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Chapter 10 - God and meditation in Descartes’Meditations on First Philosophy

from Part IV - The human being

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

By
Jorge Secada
Edited by
Karen Detlefsen
Karen Detlefsen
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

This chapter looks at Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy as a guide to meditation on God. Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy embodies a conception of philosophy that is deeply anti-scholastic and anti-analytic. From the perspective of the meditation on God, the purpose of the First Meditation is to introduce the meditative object. The meditator reflects on the actual or even just merely possible existence of this entity, this "supreme fountain of truth". The meditator perceives God as "a perfect being who is already wholly present though never wholly grasped by the human mind". Meditation on God will transform the meditator as it displays its infinite, ultimately fulfilling, object. If the Meditations are read as an essay engaged in refuting skepticism and securing the foundations of science, the quasi-mystical rapture at the end of the third Meditation is surely most surprising.
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Descartes' Meditations
A Critical Guide
 , pp. 200 - 225
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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