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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
Descartes explains that he summarized his conclusions about God and the soul in the earlier work Discourse on the Method. In these Meditations, he will answer the critics who have questioned his views: he will explain why the human soul has no essence besides “being a thinking thing” and why, if he can think of a God more perfect than himself, that God must exist. He dismisses atheists’ criticisms as irrelevant, as they underestimate God’s infiniteness and overestimate humans’ power. Next, he warns readers not to read this book unless they’re “able and willing to seriously meditate with [him].” Readers must follow reason alone, rather than their senses or their preconceived opinions. Finally, before criticizing Descartes’s arguments, they should read the Objections and Replies that he published along with the Meditations.
Descartes uses this preface to explain his overall goals in Meditations and to contextualize the book within the broader sweep of his life’s work. This context is important because it can help readers distinguish between Descartes and his narrator (whom we call “The Meditator” in this guide). Descartes has purposely made the Meditator naïve: the Meditator appears to be thinking up his arguments for the first time. This is a rhetorical technique intended to help readers identify with the Meditator, since the readers themselves are perhaps also encountering these ideas for the first time. In turn, it’s a bit easier to consider the book’s ideas more objectively. But readers must not assume that Descartes is as naïve as his Meditator. Descartes has spent years developing his ideas, testing them against objections, and figuring out the most logical and persuasive way to present them to his audience. Just as a mathematician might offer a formal proof of a concept accompanied by a commentary explaining why the proof is structured the way it is, Descartes presents Meditations as a proof and his Objections and Replies as a commentary.
Themes
