Continental Philosophy

Descartes: The Emergence of Subjectivity

Primary Source:

• Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations 1 and 2 (Handout)

Background:
From the Routledge Online Encyclopedia:

René Descartes, often called the father of modern philosophy, attempted to break with the philosophical traditions of his day and start philosophy anew. Rejecting the Aristotelian philosophy of the schools, the authority of tradition and the authority of the senses, he built a philosophical system that included a method of inquiry, a metaphysics, a mechanistic physics and biology, and an account of human psychology intended to ground an ethics. Descartes was also important as one of the founders of the new analytic geometry, which combines geometry and algebra, and whose certainty provided a kind of model for the rest of his philosophy.

The Meditations begins with a series of arguments intended to cast doubt upon everything formerly believed, and culminating in the hypothesis of an all-deceiving evil genius, a device to keep former beliefs from returning [this is the topic of Meditation 1]. The rebuilding of the world begins with the discovery of the self through the ‘Cogito Argument’ (‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’) – a self known only as a thinking thing, and known independently of the senses [this is the topic of Meditation 2]. The project, then, is to build the entire world from the thinking self. It is important here that it is not just the mind that is the foundation, but my mind. In this way, the starting place of philosophy for Descartes was connected with the rejection of authority that is central to the Cartesian philosophy. In beginning with the Cogito, we build a philosophy detached from history and tradition.

Questions:

• Descartes presents four skeptical arguments at the beginning of Meditation 1. Why does he mention skepticism? What are the four skeptical steps (in their precise order)? What is their meaning?
• In Meditation 2, Descartes arrives at his first indubitable proposition. What is it and how does he arrive at it?
• What sort of ‘thing’ does Descartes deduce that he is in Meditation 2?
• What is Descartes’ wax example in Meditation 2? What does he purport to show with this example?

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