Customer Reviews

Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th Ed.

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Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy is one of the few works of philosophy that absolutely every educated person needs to read at least once. This is required reading for anyone interested in philosophy or its history, and honestly I don't see how this work can be ignored by anyone interested in the history of ideas. It's also a work that I'd recommend to anyone who wants to be introduced to philosophy by reading the work of a great philosopher. And don't worry: it shouldn't take you more than an afternoon to read through it.

The Meditations has had an incalculable influence on the history of subsequent philosophical thinking. Indeed, according to nearly every history of philosophy you're likely to come across, this work is where modern philosophy begins. It's not that any of Descartes's arguments are startlingly original--many of them have historical precedents--but that Descartes's work was compelling enough to initiate two research programs in philosophy, namely British empiricism and continental rationalism, and to place certain issues (e.g. the mind-body problem, the plausibility of and responses to skepticism, the ontological argument for the existence of God, etc.) on the philosophical agenda for a long time to come. Moreover, Descartes was capable of posing questions of great intrinsic interest in prose accessible to everyone. So the Meditations is a work of value to both newcomers to philosophy and to those with a great deal of philosophical background.

The First Meditation is Descartes's implementation of his method of doubt. Descartes's aim here is to systematically doubt everything he believes that seems dubitable in any way and thereby to arrive at something that is absolutely certain and indubitable. Here Descartes formulates two very famous skeptical arguments: the dreaming argument and the evil demon argument. The dreaming arguments calls into question my current beliefs about the world by drawing attention to the possibility that I might be dreaming now. Can I know right now that I'm not dreaming? If not, doesn't it seem that I don't know much of anything? The evil demon argument is even more radical in that it focuses my attention on the possibility that almost my entire conception of reality is based on a very general delusion. What if my every experience and all my reasoning results from constant deception by some being with God-like powers? What, if anything, would I know if this were the case? These worries, Descartes thinks, allow him to doubt nearly all his beliefs, and it indeed they may preclude his having any certain knowledge at all.

The rest of the Meditations is Descartes's attempt to find something he can know for certain. Famously, he begins by claiming that he can be certain of his own existence. Even if he's dreaming or being deceived by an all-powerful evil demon, he can be sure that he exists. For he couldn't dream or be deceived unless he existed.

But even if he can be certain of his own existence, how can Descartes move beyond this to knowledge of a world outside his own mind? By appealing to the existence of God. He provides two distinct proofs for the existence of God: one a variant of the ontological argument, which attempts to prove God's existence from an appeal to the very concept of God, and one a type of cosmological argument, which attempts to prove God's existence by appealing to something whose only possible cause is God. Both these arguments, Descartes claims, prove that the world includes an absolutely perfect God. And it is the perfection of God that Descartes to be confident that he can know things beyond his own mind. For God, as a wholly perfect being, wouldn't provide Descartes with intellectual faculties that allow him to go wrong. Consequently, Descartes can be sure that his beliefs are generally correct, provided that he has used his intellectual faculties in the way God intended.

This work also includes a statement of the sort of mind-body dualism with which Descartes is widely associated. Although his arguments for dualism are obscure here, it is fairly easy to explain the central idea. According to Descartes, mind and body are wholly distinct kinds of substance that interact with one another. Mental states aren't a part of the natural world revealed by the sciences, and so, for instance, they are not reducible to certain things going on in a brain. Instead, they're a wholly different type of thing--though a type of thing that is somehow causally connected to a brain.

All of this is material, and a lot more, is covered in roughly sixty pages of text, and it is presented in some of the clearest, most straightforward philosophical prose ever written. Plus, the reader needn't have mastered any arcane jargon or previous work in philosophy to understand Descartes's views. And because it is written as a series of meditations in which Descartes leads us through something like his own process of through about these issues, it makes for relatively easy reading.

This edition also includes Descartes's Discourse on Method, which, though it isn't as important or philosophically sophisticated as the Meditations, is an essential text for understanding Descartes's conception of his own project. The book begins with interesting intellectual biography involving an account of his disillusionment with the intellectual culture of his time and of how this disillusionment led him to the project of finding a philosophical basis for a systematic scientific conception of the world. This is followed by a short presentation of an early version of the main lines of Descartes's philosophical argument that he would go on to develop in the Meditations. Then Descartes shows how he applied his method to discover a priori "solutions" to certain scientific problems. The Discourse, then, provides one with a better sense of Descartes's self-conception as a philosopher and the role he thought his philosophical system should play in the thinking of his times

This is a serviceable edition of the Meditations and the Discourse for students, and I'm sure it's perfect for the average reader. The translation is readable, and it doesn't seem significantly different from other translations of Descartes that I've read. While there aren't a lot of frills here, there's a very brief account of Descartes's life and a short bibliography.

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy of 1641 is one of the four or five most important and most influential works in the history of philosophy. It expresses an understanding of the independent power of the human mind that was pivotal to the scientific revolution, and that continues to shape our everyday perception of our own human reality. The subsequent history of philosophy is largely classified according to how it responds to this work. This is an excellent translation, and it is helpfully bound with Descartes' Discourse on Method. It is cheap, and well-manufactured, and is the textbook I normally use when teaching this material.

This is a review of the Donald A. Cress translation of Discouse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes.

Philosophers disagree about everything: except about the fact that modern philosophy begins with Descartes. No contemporary philosophers agree with Descartes' positive views. However, Descartes left Western philosophy with a series of puzzles that it continues to wrestle with: how is it possible to know anything? (Descartes' "dream argument" and "evil genius" argument are powerful sources of philosophical skepticism.) What is the relationship between mind and body? (Descartes argues that there is a fundamental metaphysical difference between the two, so they cannot be identical.) Is there some certain, indubitable foundation for knowledge? (Descartes thought that we need one to escape doubt, and that he could provide it.)

Some historical context helps to explain certain features of his writing. In 1521, Martin Luther was excommunicated, beginning the Protestant Reformation and dividing Christianity. Luther encouraged Christians to read the Bible translated into their own languages (e.g., the King James Bible) and use their own individual judgment to interpret it. In 1543, on his deathbed, Copernicus published his book arguing that the sun was the center of the solar system, not the earth (as had been taught by Aristotle). In 1633, Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to renounce his defense of the Copernican hypothesis.

Given the sharp intellectual controversies of his era, it is not surprising that Descartes says he has "realized how numerous were the false opinions that in my youth I had taken to be true, and thus how doubtful were all those that I had subsequently built upon them" (59). Descartes concludes that the only way to escape his doubts is to reconstruct his beliefs using his own reason, rather than relying on traditional views. In this respect, he is somewhat like Luther. However, mindful of what happened to Galileo, Descartes begins the Meditations with a letter to the Faculty of Sacred Theology in Paris, defending the orthodoxy of his views and pleading for their support. In addition, Descartes wrote the Discourse in French (his own vernacular), but wrote the Meditations in Latin (the language of the Church), "lest weaker minds be in a position to think that they too ought to set out on this path" that he has followed (51).

If you are going to read only one work by Descartes, I recommend the Meditations. (However, you might want to quickly read Part 4 of the Discourse first, since it gives an overview of the whole Meditations.) In the Meditations, Descartes decides that, paradoxically, the only way to overcome his doubts is to doubt everything that can be doubted, until he finds something absolutely certain, upon which he can build up knowledge. (Descartes is therefore an epistemological foundationalist.) Descartes notes that his senses sometimes deceive him. Furthermore, for all he knows, he is merely dreaming right now that he has a body and is sitting in a room writing. It is hard to maintain such doubts, so Descartes resolves to pretend that an "evil genius, supremely powerful and clever," is attempting to deceive him at every step of the way. Descartes ends his First Meditation in this pit of uncertainty.

In the Second Meditation, Descartes realizes that, even if he is mistaken about everything, he still has to think to be deceived, and if he thinks, then he exists. (In Part Four of the Discourse, he phrases this concisely as "I think, therefore I am.") Descartes then realizes that, while he can conceive of himself as a thinking thing without a body, he cannot conceive of himself as a body that never thinks. So while he may, in fact, have a body, his body and his mind are metaphysically distinct. (Basically, since he can conceive of body and mind as separate, therefore they are, in principle, separate.) Thus, Descartes is a metaphysical dualist.

In the Third Meditation, Descartes argues that God exists. He gives a version of the ontological argument for the existence of God (defended before Descartes by St. Anselm, criticized after Descartes by Kant, and still later resurrected by Alvin Plantinga). Contemporary readers, even ones who believe in God, are unlikely to find Descartes' argument here compelling, but it is an important part of his philosophy. Descartes argues that, since we know that God exists, and since we know that God is all good, we can be sure that our senses and our reason are not fundamentally deceptive. (Why would an all-good God make us prone to systematic mistakes?)

But the Third Meditation suggests a puzzle: since God created us, and God is all-good, why do we humans EVER make mistakes? Descartes' answer in the Fourth Meditation is that belief requires both the intellect, which simply perceives ideas, and the will, which chooses whether to believe those ideas. So long as we only choose to believe ideas that we "clearly and distinctly" (87) perceive, we will only believe what is true. Error occurs when we precipitately choose to believe unclear or confused ideas. (Part Two of the Discourse describes the methodology Descartes recommends in a bit more detail.) This may seem like a trivial claim, but Descartes is actually arguing for something controversial (and probably false): we can and should withhold belief from anything of which we are not absolutely certain, and so long as we use our minds correctly, we can be guaranteed to never believe anything false.

The Fifth Meditation gives an alternative formulation of the ontological argument for the existence of God, and suggests that some ideas (such as those of mathematical objects) are innate, so that, "when I first discover them, it seems I am not so much learning something new as recalling something I knew beforehand" (88).

Finally, in the Sixth Meditation, Descartes turns to material objects and sensory knowledge. His general conclusion is that "I must not rashly admit everything that I seem to derive from the senses; but neither, for that matter, should I call everything into doubt" (97). In general, Descartes is concerned in this meditation with how we can have a God-given faculty for discovering the truth, yet so often be in error over sensory matters (e.g., the Sun appearing to be the size of a fist).

I do not read French or Latin myself, so I cannot comment on the accuracy of the translation. However, I will say that it is very readable. Furthermore, the selected bibliography is helpful. I do miss three things that were left out of this translation, though. First, Descartes meant for the Meditations to be read along with a series of "Objections" written by his correspondents and "Replies" he wrote in response. Second, perhaps the most insightful critic of Descartes was Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, who raised in correspondence what is still generally considered one of the strongest objections to Descartes' dualism: how can soul and body interact if they are as radically distinct as Descartes suggests? Finally, Descartes' Fourth Meditation emphasizes the distinction between having a property "formally" and "eminently." In Cress's original translation of the Meditations, he has a footnote explaining this distinction. That footnote was left out of this enlarged edition. If these three things were included in this translation, I think I would give it five stars instead of four.

Reading Descartes is like a breath of fresh air. Frankly I'm surprised no one has reviewed this before now. Reading Descartes is kind of like being informed you were going to die today, but were miraculously saved at the last moment, all without your knowledge. It changes your version of the world in the way only really good poetry can. He is so logical it makes his writings and thought process really clear and concise and this translation seems really user friendly to a layman like myself. I can't be positive, but I think he blew my mind.

Rene Descartes is often considered the founding father of modern philosophy. A true Renaissance man, he studied Scholastic philosophy and physics as a student, spent time as a volunteer soldier and traveler throughout Europe, studied mathematics, appreciated the arts, and became a noted correspondent with royals and intellectual figures throughout the continent. He died in Sweden while on assignment as tutor to the Queen, Christiana.

Descartes 'Discourse on Method' is a fascinating text, combining the newly-invented form of essay (Descartes was familiar with the Essays of Montaigne) with the same kind of autobiographical impulse that underpins Augustine's Confessions. Descartes writes about his own form of mystical experience, seeing this as almost a kind of revelation that all past knowledge would be superseded, and all problems would eventually be solved by human intellect.

In the Discourse, Descartes formulates logical principles based on reason (which makes it somewhat ironic that this came to him almost as a revelation). Descartes had some appreciation for thinkers such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, but he thought that Bacon depended too much upon empirical data, and with Hobbes he disagreed on what would be the criteria for ascertaining certainty.

Descartes was a mathematician at heart, and perhaps had a carry-over of Pythagorean mystical attachment to mathematics, for his sense of reason led him to impute an absolute quality to mathematics; this has major implications for metaphysics and epistemology. Descartes method was a continuation in many ways of the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and the medieval thinkers, for they all tended toward thinking in absolute, universal terms in some degree.

Descartes in his first section discounts much of Scholasticism, stating that the only real absolutes are theology and mathematics; because theology is based upon revelation, it is therefore beyond reason, and thus, mathematics becomes the only rational truth. Descartes develops this idea further with rules of method, which include ideas of intuition, analysis and deduction. He uses some of his method to come up with his greatest proposition:

Cogito ergo sum - - I think, therefore I am

'The Cogito is a first principle from which Descartes will now deduce all that follows.' This permits Descartes to deal both with rational elements and empirical data.

The other major piece in this collection, 'The Meditations', includes several different mediations, including that on the existence of the soul, the existence of God, the material world, things we may doubt, and other philosophical problems of the time. These meditations do incorporate Descartes attempt to employ his method to some degree, but at the same time divert into other means. For example, Descartes' meditation on the existence of God is in many ways the Anselm ontological proof revisited, and has a certain circular reasoning to it.

This is an important text, one that I read the summer before I went to college, and makes a good study for those who wish to see the personal element in the development of philosophy.

One is supposed to advance one step or two already in the search after wisdom reading Descartes' work for once, but I am definitely willing to read all three of "Discourse on Method", "Meditations on the First Philosophy", and "The Principles of Philosophy" a second time at some point in the future to better understand more of his reasonings. If reading is really a species of conversation we hold with the authors, here I claim Descartes is someone nice to chat with. Still, I agree with Tom Griffith on that the foundations of modern science and technology are well laid, and we don't need to read Descartes to reassure ourselves of this - the reason for reading him today is that we miss one of life's great pleasures if we don't.

Though I believe intellectualism is a created title for dolts and boring minds, I also believe we need to understand ourselves, & each other. Descartes is THE place to begin if you have a true interest in that understanding, & your possible place in the world you inhabit. This book is a good translation of two great works. Reading this publication presents a fresh opportunity to look at everything from a new & clearer perspective. Written in a simple essay format, it allows consideration and contemplation of the text, rather than the draining involvement of putting it all together.

Descartes is reasonably approachable for a philosopher - and he discusses his theory on being "Cogito ero sum", as well as the proof for the existence of God. If you are in to philosophy, this is a good read.

So why do I say relevant? I sat through all of public school and mostly kept quiet feeling that most endeavors were either necessary but absurd or absurd & unnecessary. And why is this? Some of us just can't find adequate teachers early enough or even know that we need one. Let's face it. Most people will not see the relevancy of this book not because they have moved beyond this Enlightenment-era style inquiry, they just don't see the world with any depth. And from these 'modern' philosophers it's a straight shot to the existentialists and from there? Well Descartes can stimulate a mind in such a way that it will not ever be (completely) satisfied, which is exactly the way a mind stays healthy and a person stays able to function as an intellectual (which essentially means functioning as a fugitive in our culture, using the term poetically). People go around saying "I think therefore, I am" and of course have no idea of its context but instead use it to assert their identity. All I can say is that this is well worth reading. And especially if you are new to philosophy, I would never recommend another place to start. The continuum starting with Descartes and ending with Kant is absolutely fascinating. Most of what is discovered is what the mind can't do. Also, comes the awareness of how strongly linked truth is to language that of course has its own inherit and somewhat arbitrary logic. And then, when the implications of this continuum sink in, the 19th and 20th Century Existentialists and Absurdists come along. I believe that without the philosophers starting with Descartes it is impossible to see how and why the questions of 20th century Existentialism were and are still so pertinent. In fact, I believe that only at a point where much deeper abstraction is attainable through years of contemplation, I would declare George Berkeley and David Hume more pertinant than Socrates (Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Socrates).

I'm just a poet and have even had my usefulness or lack thereof contemplated by the likes of Descartes (Heidegger). I don't read much philosophy anymore because the universities have made philosophy courses hostile for theists and thinkers that place a heavy influence on the importance of language. Also, I believe the current self-identified philosophers to be power-hungry in the worst way. However, a philosophical pursuit is by nature personal and therefore as in most cases the most capable practitioners leave the institutions behind. It is sad that many of the humanities are almost exclusively being pursued in universities. I know in the case of poets, it seems the idea is to gain sufficient respect and find a nice hideout (a tenured position). And, when only the writers are reading, what in hell is the purpose? This tangent, I write in the hopes to disillusion the multitudes who book after book hope to put on the semblance of study & contemplation. Also, I write to perhaps to emphasize to anyone (especially students) that will read the book to open a door of perception: don't expect good company. There just aren't many people doing things for intrinsic or spiritual value or would even know how to go about such a thing. Blah Blah Blah amounts my heap of words politics invades churches thinkers learn to conform. Thus we have the 21st Century.

Celebrate free thought unceasingly with others when possible which is the highest joy & by yourself when necessary which isn't so bad when you're tapped into the music of the universe.

This little book changed my world view when I read it almost three decades ago. The author personal history is very close to mine as well the way we handle the problem to discover the world.

"I think, so I am" has very deep implication on or everyday Cosmology - the main of them is to be convinced we are not living in an illusion!

Great book.