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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Meditations on First Philosophy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Knowledge, Doubt, and Science
God and the World
Mind and Body
Intellectual Discipline
Summary
Analysis
After three days of meditation, the Meditator knows with absolute certainty that he’s a thinking thing and that God exists. Since God cannot be a deceiver and God gave the Meditator his sense of judgment, that sense of judgment must be reliable. Of course, the Meditator makes errors because he is imperfect. His judgment is reliable, but it’s limited. Yet why would God make his judgment imperfect? While people can’t always understand God’s purposes, it does seem that creating a perfect world would require creating lots of imperfect individuals and giving each their own special place in the universe.
The Meditator recaps the conclusions he has reached so far and elaborates on a point he raised at the very end of the last chapter: God is perfect, so He would not deceive people, which means that the evil demon thought experiment is definitely not true. Human perception (which, for Descartes, is the same as judgment) is reliable. However, while God’s perfection means that human perception is reliable in general, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything people perceive is accurate. In other words, humans are capable of accurate judgment, but they still make mistakes; God has given us a perfect tool, but we sometimes misuse it. This speaks to why it’s so important to learn to use our judgment correctly.
Themes
The Meditator notices that he makes judgment errors due to a combination of his lack of knowledge and his free will. But the intellect isn’t unreliable: it’s just limited. Meanwhile, free will actually proves that God is great: it’s the only perfect human faculty, because we have absolute choice about whether to do things. In contrast, our understanding, memory, and imagination are limited. Knowing God enables us to freely choose what is good, whereas if we are indifferent and indecisive, we have not properly used our God-given abilities and are not truly free. The Meditator concludes that humans err because “the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect”—they use their free will in situations they don’t yet understand.
Descartes uses the Meditator’s argument about the will and the intellect to further clarify how humanity’s apparent imperfection is compatible with God’s perfection. His point depends on the implicit difference between something being defective and its being limited. For example, a ship could be defective, if it simply can’t sail, but it could also just be limited—perhaps it works the way it’s supposed to, but it just can’t go very fast. In this sense, humans are like a small ship: our faculties are perfect but highly limited. If humans misuse our abilities—which would be like steering the ship badly—then it’s our fault, not God’s. In short, humans are capable of perfect judgment (the kind of certain knowledge that Descartes hopes to achieve in this book). We just aren’t particularly good at using our abilities correctly.
Themes
This analysis explains how the Meditator has built his philosophy: he has resolved not to accept or reject ideas until he has enough knowledge to be sure about their truth. If he simply guessed what to believe without truly building understanding, then he would be misusing his free will. Rather than complaining, the Meditator is thankful for the intellect he has. He understands that God could not have given him part of a free will. He takes responsibility for his errors, rather than blaming God. And he recognizes that God could have made him more perfect, but this doesn’t mean the world would have been more perfect.
In this passage, Descartes uses the Meditator’s reasoning to connect his theory of human judgment to the rational method he develops in the Meditations. Specifically, the Meditator argues that the best way to rein in his free will and avoid error is by limiting himself to only believing in ideas that he’s perfectly certain about. This is the precise goal of his method of systematic doubt: by choosing to suspend belief in anything that can be doubted, he ensures that he limits himself to certain ideas. And in doing so, he prevents himself from stepping beyond the bounds of his limited intellect. Put differently, Descartes argues that logical deduction is the only way for people to use their intellect responsibly and truly respect God’s plan for the world.
Themes
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Lastly, as it’s impossible to obtain perfect knowledge about everything, the best way to avoid errors is by withholding one’s assent from anything that one’s intellect doesn’t clearly and distinctly perceive. Since clear and distinct perceptions are something rather than nothing, they must come from God, and since God is no deceiver, they must always be true.
Descartes now explicitly connects the principle that humans should use the intellect carefully to the concept of clear and distinct perceptions. In short, the clarity and distinctness of our perceptions is a measure of whether we are using the intellect responsibly: once we refine our perceptions to the point that they are clear and distinct, they represent certain truths, so it’s appropriate to believe in them. But believing in these perceptions before they are clear and distinct is an error. Of course, the purpose of philosophy—and the scientific method that Descartes lays out in this book—is to help people form clear and distinct perceptions of this sort.
Themes
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