- 01Translator’s Preface to the Reader
- 02Translator’s preface and contents
- 03Meditation I: Doubt and the senses
- 04Universal doubt and suspension of assent
- 05The evil spirit hypothesis
- 06Difficulty of maintaining doubt
- 01The certainty of existence in doubt
- 02The mind as a thinking thing
- 03Imagination, sense, and corporeal things
- 01The wax’s changing sensory qualities
- 02The mind’s inspection of the wax
- 03Self-knowledge and the mind’s certainty
Meditations on First Philosophy
by René Descartes · 1641 · 19 chapters · 24/7 tutor
Knowledge, mind, God, and skepticism.
19Chapters
36Lessons
85Topics
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 role in the Meditations
- Analyze the wax example and what it argues about perception and knowledge
- Evaluate the arguments for the existence of God presented in the text
- Distinguish between mind and body in Descartes’ dualist framework
- Summarize the main objections and replies included with the Meditations
- Interpret how Descartes treats the reliability and limits of the senses
About Meditations on First Philosophy.
Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) is a short book in six parts in which a narrator doubts everything he can, finds one thing he cannot doubt, and rebuilds knowledge from there: the self, God, the material world and the distinction between mind and body. Read it one meditation at a time, write each argument out as numbered steps, and test every conclusion against the doubts of the First Meditation.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician who spent most of his working life in the Dutch Republic. He published the Meditations in Latin in Paris in 1641, followed by a second edition in Amsterdam in 1642 and a French translation in 1647. It is a treatise written in the first person: a narrator sits alone, sets out to tear down everything he believes, and rebuilds knowledge on a foundation he cannot doubt. Descartes dedicated it to the Faculty of Theology in Paris and asked for its approval.
It is still read because it poses problems philosophy has not finished arguing about. How can you know anything if your senses sometimes mislead you? Is anything beyond doubt? How does a thinking mind relate to a physical body? Thought experiments about being a brain in a vat or living inside a simulation descend from the First Meditation's deceiving demon, and the mind-body problem starts here. And it is short enough to follow whole in a week.
What the book is really about.
Five themes run through all six meditations. For each, know the passage that shows it: essays on the Meditations are judged on how precisely you locate an argument.
Questions to ask as you read.
- 1Does the dream argument show that you might be dreaming now, or only that you cannot prove you are not?
- 2Why does Descartes need the malicious demon when he already has the dream argument?
- 3What exactly does "I am, I exist" prove: that some thinking exists, or that a particular person exists?
- 4Is Descartes right that the senses contribute nothing to knowing what the wax is?
- 5Could a finite mind build the idea of infinity by negating limits?
- 6Does the Cartesian circle break the argument, or can Descartes escape it?
- 7If error comes from the will, is it always your own fault when you are wrong?
- 8Does the ontological argument move illegitimately from a concept to a fact about reality?
- 9Does being able to conceive your mind without your body prove they are separate?
- 10How can an unextended mind cause an extended arm to move?
Curriculum
The full table of contents.
Every chapter, every lesson, every topic — laid out before you enroll. Click any chapter to expand it.
- Chapters
- 19
- Lessons
- 36
- Topics
- 85
- 01The thinking self and clear perception
- 02Doubt about sensory ideas and external things
- 03Arithmetic, geometry, and the possibility of deception
- 01Judgments, ideas, and sources of error
- 01Why natural light is more trustworthy than inclination
- 02Objective reality in ideas and causal adequacy
- 03Ideas of God, bodies, angels, and humans
- 01Ideas of men, angels, animals, and bodies
- 02The remaining idea of God
- 01The idea of an infinite substance proves God
- 02Why the idea of God cannot come from myself
- 03The causal chain leads to God
- 04The idea of God as innate
- 05God is no deceiver and the contemplation of divine attributes
- 01God as the source of certainty
- 02Error as privation and finite understanding
- 03Will, freedom, and the cause of error
- 04Free will, judgment, and the cause of error
- 05Avoiding error through clear and distinct perception
- 01Ideas of material things and mathematical certainty
- 02The ontological proof from a clear idea of God
- 03God as the ground of certainty and science
- 01Existence of corporeal beings
- 02Imagination versus pure intellection
- 03Imagination as distinct from mind
- 01Imagination, sense, and corporeal existence
- 01Why sensory ideas seemed trustworthy
- 02Reasons for doubting the senses
- 01Clear and distinct perception and the mind-body distinction
- 02Corporeal beings and the reliability of sensory ideas
- 03Nature, mind-body union, and the limits of sense
- 04Errors in natural appetite and sickly judgment
- 01Clock and body as machines
- 02Real error of nature in the compound body and mind
- 03Mind distinct from body
- 01Nerves as ropes transmitting motion
- 02How pain and thirst arise in the brain
- 03Why human senses can be deceived
- 01Sensory deception and bodily preservation
- 02Distinguishing waking from dreams
- 03Human life and particular errors
- 01Thomas Hobbes’s objections to the Meditations
- 01Objections made against the foregoing Meditations
- 01Doubt about dreams and waking sense
- 02Purpose of the skeptical arguments
- 01Mind, thought, and substance
- 01Distinction between the thinker and thought
- 02Modes of thought as inseparable from the self
- 01Imagination versus conception of the mind
- 02Ratiocination and the meaning of words
- 01Ideas of man, chimera, angel, and God
- 02Descartes’s use of the word idea
- 01Superadded forms of thought: wills, affections, and judgments
- 01How the idea of God is received
- 02Reply on the idea of God and the soul
- 01Astronomical arguments and the idea of the Sun
- 01Objective reality in ideas of substances and God
- 02Reply on ideas, reality, and degrees of being
- 01God as infinite, independent, omniscient, almighty creator
- 02Innate ideas and the faculty of producing them
- 01Argument from the idea of God
- 02Reply on God's inconceivability and the demonstration
- 01Error as a defect, not a real being
- 02Freedom of will and the cause of error
- 01Assent to clear perception and the will
- 01Against the Fifth Meditation on material essence
- 01Objection: God's deception and the existence of bodies
- 02Reply: deception incompatible with divine nature
- 01Dreams and memory of past actions
- 02Knowledge of waking and the true God
- 01Classical, theological, and legal folio books
- 02Controversial divinity, sermons, and law reference works
- 03Poetry, practical manuals, and school texts
01How many chapters are in the Meditations on First Philosophy course?
The Meditations on First Philosophy course has 19 chapters, each with its own lessons and topics.
02How many lessons are in the Meditations on First Philosophy course?
There are 36 lessons across the course, and you can ask your 24/7 tutor about any of them.
03Can I see what the Meditations on First Philosophy course covers before I start?
Yes. The full curriculum is listed on this page, beginning with "METAPHYSICAL MEDITATIONS ;".
04Do I get a certificate for the Meditations on First Philosophy course?
Yes. Finishing the course earns a personal Cavua certificate of completion.
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