existence is part of perfection; what is perfect exists. Therefore, God exists. Again.

MEDITATION VI: BODY

Descartes finally arrives at physical bodies in the sixth meditation. First, he separates mind and body: “… it is certain that I [mind, soul] am really distinct from my body.”[11] It is here that Descartes differentiates the metaphysical substances Mind from Body. I have a physical body that is subject to the laws of physics; I have a mind, which is not. So, we now have three distinct metaphysical substances: Mind, God, and Body. When one is in one department, one by definition is not in the other.

When I am in church praying to God, I am in the God box. When I am doing physics, I am in the Body box. And when I am considering geometry and the functions of the mind, I am in the Mind box.

Now, remember God is no deceiver. So, when I see three lemons on the table, they are there. They might look different at different times of the day, in different lighting, with different eyes. But there are most certainly three of them. And the three that is in my head is the same three that is in God’s mind. This is where Descartes bears much in common with Plato. The world of sensory data, the world of particulars gets deemphasized. The number, size, volume, and the weight of the lemons—that I can have confidence in. How the lemons appear to me I can be less confident about due to the contingency of such experience.

I am a thinking thing. I have a body. God—who very much exists—is no deceiver and therefore would not play tricks on me. I am, however, a finite being and flawed, and therefore I will judge wrongly and make mistakes from time to time.

NOTES

[1] In this essay I use Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

[2] Quoted in Tom Sorell, Descartes, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 57.

[3] Descartes, Meditations, 19.

[4]  This is quite similar to what is called the cogito: “I think, therefore I am”—in Latin cogito ergo sum. He does not say this in the Meditations.

[5] Descartes, Meditations, 25.

[6] Ibid., 30.

[7] Ibid., 33.

[8] Ibid., 36.

[9] Ibid., 41.

[10] Ibid., 55.

[11] Ibid., 62.