- 01Good sense and the equal distribution of reason
- 02The need to apply reason rightly
- 03Personal confidence in a method for increasing knowledge
- 04Caution about self-deception and the plan to describe his life
- 01The author's aim and method
- 02Early schooling and doubts about learning
- 03Assessment of the school studies
- 01Abandoning letters for worldly experience
- 02Learning from travel, courts, and armies
- 03Rejecting custom and studying oneself
Discourse on Method
Methodic doubt and foundations of modern philosophy.
6Chapters
24Lessons
57Topics
Certificate of completion included
This course was produced by Cavua from a public-domain text.
Skills this course leaves you with.
- Explain Descartes' method of doubt and its purpose in philosophical inquiry
- Describe the four rules of method presented in the text
- Summarize the role of provisional morality in Descartes' argument
- Identify the main claims about mind, body, and the foundations of knowledge
- Analyze how Descartes connects self-doubt to the search for certainty
- Discuss why Descartes withholds some scientific ideas while publishing others
Curriculum
The full table of contents.
Every chapter, every lesson, every topic — laid out before you enroll. Click any chapter to expand it.
- Chapters
- 6
- Lessons
- 24
- Topics
- 57
- 01Reforming one’s own opinions
- 02Why custom and example mislead judgment
- 03Limits of logic for discovery
- 01The four rules of method
- 02Applying the method to mathematics
- 01Provisory code of morals
- 01Firmness in action and probable choices
- 02Conquering oneself rather than fortune
- 01Choosing the life of reason and truth
- 02Travel, doubt, and clearing away false opinions
- 03Mathematical method and retreat in the Netherlands
- 01Methodic doubt and the Cogito
- 02Mind as a thinking substance
- 03Criterion of truth and certainty
- 01Idea of a more perfect being
- 02God as the source of perfection
- 03God's simplicity and dependence of created things
- 01Geometry, God, and the certainty of existence
- 02Imagination, the senses, and the soul
- 03Dreaming and the limits of bodily certainty
- 01Truth of clear and distinct ideas depends on God
- 02Dreams, waking experience, and the rule of reason
- 01summary of the contents of this treatise
- 01Rational soul and animal functions
- 02Anatomy of the heart and major vessels
- 03Valves, heat, and the cardiac cycle
- 01Perpetual circulation through arteries and veins
- 02Signs of arterial blood and pulse
- 03Heat, respiration, digestion, nutrition, and animal spirits
- 01Fabric of the nerves and muscles
- 01Speech as evidence of reason
- 02The rational soul and immortality
- 01Reasons for withholding publication
- 01Medicine as the aim of inquiry
- 02Experiments and the order of discovery
- 01Experiments needed to advance natural knowledge
- 02Reasons for withholding publication during life
- 01Why objections and disputes are unhelpful
- 02Self-discovery and the limits of secondhand learning
- 03Critique of Aristotelian philosophy and the value of clear principles
- 01Limits of relying on others for experiments
- 02Reasons for publishing specimens
- 01Reply to objections through the publisher
- 02Hypotheses in the Dioptrics and Meteorics
- 01Defense of original opinions and method
- 02Writing in French for unprejudiced readers
- 03Future work in natural philosophy and medicine
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