Descartes: The Meditations

Six days of doubt and reconstruction with René Descartes

A course on the thought of René Descartes.

Course outline

1. First Meditation: The Fire and the Demon — The method of doubt — why I tear everything down to the foundations, the dream that unsettles the senses, and the evil demon who unsettles even arithmetic.
2. Second Meditation: I Think, Therefore I Am — The one thing the demon cannot take — that I exist whenever I think — and the piece of wax that shows the mind is better known than the body.
3. Third Meditation: The Idea of the Infinite — The rule of clear and distinct perception, and the first proof of God — that a finite mind could never have produced, by itself, the idea of the infinite.
4. Fourth Meditation: Why I Ever Go Wrong — If God is no deceiver, why do I err at all? Error as a misuse of free will — the boundless will outrunning the narrow light of the intellect.
5. Fifth Meditation: The Mountain and the Valley — The essences of material things, known before any experience — and the second proof of God, the ontological argument, where existence belongs to perfection as the valley to the mountain.
6. Sixth Meditation: The World Rebuilt — That material things exist; the real distinction between mind and body; and the intimate union of the two — with the honest difficulty Princess Elisabeth pressed.

Part of the Symposium course library.