René Descartes’s philosophical method centers on using logical reasoning to achieve certain, systematic knowledge. As a result, readers might find it strange that he wrote the Meditations as a first-person story about a Meditator immersed in thought, rather than a direct philosophical treatise explaining and proving his views. What’s more, he covered many of the same ideas in his earlier work Discourse on the Method and his later textbook Principles of Philosophy, but the Meditations actually remains far more popular today. Clearly, its distinctive narrative flair has somehow captured its readers’ attention. Indeed, Descartes presented the Meditations as a series of essayistic soliloquies in part because he believed this would bring the reader along with his Meditator’s logic, step by step, and convince them of his conclusions more thoroughly. But he also did so for another notable reason: he thought that the discipline, sustained attention, and reasoning skills involved in actually doing philosophical inquiry would help his readers, and he wanted to show them how to do it. After all, his Meditator concludes that achieving certain knowledge in everyday life requires systematically assessing one’s perceptions with the intellect, in order to make them as clear and distinct as possible. (For instance, rather than simply reacting instinctively to pain, people should try to understand where it’s coming from and why.) This is also why Descartes describes the Meditator thinking through each chapter of the book per day, rather than doing it all at once: he wants to show how a sustained, thorough routine of contemplation can help people achieve intellectual progress and digest complex ideas at an accessible pace. In short, then, Descartes uses the Meditator’s intellectual journey as a model for showing his readers how they can use the tools of philosophy to become better, more enlightened people.
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Intellectual Discipline Quotes in Meditations on First Philosophy
I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, and to withdraw their minds from the senses and from all preconceived opinions. Such readers, as I well know, are few and far between.
I will suppose therefore that […] 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, colours, 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 all these things. I shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my power, that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree.
So serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown as a result of yesterday’s meditation that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them. It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top.
But before examining this point more carefully and investigating other truths which may be derived from it, I should like to pause here and spend some time in the contemplation of God; to reflect on his attributes, and to gaze with wonder and adoration on the beauty of this immense light, so far as the eye of my darkened intellect can bear it. For just as we believe through faith that the supreme happiness of the next life consists solely in the contemplation of the divine majesty, so experience tells us that this same contemplation, albeit much less perfect, enables us to know the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life.
If, however, I simply refrain from making a judgement in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error. But if in such cases I either affirm or deny, then I am not using my free will correctly. If I go for the alternative which is false, then obviously I shall be in error; if I take the other side, then it is by pure chance that I arrive at the truth, and I shall still be at fault since it is clear by the natural light that the perception of the intellect should always precede the determination of the will. In this incorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutes the essence of error.
Today I have learned not only what precautions to take to avoid ever going wrong, but also what to do to arrive at the truth. For I shall unquestionably reach the truth, if only I give sufficient attention to all the things which I perfectly understand, and separate these from all the other cases where my apprehension is more confused and obscure. And this is just what I shall take good care to do from now on.
In these cases and many others I see that I have been in the habit of misusing the order of nature. For the proper purpose of the sensory perceptions given me by nature is simply to inform the mind of what is beneficial or harmful for the composite of which the mind is a part; and to this extent they are sufficiently clear and distinct. But I misuse them by treating them as reliable touchstones for immediate judgements about the essential nature of the bodies located outside us; yet this is an area where they provide only very obscure information.
Accordingly, I should not have any further fears about the falsity of what my senses tell me every day; on the contrary, the exaggerated doubts of the last few days should be dismissed as laughable. This applies especially to the principal reason for doubt, namely my inability to distinguish between being asleep and being awake. […] But since the pressure of things to be done does not always allow us to stop and make such a meticulous check, it must be admitted that in this human life we are often liable to make mistakes about particular things, and we must acknowledge the weakness of our nature.
